Hugo

I have to admit I went in with pretty high expectations.  Everything I had heard about this movie was positive.  I share this with you because my expectation was that this was going to be a pretty darn good movie.

Hugo is about a boy named Hugo Cabret who loses his father and is then forced to live and work in a train station.  The movie basically follows Hugo on different adventures to put an automoton robot back together that he and his father had been working on.  During this adventure he meets some friends that help him become more than just an orphan.   The film takes place in Paris.

The movie basically stars a bunch of no names.  The stars are Asa Butterfield as Hugo and Chloe Grace Moretz who plays Hugo's friend Isabelle.  Ben Kingsley and Sacha Baron Cohen also play significant roles in this film.  All of the actors do a very nice job and carry off their individual roles well.

Hugo wasn't a bad movie at all but the story was very slow.  While it was kind of a fun and interesting plot it was weak because of the poor pacing.  It's been very popular but I wouldn't really recommend this one to anyone.  My wife fell asleep with this one it's so slow!

The Whistleblower

The Whistleblower is about a divorced police officer who needs some extra cash and decides that taking a job with the United Nations is the best way to make some.  Once she gets there she finds extreme human abuses taking place that she cannot stand for.  Specifically the movie deals with human trafficking and the effect it has on the women and the community as a whole.  The Whistleblower is based on a true story.

The movie takes you to post-war Bosnia and it's efforts to recover.  The story to this film kept you involved with each new development that took place.  Characters were pretty good.  The one place where I would say the story struggled was at some of the dramatic sequences I just didn't care enough. 

The movie stars Rachel Weisz as our police officer turned UN official.  Vanessa Redgrave, Monica Bellucci and David Strathairn (Bourne Ultimatum) also play major roles in the film.  Weisz stands out as again doing a fantastic job in this keenly dramatic role.  The others are very good, particularly Strathairn. Benedict Cumberbatch, of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, also has a small role in this film.

I enjoyed The Whistleblower quite a bit.  It was a very dramatic film with not much of a happy ending though, which is always a turn off to me.  I would probably say this one is worth checking out.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

First let me inform you that I have seen all of the other "Pirates" movies.  I liked the first two but thought the third, At Worlds End, was absolutely atrocious.  It was way too long and had way too much nonsensical narrative that was impossible to follow.  I was very skeptical about seeing this one because my most recent experience but, I had some small hope that this would be better.

On Stranger Tides is the fourth in the "Pirates" series starring Johnny Depp.  As usual the story follows Captain Jack Sparrow on his adventure to find some kind of treasure, this time it's the Fountain of Youth.  On his quest he meets up with quite a few new pals and some old faces as well.  The journey is confusing, again, and while sometimes fun still gets very slow and stale in parts.  The pacing of the last two "Pirates" films has been very poor.

On Stranger Tides is also missing two of the main cast members from the previous films, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, who were smart enough to bail on the series.  Penelope Cruz steps in as the female lead and they use some old characters including Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush) and Gibbs (Kevin McNally) in larger roles.  Depp does most of the action work and provides most of the comedy as well.  Depp does a pretty good job but the supporting cast is really pretty weak.  I'm not a fan of Penelope Cruz's acting skills.

I will give On Stranger Tides this, it's better than At Worlds End.  I didn't really enjoy it though.  I guess it was ok, if you really like these films but I'm not enough of a fan to ignore the confusing story and poor acting.  Better luck next time!  Yep, I think they'll make another, Disney could always use more $$$.