Lucy Rated: R

Cat Says:


I like Sci-Fi but I LOVE action! Lucy is a lot more Sci-Fi and it has action. That may not seem like a difference but it really is a huge difference. Unfortunately that's not the problem here. Let's start with the premise of the movie which is that we only use 10% of our brains and what would happen if we could access more.

Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is a girl hanging out in Asia who meets a dicey guy who then traps her into delivering a briefcase to an Asian mobster. He turns out to be a drug kingpin and she ends up becoming an unwilling drug mule. Here is the first problem. Lucy isn't the only one who gets a packet of this new designer drug sewn up into their abdomens...she is one of 4. But she is the only one who ends up, somehow, in a prison instead of heading to the airport like the other 3. She gets beaten up, the packet ruptures and she ingests enough of the drug to make the change begin and she begins to gain more access to her brain. 

Does Lucy use these new found mental powers that the drug provides to enact revenge? Nope. Does she make it her mission to get the drug off the face of the Earth? Nope. Her one and only mission is to retrieve the other packets for HER use and get to this scientist who does lectures on how much of our human brains we actually use. 

And that's still not totally what is wrong with this movie. As the scientist (Morgan Freeman with almost a walk on role here) lectures about evolution we end up seeing nature video of evolution. When he lectures about reproduction we get nature videos of reproduction. Yes, that heavy handed! Still not all that is wrong with this movie.

As Lucy begins to use more of her brain, thanks to this drug, she goes from the supposed 10% that we use to 20% (and yes, an old fashioned cue card says 20% (or 30%, 40%, etc) on the screen) and up and gets less human and more monotone by the moment. She figures she only has 24 hours to live and spends half of it just getting to the scientist and retrieving the packets. There is a French cop pulled into it (barely) and the Asian bad guys are still chasing her so you get some battles where she is just able to lift people with her mind. However when the lab where the scientist is comes under siege she simply has the French cop try to defend it instead of just removing the bad guys with her mind! THIS is what is majorly wrong with this movie. There are no consistencies. So you end up, the entire movie, thinking "but why didn't she just do "this" or "that" instead?" or "But if she can do that with her mind then why is there any fighting at all?" Because there HAS to be a bad guy and there HAS to be action, otherwise you just end up with a Sci-fi movie and not an action movie.

While I won't tell you the ending you can, by now, guess that it doesn't make a lot of sense even when you are shown more nature videos to try to explain it away. I give this a 4.5 out of 10 simply because of the special effects and the fact that I like Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman.

For those parents out there...it's R because of a very brief sexual encounter (nature videos) and the extreme violence.

Begin Again Rated: R

Cat Says:

So I'd seen the trailer for this movie and I was lukewarm in going to see it but my Mom wanted to see it so what the heck...good Girl's Night Out movie? Yes, yes it was!

The film begins with a girl, Gretta (played by Keira Knightly) being forced up on stage at an Open Mic night by a friend. She sings a little folk song that is not too well received...except by one very drunk washed up music industry producer, Dan (played by Mark Ruffalo) who doesn't just hear her song but also the full arrangement he could bring to it and make it a hit. If only Gretta would let him. 

Gretta is on her last night in the States, heading back to the UK after her relationship with her up and coming rock star and co-songwriter boyfriend, Dave (played by Adam Levine) crashes and burns when he ends up breaking up with her after dragging her on his whirlwind journey to stardom. So she's broken-hearted and just wants to get the hell outta Dodge and away from how much her life sucks and the last thing she wants is to deal with some drunk guy who wants to make her a star. 

But the thing Dan needs most in life is to make her a star and save his own life. He's lost his wife and daughter, and on that day his job too, to his failing career and his dive into the bottle so he really needs this motivation to rejoin the human race and his life. 

So he talks Gretta into his dream, talks his old partner at their music label to give it a chance, and he and Gretta put together their own album. And save each other. 

It's a wonderfully sweet movie. It doesn't make anyone an angel or a devil, not even the cheating boyfriend Dave. Everyone has a heart, everyone is dealing with how fast life changes and how quickly you can get lost. And I loved it. This one I will own when it comes out on DVD type loved it. I loved the music so much I went out and bought the soundtrack that day. I really like Keira Knightly's voice and the music here but a word on that. Go to Amazon or just look up one of the songs on YouTube before going to see this. If you hate this music then you'll hate the movie since it's in just about every single scene. But if you like the music then chances are you will love this movie. I give it a 9.5 out of 10.