Crazy Elephant Thing

   So it's been awhile since I've blogged about any new movies but I just happened to watch a few over the weekend so here's an update:

Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

  So I've been wanting to see this for awhile because I love, love, love Steve Carell (and Ryan Gosling's not bad either).  I get all my stuff from the local library so it takes me a little while to get some of the new things so I've been waiting a couple months for this and finally last week it came in.  I was really excited to see this because the previews made it look really good and I love seeing Steve Carell in these kinds of roles and he really was great in it.  However, the movie wasn't quite what I thought it would be.  Don't get me wrong, it was good but it was a little slow-moving for me.  Ryan Gosling's character was pretty amazing though.  It was almost a little unbelieveable, are there really guys out there like this?  He was like Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother on steroids.  I just love seeing Steve Carell in roles like this, I mean he's fabulous on The Office but my favorite role of his is Dan In Real Life because he just seems so real and personable, I just want to give him a hug.  Steve's character has just separated from his wife and he runs into Ryan Gosling who gives him a head to toe makeover and turns him into a ladies man but deep down he still loves his wife.  Emma Stone and Julianne Moore play the main women and I honestly wasn't that impressed with either one.  I don't get the attraction to Emma Stone though so that could just be me.  Overall I would suggest this movie to anyone who just likes to have fun at the movies, it's a good mix of comedy and drama.

Water for Elephants (2011)

  This was another one that I had been waiting a long time for and of course it came in at the same time as the previous movie.  I really wasn't sure about this movie, the only reason I wanted to see it was because I liked the main stars, Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson.  I am not a fan of the circus and I don't usually care for things that take place that long ago (1931) but it exceeded my expectations.  I was quite impressed by Robert Pattinson's performance, I had only ever seen him in the Twilight movies so I didn't have a ton to go on but he did a great job.  Though I haven't read the book yet he seemed to fit the character perfectly.  I used to love Reese Witherspoon but I feel like lately her acting seems the same in everything she's done.  A year or so ago she did a movie called How Do You Know? and that movie was just terrible and she didn't impress me at all.  She was good in this but it didn't blow me away, Robert Pattinson was much better in my opinion.  Christoph Waltz who played Witherspoon's character was great in his role as the insane circus leader.  Witherspoon and Pattinson's characters start an affair and that's when Waltz's character really goes over the edge and he did a very good job at acting crazy.  I've never seen him in anything before but I really enjoyed his performance.  The day after I watched this movie I ran to the bookstore to buy the book so I will be reading that pretty soon!  Overall I would suggest this to just about anyone.  Side note: if you have a problem with any sort of animal cruelty you may want to avoid this because there are a few mild scenes involving this.

The Thing (2011)

   This was terrible.  I love horror movies but this was just bad.  Now I've never seen the original so I don't know how it stacks up to that but looking at it by itself?  Not good.  The acting was mediocre, the main character was played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead and I don't have anything against her but I just don't understand why she was cast as the lead.  She wasn't bad but she just didn't have that star quality that's needed to carry a movie.  The majority of the rest of the cast was made up of people I had never heard of that I'm pretty sure were Norweigan or something like that.  I guess I didn't really know this movie had to do with aliens so that could have been my first problem.  There aren't a lot of alien movies that I like, really the only one is War of the Worlds and I think part of the reason is that it just comes off as goofy to me and this was no exception.  I would not recommend this.  Don't waste your time.