50/50: My Review

Joseph Gordon Levitt as Adam in 50/50

I've been sleeping on Joseph Gordon Levitt,  and I could kick myself for doing so. After watching the magnificent 50/50  I must say I get the hype. I mean not only is Joseph a cutie, but a good actor to boot.  If you all haven't seen the movie, Redbox it, Netflix it, or wait for it to be shown again on cable.  Yes it's a tearjerker (Joseph's character has cancer, (hence the title) , but the movie also boasts some laughs and the cast which includes Anjelica Huston, Seth Rogan , Bryce Dallas Howard, and Anna Kendrick is stellar. 

If you've already seen it, post your comments below!

Jane the Virgin : TV Review

My timeline has been so full of love for the new CW fall show Jane the Virgin that I took some time on my off day last week to catch up on the show's first five eps to see if all the hype bestowed upon it by my Tweeples was well deserved.

I walked away hooked! Gina Rodriguez plays the titular character a virgin in her twenties who gets artificially inseminated by accident. Yes this premise sounds far fetched, but the cast and the writing makes this show one of the better series to premiere this Fall season. And I will go as far as saying I like it better than the much hyped How To Get Away With Murder, although I do watch that show as well. What sets this show apart is the cast, the writing, and the chemistry between the lead character and her two suitors (the fiancee and the millionaire whose baby she's carrying) both of whom are adorable and as the viewer one is torn as to who Jane should wind up with when the smoke clears. I am also impressed by the two actors who portray Jane's parents Andrea Navedo and Jaime Camil. Jaime's portrayal of Rogelio, the telenovela star who just found out about Jane is hilarious to say the least.

If you are not watching this show, my suggestion for you is to catch up on all the eps via the CW website before Monday's new episode.

Beyond the Lights: My Review

Great dramatic love stories with engaging leads of color are not always a quick sell in Hollywood, but they should be.  After seeing Gina Prince Bythewood’s Beyond the Lights today, might I suggest she be the go to writer/director if you want to tell this kind of tale right.  After impressing the hell out of critics and audiences with Love and Basketball, she followed up that film with The Secret Life of Bees, and now the wonderful Beyond the Lights, starring Gugu  Mbatha-Raw of Belle fame and Nate Parker who some say is the second coming of Denzel Washington.  Beyond the Lights has already been compared to the mega hits The Bodyguard and Mahogany, but it definitely can stand on its own. The story of Noni a pop star with an overt sexual image who just wants to sing and Kaz, the cop who saves her from a suicide attempt gets everything right from jump, and it doesn’t waste time getting the love story in motion.  The way Bythewood uses a flashback to set up the trajectory of a biracial child with an amazing voice who is virtually pushed into the limelight by a mother whose thirst for fame and riches outweighs thoughts of what's best for her daughter, lets the movie goer in as to how modern day Noni eventually winds up in the place of despair Kaz finds her in.

As a screenwriter, I studied the pace of the script and can honestly say the other reason for my going to see this film was not only to be entertained, but to also adopt some of the methods that makes Gina’s films work so damn well. It’s not easy being a writer and revising a script can be tedious, but after learning Gina goes through over 50 rewrites , you won’t hear any more complaints from me. If Beyond the Lights' many revisions resulted in what I saw today, then as one of the audience members that applauded the film as the credits rolled, Bythewood’s revisions netted the result she was looking for.