A TV Show that is wrapped around its characters who are so perfectly built in and embodied as if they are out of a cartoon show! You cannot help it but to fall in love with it and in certain perspective, the adorable students. In every session of AP Bio, which seem to be all there is for the students, their single-liners are hilarious and masterfully stated!
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"AP Bio" is as one reviewer wrote "original" and as I would put it, the "art" itself!
Reviews
8 Reviews
A.P. Bio
(2018–2021)
Modernly Funny, Perfectly Characterized, Absolutely Lovable; "AP Bio" is a genius work of perfection!
21 December 2020
RoboCop
(2014)
RoboCop (2014)
21 August 2014
What Happens when futuristic robots, work as police force to take control of violence, murder, and corruption at police department taking the criminals down? This primarily happens in the USA, in one of the most violent cities in the world; Detroit in 2028. It gets interesting when organic intelligence takes place of artificial one. But it also gets more interesting when a human brain is combined with one of these robots to make a prototype of a humanoid called RoboCop, only that it is human. RoboCop (2014) is the story of a devoted Detroit PD cop, Alex Murphy (Joshua Zetumer), whose life was changed after he was paralyzed in a car bombing in front of his house and his wife (Abbie Cornish) agreed to have the rest of his body, which was not a lot, to be implanted into one the robot machines by one of the Omnicorp scientists. Omnicorp is a multibillion-dollar company whose products are running in the streets of Tehran, Iran in Tehran's Operation Freedom and the company tries to get the majority vote from the senate for utilizing its products inside the US. However, backed up by Sen. Hubert Dreyfus, a moral debate rises soon after a Persian kid is killed by one the Omnicorp robots in a conflict which leads to Dreyfus act; ban of Omnicorp products use inside the US territory. However, unlike the other robots, Alex has feelings and considers the value of life which leads him to be 5.6 seconds behind the scenario time in the first test he had after he turned into a RoboCop. Able to recognize potential threat by analyzing emotional assessments, Alex reviews his homicide scene and starts solving his own murder. Adding bits like this to the screenplay, I believe that this was so cleaver of the creators having the remake of RoboCop (1987) exciting still not turning it into a boring replica. I remember watching the first version of RoboCop, in 1990s and as a kid I was excited about the idea of it and enthusiastic about the combination of technology with biology. And of course Alex Murphy's character then was so lovely for me unlike the one in this version which honestly I couldn't come to the point of liking him. One of the other things I didn't like about the movie was having Iran in a war zone by the means of freeing it from the tyranny of its rulers which sounds like another propaganda to have the minds ready for creating yet a brand new chaos in the Middle East, although, I liked the animated art pretty much and for someone who actually lives in Iran I must say that the old facade recreated of the city's streets was more like of those in Syria and Iraq not of the classy and beautiful Tehran. Director José Padilha has done a great and like most of the MGM movies a detailed job in RoboCop. Everything is in order and every detail seems to be worked at. What attracted me the most though, was the cypresses grown inside the Omnicorp headquarters suggesting that the machinery world of Sellars saves the world in a peaceful shape without any corruption like what Novak says; "Machines, however, are corrupting free." But what happens when the creator and supporters of it are corrupted already? RoboCop answers this question and unveils the truth by distinguishing the goodwill and punishing the evil deed.
Noah
(2014)
Noah (2014)
20 August 2014
"In the beginning there was nothing." Says Noah when he describes the creation to his family while they are floating on the water surrounded Earth. As I was watching Noah (2014) my mind got filled with lots of questions and yet new ideas of brilliance about the truth of what was going on in the past of humankind and of course the past of creation. From the fallen angels who disobeyed the creator to help human and therefor were punished to be transformed from light and trapped into bodies of stones until they got released asking the creator to forgive them and ascended back to the heaven, it made me realize how ungrateful human is and yet how stupid it could be. It, the movie, also solved some of my questions. Temptation led him to eat the forbidden fruit, and descended him to the Earth, it began to kill his own kind and turned the world into a planet of horror. But after generations there comes a man of light whose task is to lead the world into a new beginning by wiping the ugliness of generation of disobeying people off the face of the Earth having them all sunk. The creator chooses him to finish what was left to be done
but soon he realizes there is a choice to let it go on with mankind life or to abort the existence of it. Emotionally struggled between his feelings for his family and his will to do the right with the creator, Noah says to him "I will not fail you" and repeats it three times determined to end the violence brought to the Earth by man abusing the knowledge that fallen angels had given to them of creation. There are many great scenes in the movie but for me, there was nothing more tremendous than to see the sudden bloom of a flower by a drop of rain or the sudden growth of trees from a barren land which compelled me to think about the majesty of the creator once again but this time deeper from a clearer view; there is nothing that he can't do. However, before the movie was over the idea that how different and perhaps diverted the story and the characters of Noah and his family members are from the original ones I had heard came to my mind. It had lots of paradoxes with what was narrated in Muslims' Quran and although I am no familiar with the real Bible but I can say it for certain that it is in contradiction with it to. For instance the long age of Noah comes to the mind that no evidence of it could be seen in the movie. It seems that the writers (Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel) haven't done a complete research for a project that its name proceeds the whole Cinema in history genre put together. When I saw Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly playing together in A Beautiful Mind (2001) as a couple whose relationship was disturbed by the hallucinated imaginations of Dr. Nash (Russell Crowe), I was so amused by their realistic and amazing performance and now to see them back together again in Noah, I can't think of any other couple of actors who could play the roles as good as they did. The visual effects, on the other hand, are not so eye catching comparing to the previous works of Paramount Pictures like Titanic (1997). The animals could easily be found as immaturely animated and the species like the cats are hidden from the eyes in the majestic entrance of the animals into the arc. I think The Ten Commandments' (1956) creators would be doing a better yet more realistic job of making Noah. Of course it was in no compare with Darren Aronofsky's previous jobs like Black Swan (2010). However, to sum up nearly 2000 years of Noah's life and capture it in a 2+ hour feature with a though diverted but a rather straight storyline without any excess inclination in it was an absolutely daring work that Darren did.
A Trip to the Moon
(1902)
A Trip to the Moon (1902)
3 January 2014
One of the first ever colored movies in the history of cinema, A Trip to the Moon (1902), brings the story of a group of astronauts having a trip to the moon and back after a controversial proposal is suggested by the eldest member of their society in where seems to be a planetarium where an assembly of astronauts, pros and cons, are gathered together to discuss the project. The scientists reach an agreement on doing this project and a few are chosen to do the trip. Their plan is to build a human carrying capsule and then shoot it toward the moon via a very big ordnance. Shot by ordnance seems to be the only possible way of going to a far vertical distance then and maybe the only solution coming to minds of the creators of this movie because at that time the technology of rockets or human carrying shuttles were not yet evolved, though the idea of space exploration by rockets was proposed by a Russian schoolteacher named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1898 but its technicality published in 1903. However, Jules Verne's novel as one of the uncredited adaptation materials for this short feature has more surprises in itself than just shooting a capsule to the moon and although I haven't read H.G. Well's novel, "First Men in the Moon", I am sure that it too, suggests more sophisticated and of course rather elaborated way to send humans to the moon. But what seems to be more initial in this movie is the way the astronauts return to the earth after an exploration in a planet of apes like environment; they use gravity of the earth to fall from a rock in the moon into the ocean defying the laws and the absolute nature of the astrophysics even known to the time movie was made at. The moon is habitable and has all the four elements of life; it even snows. In there they face with giant mushrooms and are chased and arrested by Martian like creatures who turn into colorful dust when being hit. After destroying their king, the astronauts manage their getaway and proudly return to the earth where they are welcomed by overwhelmed people and politicians, celebrating their successful trip to the moon. Georges Méliés directed this movie with the original French title of "A voyage dans la lune" 4 years after he directed a 3-minute-long short movie about the moon titled La lune à un mètre (The Moon at One Meter) (1898) aka: A Trip to the Moon. He is one the first directors in the cinema whose movies are all almost short. I don't know why Méliés uses a lot of cheerleader like girls in most of the scenes but what is apparent for sure in this Sci-Fi short movie is the lack of seriousness of female gender in his created scientific society and to be precise feminism fades here. Most likely they are just there to beautify the long theatrical like shots. The-13-minute-long short movie proposed in both black white and hand painted color but the color version was considered as lost for several decades until it was found by Filmoteca de Catalunya in 1993 and only in 2010 a complete restored version of this film was launched after a one by one restoration of 13,375 frames of the movie was done via today's technology and the missing or too damaged frames were taken from the black white version and then colored. Even though A Trip to the Moon has a not so complicated plot and filming compare to what a today's version of it would have, the visual effects used in the movie were amazing for the era it was made in and if not so overwhelmed, the movie itself was a great success in the early years of cinema.
Cube²: Hypercube
(2002)
Cube 2: Hypercube (2002)
3 January 2014
Hypercube is the idea of a twisted maze created by the dangerous mind of Alex Trusk whose existence has been under a cloud and was considered to be the first genetically engineered super human however, that's not true. The idea was manufactured as an experimental prototype of quantum telecommunication in an extremely large cyber environment by Izon, one of the most powerful weapons manufacturers in the world. The outcome is reality combined with virtual world of a theoretical four dimensional shape called hypercube. Its creator is among the 10 people trapped inside it every one of whom in a way is involved with Izon Weapon Corporation. However, none of them seems to know where there is. It includes sixty millions cubic white rooms with a touch sensor door panel in each side of every room designed by Jerry Whitehall (Neil Crone), an engineer who enjoys reading whore novels and eating chocolate ice cream. Each door panel enters into another room where the gravity might shift or even not exist and the time speed might vary. The concept of variable time speed rooms was programmed by Max (Matthew Ferguson) for a computer game stolen by a company called Cyber Thrill which is a subsidiary of Izon. The rooms seem to repeat themselves; Jerry finds out this when he starts numbering them but when he faces some big numbers written already on the door frames, the possibility of the idea of parallel realities simultaneous existence in a quantum universe increases. "This place changes your perception of what's possible", says Kate (Kari Matchett), a psychotherapist who later appears to be in a very close cooperation with Izon. She looks after Sasha (Grace Lynn Kung), a blind Asian girl, who is so positive that things are not going to end well and believes that their attempt to get out of there is hopeless. But what is the exit way of this complex labyrinth? In search for an answer Kate finds out that the numbers, 60659 are written in some other rooms as well. This leads her to carefully look for the meaning of them and when she notices the time leading to 6:06':59" in Jerry's watches fastened to the hand of his several time murderer, she is able to crack the code. Directed by the Polish cinematographer, Andrzej Sekula, Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) is an intelligently created multiple dimensional universe to which the rules of theoretical possibilities are applied. The plot for this movie is genius in connecting all the insiders to a common outsider source but fails to connect them all together in a logical way and connects them only in a two by two way at the best. The movie occurs mostly in the closed spaces of the rooms and for such limited spaces the set decoration is quite appreciable; it's not boring at all and saves all the thrill to follow the coming events. It is the effective cooperation of all the different departments involved in movie making that creates synchronized perfection in a mind blowing unique environment called "Hypercube".
The Bounty Hunter
(I) (2010)
The Bounty Hunter (2010)
3 January 2014
A wanted felon and a bounty hunter, an ex-wife and an ex-husband. A couple divorced and resentful of one another are drawn together after the husband becomes hunter and the wife huntee. Nicole Hurley (Jennifer Aniston) who works in the Daily News is a wanted felon for assaulting police, grazing an NYPD police horse with her car when she was in hurry for a press conference. She was on bail and had a trial meeting but four minutes before the trial begins, she gets a call for an emergency meeting for her story of a suicide and by ditching her lawyer, she goes to her appointment which leads the judge to order bench warrant on her case. Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler) is an ex-cop for police force who was fired for neglect of duty and now works with the police department as a bounty hunter but himself is looked for by a retail mob called Irene for owing her money. Milo gets offered five grand to find his ex-wife and take her to the jail. Nicole works on the suicide story of Walter Lilly, an employee of police storage department, who according to a police report signed by Bobby has jumped off a building but she suspects that it was a murder because Walter was afraid of height and he was riven to the street on his head which apparently in suicide cases they fall on their feet. Bobby, their mutual friend, is Milo's ex-colleague at police department who walked Nicole down the aisle at her wedding! He bails out Milo when he gets arrested for setting fire in the 4th of July parade in a bounty hunting chase. Milo finds Nicole at her exact place in a horse race stadium in Atlanta City based on his knowing of her and her lucky letter, "D", which surprises her. "Who has a lucky letter?" he mocks her. Their running and chasings later involve other people as well as Irene's men and Bobby's golf pal who is his other colleague in force. Nicole is Milo's good luck and temptation lock. She can easily trick her to gamble by tempting him and her blow on his dices can bring him good luck and when it (her blowing) eliminated, he seems to be losing. The magnet between them is so powerful that despite pushing each other away, some inner more powerful force draws them back together. In spite of their taking the blame at the Cupid's Cabin where they used to spend their anniversaries, we never exactly know why they split up though there are small mentions in dialogues during the movie, but we know for sure that they were madly in love before they got divorced. The resentful humor between Milo and Nicole has clear signs of their history which doesn't seem to lack love. Gerard Butler's prior performance in The Ugly Truth (2009) along with Katherine Heigl finds a sequel in The Bounty Hunter (2010) with co-acting of non-aging Jennifer Aniston who for herself has a long term of comedy-romance performance e.g. the NBC TV show Friends (1994-2004) which is a perfect example of her tireless performance carrier in this genre. They both have pulled off their roles so perfectly that sometimes exceeds the movie itself as if the other events happening around them doesn't matter. Movie itself is an action comedy-romance which has been somehow successful in terms of directing, screenplay, and editing. But what are the most successful and high point for this feature are the sound tracks and the score music which combining with pictures at some points illustrate the whole scenes alone needless to any dialogue. At the end The Bounty Hunter is an amusing movie which can bring joy at the time of watching it and can make your day after hours of work.
The Girl
(I) (2012)
The Girl (2012)
2 January 2014
As I started watching The Girl (2012), from the beginning scenes it absorbed me in itself, letting me lose my control over things as an outside observer but rather float inside the story observing it directly as a third person inside the screen; I enjoyed that very much. Abbie Cornish portraits elegance and delicacy of a woman in this movie as she did in Bright Star (2009) prior to this, and features perfect sense of motherhood as she did in Candy (2006) in the scene of miscarrying the baby, but here more sophisticated. She plays Ashley, a single mother who is in danger of losing her nearly five year old son named Georgie to a woman named Gloria who can't have kids and at the moment is fostering him and according to Ashley has a plan of adopting him like the two other kids that she has already fostered and then adopted. She is from San Antonio-Texas. She can't afford a proper house and lives in a trailer. Her salary is so low and the raise she was supposed to get after three months working in a convenience store which now is turning to a year, was dismissed; "You didn't get a raise because of your attitude", says Mr. Chavez, the manager. But as the movie goes on we find out that she has no attitude and is so modest and responsible. Ashley has no money and to win in the court, she has to prove to CPS (Child Protective Services) that she is eligible to take care of her son. In a surprise visit, Ashley's father shows up on her door step and when he finds her daughter sad asks her to go and celebrate with him in Mexico. He even goes further and gives her money to buy her son a set swing claiming that he's been on lucky street in his work but later she finds that her dad is a human trafficker. In spite of despising her father for that, in an act of desperation, Ashley starts trafficking Mexicans to Austin-Texas herself. She is a beginner and doesn't know that in order to cross the river they will need inner tubes which leads to the loss of Rosa's mother, a stubborn young girl who blames Ashley for loss of her mother and claims searching for her. Looking through the drown people in police station, Ashley finds out that Rosa's mother is dead which makes her to feel more responsible for the girl. Her maternal sense doesn't allow her to hand the girl over to the strangers. She even tries to postpone her court to find her family. Rosa has no family but a grandmother in the middle of nowhere in a beautiful mountain land. I never knew Mexico had such an amazing green landscapes; it seemed a trip to heaven for me. There are scenes of desperation and poverty in the movie which made me sympathize with the Latino America, but no sympathy seems better than splitting out the word "God damn" which Ashley did after she took a through look around and saw the misery in people's looks. Ashley smokes a lot and in her definition of "Stressed" she regards it as one of being adult effects. That may be true in some senses. Her face though, is a dictionary of the word, "Stress". However, most of the times she manages it in a wise manner with her responsible choices and acceptance. Inner struggles of a mother with her conscience over a responsibility of a child and trying to win her own child back has perfectly, beautifully, and purely been pictured in this movie and what is the most mind capturing feature is combining it with natural sounds around and sometimes letting silence tell the story which is what David Riker as the director has certainly been successful at.
The Matrix
(1999)
The Matrix (1999)
18 December 2013
"The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change human being into this (a battery)", says Morpheus at the beginning scenes of his appearance in The Matrix. The Matrix (1999) is a clever display featuring the inner reality of a few beings believing they are prisoned in the world of a viciously designed program, a world of numbers which master has designed it perfectly but in which people choose a life of misery and pain, never realizing they are slaves. Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), the leader of those chosen few, has long been searching for the One and sincerely believes in him in a madness kind of way that is ready to sacrifice his life for him and later we find out that he actually does when he tries to keep one of the 3 seemingly immortal and mastermind agents from harming Neo (Keanu Reeves). Neo, according to his profile, is an alias of Thomas A. Anderson, a law abiding program writer for a respectable software company, whose double life is letting him to also be a professional hacker in an underworld criminal society. At first, despite Morpheus's phone guidance, he gets arrested by cops and gets investigated and bugged by the agents but then Morpheus's group comes to rescue him and as in later, so called free him. They make some changes in his body and give him a second birth to become one of them. After all it was his own choice to be in wonderland when he chose red pill over blue one which would ended the story for him. In his waking up in hover craft, Neo asks Morpheus "What is this place?" and he gets answered by a more important question; "When". They don't know what year it exactly is but it's almost 200 years ahead in the future. In the white room inside the computer program, Neo faces with more mind twisting questions like "What is real?" or "How do you define real?" which confuses him even more but are essential to the answer of the question, "What is the Matrix?". What is more intriguing to see in The Matrix is the amazing scenes of works of visual effects which are perfectly mastered under the directorship of the Wachowski Brothers who are also the writers for this feature. However, the screenplay is been written in a way that in order to understand the final mission of Morpheus and his left crew, it seems inevitable to follow the sequel of this trilogy but as a friend who believed this movie has much more to say once told me: "You should read between the lines". As at the end of the movie when Neo is being shot several times by agent Smith for whose willingness to be free, he must get the codes to get inside Zayan, for a moment the happy ending of goodness's triumph over evil gets shadowed by the fact that everything is already falling apart and nothing is going to make things right again in any possible way. But then once again comes the miracle of love and Trinity's whispering to Neo works out by making him realize that he is the One and that Oracle's prophecy of her falling in love with him (the One) has become true and that brings him back to life; like Sleeping Beauty (1959) a kiss on the lips
and goodness triumphs evil.
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