Inside Out: emotionally gratifying

Trailer:


Plot:
A girl named Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is born in Minnesota. Within her mind's Headquarters, there live five personifications of her basic emotions: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and Anger (Lewis Black). The emotions influence Riley's actions via a control console. Riley's memories are stored in colored orbs, which are sent into long-term memory each night by a suction tube. Riley's most important memories, known as "core" memories, are housed in a hub in Headquarters and power five "islands", each of which reflects a different aspect of Riley's personality: Family, Friendship, Goofiness, Hockey and Honesty. Joy always tries to keep Riley happy, and she and the other emotions try to prevent Sadness from using the console, not understanding her purpose.

When Riley is 11, her family moves to San Francisco. Riley is disappointed by their lifeless new home, and the moving van with all their belongings gets lost. Sadness begins touching Riley's happy memories, causing them to become sad memories, so Joy tries to keep Sadness isolated. However, on Riley's first day at her new school, Sadness causes Riley to cry in front of her class, creating a sad core memory. Joy tries to dispose of the new core memory before it reaches the core memory hub, but she instead knocks the other core memories loose, destabilizing the personality islands. As Joy scrambles to collect the core memories, she is sucked out of Headquarters by the memory tube, along with the core memories and Sadness. They land in the maze-like storage area of long-term memory.

Fear, Disgust, and Anger try to keep Riley happy, but inadvertently distance her from her parents, friends, and hobbies, causing her personality islands to crumble into the Memory Dump, an abyss where fading memories are disposed of and forgotten. Anger believes that going back to Minnesota will make Riley happy again, so he inserts to the control console a light bulb, which gives Riley the idea to run away to Minnesota. Meanwhile, in long-term memory, Joy and Sadness find Bing Bong (Richard Kind), Riley's childhood imaginary friend. He tells them they can get to Headquarters by riding the train of thought. After exploring Imagination Land in Riley's mind, the three eventually catch the train, but it crashes when another personality island falls and destroys the rails.

As Riley prepares to board a bus bound for Minnesota, Joy attempts to abandon Sadness and use a "recall tube" to return to Headquarters. However, Riley's last personality island falls and breaks the tube, plunging Joy and Bing Bong into the Memory Dump. In the Dump, Joy discovers a sad memory of a hockey game that becomes happy when her parents and friends comfort her. Joy now realizes that Sadness's importance is to alert others when Riley needs help.

Joy and Bing Bong try to use Bing Bong's wagon rocket to escape the Memory Dump, but after several tries, Bing Bong realizes their combined weight is too much and jumps out, allowing Joy to escape. Bing Bong fades away, finally forgotten. Joy goes to Imagination Land and uses various tools to propel herself and Sadness through the air to Headquarters. They find that the idea to run away has disabled the control console, rendering Riley numb and apathetic. Joy encourages Sadness to control the console with Sadness successfully removing the idea, reactivating the console and prompting Riley to return home.

As Riley arrives home, Sadness reinstalls the core memories, which caused Riley to burst into tears, confessing to her parents that she misses her old life in Minnesota. Riley's parents comfort and reassure her, creating a new core memory, which is a combination of sad and happy. A year later, Riley has turned 12 and adapted to her new home, and her emotions now work together to help her lead a more emotionally complex life. She has become much happier with new friends and a new hockey team.

Review:
it is such a bittersweet story. about how we cope about our feelings. some people choose to be happy through and through no matter what. except that sometimes they must allow for sadness to set in.. by constantly denying a sad moment to coexist, sooner or later we'll be imbalanced, incomplete. a sane reasonably healthy person must recognise all the emotions and keep them in balance.

at first, i was so disgusted with Sadness, rasa nak cekik-cekik je. but as the story progressed, i realised, she was that way as the product of 11 years neglect and shun. Joy completely controls Riley and relegates Sadness into a forgotten corner, assigning her to reading mind manuals and such. that wasn't nice of Joy, you see. as she allows other emotions to have a role in Riley's day, the same courtesy should be extended to Sadness.

there was a few moment when i cried. this is really an emotional movie, you know. for example, when Riley cried at school, that was a touching moment.. then, Bing Bong, when he sacrificed himself to save Joy. it reminds me of forgotten old friends who used to make us happy when we were a child. then, when Riley confessed her sadness to her parents, that was also a tear jerker moment for me.

All in all, it was a flawless movie.. something that children might enjoy together with their parents for its very strong family values. though i wonder why Riley has a mixed gender emotions whilst Mom's emotions are all female and Dad's are all guys.. hahaha.

good memories...

life is always ok when you have laughter with your family

Accepted: Simply GENIUS thought provoking FUN

 

Trailer:


The Plot:
Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long) is a persuasive high-school senior who, among other pranks, creates fake IDs. His gifts do not extend to grades, however, and he receives rejection letters from all of the universities and colleges to which he applies, including those with high acceptance rates.



In an attempt to seek approval from his strict father (Mark Derwin), Bartleby creates a fake college, the South Harmon Institute of Technology (S.H.I.T.). He is aided by his best friend, Sherman Schrader III (Jonah Hill), who has been accepted into the prestigious Harmon College, and fellow rejects Rory Thayer (Maria Thayer), a hard-working girl who, due to prevalence of Legacy preferences, failed to get in to Yale University, the only school she applied to, Hands Holloway (Columbus Short), who lost his athletic scholarship after an injury, and Glen (Adam Herschman), who got a "0" on the SAT when he neglected to sign his name.


To make the "college" seem legitimate, Bartleby convinces Sherman to create a fully functional Web site for the school. Later on, with Rory's help he also leases an abandoned psychiatric hospital adjacent to Harmon College and renovates it to look like a college campus, using the college enrollment fee that his father gave to him.



When his domineering father insists on meeting the dean, Bartleby hires Schrader's uncle, Ben Lewis (Lewis Black), a former educator, to play that role.



The seemingly innocent ploy quickly spins out of control when the website, which automatically accepts any applicant, enrolls hundreds of other rejected students.



Bartleby realizes that these people have nowhere else to go, so he lets them believe that the school is real, a place where they will finally feel accepted.After a visit to Harmon disenchants him with traditional college life, he has the students make up their own classes and be their own teachers.



Students write down what they want to learn on a giant whiteboard, with classes ranging from the culinary arts and sculpting to "Taking a Walk and Thinking about Stuff," "Foreign Affairs: Hooking Up Overseas," "Rock Our Faces Off 222," and the invention of one freaky kid (Jeremy Howard) who wants to learn how to "blow shit up...with my mind."



Bartleby even goes so far as to create a school newspaper (the S.H.I.T. Rag) and a mascot (the S.H.I.T. Sandwiches).

Meanwhile, the dean of nearby Harmon College, Richard Van Horne (Anthony Heald), makes plans to construct the Van Horne Gateway, an adjacent park-like "verdant buffer zone" by which the dean hopes "to keep knowledge in, and ignorance out." He dispatches Hoyt Ambrose (Travis Van Winkle) to free up the nearby properties, but when Bartleby refuses to relinquish the lease for the South Harmon property, Hoyt sets to work trying to reveal the college as a fake.

The dispute turns personal, since Bartleby has been vying for the affections of Hoyt's ex-girlfriend, Monica Moreland (Blake Lively). Hoyt exposes South Harmon as a fake institution through Sherman, who is attempting to join Hoyt's fraternity as a legacy, but is treated with humiliation and abuse by his fraternity brothers. After having Sherman beaten up, Hoyt forces him to hand over all the files he has created for South Harmon.

Hoyt then contacts all the students' parents to expose the school as a fake. Soon after the parents come and as a result of that, the institute is shut down. However as Sherman's has taken the initiative to file for accreditation, it gives Bartleby a chance to make his college legitimate.



At the State of Ohio educational accreditation hearing, Bartleby makes an impassioned speech about the failures of conventional education and the importance of following one's own passions instead of being dictated on what to do, convincing the board to grant his school a one-year probation to test his new system.

The institute reopens, with more students enrolling, including Sherman and Monica. Also, Bartleby finally earns the approval of his father, who is proud that his son actually owns a college. As the film closes, Van Horne is seen walking to his car in the Harmon College parking lot, only to watch it suddenly explode. Bartleby watches in astonishment as the freaky guy from earlier tells him "I told you I could do it", in that he made his psychokinetic explosions reality.

Review:
To me, Accepted is a simple take on education industry. It happens that these days, our generation lives by a certain standard that if not provoked, and flexed to a certain extent, it shall waste good talents like Bartleby's.

Of course, to some extent, it was too good to be true. but the ideals put forth are worthy. thought provoking.

Plus, I got JL and CS at their most carefree roles. JL is admirable and reminds me a lot about my younger brother who didn't graduate himself. sometimes life is more than just certificates and good job. it's about how you live your life and impacts on others.

Accepted has put JL in my good books the same way Get Over it puts Ben Foster on my map. They are both good and off-beat, a delight to put on rerun :)