If you haven't seen Hackers before, it's awesomeness is comparable to that of The Fifth Element and Real Genius. The film opens on a SWAT takedown of a tiny boy, Dade Murphy, or "Zero Cool," who has committed various felonious acts by hacking into computer systems and planting a virus he designed. His parents are fined a ridiculous amount of money and he is banned from using a computer or anything close to one until his 18th birthday.
Flash forward to high school. Dade meets the smokin' hot Angelina Jolie in one of her very first films, as well as young versions of future stars Jesse Bradford, Matthew Lillard and Renoly Santiago. They discover a secret plot to plant a supervirus by a super douche in the business, and must use all their skills together while avoiding the Secret Service, who has noticed that the craziest hacker of all time is back on the web, and trying not to dry hump Jolie every time she says something sarcastic. The best part of this film is the special effects of "the internet." Whoever made this film obviously thought that all business and personal networks were connected somehow on the web, and that you could access them and, at the same time, unlock a tiny screen world of rolling colorful characters similar to the cover of a little indie flick called The Matrix (don't worry, you probably haven't heard of it). The prank sessions and the secret hacker show are close runner ups on the scale of awesome. This movie is also rife with references to nerdy pop culture, including Transformers, Allan Ginsberg, and the Bible. Hackers is rated PG-13, but it's for language and Angelina Jolie, so I would say somewhat mature tweens would be totally fine watching. As for everyone else: if you haven't seen it, for the love of awesomeness please go rent it; if you've seen it before, go rent it again and show it to your loved ones. I will leave you with this quote: "Spandex: it's a privilege, not a right." - Cereal Killer, Hackers, 1995
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Sucker Punch is a film about a young woman, Babydoll (Emily Browning), who is sent to an insane asylum after she accidentally kills her sister while trying to kill her stepfather who tries to rape her sister. It's very convoluted. She arrives at the asylum and meets the director, Dr. Gorski (Carla Gugino) and the head orderly, Blue (Oscar Issac). Babydoll's world changes when she discovers that Dr. Gorski is actually the dance instructor in charge of the young ladies and that Blue is actually the man in charge. Obviously unhappy, Babydoll is forced to dance for the asylum to "prove her usefulness." As we learn, her dancing is so hypnotic that people who watch are unable to focus. While she dances, she sees a foreign world in her mind where a mysterious man gives her the clues to escaping from her prison. With the help of the other girls, she goes an a journey to discover the secret to freedom. Both Zack Snyder (the director) and Tyler Bates (the composer) worked on 300 together. That movie was amazing. Sucker Punch was as terrible as 300 was awesome. The plot was unnecessarily complex. Now, I know about the dumbing down of America via film and television, and I love films that make me think, but I don't appreciate movies that are complex for no reason. Sucker Punch exists within three different mental spheres that you don't really understand until the end, and even then you leave thinking, "What just happened?" Even the credits don't make sense in the context of the movie. The graphics were amazing. The acting wasn't terrible. The plot was really the death of this movie. Some people have enjoyed it, yes, but it's 110 minutes of my life that I wish I had back. |
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