Last week of classes before Spring Break, and the Beginning of Spring Break!

Hello everyone!

I have a lot of catching up to do, so here I go! This post will be about To Save a Life, Gnomeo and Juliet, Stand By Me, and Die Hard, among other things, such as Free Rice updates!

In my classes on Monday and Tuesday, I took tests, and I'm pretty sure I rocked them, so that was nice. Let's just hope I actually did do well on them. I'm sure my Film Studies test will be online sometime over break so I'll be able to find out.

I guess now that I think about it, my week was pretty uneventful until Wednesday night. On Wednesday night I watched To Save a Life, and then I went to Buffalo Wild Wings with my friend's fraternity group.

To Save a Life was actually pretty good. I had sat down when the group started watching the movie just to kill the time, and I got up a few times during the movie, but I only missed about 10 minutes total. Afterward the group took time to reflect on the movie and ask a few questions. One of them included a reference to the fact that a lot of Christian movies are pretty cheesy.

I think this movie had it's moments, but overall, it didn't really fit that catagory. It really stepped out to make a few of it's points. There were drugs, there was alcohol, there was cursing, and there was suicide/depression. All things that usually aren't included in a Christian movie, maybe just talked about briefly and forgotten. It gets the point in, but it doesn't get it across like this movie did.

The movie starts off with a young boy saving his friend's life. In the process of preventing a car from hitting his friend, he gets hit, and injures his leg. For the rest of his life, he is tormented with names like "gimp". Eventually, the boy who he saved the life of just leaves him in the dust, and they lose the bond they had throughout their childhood. It's pretty sad, and it really makes you angry at the main character. The rest of the movie includes messages about depression and suicide, and discusses a little why people choose to do these things to themselves. It has a message about how all of us just need someone to be there for us sometimes.

I would like to take something from this movie. Normally I'm a very friendly person, but from here on out, if I see someone sitting by themselves at a lunch table, I think I'll ask them to join me, for the sake of them having someone to talk to. I think it'd be an easy way to get everyone to feel better about themselves. (No, I'm not saying I'm some high and mighty power that can take away everyone's pains, but I can say that sometimes we all have pain, and I understand that we all need someone to talk to at times.)

Otherwise, the movie was pretty okay. The acting was a little sub-par, but they got their message across. I would probably have to give this movie a 6.75 out of 10.

On Thursday, Rachel and I went on our last date before Spring Break. We decided to go see Gnomeo and Juliet since we'd seen a lot of heavy movies lately. We both just thought it was alright. The last half hour was better than the first hour, simply because the first hour of the movie pretty much only had jokes that were in the previews, which was a total buzz kill. Basically, if you saw the previews, you saw the funny, which is really disappointing.

The story was your basic "Romeo and Juliet" story. Two lovers cannot unite because the people around them keep them apart. I guess it was an alright way of teaching the story to children, and they actually did go through with the death of Tybalt, which was very surprising to me. Of course though, since it was a children's movie, they edited the ending, and for as triumphant as it should have been, it was really hard to even care. Overall I would give this movie about a 5.5 out of 10 stars.

In class on Thursday we watched Stand By Me. This was probably my favorite of the movies I have seen in the last week. It really made me want to live in the 50s, and it really made me miss my childhood, and doing things like walking along the railroad to kill time in the day with your friends. The only difference was, my friends and I weren't looking for a dead body!

The movie is a flashback and it's told by one of the main characters from an older point-of-view. He tells the story of how he and his friends went on a journey to find a dead body so that they could become heroes in their hometown. They learn a lot about themselves along the way, and it seems like there's even a "Breakfast Club" moment at one point when two of the friends are sitting next to a fire. They discuss how one will go on to take college classes, and the other will take shop classes and be forever forgotten. I also really enjoyed the story that the narrator tells as a young boy about the fat kid. It's really entertaining!

For this movie, I'd probably have to give out a 9 of out 10 score. I really enjoyed it, and I love how it made me reminisce to, and miss my childhood.

Then, last night, I watched Die Hard with a few of my friends. We weren't paying close attention until about the second half, but it was pretty enjoyable. Since I didn't see the whole thing though I won't rate it, I'll just say that what I did say of it, I enjoyed. We also watched the first half of the third movie in that series, and I really enjoyed that, especially Samuel L. Jackson's character.

Spring Break started last night too. I've been having a lot of fun hanging out with friends from high school, and I'm actually looking forward to spending a week relaxing at home. They're even talking about another snow storm next week, and over 50 inches of snow are projected for this area over the next three weeks!

I do miss Rachel though, and I can't wait to see her again! That is the one bad part about this week, no Rachel!

Zach and I are going to play the demo now of "Lego Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars". I'll update again sometime tomorrow I'm sure, when I've watched more movies, or played more games, or just have something to say!

Also, in case anyone is wondering about the Free Rice progress, our group has 16 members, and 56,830 grains. Keep up the great work, and we'll be in first place in no time everyone! And if you haven't joined the group yet, simply join the website, and once you've done that, --> here is the link to the group <--, just click join, and play!

Thanks for reading everyone! Enjoy your day!