Month: October 2012

Generally I am able to separate the real world from the movie world. I know that I won’t get sucked into a video game, and that I won’t be chased by a serial killer (because hey, why would anyone want to kill me?). But then we have certain movies that say, “I’m gonna to take something you love and make it scary for you, so that you can always think about the fear every time you do that task!” I like to call those movies “jerkfaces”, and that is what Sinister did to me in regards to watching movies. It is probably the same exact thing The Ring dids, but I wouldn’t know because I value my sanity.
Fucking Sinister.

Presumably this is the same thing that happened after The Ring, but fuck if I’m ever gonna watch that.

Our story begins quite creepily with four members of a family being hung from a tree on a very old looking roll of film. Well, now that the mood is set, we introduce the actual new family, moving into a new house with a very familiar looking tree. Great! Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) is a famous-ish author, who got his big break when he began to write true crime style novels. His book, Kentucky Blood, based on a real murder and his own research actually helped bring a criminal to justice and got him mega bucks!

But he just hasn’t lived up to his former glory since then. His books haven’t been as good and local cops now hate him. But this time, this time he has it! Hell, he actually picked the murder house to live in instead of just being in the same town! The family was murdered (by hanging) and the youngest daughter is now missing. He could be a hero!

After this book he has promised to quit because his wife (Juliet Rylance) is tired of it and his kids (Michal Hall D’Addario, Clare Foley) are tired of moving. Not to mention their son now has night terrors. What a creepy kid.

But when Ellison finds a box in their attic entitled “Home Movies” with reels from the 1960s to 2011, his curiosity gets the best of him and gives them a watch. Each tape begins the same way, a nice family scene, spliced with the murder of said family.  They also all feature the youngest child missing in the murder scenes, hmm.  These series of murders take place all around the country, and with the help of Deputy So-and-So (James Ransone) he might be able to find a connection between them all, and save the day! Or you know, die himself. It is really 50/50 at this point.

Oh yeah, also this shit happening. Fuuuuuck.

This story also is about an ancient pagan demon who steals the souls of children. He also lives in any pictures of himself, including movies, and can move between them and out of them. Great! Movies are now forever ruined for me!

The movies drops enough clues for you to understand everything that is going on, so you should be able to figure it out halfway through. But don’t worry, if you still didn’t get it by the end, it is fully explained to you. Based on the ending, it also looks like this film is a “one-and-done” series. That should excite a lot of you, because it means we won’t soon get flooded with ten sequels to a new original horror movie!

Most of the film is Ethan Hawke walking around his house at night, with so little light, and it is absolutely terrifying. I wish he would have turned on a light more often, but when you are drunk you make poor decisions. I personally felt paralyzed when I watched the screen, afraid that if I moved I might be the next to go. I am disappointed that it did resort on more than one occasion to the sudden pop up scares, most notably at the end of the movie. It could have ended on a classy note, but instead went for one last “boo!”

The best part to me is that this horror movie actually has a plot that is believable enough in the world it created. That means it might actually make you think while you shriek. I’d definitely call Sinister my favorite new horror movie this month, and the one you should watch on Halloween night.

It turns out that Silent Hill and Silent Hill: Revelation are actually connected movies! Shocking I know. But for some reason I just figured they’d be two different stories both set in the same town, based on different games in the series. After all, it has only been a six year difference between the movies.

But nope, Sean Bean plays the same character in both movies, so I had to rush watch the first one to make sure I understood all the complicated plot developments this movie would surely have.

Well, at least this also has snow. Wait no. Ash. Yep, that’s ash.

Well don’t worry, seeing the first film is not necessary. The dad (Bean) and daughter Heather/Shannon (Adelaide Clemens) are moving all across America because the cult in Silent Hill, West Virginia is after her. She doesn’t remember any of the events from the first film, when she was in the town with her mother (Radha Mitchell), and didn’t know that her mom was still trapped inside its city limits.

But when they move to a new town, with new identities, she continues to receive strange dreams that feel extremely real, telling her that she is never to return to Silent Hill.

So when her dad gets kidnapped to protect her location, she does what anyone would do in that situation, and returns to Silent Hill. Thankfully she has the help of Vincent (Kit Harrington) who also happened to be a new kid in school, and for whatever reason doesn’t find any of this weird.

The cult wants to kill her, because they believe she is the innocent part of a demon child Alyssa that is terrorizing their town…that they also created. They are hoping to kill the demon, in order to birth a new demon, who can uh…kill the world? I am not even sure. But Carrie-Anne Moss is in charge of it all, and Malcolm McDowell plays a blind crazy uncle.

This is also how I like my womenz.

I don’t go to 3D movies a lot, right now my count is at six, but I am trying to give them more chances. “Silent Hill: Revelation” is by far has the worst 3D I have ever seen, and I also watched Katy Perry: Part Of Me in 3D. Its 3D consisted entirely of things coming out at you and roughly zero of everything else. It was made purely for a scare factor, but even did poorly at that aspect.

I don’t think you need to see the first “Silent Hill” film to see this one, because they try to explain everything you need in the second movie. However, the plot made absolutely no sense to me, despite seeing both films. I can’t tell the point of the cult, nor could I fully grasp why the town went to hell in the first place.

Most would say that the movie isn’t about plot, but cool visual effects. Well, its visual effects are bad (and they should feel bad), so then the movie just might be about being scared! But even I didn’t find it scary, just predictable and weird. The first film most would agree was a bit dull, trying (and failing) to recreate the alone feelings felt from the game. I think it is obvious that for this film they tried to amp everything up, yet still it just didn’t feel quite right. A bit disappointing that this is the only horror movie to be released on Halloween week. If you are looking for some good scares, I’d recommend basically anything else but this.

It has been a few years since we have had a stop motion scary movie, the last of which was three years ago in Coraline. But this year we have two! ParaNorman, made by some relatively unheard of directors, and Frankenweenie, a remake of a 1984 short film by Tim Burton, king of the slightly creepy.

Yep, ParaNorman is the underdog in this fight but hey, it is at least in color!

All white people, but color nonetheless.

Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) can see dead people. Ghosts at least, who are stuck on earth because their time and tasks have not been completed and cannot move on. So you’d think Norman would go around helping all the ghosts move on, but instead he just befriends them and acts like its not his problem. That isn’t the movie plot, they never even bring up Norman helping the ghosts, he is just a dick kid who never thinks to help out his ghost friends. Just an observation!

He doesn’t keep the ghosts a secret either, so everyone thinks he is a freak. His parents don’t know what to do (Jeff Garlin, Leslie Mann) and his sister (Anna Kendrick) thinks he is a loser. Outside of the ghosts, so far just a normal sounding life. His only friend is a guy named Neil (Tucker Albrizzi), who has no friends because he is fat. True story.

In this town, their claim to fame is that they once burned a witch. But before the witch was burnt, she hexxed her seven accusers into a zombie fate once they die, meaning that  she is actually a witch and really they did nothing wrong. You can’t just let witches free and running amuck! Years later, the curse still has not occurred because of people like crazy uncle Penderghast (John Goodman) who delay the curse. But once he kicks the bucket, it is up to Norman to make sure the zombies don’t rise up and take over, with the help of Neil, Neil’s older brother (Casey Affleck), his sister, and the local bully (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).

SO MANY ZOMBIES. SEVEN OF THEM. AHH.

Personally, I found the movie to be a bit boring. It is hard to classify just what kind of movie this was, and for who it was meant to be enjoyed by. Most of the good jokes were given away in the trailer and I didn’t understand how this town even felt threatened. I mean, seven zombies? That is a very specific finite number of zombies, in the modern age, a town should be able to handle them. There is a scene where the towns people try to destroy them and end up killing exactly zero. Despite multiple guns, they actually just end up beating them up with umbrellas and clubs and let them get away. Well then.

I could talk a lot about the actual movie, but this one has controversy which is more exciting.

Controversy? In a kids movie? Yes! At the end of the movie, one of the main characters turns out to be gay. It was just meant to be a minor joke, but it has caused a lot of parents to freak out. I won’t get into how ridiculous this controversy even is, leaving that up to you.

Overall, I can’t see why this film has received such high praise. I just felt the stop motion wasn’t the best and that most of the jokes fell flat. Feel free to see it as soon as you can and prove me wrong or tell me what I missed, because I am willing to listen. I do understand that the moral of the film wasn’t just destroy the witch/zombies, but that wasn’t enough for me to care.

I am surprised at how little Lawless was talked about when it first hit theaters. They didn’t really give away any of the plot, but made it seem like a ganster/western movie of some sort, with some bad ass actors.

And you know, uhh, Shia LaBeouf.

Damn it Shia, what did I tell you about showing up in my movies?

Franklin County, Virgina, early 1900s, prohibition is a bitch. But thankfully this is the wettest county in the world and basically everyone is growing Moonshine, so much that even some gangsters from Chicago are getting their hands wet out here.

The Bondourant brothers are immortal, through legend and talk from their brother Forrest (Tom Hardy). He survived a flu that killed most people who got it, and his other brother Howard (Jason Clarke) was the only surviving member of his platoon in WW1. The youngest brother, Jack (LaBeouf) is the runt of the group and wants to join in on all of the activities but, you know, he is small.

He has big dreams though, and even worships the great gangster Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman), and is hoping to start his own moonshine batch with his weird friend Cricket (Dane DeHaan) who is at least good with tinkering.

Things are going great! That is until some DA Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) is brought in, from Chicago, to clean up this moonshine business in the area, even though the local cops don’t care. His style and aura is definitely not welcome, you know, because he wants to arrest them and maybe kill them.

Kill them? Yeah, life is brutal in this time period. People die, lots of people, and it is fucking gruesome. Most people would fear for their lives, you know, if they weren’t immortal (and missing a lot of their brain cells). All while this is going on, Jack is working on seducing a local Amish like chick (Mia Wasikowska) and a former dancer from Chicago is here to work at their restaurant (Jessica Chastain).

Basically a nice quiet life. But with lots of guns and violence.

Despite my best attempts to make the movie seem lame, it was a blast to see. Hardy and Clarke as the older brothers were both unique and brought a lot to their characters, especially Hardy. His low witted self always made me either chuckle or grimace based on what he was doing (or had done to him).

Gary Oldman is barely in this movie, but Guy Pearce definitely plays his own extremely unique character, so much that I couldn’t even remember what Guy Pearce actually looked and sounded like.

But Shia? Well he did a fine job too. Didn’t ruin the movie like I thought he would, but I am disappointed that he was the main character and not Forrest.

I think the movie could have been a bit shorter than what happened though, or even better, just less “down” scenes. The church scene was really odd, and I do’t know why they never really explained what the heck was going on there. There won’t be any sequels to the movie, as the entire story is told, which is a shame. I’d almost want to see more of Forrest and Howard when they were younger and just getting started.

Can’t stop, won’t stop. That is how I live my life. Every walk a strut. So why not a movie called Won’t Back Down? That shit appeals to me. Only time I will back down is when the ref tells me too cause I am too awesome in a fight. Alright that’s a lie. I wouldn’t back down then either.

Determination to finally get off the couch and you know, sit on a couch.

Jamie Fitzpatrick (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is not your ordinary mother. You know that, because she says so multiple times. Her daughter (Emily Alyn Lind) has dyslexia and now because they are so poor, she can not keep her in the private school even with aid and has to go public. Public schools give no fucks, because this is another random one that has a tenure policy. So they get that and well, do nothing else and barely try to teach. Leaving the daughter to be dyslexic and unable to read.

But she wants to change that. First by bugging everyone but no dice. But when she hears about a parent/teacher takeover for a school, that lets them get rid of unionization if half of the parents and teachers are for it, and develop new rules and principals and teaching methods, she gets all excited. But why would teachers give up their safety net? Well, because some of them care I guess. Nona Alberts (Viola Davis) feels bad about her son (and divorce with her husband, Lance Reddick) and just goes a long with it. Jamie even seduces a teacher who still cares to join their cause (Oscar Isaac) even though he likes unions and doesn’t like being put in that spot.

So despite the fact that they even say most schools that go through this begin to fail again after six months, will they somehow pull off the whole process and fix everything in two whole months?

Spoilers.

But wait. Does the movie end after they successfully win their resolution? Yes. But it only shows the school a few months after summer break and its fine. Not years later. Most start to fail after six months. They didn’t even show past that threshold!

But they showed a whole lot more. Two hours of movie at that. First off, time was confusing. I was sure they were setting it in early 2000s, but had all these Penguin/Steeler references after 2008. It said inspired by true events, which is another bullshit term. Schools have gotten better through this is all. It is super one sided and makes fixing a school seem easy as crap.

But more importantly, it is based on a fucking incorrect Gandhi quote. He never said be the change you want to see in the world. Stop it people. Stop giving that to Gandhi. It is a lie! Every time a movie uses it, kittens die. That is all I am saying.

I wish I just watched Lean on Me again, would have been better use of my night!

Entirely my fault, but as soon as I started to watch this movie, I was immediately disappointed.

I saw L!fe Happens in the RedBox, and was like, “HOLY SHIT THE GOOCH IS STARRING IN A MOVIE GO GO GO GO GOGOGOGOGOGOGO!”

Well it’s not The Gooch. It is just Krysten Ritter, who always reminds me of The Gooch. Except for when I started to watch Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23. I started that show because I thought it was Christina Ricci.

Basically, I have no idea who this fucking woman is.

The story begins with Deena (Kate Bosworth) and Kim (Ritter) really wanting to have sex. They are roomies, you see, and actually both brought a guy home! But they can’t find any damn condoms. Well, one, and Deena claims it. A year later, Kim has a child. Max, aww.

They also have a third roommate, Laura (Rachel Bilson) but she is a virgin and that’s all she brings to the table in the movie. I guess as a sort of opposite to the main two?

Anyways, the baby daddy (Rhys Coiro) doesn’t want to be a dad, so she is basically on her own. She pushes her baby on other people, like her dad, and roommates, because she still feels the need to party and feels like she deserves it. She also ends up falling for some Nicholas dude (Geoff Stults) and tells him the baby belongs to her roommate. That’s a good start to a relationship.

So now she is all lying it up, and constantly trying to make her friends help her out. They don’t like that, or the lies. Hey, Jason Biggs and Justin Kirk are also in this. Hooray~.

Um. Uhhh. Just hanging out ladies? That’s cool. Stop staring at me.

Turns out there is not much to say about this film. It was just terrible. Characters aren’t really likable, story is boring, there aren’t really any funny moments. It literally has nothing going on for it. So little that I can’t even make a good joke about it.

I mean. Fuck. Why would you do this to me, movie people? Such a boring lame movie? I trusted you, and you just poked me in the eye. Twice. The same eye. I mean, it is nice of them to not do one poke per eye, or else I’d be blind, but the second poke on an already poked eye is basically pointless.

Nevermind, if an eye poke was pointless, it probably wouldn’t actually be a poke, would it?

I almost made a mistake and didn’t look up a single detail about Alex Cross before I went to see it in theaters. Thankfully, a friend of mine let me in on a not so secretive secret. Alex Cross is actually a pretty famous character, and has been in sixteen books! Maybe if I knew how to read I would have known that sooner. But more importantly, I found out that this is not the first time Alex Cross has been in film, this is his third time! The first two were over a decade ago, Kiss The Girls and Along Came A Spider, both times being played by Morgan Freeman.

Pretty big shoes to fill.

But technically Tyler Perry has big feet.

So who is Alex Cross (Tyler Perry) and why is he so important? Well, in this version he lives in Detroit, is a homicide detective, and also has a doctorate in psychology. Yep, he can read people, one of those guys. The FBI really wants him to move to DC and become a profiler, but moving his wife (Carmen Ejogo) who also has a career and kids to a new city would be quite difficult.

Besides, he has a good thing going with his partners, Tommy (Edward Burns), a friend of his since grade school, and Monica (Rachel Nichols). The hours can suck, but at least he is doing a good thing for Detroit.

But when a man who calls himself The Butcher (Matthew Fox) begins to target high income individuals who are working on bringing back Detroit to its past prime, Cross is given the problem of trying to analyze someone who might be so far off the rails psychologically that he is entirely unpredictable.

No no no, that’s not what I meant by off the rails.

Never before have I been so torn after watching a movie. While watching it, I was shaking my head at how bad overall it was. The dialogue never felt natural. Most characters just seemed fake, no realistic characteristics at all. The plot was actually very basic, the reason the killings I figured out pretty early, and Matthew Fox creeped me out.

However, multiple times throughout the movie I found myself shocked and surprised at the events that were unraveling. Yes, I knew how it would end, but could not guess the journey. Most of it came from death, because hey, people die in this movie and each time I didn’t think it would happen. I did almost tear up a little bit during one scene with Cross and his daughter.

Usually when I can’t tell how I feel about a movie, I give it a neutral review and run away. But here is some more anyways. Technically, Freeman wasn’t that good in those movies either. They were normal crime based films, and Alex Cross didn’t seem too special. Also, originally this role was supposed to be played by Idris Elba. That should just make you rage with the potential energy that film would have created.

Overall, I think this film will most likely be ignored, and I am not just saying that because of there only being three people in the theater on an opening night showing.

I readily admit that I am a coward, but I also claim that I am willing to watch anything. This often leads me to situations where I scare myself for the entertainment of others. Like Paranormal Activity 4! I never really wanted to see these movies, but last Monday I marathoned the first 3 just to catch up, and strangely enough did not find them scary. I attribute that fact to my multitasking nature, and that I may have missed a lot more of the subtle scares in the build up.

In order to get the full experience, I realized I needed to see the movie with other people. A nice midnight release. Once I got there, I also picked my seat so that I would have groups of women on all sides. I figured hey, if women scream more at movies, I might scream too! If I increase my own fear, I can probably talk about the movie a bit better.

Paranormal Activity 4 takes place about five years after the events of PA1/PA2. Katie had stolen her sister’s kid, Hunter, killing everyone in her path, and disappeared never to be seen again! But now, we are in Nevada, with a completely new family.

Alex (Kathryn Newton) is your typical teenage girl, but lives kind of in a big wealthy house. Mac notebooks everywhere! She actually has married parents (Stephen Dunham, Alexondra Lee), but they fight a lot and might get divorced. You know, if they survive. She also has a younger brother, Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp) who is pretty normal.

You know who isn’t normal? That kid across the street, “Robbie” (Brady Allen), who lives pretty much alone because his mom Katie (Katie Featherston) is away a lot. But when she gets injured in an accident, the family agrees to watch over “Robbie” for a few days while she is in the hospital. Just like every other movie in the series, weird stuff starts to happen in their house as soon as “Robbie” is staying over. Alex’s good friend Ben (Matt Shively) notices that “Robbie” is being weird while they Skype, so they agree to set up mac book pros around the house to record their activity and make sure he is on the up and up.

Definitely not a ploy by Ben to have access to Alex any time of the day. Perverted teenagers are not a thing.

Hopefully “Robbie” doesn’t befriend Wyatt too much. It would be weird if there was two scary young boys running around.

Nonchalant face of terror + night vision = pants being shat.

Paranormal Activity 4 turned out to be a pretty different beast than the previous three films. The technology used is ramped up, the replace a lot of the subtle scares with more noise based rumbles and shadowy figures, and the main character is a teenage girl instead of the adults. Some would say that replacing a lot of the subtle scares is almost a dumbing down of the film series, no longer rewarding the observant viewer, and yeah, I would agree with it.

But I am more upset that the main character, who has all this physical proof on her computer, has a great inability to show her parents and get some sort of solution in the works. Most notably would be the “car/garage” scene. It is almost as if they decided after setting up all the computers to never actually check them again for evidence, which is bonkers.

I also have a problem with this movie in that it doesn’t really answer any questions into the mythos of this world. The plot involving Wyatt and Robbie doesn’t actually make any sense, nor do the actions of Katie. Instead, we are left with another tragic ending, but practically no plot development, which to me only feels like a waste of time.

Boo! Okay, that never scares anyone anymore. No, we need more subtle weirder and realistic stuff to scare us. Which explains the Paranormal Activity franchise. Heck, the production companies love it because they are relatively cheap to make and can rake in the cash.

In case you didn’t see the first two films, here is some catch up! Obviously this contains spoilers for 1 and 2, but hell, 3 also.

In the first film, Katie has moved in with her boyfriend, after which she tells him that some evil presence has been following her around and messing with stuff. Well shit, kind of late there. Weird stuff happens, grows more and more, she becomes possessed and kills the boyfriend and goes missing.

In the second film, it takes place before the first! Ah sneaky. Instead of Katie, it is her sister Kristi, who is actually married with kids, including a new born boy. They recall that demons haunted them when they were kids, and that their family could have been involved with a cult that requires the first male born son. That son, Hunter, is the first in four or five generations. Awkward. Demon stuff happens, it escalates. Then the end of the film is after the events of the first, Katie comes, kills everyone, and steals a baby!

It’s Katie and Kristi! It’s Katie and Kristi! One is a demon, the other’s just dead!

So lets go to the third film now! Which takes place before both of the other ones, hah! Take that, continuity!

No, this movie takes place like, 18 years prior or so. When Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown) and Katie (Chloe Csengery) were kids! Where recording stuff happened on big VHS recorders, with tape and wasn’t all snazzy and digital. They live with their mom, Julie (Lauren Bittner) and her boyfriend Dennis (Chris Smith), because not many people get married in these movies.

Weird shit happens, so he sets up some cameras around the house to see if he can record any more. If only he was their actual dad, then we could say we know it was some genetic issue for each family to do this later as well. But I guess it was the guys idea each time, so hmm.

Shit escalates. Some invisible demon bugs the kids, until it convinces them to do what it wants, mainly Kristi. They convince the family to go to the grandmothers house for a bit, thanks to all that weird ass shit. Then it becomes a fuck with Dennis movie, which it might have been all along. They hear weird noises at the grandmothers house, Julie goes to investigate, does not return. Dennis finds weird images in the girls room, but can’t find the girls. He sees shapes, but no one there. He notices the back door open, goes to investigate, heads to the back shed, turns it on, BOOOM, a bunch of old ladies in black just standing there all creepily.

Julie is found dead, and used as a projectile against Dennis. He finds Kristi and tries to hide with her. Doesn’t work. Finds Katie, she goes all demon on him and he falls down. Just to make sure, the grandmother pops up and breaks his body completely. Yay happy endings! So I guess uhh, after this, the girls go to live with grandmother all creepily until they move out?

Bloody mary is a fun game. And by game, I mean time waster. And by fun, I mean stupid.

You’d think they’d remember these type of things happening, since they even say they were haunted in the previous film. But their mom and her boyfriend violently killed? Come on.

Out of the first three, I think this is the worst. I think it has more subtle stuff going on, but having it go back to their childhood to help explain the first two movies? I didn’t think it really worked. Sure, a lot of weird stuff happened. But for the girls to just completely forget about it until almost 20 years later when it happened again? That just feels like a plot hole. A giant plot hole kick in the nuts.

The only plot that matters from this movie, if you were going to continue the series, is that you got to see they had a creepy grandmother, who probably knew about the demon cult curse thing mentioned in the second movie. Definitely not necessary (yet) to understand any more of the series.

Normally I try to maintain a neutral bias before I see every movie, as you know. But sometimes I get so pumped up on an idea and on how awesome a movie can be, if the movie doesn’t deliver, then I might resent the movie.

And well, that might have happened for Premium Rush. I was stoked for this movie. Cool bike racing against the time, maybe terrorists, who knows?! Joseph Gordon-Levitt generally delivers. This will be a great movie if it is real time, like 24 and Phone Booth. The previews almost make it seem that way, I mean jeez, they even say he only has 90 minutes to get the task done. That’s like a movie length!

Oh no JGL! Watch out! That Taxi is coming right for you!

Well this movie is not set in real time. Insert instant disappointment. They do show the clock an awful lot. But also flip back and forth to before the movie started to set up some plot. Eh, flashbacks, how lazy.

Wilee (JGL. Yes like the Coyote. Might be an reference or something) is a bike courier in the big NYC. He actually finished law school, but doesn’t want to take the bar, or else he might be working in an office with all of those squares. How scary!

Know what isn’t scary? Riding an old bike at high speeds, no gears or breaks, around NYC. Always moving, always being an asshole. That’s the life!

He decides to take a big ticket item to pay some bills, a long delivery from his old school by 7pm, and hey, it is even his friend Nima (Jaime Chung) who hooks him up! But he immediately runs into problems when some random suit (Michael Shannon) stops him on his bike, demanding the envelope, and willing to give chase. Hot damn, crazy people!

While this is going on, he is also vying for the attention of his ex(?) Vanessa (Dania Ramirez) who actually wants to stop riding bikes, dealing with an asshole work mate Manny (Wole Parks), and trying to convince his manager Raj (Aasif Mandvi) that something bad is happening.

So step 2 was you putting your hands upon my hip? Then you dip, I dip, we dip?

Gah. Really though. This movie might have been killer if it was real time. I can’t get over that fact. Sure its harder to make, but come on. Come. On.

I did see that JGL actually got injured in the shoot. Real bike riding can do that to you with all those cars around. At least there was passion.

Personally I found the character to be extremely unlikeable. When I called him an asshole? That wasn’t just me bullshitting. He actually is one. He will go back and forth in front of cars, causing them to stop and swerve, almost hit lots of people, no care in the world. That’s just a dick move, man.

After he starts getting chased, he causes a small accident which causes a bike cop to chase him. Despite the fact that his chaser is gone and is now a cop, he still doesn’t stop. Not even when it is just easy enough to stop, and get help from the mad man.

The rest of the plot? I guess it is plausible. But a lot of the coincidences to make it worked bugged me, there were far too many. Not to mention they also gave JGL some sort of spider sense to be able to pick the right path that didn’t come up in injury (although I will admit it was funny to see the “wrong” path choices. Some crazy crashes).

Basically, the TL;DR version of this review is my friends intuitions were correct.