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All posts by Elliott Prasuhn

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace – Cast Out Fear

Posted by Elliott Prasuhn on November 25, 2015

Posted in: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Movie Reviews, Sci-Fi. Tagged: George Lucas, Jedi, John WIlliams, Sith are awesome, Star Wars, Star Wars Episode 7. Leave a comment

Chancellor Palpatine: And you, young Skywalker; we shall watch your career with great interest.

Review by Elliott

Intro

Growing up, whenever we visited my Grandparents, the first thing I would do was run down to their basement and watch one of the original trilogy movies on VHS. Before the age of 10 I probably had seen them each a hundred times. As I got older I started reading the books/comics and playing lots of the video games. Needless to say I’m a big fan. The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, which is when I was just starting High School. At the time I was blown away and loved every minute of it. However, as time has gone on, I’ve become a little more objective. My goal with this review is to briefly go over the plot, pull out some moral application and conclude with what I liked and disliked about the movie. Continue Reading

Invasion of the Body Snatchers – What are you really?

Posted by Elliott Prasuhn on October 10, 2015

Posted in: Horror, Movie Reviews, Sci-Fi. Tagged: Classic Horror, Dana Wynter, Don Siegel, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kevinj McCarthy. 2 Comments

Review by Elliott

Intro

As a general rule of thumb, I don’t watch many older movies. Not for any particular reason, it just doesn’t happen often. For several years, my dad has recommended this movie to me. So the other day when I was looking through Amazon prime, I was surprised to see this pop up. Despite my skepticism, I decided to give this classic sci-fi horror flick a try. The version I will be reviewing was made in 1956, but it was followed up with a remake in 1978. I’m not sure how different they are, but I liked this version well enough that I’d like to watch the remake as well.

Avatar: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Posted by Elliott Prasuhn on August 29, 2015

Posted in: Action, Adventure, Movie Reviews, Sci-Fi. Tagged: avatar, James Cameron, Michelle Rodriguez, pandora, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Unobtainium, Zoe Saldana. 2 Comments

Jake Sully: All I ever wanted was a single thing worth fighting for.

Review by Elliott

Introduction

Avatar, not to be confused with Avatar: The Last Air Bender(The best animated series ever made), is one of if not my favorite movie of 2009. That’s saying a lot consider there were a bunch of great movies that year, like; Up, Sherlock Holmes, and Zombieland just to name a few. Apparently I wasn’t the only one that liked it, because it ended up grossing 2.8 billion worldwide, which dwarfed its whopping $280 Million production budget. However, the amount of money a movie makes certainly doesn’t correlate with how good it actually is. For the many that loved it, there was a comparable number who didn’t and were very vocal about it. Despite its polarizing effect, everyone recognized that it was one of the most breathtaking films ever made, which resulted in it winning 3 Oscars. Regardless of whether or not you liked it, I think it has a number of good messages, which is why I decided to review it. Continue Reading

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog – That’s spelled with two R’s

Posted by Elliott Prasuhn on June 4, 2015

Posted in: Comedy, Movie Reviews. Tagged: Felicia Day, Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, Neil Patrick Harris, Rating 5, Simon Helberg, Writers strike, Youtube. Leave a comment

Review by Elliott

Dr. Horrible – A lot of guys ignore the laugh and that’s about standards. I mean, if you’re gonna get into the Evil League of Evil, you have to have a memorable laugh. What, do you think Bad Horse didn’t work on his whinny? His terrible death-whinny?

Intro

So I’m sort of cheating this week, since this technically is not a movie, but that’s ok. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (DHSAB) was created as a short online video series during the writers strike of 2008. I heard about it a long time ago, but never looked into it until about 2 months ago, while writing my review of Stardust. In fact I was about half way through Stardust, when I found the it on Youtube. Needless to say it was 45 min later before I started watching Stardust again.

DHSAB was created by Joss Whedon (Avengers, Buffy, Firefly) and his brothers Zack and Jed. It’s part musical, part comedy, and all awesome! It was released online as three 14 minute episodes. The Whedon brothers goal was to create an inexpensive but high quality show in a way that would circumvent the issues that were being protested during the strike. The strike is long over, but you can still watch it online for free. Here’s a link to it on Youtube: DHSAB. Continue Reading

The Wind Rises – Airplanes are beautiful dreams

Posted by Elliott Prasuhn on May 9, 2015

Posted in: Animated, Documentary, Drama, Movie Reviews. Tagged: anime, Elijah Wood, Emily Blunt, Hayao Miyazaki, John Krasinski, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mae Whitman, Mandy Patinkin, Martin Short, Stanley Tucci, Studio Ghibli. 1 Comment

Jirô Horikoshi: Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling, The wind is passing through.

Review by Elliott

Introduction

This movie marks the end of Hayao Miyazaki’s directing career, at least of full length animated films. If you don’t recognize his name, you may be familiar with some of his works such as Howl’s Moving Castle, Castle in the Sky, or Spirited Away. For years he has worked with Studio Ghibli to create beautiful anime movies and Disney has helped to bring those great films here to the states. As of late, I’ve been delving into the world of anime so I have been interested in seeing this movie. However, I’d forgotten about it until the other day when my brother-n-law recommended it to me. Unlike Miyazaki’s other movie’s I’ve seen, this one has very little action and zero fantasy. It trades those in for historical fiction and drama. It is beautiful and thought provoking and held by many as his masterpiece.

Stardust – A Potpourri of Fantasy

Posted by Elliott Prasuhn on April 11, 2015

Posted in: Adventure, Fantasy, Movie Reviews, Romance. Tagged: Charlie Cox, Ian McKellen, Matthew Vaughn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Neil Gaiman, Robert De Niro, Stardust. 2 Comments

Review by Elliott

A philosopher once asked, “Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them
because we are human?” Pointless, really… “Do the stars gaze back?” Now *that’s* a question.

The Terminal – Coup, Crackers and Krakozhia

Posted by Elliott Prasuhn on March 7, 2015

Posted in: Drama, Movie Reviews, Romance. Tagged: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Krakozhia, Stanley Tucci, Steven Spielberg, The Terminal, Tom Hank, Zoe Saldana. 1 Comment

Review by Elliott

When I think of Steven Spielberg, the first movies that come to mind are Jurassic Park and Saving Private Ryan. Serious movies with lots of action sequences and violence. The Terminal is neither of those. I would describe it as a light-hearted comedy with some similarities to Castaway. Like Castaway, this movie features a lot of Tom Hanks. “To much Tom Hanks”, is always the complaint I hear when discussing Castaway, but considering he is my favorite actor, it didn’t bother me in the least. What sets this apart from Castaway is that Hanks is joined by a handful of other great actors. Well that and the premise is totally different. They really aren’t that similar except for Tom Hanks, I just wanted to bring up Castaway… (Watch the Trailer Here)

Jupiter Ascending – Blue Pill Required

Posted by Elliott Prasuhn on February 7, 2015

Posted in: Action, Adventure, Movie Reviews, Sci-Fi. Tagged: Channing Tatam, eddie redmayne, mila kunis, sean bean, The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers. 3 Comments

Review by Elliott

From the writers that gave us the Matrix and V for Vendetta, comes their latest masterpiece, an epic space opera with amazingly beautiful graphics, Oscar winning performances and the most thought provoking plot since Avatar…

Big Hero 6 – Fist bumps will never be the same

Posted by Elliott Prasuhn on January 18, 2015

Posted in: Action, Adventure, Animated, Family, Movie Reviews. Tagged: Baymax, Big Hero 6, Disney, Hiro, marvel, Stan Lee, superheroes. 2 Comments

Hiro: [narrating] We didn’t set out to be superheroes. But sometimes life doesn’t go the way you planned. The good thing is, my brother wanted to help a lot of people and that’s what we’re going to do. Who are we?

Review by Elliott

Big Hero 6 is loosely based on the Marvel comic series of the same name. Many of the characters come straight from the comic, but much of the plot and back story has been changed. I haven’t read them yet, but plan to as soon as I finish writing this. Big Hero 6 is an origin story about 5 nerds and an inflatable robot that join forces to become superheros and save the day. We haven’t seen Disney make an animated superhero movie since The Incredibles, so I was pretty excited to see how this would turn out. They have once again proven that we can trust them.

Looking Back on 2014: Elliott’s Take

Posted by Elliott Prasuhn on January 8, 2015

Posted in: Rants. Tagged: 2014, elliott, guardians of the galaxy. Leave a comment

Rant by Elliott

This week, we are taking a look back at 2014 and seeing how the movies we were looking forward to most turned out. Here’s a recap of my comments on what I was looking forward to most in 2014 and whether my expectations were met. Note: If we reviewed a movie that I mention, I’ve linked the title to the review.