Movie Review Monday

This week I watched a few new movies, well new to me. I asked for The Purge fpr Christmas but I wasn't aware that there were two of them and since my brother in law didn't know which one I would want, he bought me both. So while I was busy procrastinating what I needed to do all week, I watched both of them. Then my oldest wanted to go see a movie with her friends and instead of just dropping her off, I took the three youngest to go see the new Spongebob movie. I will try my best to review what I saw but it really turned into an $8 nap for me since I had only gotten 4 hours of sleep the night before.

The Purge - This movie is set in the future. 2022, I believe. The country had implemented a new law that would allow anyone to commit any crime of their choosing, including murder, for a total of only 12 hours on purge night. The idea behind the purge was to eliminated crime for the remaining 364 1/2 days of the year and to help cut down on the homeless and lower class population that was dragging the country down. Those people were usually the targets of those looking to purge. Police officers and high ranking officials were exempt from becoming targets, and all emergency services were suspended during the purge. A wealthy family, that gained their wealth from selling home security systems with the purge in mind, became a target this year. The family had to find out how far they would go to protect themselves and realized that even with the best safeguards and wealth, it still didn't make you safe on purge night. The movie was well done, in my opinion. It had a great level of suspense, and it wasn't too predictable. It is definitely not a movie that children should be watching, unless your children are old enough and able to handle movies with a lot of killing. It was pretty gory, but not as bad as I had expected. No worse than any zombie movie out there. The whole premise of the movie was quite intriguing to me, which is why I had asked for the movie in the first place. It did not disappoint. I thought it was a really great movie. If you like suspense, drama, and a good psycho flick, then this is a must.

The Purge: Anarchy - Same premise as the first, just a year later. In this year's purge we find ourselves following a group of strangers that come together to protect each other after finding themselves targets. A husband and wife find themselves stuck outside when the purge begins leaving them unarmed and in harms way. A mother and daughter find themselves targeted for being poor. And a man puts himself in harms way because he is on a mission of justice on this one night where justice is served by the community themselves. We find out in this rendition that the wealthy can buy poor people to slaughter. The idea of the purge is to cleanse one's soul. By participating, you are cleansing your soul until next year. It's much like a religious cult where everyone believes that this way is the right way and if you don't participate then your soul is tainted. However, there is a group that is trying to counteract the purge, to put an end to it. I liked this year's purge better than the previous one. It was the same level of killing, but the action was more intense. Having a group of strangers working together and being stranded outside trying to find safety just made it that more intense. Predictability was rather low, it really left me on the edge of my seat for a good majority of the movie. There was one character that I was surprised we didn't find out what happened come the end of the movie but maybe there will be another movie where she comes back... or they thought her last line was good enough to tell us what happened to her. The characters are pushed to their limits and they must decide to fight or die at the hands of those participating in the purge. They fight their own inner demons in order to survive the demons coming out of the participants. It really is a good series, if you like that sort of thing. If you can't handle blood and gore then definitely skip these movies. Oh, there was one other thing that surprised me... while The Purge is in place, all crime is acceptable, but there is no rape in either movie. A brief sexual scene in the first movie but both were fully clothed and it was consensual. The main focus of both movies is murder and while they could have thrown in some disgusting rape scenes (there were a few times I was waiting for it to happen), they didn't. I applaud the writers for steering clear of that.

Now, onto a much happier note...

The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water - Like I stated earlier, I cannot attest to the entire movie because I did end up falling asleep for the entire middle of it, but I will do my best to give a good review of what I did see. I really wasn't planning on bringing my kids to see this in the theater. Most times, I don't feel like the cost of a kids movie is really worth it. This movie was an hour and thirty minutes. Pretty typical length of a movie these days. I have seen some that are more like an hour and twenty minutes and paying the price for such short movies kinda gives me anxiety. I think this one was the right length. Not too short, not too long... I'm not regretting paying for it. In this reincarnation of Spongebob, we follow him and is friends as they venture out of Bikini Bottom in hopes of recovering the lost Krabby Patty recipe. Things become a mess down in Bikini Bottom. Friends turn on friends but eventually, all is well again when they join together to put Bikini Bottom back on it's feet. I fell asleep before we even got to "Sponge out of water" and woke up towards the end. Spongebob is rather stupid show... but it's funny. From what I saw, there wasn't a lot of crude humor, mostly just silly kid stuff. The pirate in the movie is played by Antonio Banderas, and I absolutely LOVED his portrayal of Burger Beard. He is such a well rounded and fun actor. The kids loved the movie from beginning to end. They were asking me what I saw and telling me what I missed. It was a good kid date movie. They enjoyed it, I got a nap in, and Spongebob is just fun to watch on the big screen. If you are wanting to go to the movies with the kids and you all like Spongebob, go see it. But go during matinee prices... save yourself a little bit of money. Or, just wait til it comes out on DVD and definitely rent it. It's a fun movie with some silly, sometimes stupid, humor but it wasn't terrible humor. I laughed out loud quite a few times for only having seen less than half of the movie.