Adult style racing film Rush is a huge comeback for director Ron Howard. This isn't to suggest he was previously on an endless downhill fall, but after a three in a row succes (The Davinci Code, Frost/Nixon, and Angels & Demons) he directed the junk film, The Dilemma. But that's all in the past with Rush. The film focuses on the real life battles between James Hunt and Niki Lauda. I knew nothing of these two coming in, so the final race scene was especially gripping for myself. The characters are played by Hemsworth and Bruhl, who both put up solid performances. These two forces of racing are highly different, I was switching between the one that I prefer. These aren't just two different racers, they are different style of lives. You have party lover James Hunt on one side, and Lauda who won't stay up past nine on the other.

The cinematography in this movie is some of the best I've seen in awhile, in it's tecnological saviness. Car lovers will orgasm over some of the shots, fast moving, and beautiful to the eye. The film has notable make up artists as you can see in the development of Launda's face after the accident. Speaking of which, Rush has the greatest cringe scene ever, perhaps only behind Clean, Shaven, and Irreversible. As Launda is in the hospital, they must pump the junk out of his lungs, through a long metal pipe. In a scene that can't end soon enough, I was left cringing and looking away in my seat. I'm going to be keeping a closer eye on screenplay writer Peter Morgan after this, he's written two other non fiction film that I've respected, Frost/Nixon and The Dammed United. In all three of these movies the dialogue is a crucial factor.

So yes I loved Rush. Despite having sex, drugs, profanity, the film is classy as all hell in style. Has a similar intense yet comftrable feeling as 2012 Oscar winner Argo. I strongly reccomend this film to those interested in racing, or those like me, who know near nothing about it.

Happy Birthday to Me is pretty standard slasher, it gets right into the slashing, and is followed by loads of fake scares. This is similar to the Scream movies-that I love- but here I was never surprised by a fake out. Often these fake scares were just characters acting creepy. The film has plenty of gory films in it, as it chops its' way through the smug private school characters. My favorite kill was the bench press, which had me laughing. Happy Birthday To Me gets props for the weirdness, which really shows at the end. It seems to get some inspiration from Brian De Palmas, Sisters. While I laughed, and was kept entertained, the film didn't work at all as a horror. No scares, but often funny, even if unintentionally.

At times it's hard to tell if the director is making another one of his fifty character epic films. While some stuff was intentionally bad, I don't believe he was shooting for something this illogical and cheesy. I had a handful of laughs, but this was mainly just a cheesy disaster. I even was excited for this film, my want to see, reads:

"Looks like an even better version of Machete I'm excited for this one".

Psh, not even close. At least Trejo is in the crap film.

All this movie does is run in circles, accept there's no curves, so I supposed its just pacing back and fourth.

I'm coming to realize that school shooting movies might not be my thing. In all fairness the only other one I recall seeing is We Need to Talk About Kevin, which wasn't per say a shooting, but it has a similar theme. I've also come to realize Gus Van Sant isn't really connecting with me. Again in fairness I've only seen this, Good Will Hunting, and Paranoid Park. Elephant follows a similar narration to Paranoid Park with the loop concept. With Paranoid Park I thought this was an up for the film, since without it the movie would be desert dry. In this case though I believe it hurt the film, due to the repetitive nature, and lack of action.

This film is highly minimalistic. It requires little, the only time the score is apparent is the DVD menu. Before the shooting occurs this film has its moments, something I noticed was the great body language acting. The decision to bring in no name actors really worked well, with the genuine feeling. The bulimic scene was pretty funny, but not as shocking as I think it was intended to be. By giving the killers a face, despite not a character, it made them a lot more detestable. A queer slim shady wanna be and his sadistic boyfriend, these are people I wouldn't be fond of even if they didn't shoot up a school. This award winning film wasn't shocking to me, but I did appreciate some of the factors to it.