Stacy's Blog Has Got It Going On

 "I'm Cruella, born brilliant, born bad, and a little bit mad." -Cruella de Vil This origin story shows how Cruella de Vil (Emma Stone) went from being a young pickpocket to becoming the criminal mastermind and fashionable force of nature we all know and love to hate. I have many bones to pick with this movie and I can't really do that without getting into spoilers.  In short, it's an entertaining enough movie with lots of things to like, but it's a terrible prequel to 101 Dalmatians , which is a movie I love to death.  So, before I air my grievances, I would just like to say, "Spoiler Alert." What Works: Off the top, there are some really great performances in this movie.  Emma Stone was a great choice to play Cruella and she gives it her all.  I have a lot of problems with how this character was written, but none of the problems are with Stone's performance. The main antagonist of the film, Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson), is fantastic.  S

 "It's very stressful being an Other, Jack." -Dr. Juliet Burke "The Other Woman" picks up in a flashback.  A week after arriving on the island, Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) starts seeing a therapist, Harper Stanhope (Andrea Roth). They don't really get along.  As Juliet struggles to adapt to the island and the deaths of her patients, she starts having an affair with Harper's husband, Goodwin (Brett Cullen).  This makes Ben (Michael Emerson) very jealous because he has a crush on Juliet.  Ben sends Goodwin on his fateful mission to infiltrate the tail section survivors, where he is ultimately killed.  Ben brings Juliet out to see his body, which crushes her and Ben tells her she is his. In the present, Daniel (Jeremy Davis) and Charlotte (Rebecca Mader) go missing.  As Juliet searches for them, she runs into Harper, who gives her a mission from Ben.  She says that Daniel and Charlotte are on their way to the Tempest Dharma Station to release poison gas to

 "Scott, was that a zombie in a goddamn cape?" -Marianne Peters After a zombie outbreak, Las Vegas is quarantined away from the rest of the world and becomes a city of the dead.  Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada), the owner of a casino, has 200 million dollars locked in his vault and hires a team of mercenaries, led by Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), to retrieve it.  Things become more complicated when Scott's daughter, Kate (Ella Purnell) tags along and they discover more than just your average zombies inside the city. Spoilers below for Army of the Dead .  This movie is ok at best.  Don't go see it in theaters, but if it peaks your interest, watch it on Netflix. What Works: The best part of this movie is, hands-down, the gore.  We get some absolutely gnarly kills of both zombies and humans alike.  The best part is, a lot of them are shocking, so you don't even see it coming until the blood seems the splatter across the screen. Dave Ba utista is solid as the main protagon

 "Assume the worst-case scenario.  Assume catastrophe, and act accordingly." -Arthur Smokejumper Hannah Faver (Angelina Jolie) is posted in a fire lookout tower for the summer.  One day, she comes across a young boy, Connor (Finn Little), in the wilderness.  Connor is on the run from a pair of assassins because he knows too much.  Hannah promises to protect Connor, but the assassins start a wildfire to cover their tracks, making it much more difficult for Hannah and Connor to survive. What Works: This movie is gorgeous.  An utter feast for the eyes, especially for someone who likes mountain wilderness.  There are some stunning panoramic shots around Hannah's lookout tower.  Later, our characters find themselves in the middle of the fire, which looks incredible.  It's mostly CGI, but it still looks great and we get even more stunning, if dangerous, visuals. The action sequences are a lot of fun.  Mountain road assassination attempts, cat-and-mouse chases, a lookout tow

 "We ain't the predators.  We're the prey." -Dave Patrick Hill (Jason Statham) gets a job as an armored truck guard.  When his truck is attacked by thieves, Patrick proves he's no ordinary guard when he kills all of the attackers.  The other guards quickly begin to suspect Patrick isn't who he says he is and has another agenda. I can't really talk about this movie without spoiling it.  So there will be spoilers below.  In short, this is a decent and entertaining action movie, but nothing overly special.  Go see it on $5 movie night.  SPOILERS BELOW!  You've been warned. What Works: Jason Statham has made a career by being a stoic, action bad-ass and there's a reason he always plays the same role, he's good at it.  He's more humorless than usual in this movie, but manages to be more of force of nature than a man.  He's easily the most likable character in the movie by being so utterly competent at everything he does.  It makes it easy to

 "I love you, Penny." -Desmond Hume "The Constant" picks up with Frank (Jeff Fahey), Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick), and Sayid (Naveen Andrews) flying out to the freighter.  Frank tries to fly the chopper on the bearing given to him by Faraday (Jeremy Davies), but a thunderstorm knocks him off course, which cause Desmond's consciousness to travel back to 1996 when he was in the army. When he snaps back to 2004, he doesn't know where he is or recognize Sayid or Frank and starts to freak out.  When they land on the freighter, the crew brings Desmond down to the medical bay, where he meets George Minkowski (Fisher Stevens), who is suffering from time-displacement as well. Sayid gets ahold of the beach and gets Faraday on the phone with Desmond.  Faraday tells him to travel to Oxford University to find him in 1996 and gives Desmond some machine settings to convince past Faraday to believe him.  As Desmond flashes back and forth, he makes it to young Faraday at Oxfor

 "That's the saddest thing I've ever heard and people are blowing up." -Mara Carlyle When the senior class of Covington High School starts spontaneously combusting, Dylan (Charlie Plummer) decides to make the most of his life and tells his crush, Mara (Katherine Langford), he likes her.  The two form a relationship as more and more of their classmates explode.  As they get closer, they can only hope a cure will be found in time. There will be some mild spoilers below.  If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it, so go watch it and then come back and read this review. What Works: At it's core, this is a movie about a romantic relationship between two teenagers, which is not something that is easy to get right.  Fortunately, Langford and Plummer have incredible chemistry.  Their relationship feels natural and progresses with ease.  The story takes place over around eight months, so it gives the relationship the opportunity to not feel rushed and they

 "No use having in having rules if there's no punishment for breaking them." -John Locke "Eggtown" picks up with Locke (Terry O'Quinn) having locked Ben (Michael Emerson) in the basement of his house at the Barracks.  Meanwhile, Kate (Evangeline Lilly) is hanging around because she wants to find out how much the people on the freighter know about her.  She asks Locke if she can speak to Miles (Ken Leung), but Locke refuses.  Kate tricks Hurley (Jorge Garcia) into revealing where Miles is being held.  She and Miles make a deal; if she gets him one minute to speak to Ben, he will tell everything he knows about her. Kate gets Sawyer (Josh Holloway) to distract Locke and get him out of the house, so she can bring Miles in to see Ben.  Miles offers to tell his employer that Ben is dead in exchange for 3.2 million dollars and gives him one week to come up with the money.  Miles then tells Kate that the people on the freighter know all about her criminal recored an

 "Get over here!" -Scorpion Having won nine Mortal Kombat tournaments in a row, the realm of Outworld only needs to win one more to win the right to invade Earth.  Shang Tsung (Chin Han) plans to assassinate all of Earth's fighters before the tournament can even begin so Outworld can win by default.  The protector of Earth, Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), must work quickly to gather the remaining fighters and train them before they can be killed. What Works: The original Mortal Kombat movie was rated PG-13, so there was almost no gore.  That's not acceptable in a movie adaptation of a notoriously violent video game series.  Luckily, they fixed that this time around.  There are some truly awesome and messy kills right out the gate and throughout the entire movie.  This is what I'm here to see! The movie's fight sequences are all pretty epic and a lot of fun.  Sure, they're kinda dumb and definitely schlocky, but who cares?  I was all for it.  The movie opens