Movie Spotlight: Jamie Marks is Dead

Jamie Marks is Dead is a 2013 movie starring Cameron Monaghan, Noah Silver, Morgan Saylor, Madisen Beaty, Judy Greer, and Liv Tyler.  The movie begins with high school student Gracie Highsmith (Morgan Saylor) finding the dead body of classmate Jamie Marks (Noah Silver) next to a river.  No one ever paid much attention to Jamie when he was alive (except for the bullies), but Gracie and fellow student Adam McCormick (Cameron Monaghan) begin seeing Jamie's ghost.  Gracie warns Adam not to get involved, but Adam befriends the ghost of Jamie and works to find out what happened to him.  As if that weren't enough for a teenage boy to deal with, Adam's mother (Liv Tyler) is paralyzed in a car accident and becomes good friends with the driver (Judy Greer) who caused the accident, which Adam has a hard time comprehending.

Unlike most movies featuring ghosts, Jamie Marks is Dead is definitely not a horror movie, but if you want to watch a good, well-written ghost story, give it a chance.  All of the actors did a great job, and the story is one that sticks with you long after you've finished watching the movie.

My rating: 7/10

Movie Spotlight: Carrie (2013)

Carrie is a 2013 movie based on Stephen King's novel about a teenage girl who has telekinesis and a religious nutjob mother.  The movie stars Chloë Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Judy Greer, Portia Doubleday, Gabriella Wilde, Alex Russell, and Ansel Elgort, and since most people have seen the 1976 version, I'm going to include spoilers (so stop reading if you don't want to know what happens).  I know most people don't agree, but I liked this version of Carrie as much as the 1976 version...I like that they cast an actual teenager in this one and that they made the bullying more up-to-date by having Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday) film Carrie's humiliating locker room incident and put it on YouTube.  Chloë Grace Moretz did a great job as Carrie (I was impressed with  her when I saw her in Kick-Ass, which she filmed when she was 11 years old, and she keeps getting better), and so did Julianne Moore as Margaret White, who I still hated even though she was a little more likable than Margaret in the 1976 version.  Someone should've called child services on Carrie's mother a long time ago: she hits Carrie in the face with a Bible, locks her in a "prayer closet" for hours with creepy Jesus paraphernalia, and never teaches her about puberty, so the poor girl thinks she's dying when she has her first period in the locker room at school.

When Carrie gets upset or angry, strange things happen, like mirrors breaking and water dispensers exploding, so she does some research and concludes that she has telekinesis; she checks a few books out from the library and makes them float around her bedroom as her bed levitates.  When Tommy Ross (Ansel Elgort) invites her to the prom at the request of his guilt-ridden girlfriend Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde), Margaret forbids her to go, so Carrie makes her levitate, and the night of the prom, she locks Margaret in the prayer closet using only her mind.  At the prom, Carrie finally begins to feel like she's not a total outcast, but then evil Chris (angry that gym teacher Miss Desjardin (Judy Greer) has banned her from attending the prom after she refused to take the punishment she was dealt for her part in the locker room incident) dumps pig's blood on her, and all hell breaks loose.  When the bucket hits Tommy in the head and kills him, Carrie loses it, and her telekinesis causes fires to break out, killing many of her fellow prom attendees.  Chris and her boyfriend Billy Nolan (Alex Russell) leave the prom before this happens, but Carrie catches up with them and causes their car to crash, so they get what's coming to them (karma's a bitch, and so is-I mean, was-Chris).  Carrie runs home and seeks comfort from Margaret, who stabs her, so Carrie uses her powers to crucify her psycho mother, pinning her to the wall with knives and scissors.  Upset by what she has done, Carrie causes rocks to fall from the sky, eventually causing the house to collapse on top of them.

I really enjoyed Carrie and thought that certain aspects were better than the original movie.  If people want bullying to stop being such a problem, maybe every high school student should be forced to watch Carrie...would you bully someone after watching this movie?

My rating: 8/10