Charlie St. Cloud

Charlie St. Cloud (2010)
Starring: Zac Efron, Charlie Tahan, and Amanda Crew
Directed by: Burr Steers
Tagline: Life is for living.
Grade: B

I love Zac Efron. He's one of my favorite actors (and he's very cute) and I can't wait for The Lucky One to come out. I was interested to see this movie, but not so much that I went to the theater. But I did get it when it came on video. It's pretty good, but I didn't really like the supernatural edge to it. Charlie (Efron) has a very good future ahead of him, until the death of his brother, Sam (Tahan), makes him give up on life. He takes a job as caretaker of the cemetary, because he wants to carry on the relationship with his brother, so much so that he even begins to see and talk to him. But then a girl (Crew) comes into his life and messes up his relationship with his brother, because, as his brother points out, "the more you're in her world [meaning, the real world], the less you can be in mine." Overall, pretty good, well acted, especially by Efron and newcomer Amanda Crew, who you can see as the hilariously dumb Kia in She's the Man.

Movie Review: Big Fat Liar

Big Fat Liar (2002)
Starring: Frankie Muniz and Paul Giamatti
Characters: Jason Shepherd and Marty Wolf
Directed by: Shawn Levy
Tagline: The truth is never overrated.
Grade: A-

This is another one of those movies that people might not want to watch just because of the genre. Most people consider movies that don't have cussing or bloody violence to be bad. A lot of my favorite movies have violence and cussing (Stand by Me, anyone?) but a lot of great movies are family movies, like this one. The movie is about Jason, who lies all the time...about everything. One day, after sneaking in the window to the classroom with the help of his best friend, Kaylee (Amanda Bynes, who, as always, rocks and steals the scenes she's in), he realizes he hasn't written his paper that was due that day. So he makes up a whole story about how he was in the ER all night with his dad, who had choked on a meatball...which is soon proved to be false when his parents show up at school...his dad meatball free. His teacher gives him until 5:00 that night to write his paper...which he very fittingly titles Big Fat Liar. On his way to turn in his paper, he runs into Mr. Marty Wolf...a ruthless movie producer. After Jason accidentally leaves his story in the limo, Wolf sees it and decides to claim it as his own. Hilarity ensues, with Jason and Kaylee to sneak off to Hollywood and all of Wolf's enemies ganging up on him to force him to confess that he stole the story. All in all, a solid movie from the time when Frankie Muniz was in every movie that came out...like Agent Cody Banks (I also liked that one...but, like I said, I like pretty much every movie.) The clear "winner" of this movie is Amanda Bynes, who wins in all her movies. (See the amazing, AMAZING She's the Man.)
-MOT