Ida

Winning the best foreign movie Oscar is enough motivation to watch a movie, right?
Well that, and the movie being in black and white with a touch of WWII, are enough for me, though half way through the movie, I was expecting it to be another movie I wanted to watch some months ago.

Ida is a simple beautiful movie, about a young polish nun who in search of her dead parents, she meets her not so conservative aunt and realizes that she actually is Jewish. During the war, her parents were kept in the woods and fed by a guy, and at the end were killed by him. The girl and her aunt go on a journey to find the guy by asking from his son who refuses to help.

The movie is very smooth and well made, the acts are amazing and very believable. The conflict between the girl and her aunt's belief, the girl's innocence and how the connect. The movie has a very sad theme, specially that it is in black and white and in another language.

I would not recommend watching this movie if you are not into foreign films, since you will be bored.
I give a 6/10 to this movie

The tale of princess Kaguya

I remember when I was very young, they used to show this Chinese movie on tv about a princess coming from the moon, or going to the moon !??! I wonder if this the same story.

I am most biased when it gets to animations and even more biased when the animation is from studio Ghibli, because they are so perfect and so talented and make these cute things that you don't even need a story to follow, you just want to sit and watch.

The story is about a girl who comes from the moon into the life of a poor couple, and she brings a lot of gold with her. The husband decides with all this money they have to take her to the city and build a mansion and raise her like a princess.They give her best lessons and make her wear the nicest clothes until she become famous in the city and legitimate bachelors start asking her for marriage. The girl is not happy and feels trapped in her castle and she wants to go back to the village and live freely.

It sounds a little bit of a cliche, but believe me you won't notice that. This animation is very well made with plots all hand drawn with soft colors and very flow y. The music is amazing and everything came together so well that you feel all their feelings and make connection with the character. This is certainly not your flamboyant Pixar or Disney animations and you would certainly not expect that from Ghibli, but they always made amazing animations like spirited away which already won an Academy awards best animation.

I would certainly recommend this to anyone who likes well made animations and give a 7.5/10 to it.

Whiplash

IMDb 8.7, metacritic %88 , everyone would think they have to watch this movie, and I think you should really, It is a good movie but how are all of these movies competing with boyhood? or we simply do not have better movies? or I am turning into an old lady who nags about everything?!?

I like all the movies that are somehow music related, and this movie is no exception. The movie is neat, smart, sneaky, emotional and all together but then on average it does semi perfect.

The story is about a guy studying drums at a famous music school when he is noticed by the conductor of the school's orchestra, who happens to be a guy looking for THE talent and he spots him and brings him into his orchestra and push him to his limits by mocking and cursing and throwing stuffs at him only to make him brings out the star but at one event the student couldn't take it anymore and attacks the conductor which then gets him expelled from the school and then a series of attempts for revenge happen.

In general the movie is short, to the point, clear and that is what I like comparing to all the 3 hour movies that I'm afraid is becoming a new trend. It shows the emotions, pain and the struggle and although you see tears and cuts and bloods but you are gonna smile and love it.

I would recommend watching this movie but warn you that the movie has a fast tone and can get harsh, definitely not a relaxing happy go lucky movie and I give a 7/10 to it.

Birdman

I am trying to watch all the academy award nominees before the event and JUST because I have so much free time (lol,kidding, I am defending my thesis in a month or so also) and every movie is disappointing me after the other one.

Me and my friend have been debating whether to watch this movie or not because from the trailer and all the awards it won it looks kind of a conceptual movie and I am not good with understanding conceptual movies even in my own language and culture, but then I gave it a shot and to my surprise, there is nothing sophisticated about this movie.

Birdman is about the struggle of a lead actor of an old superhero series called birdman who refused to continue playing in it with the dream of going to Broadway, but simply he is not a broadway material.

The acts are good in this movie, but the whole story is very mundane , and the birdman accompanying the guy throughout the movie is a little bit annoying.

Unless there are several layers of understanding and I am stuck at level one, this is an OK movie and I would only say watch it if you are very much into theater and shows and movies and how critiques work ( the concepts I mean) and will give a 5/10 to this movie !