Month: May 2013

V/H/S

I really really am not qualified to review horror films. How are they supposed to be judged? I don’t know. I either tend to love or hate them. Doubt I have any 2 out of 4 horror films. What is average?

Basically, they either creep me out (scare me) or they bore me. Occasionally, I like some for their plot, but those are rare.

For V/H/S, I’d put it in the creepy column.

Eyes
Her? Well, there is a fine line between hot and creepy apparently.

Alright, I might not actually be sure what the “actual” plot of the movie is. I think its about a group of asshole kids, who fuck shit up, and film it on their cameras for others to see. Also assault women, making “Reality porn”. Not the nicest bunch. Well, these asshole kids get hired to steal a video tape from someone, it is valuable. But maybe the video tape is actually a collection of other fucked up events happening, and potentially haunted itself?

Not actually sure. But the main film is spliced with five short stories (although, they are about as long as the main story too, which is just split up). I can’t even tag any people from them or really describe them without giving away too much. But the titles do a fair enough job on their own!

Tape 56.
Amateur Night.
Second Honeymoon.
Tuesday The 17th.
The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger.
10/31/98.

You can make your own guesses with some of these. But there is a lot of themes present in the movie. Succubus. Woods. Ghost Hands. Cults. Ex Lovers. Zombies. Aliens. You name it.

Skype
I hope you tried to move the mouse in the picture.

Honestly, I found this terrifying. Not just because it involved such old technology (Kids won’t know what V/H/S tapes are!). It was interesting watching a movie about V/H/S tapes on Blu-Ray.

Not every short film is great. I didn’t really like the Emily one, or the main storyline that much. But Amateur Night was a great side story to start the films off right. It really was able to draw you in and then fuck with your mind some at the end, even if the end you saw coming (a little).

I think overall it was creatively done, even if there are things in it you have seen from other movies (as seen in picture 2 and Paranormal Activity 4). Having a different director for each short film keeps it fresh, and potentially interesting to watch multiple times.

3 out of 4

An Invisible Sign

Oooh, a quirky movie. Reading the back of the cover, An Invisible Sign looks like it is supposed to be a made up woman version of A Beautiful Mind. I loved A Beautiful Mind, it made me cry, and the twist took me off guard.

Clearly this movie can only bring great things!

Quirky
WARNING WARNING: QUIRKINESS OVERLOAD.

Mona Gray (Jessica Alba) loves numbers. She is 20 something though, and can’t find a job, because she is so dang weird. By weird, I just mean OCD, but no one else really notices that, they just see her being strange. When she was a kid (Bailee Madison), she had no friends, but had a math teacher (J.K. Simmons) who really got it. She didn’t know how to show her appreciation, and didn’t think he cared, so she egged his car. Typical kid stuff.

Well, he eventually quit and runs a hardware store. Not at all important to my current description.

Now she is a loser because she live with her parents even though she is right out of college. But hey, she can teach elementary school math maybe! I am sure the kids wont make fun of her either.

Alright, okay, this is nothing like A Beautiful Mind. Fine. For some reason a guy likes her (Chris Messina), while her mom (Sonia Braga) is overly stressed, because her father (John Shea) can’t function on his own anymore. There is still hope. One student, one little girl (Sophie Nyweide) might be the same sort of prodigy she was. Can she be the one who saves her life from the mundane?

Numbers everywhere
Yep. Numbers everywhere. Nerd alert folks.

The ending of that description sucked, but I just needed it to stop. Typing out the plot of the movie made me sleepy, and I wanted to be sure it was finished before I got my nap on. Because woo, is this movie boring.

It has some heart to it sure. It has an interesting (ish) concept. But it decides to give it to you while smothering you with the softest pillow known to man.

In addition to that, the ending was completely bonkers. She was not qualified to be a teacher, so couldn’t even handle the one class level that seemed to pay attention to her. In fact, the ending is full of so many bad things, there is no way to like it even if you got past the bore.

Almost also feels like a strange version of Matilda, but from the teachers point of view, and no awesome magic. Or evil people. Or Danny DeVito.

1 out of 4

Salmon Fishing On The Yemen

Fish movies! Oh the fish movies!

Okay, I am kind of bullshitting here. After all, I only know of one other fish movie that came out anywhere near this one, and that was The River Why. Very, very hipster. That was a boy’s coming of age story, who just really liked fishing and wanted to fish like a real man. Or something.

So Salmon Fishing On The Yemen is probably similar.

Wait a minute. This title is weird. “The Yemen”. There is no river called that. What the hell. Do they just mean in Yemen? I wouldn’t say “Salmon Fishing In The Italy”. Don’t be weird, movie titles.

Fish
I can’t tell who is the expert here.

Oh wait a minute. Yemen is all in the Middle East (kind of). I see now. There is no salmon in Yemen! That is a big problem I guess, but one this movie plans to over come.

Sheikh Muhammed (Amr Waked) is a prince and he loves fishing, and wants to fish at his home in Yemen. So he contacts the UK to see if it can be done. This means they have to make a river, and introduce salmon, and hope they can live and breed there without it being too much of a problem.

The UK are interested in helping too, because any news with the middle east that has nothing to do with war can only be good. So they get Harriet (Emily Blunt) who is some political underling in the UK to get it started. So she goes to the fisheries department. Who else would know what to do? There she finds Dr. Alfred Jones (Ewan McGregor), world renounced Salmon expert and fisherman and lure-maker.

But he says no.

That idea is dumb.

Or maybe it is crazy enough to work? Doesn’t matter. His job is now on the line to at least try. Bah.

Then some romance happens (Which is bad, because he has a boyfriend in the military Tom Mison) and a lot of politics. Do they succeed at building a river, shipping ten thousand fish over, and having them survive, without pissing off Yemen locals and environmental group? Welllll…. Also featuring Kristin Scott Thomas as even higher up official in the UK!

Love is in the water
There are few things I love more than adultery. Unfortunately, one of those things is not cheating and stable relationships.

2 out of 4.

Iron Man 3

The sheer existence of Iron Man 3 puts us in a difficult situation. For super hero trilogies, we often see the first film have high reviews, the second film overlap the first, and the third one disappoint. However, in this case, Iron Man 2 was clearly the inferior film to Iron Man!

Basically, I don’t know what to expect. I know I always try to keep the source material out of my reviews, but with superhero movies it is much harder, because I tend to be familiar with the comics. I am overly pumped that we are getting The Mandarin as the enemy, his own personal Dr. Doom. Marvel was afraid to add him earlier, because he is a magic guy, and they have tried to keep their movies (pre-Avengers) separate thematically. That is why Iron Man always had to face tech based threats, the Hulk faced other genetically altered villains, etc. Well, I for one and ready for the theme shift!

Sexytime
This is a completely new way to interpret “I want to be in you”.
Iron Man 3 takes place after The Avengers (you saw that film right? And the first two Iron Man movies? They would help). There is no giant threat to Earth currently, so its mightiest heroes are back working by themselves, personally dealing with those events. Well, Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) almost died in another dimension, so he is freaking out emotionally. He is having problems sleeping, so he fills his nights building more and more iron suits; always improving, always testing new theories.

This has put quite a toll on his loved ones, including his girlfriend Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), friend James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), and even body guard (Jon Favreau).

Not to mention the FUCKING MANDARIN (Ben Kingsley) is out and about, terrorizing America. There are bombings and threatening videos over television networks! Egads!

But what does The Mandarin have to do with the AIM corporation, led by a now charismatic Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), with ‘botanist’ Maya Hensen (Rebecca Hall), and his super weird body guard (James Badge Dale). Regenerating plant tissue sounds cool, but not something I’d invest in.

Mananandarn
Ah, he is so fucking chill. Taking over the world, fucking up the Iron Men. You know.
It is hard to write this review. It really is. I have conflicting ideas with how I felt about the movie. I realize that twists and turns are expected in a movie, and that saying there is a twist is a spoiler on its own, but I have to talk about the big one in vague terms.

It is shocking. It is unexpected. It is completely out of left field.

And I don’t know why it is in the movie.On one side, it pisses off fans of the comics, and on the other side, it won’t have a lasting effect on those who aren’t comic fans. There really is only two categories, and it seems weird to alienate the fans without having anything to gain. From the movie point of view, it is kind of awesome. It just shits pretty heavily on the source material.

I think the one real complaint I have with the movie is the director seems to really hate Iron Man. The armor breaks a lot, almost constantly, leaving us with a Tony Stark movie more so than Iron Man. So much for the “invincible” title that is generally associated with his name. It is almost sad how little time he is spent in the suit kicking bad guy butt.  Yet somehow, it is still action packed and crazy. There is plot reasons why the suits may have been weak, but I am not sure if I buy them.

The ending itself is also a bit unexpected. Many questions will arise from it and the future of the franchise. After The Avengers 2, Iron Man might not get a fourth film, and instead become part of other characters movies. Pepper Potts also ends up in a strange place at the end of the film, which should be fully explored later, but I fear it wont.

But you know? Despite all of that, I really think I loved the movie. It was funny, the action was great, and it was entertaining as fuck. Sure, there are some plot hols, but you will survive. It is clear, however, that Disney had extended their reach deep into the film. They introduced a kid character and his role definitely overstays its welcome. Go away kid.

I think Tony agrees with me there.

3 out of 4.

The Details

The Details I must say is a random grab for me. I saw the cover, I noticed how bad it looked, and that hey, I know all the people in it. Fuck it. Give it a shot.

It did just come out on DVD/Blu-Ray, but I know it was finished in 2011. Lot of post production hell, but the wiki page wont tell me anything. Oh well!

Family fun
But clearly this will offer nothing but good clean family fun.

Jeff Lang (Tobey Maguire) is a simple man, with a simple wife (Elizabeth Banks) and a simple child. He is a doctor, loving life. He is trying to do the good breadwinner thing and expand his house for his growing family. But this fucking raccoon keeps messing up his lawn. This pisses him off so much that he decides the best way to fix it is to poison that raccoon.

Things go all down hill from there.

Not wanting to give away the plot, but he also has a noisy cat lady neighbor in Laura Linney, a best friend doctor in Kerry Washington, her husband is Ray Liotta, and a strange best friend confidant in Dennis Haysbert.

That is it. People also die, there is that. And cursing. Not at all a family film!

Piee
Just look at that pie. Oh yes, I love pie.

Shit, this movie was hysterical. I didn’t even know it was a dark comedy going in, it kind of sprang up out of no where, but it was definitely odd and campy early on.

Surprisingly, Ray Liotta had my favorite scene in this movie, a certain encounter with him and Tobey Maguire on a bridge. It blew my mind how well dialogue-d it was.

Not to take anything away from Tobey, as he floated through his life. Some of his actions didn’t seem to make any sense, but must have been part of his midlife crisis, trying to fix the wrongs he found himself buried in. Not to mention Laura Linney was strangely really hot as the “crazy cat lady”.

I’d say that The Details is a surprisingly well done dark comedy, a genre sorely unrepresented in most new films. Well, ever. I want more, damn it!

3 out of 4.

The Company You Keep

Robert Redford is starring in a movie!

That should be the first thing out of your mouth, seeing The Company You Keep. The other thing you will notice is it has quite a hefty list of famous actors thrown into the mix. Robert Redford doesn’t act much anymore, but when he does, he calls out all the stops.

Robert Redford
See? This is him literally calling out all the stops.
From watching movies, I have learned that the 1960’s were a terrible time. But hey, terrible times lead to great movies about how terrible it all was. War, protests, the whole shabang. Some protesters couldn’t stand being peaceful though, like the Weather Underground movement. These group of youngsters thought they saw their government committing terrible crimes, so they wanted to get their attention back at home by blowing stuff up, and maybe even murder.

They also were never caught in the act and prosticuted. Until now.

Sharon (Susan Sarandon) has just been picked up by the cops, wanted in the murder of a cop from the ’60s. They have everything on her and all of her phone logs. Thanks to some reporter with gusto, (Shia LaBeouf), an article was published linking lawyer Jim Grant (Robert Redford) to the crimes and a nationwide manhunt for his arrest. Hooray! Take that violent political activist from the ’60s!

But did he really do the crimes he is being accused of? If he is innocent, why would he run? After all, the FBI (Terrence Howard) and newspaper editors (Stanley Tucci) all seem to think he’s guilty. Yet for some reason, he is being erratic, and looking really hard for one Mimi Lurie (Julie Christie). Hmm, I wonder what she has to do with all of this mess.

There are far too many famous (and famous-ish) actors to just throw their name casually in the plot, so I will just list them all here: Richard JenkinsAnna KendrickBrendan GleesonBrit MarlingSam ElliottStephen RootNick Nolte and Chris Cooper.

Laboofie
Stephen Root is standing next to lettuce. Yep, nothing to see here.
The first thing I noticed is that Robert Redford no longer looks identical to Brad Pitt. But hey, now we know what Brad Pitt will look like in about 20 years.

Looking at Redford’s work schedule, he hasn’t been in a movie since 2007, but he has at least two more on the pipeline. The more notable one is Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Even better, the reason he is in the Marvel Sequel is just because he hasn’t ever played a role like it and thought it would be fun. I love it when actors tell the truth.

As for The Company You Keep, it has an interesting story behind it, but in the end it is just okay. It takes a little bit to get going, and kind of fuddled up in the middle, but it all makes a lot of sense by the end. Not that I actually liked the ending, as I thought there were multiple cop outs from various characters in the film. Acting was fine, just like Lawless, I didn’t hate Shia by the end of it, but he wasn’t exceptional in it either. Seeing him with facial hair (well, the small amount he could pull off) was an interesting change at least!

In other news, watch it only if you are missing Robert Redford in your normal life and like slow moving political-ish thrillers.

2 out of 4.

Pain & Gain

I am not going to harp about how Michael Bay is the worst guy since whatever. Yes, he did the Transformer movies, and fucking Pearl Harbor, and he is about to kill the Ninja Turtles, but he has some decent stuff. Like. Independence Day. I love Independence Day!

I am just saying, there is no reason for me to assume Pain & Gain will be bad. The trailer just makes it look…weird. And apparently a true story. Okay, yeah. Sure.

Snell's Law
So far, Michael Bay is clearly experimenting with different light refraction techniques. He is growing!

1995. Miami, Florida. Danny Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is the current main manager at Sun Gym, after serving a short sentence in prison for fraud. He promised his boss (Rob Corddry) that he would triple the membership and get the gym back on the map, and boy did he ever. Through some questionable means, but who cares when you got dat income.

He is great friends with Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie), another former criminal and bodybuilder. But they are both poor and tired of it. Tired of a bunch of assholes, like Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub) who are self made rich men, and think everyone else is a piece of shit. After all, Danny is a doer, not a donter (lessons he learned from Johnny Wu (Ken Jeong)).

Doers do, and so Danny had the simple plan. Kidnap Victor, torture him until he signs away everything and ruins his life completely, then kill him and live the life of luxury. Just need a third man. Like Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson). Paul just got out of prison, was a cokehead from NYC, but found Jesus and wants to turn his life around…but he also needs cash.

Simple plan, nothing can go wrong if they have enough can do attitude, muscles/fitness, and positive thinking! Yeahhh… Ed Harris plays a private investigator, and Bar Paly a stripper turned confidant.

Rock
Step 1: Identify self to kidnappers. Step 2: ???? Step 3: Profit

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. It is not cursing if you take 10 seconds to say it.

Hot damn, this film was awesome. And amazing! And abstract. Abstract? Yes. Totally. I wasn’t just looking for more A words.

Seriously, this film was definitely something special. Who thought Bay had it in him? I was laughing and cringing, often in secession. There is just so much ENERGY in this movie, I’d find it impossible to lost focus at all.

Dwayne Fucking Johnson, I don’t even know you anymore. He acted the fuck out of this film, and was 100% the best part. Not saying Mark Wahlberg wasn’t amazing (because fuck, he was!), he just had to compete with The Rock! The two of them were out of their minds the entire time filming this, and made their characters their bitches. That is the only way to describe it. Literally. No one else has tried. If they did, they used those words.

Just. Aggh! The true story itself is a fascinating one, which is also not as funny as the movie took it out to be. Check it out here, but be warned it is a long read (so…its like reading the book version?). I am not saying the movie made light of the events in the film, because very serious shit went down and they talked about a lot of it. Just still had a more comedic tone overall, while also splashing your face off with shock juice.

4 out of 4.