We Bought a Zoo

     We Bought a Zoo, starring Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson.

     Benjamin Mee (Damon) is a widower trying to raise two kids on his own.  He was an adventure seeker who found a way to make a living chasing adventure and writing for the paper.  When his wife passes away from cancer (I assume, the film never comes out and says what she was sick with), his life falls to pieces.  His son (Dylan) becomes disillusioned with him, and life in general, and Benjamin is doing everything he can to keep the same thing from happening to his seven-year-old daughter, Rosie.

     Dylan gets his third strike at school from stealing a cash box from the lunchroom, and is expelled.  Rosie can't sleep because the neighbors are being, "happy too loud", Benjamin quits his job because his boss is patronizing him, and everything in town reminds him of his recently deceased wife.  He decides it's time for a change, and the family goes looking for a new house.

     The only place that seems to fit their need to get away is a large, 18 acre, property, in the middle of nowhere.  Benjamin and Rosie fall in love with the place, but the dream house comes with a heavy addendum to the purchase contract; it's a Zoo.  They can only buy the place if they put forth the effort to keep up the Zoo, care for the animals, and reopen the business, otherwise the endangered animals will be put to sleep.

     The staff had all quit, save a few die-hard animal lovers.  The current Zoo Keeper is Kelly Foster (Johansson), who is under-qualified, but hopeful.  The two make a go at getting the Zoo back to its former glory.

     We watched this with the kids, and everybody liked it.  It's a heartwarming story, without getting too sappy.  Watching Benjamin struggle through his feelings over the loss of his wife was beautifully done by Mr. Damon.  To me, he's an action film guy aka Jason Bourne, but he transitioned very well into this role.  

     The story is true.  Though, the actual events were far different from the film, the family still runs the zoo (or did at the end of the filming of the movie).

     I'd give the film

The Last 5 Years

     The Last 5 Years, Starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan.

     This is a musical... with Anna Kendrick... so I was thinking, "Awsome!"  I love her voice, and she's a great actress, and a fun person, so I came into this with really high expectations.  It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as I was hoping for.  I also went into it completely blind.  I didn't even read reviews before I watched it, so the timeline mix-up (which was really cool, but confusing at first) messed me up, a lot.

     Cathy (Kendrick) is an up and coming actress.  She falls in love with an up an coming, Jewish novelist named Jamie (Jordan).  Her songs start at the end of their relationship and work backward.  His start at the beginning and work forward.  The whole thing ends in the middle when he proposes.  The deconstructed timeline made the movie, once you figure it out. 

     They are two dreamy artists, so the love is fast and intense, but loses its substance when things get tough, and Jamie cheats on her, ending their marriage.  It's a bit of a cliche, but probably happens more often than not.  They are both so frustrated with their struggles in trying to make it in their perspective careers, that they lose touch with each other.  

     The music was good.  Mr. Jordan is in the new Supergirl series, so it was fun to watch him sing.  I was impressed.  Mrs. Kendrick's voice was beautiful, as expected.  However, none of the songs really stood out for me.  I love musicals because singing is a talent I truly wish I had, but truly don't.  I did theater all through high school, and my drama teacher would always make a spectacle of how horribly I sing.  So, when I watch a show like this, with talent like this one had, I want something that will stick with me.  Sadly, the repeating melody is mundanely present throughout.  There weren't any ups and downs.

     There is quite a bit of language throughout, and they even belt out the "F" word.  I'm sad that Hollywood is doing that in every PG-13 movie now.

     In all, I'd give it

Little Boy

     Little Boy Starring Jakob Salvati (as little boy), Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, David Henrie, Michael Rapaport, and Emily Watson. 

     We went and watched this with the family when it was in theaters, so it's been a while since I've seen it, but I remember it well enough to write the review.

     Little Boy is about a boy who loves his dad.  He's small for his age, and gets picked on by a lot of the kids around town, but his dad makes all his problems go away.  They are best friends.  When WWII breaks out, James Busbee (Little Boy's father)signs up to fight for his country.  He writes home regularly, but when his unit is attacked, the letters stop coming.  Most of the town assumes he's dead.

     Pepper Flynt Busbee (little boy), goes to the Father of his church to ask for a miracle.  He wants the Father to pray for God to send his dad home safe.  The Father says that miracles are rare, and he would have to complete several tasks to obtain one.  One of the tasks is to befriend the only Japanese man in town, Hashimoto.  Pepper hates this idea because he believes it's the Japanese's fault that his dad left in the first place.  To make matters worse, the whole town is pretty prejudice against the old Japanese man, including Pepper's brother, London.

     Pepper wants his father home so badly, he decides to befriend the old Japanese man.  Hashimoto, isn't too keen on letting the boy get his hopes up, and is resistant to the friendship.  Tempers flare as the town thinks Pepper is a traitor, even his own brother turns against him.  Little Boy keeps his faith through the whole ordeal, and even causes an earthquake with his faith (or perhaps the timing was just right, and it was all a coincidence). 

     This was a heartwarming movie, but they seemed to try too hard to push too many values down the audiences throat.  You can't help but get emotional over the boy's undying love and faith that his father will make it home, but they throw so many other lessons in the movie that it gets a bit sappy.  The story of the boy having faith to bring his father home would have been enough, but there is also a story of tolerance, overcoming bullies, family love bringing home the prodigal son, a mother being faithful to her husband, and on and on.  

     However, I can't say I wasn't entertained, so I'd have to give it

Clean Movies For Your Family

     Okay, first of all, I know it's Sat. morning, and not Friday Fun Day, but I got dizzy last night, and had to go to sleep to avoid a seizure before I had a chance to post this last night.  But last night we tried VidAngel and were pretty impressed.  You can buy movies to stream from them, and then apply filters to bleep out any content you don't want to see or hear, and if you sell them back to VidAngel for $1 less, so essentially you're renting a movie for a buck.  If you watch it and love it, you can keep it.

     The great thing about this is that they have some very rigorous filters you can apply.  You can make movies friendly for your kids if you want.  The swear words are muted, you can skip sex scenes, violent or graphic scenes, and even implied stuff.  Here's a list of some of the filters.

Miscellaneous

Opening credits

Closing credits

Objectionable/disturbing (Farting, and other crude stuff)

Language

Profanity (All your usually swear words)

Sexual (any sexual references)

Crude (Not quite swear words, but you may not want your kids hearing these things)

Blasphemy (all the varieties of taking the Lord's name in vain, or mocking religious stuff)

Discriminatory (racial slurs)

Other Language (words like pimp, or jerk, or even calling names like stupid)

Sex/Nudity/Immodesty

Immodesty (cleavage, bikinis, shirtless guys, etc.)

Sex (hardcore all the way to implied)

Nudity (in all its varieties)

Implied Nudity (nothing is shown but they show enough to make you know/think the actors are nude)

Kissing (yes, you can even skip the kissing scenes)

Violence/Blood/Gore

Implied (Gun shoots but you don't see victim, stuff like that.)

Non-Graphic (punches, car crashes, etc.)

Graphic (Blood/gore stuff)

Disturbing Images (people under falling debris, fall off buildings, long distance deaths, scary stuff)

Alcohol or Drug Use

Legal (smoking/drinking scenes)

Illegal (underage, or illegal drug use)

     So there are a lot of filters, and even the rated G Disney movies have filters available.  The nice thing is that you can filter stuff for each movie.  The title will have a list of filters available for any given movie and you can pick and choose what you want taken out.  The only warning I will give is that these scenes are skipped.  So if you're watching Frozen, and you filter the scene where the Swedish family is in the sauna because it's implied nudity, it will cut that part out, leaving a bit of a skip in the movie.  It's not dead air, it just skips it like you pressed next on the remote, but only that short scene where they wave from the window.  So if you have a lot of filters, you may end up with a bit of confusion because a lot of scenes are skipped.  You can skip some scenes in a category, and not others if you know a movie.  So if you like the hunger games, and don't mind the kids killing each other, but that scene where Cato slashes the nerdy kid is too much for you, you can cut just that scene out, but see the others.

     Even if you aren't interested in cleaning up the movies you watch, this is a pretty cool site.  You can basically rent movies without paying high prices, and without driving to redbox.  I was really impressed with the service.

     Click HERE for the link to VidAngel, and enjoy!