"DESPICABLY FUNNY 2!"

I can't remember the last time I found myself laughing so hard while watching an animation, and the sequel of Despicable me, which was definitely hilarious, did the trick! The inclusion of new characters like Lucy Wilde, an agent of an undercover spy agency called the AVL (Anti-villain League), and Eduardo Perez, a Mexican restaurant owner who is suspected to be a former villain known as El Macho, this animation film is guaranteed to have you laughing your socks off.

The Anti-Villain League (AVL) recruits former super-villain and main character of the animation movie Gru, now a devoted father to Margo, Edith and Agnes, to find out which evil person using a mysterious giant magnet vehicle to steal a secret laboratory near the Arctic Circle The lab is said to contain a powerful mutagen known as PX-41 which can make indestructible and extremely aggressive monsters out of living organisms. 

Gru reluctantly partners with undercover AVL agent Lucy Wilde, and together they search The Paradise Shopping Mall, where they are given a bakery called "Bake My Day" as their headquarters. Gru suspects Mexican restaurant owner Eduardo Perez of being a super-villain called "El Macho", a bad guy who became Gru's inspiration for a villain who supposedly died after sky surfing a TNT-laden shark into the center of an active volcano (you gotta listen to the way Gru talks about this guy with so much excitement and adoration...oh sorry, I shut up now).

If there is anything this film has that many have failed to achieve over the year, is fun! Very laid back and simple comedy and the audience will also be thrilled by watching Gru's gibberish speaking minions just being naughty with each other. Even though Gru is a former villain, He becomes very overprotective of the girls he adopted in part one of the film, especially Margo who has a crush on Eduardo perez's son, Anthonio. Ironically, this expresses a touchy representation of a father and daughter relationship.

Despicable Me 2 is a 2013 American 3D computer-animated action comedy film and the sequel to the 2010 animated film Despicable Me. Produced by Illumination Entertainment, both films are directed by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud, and written by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio. Steve Carell, Russell Brand, and Miranda Cosgrove reprise their roles as Felonious Gru, Dr. Nefario and Margo. 

Despicable Me 2 has received generally positive reviews from critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 75% approval rating with an average rating of 6.7/10 based on 165 reviews. The website's consensus reads, "Despicable Me 2 offers plenty of eye-popping visual inventiveness and a number of big laughs." Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 62 based on 39 reviews. The film earned an "A" from audiences polled by CinemaScore.With a budget of $76 million, the film became the most profitable film in the 100 year history of Universal Studios. As of November 4, 2013, Despicable Me 2 has grossed $364,800,590 in North America and $547,000,000 in other countries, for a worldwide total of $911,800,590.

It is the twenty-seventh highest-grossing film, the fifth highest-grossing animated film, the second highest-grossing 2013 film (behind Iron Man 3), the highest-grossing 2013 animated film, the highest-grossing Illumination Entertainment film, and the second highest-grossing Universal Studios film (behind Jurassic Park). 

The film was theatrically released in the United States on July 3, 2013. 

A spin-off film, Minions, focusing mainly on the little yellow henchmen before they met Gru, is set to be released on July 10, 2015.

"THEY DIDN'T CRY UNTIL I LEFT THEM!"

Imagine this, God forbid! You are a family man and one day your daughter goes missing, possibly kidnapped! What would you do? Leave it to the Nigerian Police to do their job, or take laws into your own hands because the prime suspect tells you this, "they didn't cry until I left them?!" 
Of course that is enough for you to go Bruce Lee on the brother, right?!

Meet Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), an upstanding American citizen, deeply religious man, happily married to Grace Dover (Maria Bello), and a father of two, his son Ralph, and daughter Anna. 
One day he attends Thanksgiving dinner with his family at the house of their neighbors, the Birches who have two daughters, Eliza and Joy. After dinner, the families' young daughters, Anna Dover and Joy Birch, go missing. After a police hunt, an RV that had been parked in the neighborhood is found outside a gas station next to a wooded area. When Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) confronts Alex Jones (Paul Dano), the RV's driver, Jones tries to speed away but crashes into the trees.

Alex is revealed during Detective Loki's interrogation to have the approximate I.Q. of a ten-year-old and is released due to lack of evidence. While desperate Keller Dover confronts Alex at the parking lot of the police station as he is being released about the whereabouts of his little daughter Anna and her friend Joy, Alex Jones in a whisper utters these words, "they wouldn't cry till I left them." That marked the beginning of Keller's adventure to finding the little girls in what seems to be a race against time!

Personal surveillance by Keller convinces him that Alex knows where the girls are. He abducts and imprisons Alex in an abandoned apartment building that he owns. With the reluctant help of Joy's father, Franklin Birch (Terrence Howard), Keller repeatedly beats and interrogates Alex for days without any further information.

What is so exciting about this film are the film makers' ability to transit empathy into the audience. The audience gets to feel the pulse of a father who seems helpless as he watches his family fall apart due to the disappearance of his daughter but has no other choice but to go rogue, and this well achieved through Hugh Jackman's performance. 
The movie stylishly puts one into a state of limbo as viewers tends to assume they know who the villain is but thrills you when the real villain is revealed at the end.

The movie successfully achieves being called a thriller and is bound to keep you gripping your palms hard to the edges of your seat. With an easy going beginning, well paced tempo at the middle, and a well delivered and spectacular ending, 'Prisoners' is one movie that can be regarded one of the best thrillers of the year and a must watch.

Prisoners received positive reviews from critics. The film currently has an 81% approval rating on review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 213 reviews. Its consensus reads: "Prisoners has an emotional complexity and a sense of dread that makes for absorbing (and disturbing) viewing." 

Ed Gibbs of The Sun Herald wrote: "Not since Erskineville Kings, in 1999, has Hugh Jackman appeared so emotionally exposed on screen. It is an exceptional, Oscar-worthy performance." Metacritic provides a score of 74 out of 100, based on 46 reviews, indicating 'Generally favorable reviews.'

As of November 3, 2013, Prisoners has grossed $59,949,000 in North America and $42,400,000 in foreign countries, for a worldwide gross of $102,349,000.

Prisoners is a 2013 American thriller film directed by Denis Villeneuve. The film has an ensemble cast including Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Maria Bello,Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, and Paul Dano. The plot focuses on the abduction of two young girls in Pennsylvania and the resulting search to find them.

ROBERT HANSEN...SOME MOTHERS DO 'AVE 'EM!

On June 13, 1983, 17-year-old Cindy Paulson escaped from 44-year-old Robert Hansen while he was trying to load her into his Piper Super Cub. She told police that she had been offered $200 to perform oral sex, but when she got into the car Hansen pulled a gun on her and drove her to his home; there, he held her captive, torturing, raping, and sexually assaulting her. 

Cindy Paulson escaped when Hansen took her to Merrill Field airport, where he told her that he intended to "take her out to his cabin" accessible only by boat or bush plane). Paulson, crouched in the back seat of the car with her wrists cuffed in front of her body, waited until Hansen was busy loading the airplane's cockpit to make a run for it. Paulson made it to 6th Avenue first and managed to flag down a passing truck. The driver, alarmed by her disheveled appearance, stopped and picked her up. He drove her, upon request, to an Inn, where she jumped out of the truck and ran inside. The truck driver continued on to work, where he called the police to report the barefoot, handcuffed woman. When Anchorage Police Department (APD) officers arrived at the Inn, they were told that the young woman had taken a cab to the Big Timber Motel. APD officers arrived at room 110 of the Big Timber Motel and found Cindy Paulson, still handcuffed, and alone. She was taken to APD headquarters where she described the perpetrator. Hansen, when questioned by APD officers, denied the accusation stating that Paulson was just trying to cause some trouble because he wouldn't pay her extortion demands.

Although Hansen had had several prior run-ins with the law, his meek demeanor and humble occupation as a baker, along with a strong alibi from his friend John Henning, kept him from being considered as a serious suspect, and the case went cold.

This is a story about a serial killer, who sadly represent the sick and demented amongst us inflicting harm  in this world of ours. 
Robert Christian Hansen, born February 15 1939, murdered between 17 and 21 women near Anchorage, Alaska Between 1971 and 1983.  

Detective Glenn Flothe of the Alaska State Troopers had been part of a team investigating the discovery of several bodies in and around Anchorage, Seward and the Matanuska-Susitna Valley area. Supported by Paulson's testimony, Flothe and the APD secured a warrant to search Hansen's plane, cars and home. On October 27, 1983 investigators uncovered jewelry belonging to some of the missing women, as well as an array of firearms in a corner hideaway of Hansen's attic. The biggest find was an aviation map with little x marks on it hidden behind Hansen's headboard.

When confronted with the evidence found in his home, Hansen denied it as long as he could, but eventually began to blame the women and tried to justify his motives. Eventually, confessing to each item of evidence as it was presented to him, he admitted to a spree of attacks against Alaskan women starting as early as 1971. Hansen's earliest victims were young women, usually between 16 and 19, and not the prostitutes and strippers who led to his discovery.

He was convicted in 1983 and is currently serving 461 years in Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, Alaska.

If this story is not scary enough to convince you that we do have demons in human form living among us, then just google the name Robert Hansen, which I did after watching the movie 'Frozen Grounds'.

The Frozen Ground is a 2013 American thriller film written and directed by Scott Walker, The film stars Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, Vanessa Hudgens,Katherine LaNasa, Radha Mitchell and 50 Cent. 

Nicholas Cage plays the role of Alaskan detective Glenn Flothe (called Sgt. Jack Halcombe in the film) who sets out to end the murderous rampage of Robert Hansen played by John Cusack, a serial killer who has silently stalked the streets of Anchorage for more than 13 years. As the bodies of Anchorage women start to add up, Sgt. Halcombe goes on a personal manhunt to find the killer. When 17-year-old Cindy Paulson (Vanessa Hudgens) escapes Hansen's unspeakable violence, she believes the law will take him down. Instead she finds herself, once again, fighting for her life. With his only ally, Cindy Paulson, Sergeant Halcombe is determined to bring the serial killer to justice.

The movie has received mixed reviews from critics. It currently holds a 57% "rotten" rating on review site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 47 reviews, with a weighted average of 5.1/10. The site's consensus reads: "Though this by-the-numbers true procedural seems basic, The Frozen Ground presents a welcome return for Nicolas Cage in a solid performance." That I agree! 

John Cusack's extraordinary and scary performance as he played serial killer Robert Hansen was actually very good. In one of the scenes, Cusack is seen loosing his temper when Cage confronts him with evidences incriminating him to the Alaska murders. This movie is the first time John Cusack plays the role of a serial killer, and trust me, he did a very scary good job!

The film begins by displaying Matthew 10:16 on-screen: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves." Which is the truth and enough message that explains how we live in a world where crazy people also call their own, and I assure you that after seeing this film, "you will be careful of speaking to strangers." 

The film was dedicated to all the women that were victims of Hansen's madness and their names and pictures were displayed at the end of the movie.