Now this is a college party movie that is actually awesome. “Neighbors” is satirical all the way through. The characters are funny, the setup is funny, the situations are funny, and above all, it is a film that will make parents wonder if a fraternity house is actually safe for their children. 

The movie starts out with a married couple Mac and Kelly Radner (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne). They move into a luxurious neighborhood filled mostly wealthy families. They have one kid and they try to blend in with other families as soon as they move in. Rogen obviously still has ways of getting stoned into his films, and he does this in a variety of weird places and can still play the good father.

A few days once they are settled in, they realize they have got some new neighbors as soon as a mover’s truck shows up. After the mover’s truck stops in, a herd of cars filled with college boys fills up around it. Soon to realize that for the Radner family they got a fraternity house living next door.

They two leaders of this fraternity are Teddy Sanders (played by Zac Efron) and Pete (played by Dave Franco). Most of the time we are use to seeing Dave’s brother James be in films with Rogen, but in this one, this one really makes the mark for a comedy by James Franco’s younger brother.

The Radner family tries to be cooperative the fraternity and not to stir up trouble with police authorities. They do everything they can. They party with them, drink with them, and prove they can be trusted.

Neighbors is a hysterical thrill ride and a highly recommend. Four stars.

Billy Ray’s first film for directing, “Shattered Glass,” is one that Hayden Christensen plays the role of Stephen Glass seriously. The process of production was a disaster at first, since Ray tried to convince the real-life people to work on “Shattered Glass” with him. Former news editor of the News Republic Michael Kelly (in the film he is portrayed by Hank Azaria) had a hard time being convinced by the director to be part of “Shattered Glass.” The reason for this hard decision is because Kelly felt embarrassed that he worked with a journalist (Stephen Glass) that fabricated articles and published them. Later though, Ray convinced Kelly to help out with the film once Ray said he was approaching the story as a journalist. He informed Kelly that he wanted the script to be factually accurate as can be. Once that task was a success, two colleagues Charles Lane (in the film he is portrayed by Peter Saarsgard) and Hannah Rosin worked as advisers for Billy Ray. The character Caitlin Avey (portrayed by Chloe Sevigny) is loosely based off of Hannah Rosin.

The film’s introduction is the life of Stephen Glass (Christensen): a smart, and devoted journalist, and a student trying to finish his law degree; his colleague Charles Lane (Saarsgard) is short-fused and gets aggravated easily; another colleague Caitlin Avey (Sevigny) who is a close-friend of Glass but thinks that Lane is too hard on everyone; and a caring editor Michael Kelly (Azaria) that lacks dialogue. An organized man but is not good with confrontations.

 Glass writes a story about a company called Jukt Micronics. Which is a big event that consists of a hacker at the age of fifteen and is trying to make a name for himself.  This story is one that never happened, but the rest of the News Republic is not aware of the problem yet. The issue is that Glass just makes situations worse and does not resolve any of the conflicts he is putting himself into. He just keeps on trying to find ways to cheat his way out of getting caught, and he does this by fabricating article after article.

Before the Jukt Micronics issue happens, Glass was assigned to do research and write an article on Drug Abuse Resistance Education. He did go to the conference regarding what he was suppose to write about, but admits he messed up (where he actually lied). Later though, the News Republic gets letters of distortions and lies that they found written by Glass. Glass’s window is closing.

If Paul Walker lived to the sensation of “Brick Mansions” he would have definitely made his mark for another film other than “The Fast and Furious Movies.” “Brick Mansions” shows Walker as a ruthless, yet heartfelt detective. An opinionated, witty, crazy, and risk-taking fighter who can definitely take on a big group of bad guys in a less amount of time.

The film introduces Damien Collier (Walker) an undercover cop that is set to navigate through a dangerous neighborhood which is named “Brick Mansions.” the issue is the neighborhood is surrounded by a containment wall. Along side him he has the help of a powerful, flexible, and kung-fu fighting partner named Lino (played by David Belle).

Both Damien and Lino join together for revenge. Since it is believed that for Damien, his father was killed by the man who runs brick mansions. For Lino, however, it is for kidnapping his girlfriend. Both realize they have that in common and realize they are both skilled with fighting and that together they can destroy take down “Brick Mansions.”

Now here is something that is a twist to this movie. “Brick Mansions” is actually set to explode. Not just to destroy “Brick Mansions” but the entire city of Detroit around it. The film was advertised differently and set in this order. Both Damien and Lino seek revenge, do a bunch of jumps and stunts to survive, get into a few ruthless fights, and that just had me set to think that this movie was just based around revenge, having the city go down was something that I was not expecting at all.

I did enjoy this movie for a moderate amount of time. Non-stop action always keeps my attention. Only issue though is just really it went kind of fast. The film is only ninety-minutes. I figured that maybe it could be longer, but more with a sense of plot development. We can understand the plot but there is not enough background in “Brick Mansions” to make the plot believable of where all the crazy action is coming from.

“Brick Mansions” is violent, fast, and ruthless throughout. In a way I felt like I was watching “The Raid: Redemption.” Since that one was set in a district and this one was too, but honestly only two people taking on this crazy amount of criminals added to the suspense. I think just about two characters is all that is needed for a film of fighting a drug ring. Three solid stars.