20th Century Women (2016)

The new critically acclaimed comedy-drama, from writer/director Mike Mills . It tells the story of a single mother, in 1970s California, who asks her two friends to help her raise her son. The movie stars Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning, Lucas Jade Zumann and Billy Crudup. It's received mostly rave reviews from critics, and it's also been nominated for several prominent awards. I absolutely loved it.

The film is hilarious at times, and there's several all-time classic scenes in it. The performances are all great (especially Bening and Gerwig) and the characters are all likable . The movie is also extremely touching, and involving. I cared a lot for all of it's main characters; I really wanted them all to succeed, and be happy.

The DUFF (2015)

When i heard about "The DUFF" i thought it was going to be an extremely lame movie about some high school girl trying to get a boy, and it was, but the way that they went about entertaining and keeping the audience interested was okay.  The film concerns Bianca (Mae Whitman), a smart, eccentric teenage girl, who enjoys her individuality and her love for cult horror movies. She spends most of her time with Jess (Skyler Samuels) and Casey (Bianca A. Santos), two popular girls who find themselves at the center of everyone's attention whenever they walk through the hallways.

Mae Whitman gets her first real starring role in a film. She was also good in the TV Series Parenthood but she actually proved she could do this. She wasn't quite as charismatic as an A-Lister (Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway even Lindsay Lohan in her prime) but she is down to earth and someone you can relate to and that might be more important for this particular movie. Bella Thorne who is a real up and comer as far as I'm concerned plays the hideously mean Madison. Thorne is a natural at sarcastic comedy, she was awesome in Blended, and she plays this part perfectly and is a great nemesis for Whitman.

Project Almanac (2015)

Admittedly I did enjoy this film, despite its tired and uninspired use of the found-footage gimmick and the teen vibe that saturates every scene in this film. It's not wildly inventive with how it tackles the sub-genre of time-travel, but there are a few glimmers of originality in an already derivative heavy lineage and visually some of the effects are pretty neat. More time-travel movies need to have that explosive mode of teleportation like you'd get in the Terminator films.

This would have been an entertaining movie if not for the horrible flashing, jolting and constant moving of the camera. Apparently we were supposed to believe that the filming of the movie was done by one of the actors. At times that almost seemed credible but at other times impossible - particularly when David goes back in time by himself.