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josesolo
Reviews
Courageous (2011)
Same Generic Movie as Every Other Christian Film (small spoiler)
Let me open up by saying that I am a Christian; although I struggle with faith at times, at the end of the day I can say that I believe in God. I am also someone who loves the art of cinema, enjoying various types of films. When it comes to Christian-themed films, they all seem to have one thing in common: they are terrible. They have mediocre actors, no solid story, and rely on the "faith-themed" "plot". This movie is no different.
Courageous focuses on four different families who become connected in one way or another. It presents itself as taking place in the real world, when in reality it takes place in the fictional "Christian film" world, which is why a lot of these movies fail before they begin. In order for their faith-based themes to work, they have to portray it in the real world, but are too frightened by the fact that they would drive away their conservative audience. So, because of that, they write bad dialogue and situations for two-dimensional characters.
There's a scene where one of the characters die and hits one of the families hard. The problem is that this character interacted with one of the main characters twice, and they were very short scenes. The audience has nothing to really invest with this character, so when the tragedy strikes, it feels forced. All of the real emotional scenes feel really forced.
I've seen movies with the same themes of fatherhood a million times over, done in much better films. Watch those, and avoid this at all costs. It has some merit because it feels like the actors are trying and the way they portray how a father should be is good on the face of it. However, there are no risks taken in this film; it's just bland, boring, and very forced.
Christian movies don't have to be bad. The only good one I've seen was "To Save a Life". Even though it suffered from many things this film did, it at least had something in it to try to do things that most movies of this genre refuse to do.
Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)
Best Paranormal Activity Thus Far (Contains Minor Spoilers)
I wasn't a big fan of the first two Paranormal Activity films. I liked them, but I really disliked how it felt like they poked butt throughout the movies and a lot of the scares were cheap. Thanks to my sister, I got a free screening on Tuesday. I went in with an open mind; it was like going to a birthday party for a kid you didn't like too much -- as long as there was cake, you would be fine. And, boy was there cake!!
First off, half of the scenes in the trailers weren't in the film at all (although I hear that there are multiple endings for this one as well). That being said, the trailer is very misleading, but in the best way possible. It tells the story of why the two sisters are being "haunted" in the first two films. The movie is like walking through a haunted house set up for Halloween -- one of the professional ones that takes months in planning.
Scares in this movie were throughout the entire film -- although a lot of them were jump scares (a character jumps out just to scare another character). When the scares dealt with the demon, who in this film is named "Toby", they were pretty creepy and effective. I'm not one who gets scared easily, but this movie made me jump. And the last fifteen minutes of the film were the best fifteen minutes in the entire movie.
To sum it all up, Paranormal Activity 3 is the best out of the series thus far. The scares were well planned and it got to you on many levels. Some of the scares seemed very cheap and you may feel lost at times. It is advised to watch the other two movies prior to this, or else you may not understand anything at all. This is also a movie you should see with a crowd; you'll thank me later.