Month: June 2013

It is hard to pull off a movie like This Is The End. The actors end up playing fictional versions of themselves, setting the film in “the real world” where the stars are stars and the random people in the background are real random people. I should also mention this film is part of my Apocalypse Week.

In fact, I’d say some of the funniest cameos in history have been actors playing fictional versions of themselves, such as Neil Patrick Harris in the Harold and Kumar trilogy. So here we have a movie using only that joke and setting it during the Apocalypse? I smell comedy gold.

Michael Cera smells pussy. Jay Baruchel (Jay Baruchel) is headed back to LA to visit his friend Seth Rogen (Seth Rogen). They used to be great friends, both being Canadian and growing up together, but now Seth is a lot bigger in Hollywood than Jay! So Seth he has new friends and seems to have moved on. Thus, Jay hates LA and all of Seth’s new friends.

But after getting high and chilling, Seth really wants to go to James Franco’s (James Franco) house for a killer party. He has a new place, it is supposed to be off the hook, and he promises to not leave Jay alone. They meet some of Seth’s new friends, like the ultra way too nice Jonah Hill (Jonah Hill), and the charismatic Craig Robinson (Craig Robinson). This might sound like a love story between Seth and Jay and in a way, it is.

Unfortunately during the party the apocalypse happens! Blue beams come out of the sky and take away the good members of society (meaning the actors are all left behind of course), leaving only the sinners and scum of the Earth left to wallow. We also get fires, sinkholes, darkness, ash, and maybe even the spawns of Satan roaming the streets, killin’ everybody in sight. Yay!

Too bad they also have Danny McBride (Danny McBride) stuck in their house, being the general unpleasant sourpuss that he is. For those curious, yes, he is identical to his Kenny Powers self.

We also a huge load of celebrity cameos, including Michael Cera, Emma Watson, Rihanna, Kevin Hart, Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and more.

This movie was very aware, very funny, and very awesome. It had thrills, chills, laughs and gas. It wasn’t a straight up “stoner comedy” either, which was a big fear of mine. Was there drug usage? Yes. But it wasn’t the main plot point. After all, supplies run low really quickly during an apocalypse.

The last “meta”-esque movie that I enjoyed this much was Tropic Thunder. Although it wasn’t the actors playing themselves, it was at least actors playing other actors and extreme versions of actor cliches. However, I expect this movie won’t lead to anyone getting a nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Long story short, I laughed constantly throughout this movie. I am sure over half of it is ad-libbed too, and yet I was still surprised at times at how far they went. I am excited to buy this on Blu-Ray to see all the outtakes. In fact, I bet even the commentary will be pretty dang awesome. It should also be noted that Michael Cera was even better in his small cameo than the trailer let on. If I had to change one thing, I would have added a lot more Danny McBride, who was by and large the funniest part of the film.

This Is The End isn’t for everyone, but it was almost perfect for me.

4 out of 4.

If you have talked to me about superheroes before, you will have found out I prefer Marvel to DC. Marvel sets its characters in real cities in the real world, generally makes their characters relatable, and almost always gives them character flaws, like Tony Stark and his alcoholism.

If you had to ask for my least favorite (popular) superhero, it would definitely be Superman. The idea of his character is boring. He is hardly relatable, being an alien from another planet who has ungodly powers compared to the rest of us. He is generally unstoppable, unless somehow an even stronger force appears, or a very rare substance from his home world magically shows up. Not even Five For Fighting could convince me otherwise.

Regardless, I was still excited about Man Of Steel (Trailer). It looks like their main goal was to make him a bit more relatable to us normal folks, which is one of the harder tasks out there. So if we can get some good drama, and for goodness sake, some good action in this movie, I might just like Superman again. Basically, make it the opposite of Superman Returns. Although it only barely fits, this is also part of my Apocalypse Week, because technically it could involve the end of the world?

I like to picture the helicopters as his Angel/Devil counterparts, telling him what to do. Of course, they are helicopters, so they are both telling him to fuck some shit up.

The movie begins on the planet of Krypton! You see, the elders there have expended all of the planets natural resources, so the planet is kind of doomed, threatening the entire race. General Zod (Michael Shannon) is attempting a military coup to fix the mess the elders have caused, while Jor-El (Russell Crowe) has an alternative answer. He believes his newly born son has the answer to their future, and sends him off to Earth to live and grow, while the rest of his kind perish.

So, Kal-El (Henry Cavill, eventually) finds himself in Smallville, Kansas. He is raised by the Kents (Kevin Costner, Diane Lane), taught to be a good person and to hide his powers from others, who might be afraid of him or use it against him. It isn’t until much later in his life, when he is on odd job #35, that he is able to find an ancient alien space craft. There he finds the answers to his past, his race, and his purpose.

This unfortunately also sets off a beacon into space, allowing General Zod and his crew to find his location. They’ve been amassing a giant army and are looking for a new home. Thanks Kal-El, you doomed the Earth.

They show up, demand Kal-El turn himself over, or else the planet is kaput. Surely he is a man true to his word and will actually leave Earth alone, right? We also have Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Richard Schiff as random scientist FBI guy, Laurence Fishburne as The Daily Planet editor, and Christopher Meloni as bad ass army man.

Not to ruin the movie for you, but the entire time I thought Zod looked a bit like Geoffrey Arend.

I’ve already wrote a lot about the movie, but hold on to your butts, I have a lot more coming.

Zack Snyder is the man who brought us 300 and Watchmen, both of which I love on their own right, and is a man fully ingrained into the superhero world now. He has the ability to make a movie visually pleasing, but sometimes relies on too many film filters to take me out of it.

I hated the filtering for Man Of Steel, but the fight scenes are quite worthy of praise. They mostly involve aliens who move much faster and hit a lot harder than we can even fathom, yet Snyder was able to create fight scenes that could both A) Be followed and understood by an audience and B) show off really cool visual effects. Often times in fight scenes, you will be stuck with blurriness in the action, just not in this movie.

It was great watching Superman doing actual super things, whereas in Superman Returns, the whole movie was him lifting progressively heavier objects.

In addition to Snyder, the film also features Christopher Nolan as a writer and producer, so he can hopefully add some deeper elements to the story that Snyder usually lacks. Unfortunately, I thought the plot and characterizations were probably the weakest part of the film.

General Zod is an interesting villain, mostly because he isn’t Lex Luther. However I think they spent far too much time on Krypton early in the film, which seemed to exist just to give Crowe even more screen time and show off lots of CGI explosions. Unfortunately right after that, we had a series of awkward childhood flashbacks while Superman is an adult hiding from the world, making the early movie feel disjointed and odd. I have to admit, I think a lot could have been cut from the 143 minute storyline to make a bit more exciting movie.

Yes, I am claiming large parts of the Man Of Steel were boring, a sad conclusion. Great action scenes, okay acting, boring overall plot and set up. I really disliked Costner’s character. That guy was an idiot and I felt nothing during his biggest emotional scene of the movie. Heck, you’d think people living in Kansas would also know that when a Tornado is coming an overpass is NOT the best place to run and hide. I know that, and I’ve lived in the Midwest less than year. That isn’t why the film got the rating, but it really grinded my gears nonetheless.

Overall, Man Of Steel is a decent showing for a DC character I hate, but it still isn’t enough to fully love.

2 out of 4.

The FP was the third movie added to my Apocalypse Week, after the This Is The End and Rapture-Palooza. Before I describe it, you will want to know how I found out existed.

The main character from this movie, JTRO, was actually in This Is The End, as a cannibal near the end. Same costume, random as fuck cameo that most people won’t get from this vague vague movie. Yep.

But here is how I was introduced to the movie, through the IMDB description.

In a post apocalyptic future, two rival gangs fight for control of Frazier Park by playing “Beat Beat Revelation”, a deadly version of Dance, Dance, Revolution(TM).

“What? Don’t be a playa’ hata’, we just want to dance!” Right now you are probably thinking “Nope. No Way. No way at all. This is fake.” Too bad. This is 100% real and happening. And also a parody. Need more proof. Look below.

No words needed. Yep, they are dancing alright. But what makes it deadly? Nothing. From what I could tell. I thought the loser would get killed or something, but no, they just dance for street cred.

Well, when the two gangs are fighting, BTRO (Brandon Barrera, who looks a lot like Josh Radnor in that first picture.) is going against the other teams leader L Dubba E (Lee Valmassey). Unfortunately, during an extremely challenging song, BTRO finds himself losing and eventually dies.

How? I dunno. Heart attack or something. But his younger brother, JTRO (Jason Trost) is completely miserable after this battle, so he swears off the gang and runs off on his own, never to dance again. OH NO!

Well, years later, Frazier Park is in ruin. The other gang has won and it sucks. After a series of big speeches from KCDC (Art Hsu), he comes back to the fray, earns some more street cred, and challenges L Dubba E for the title again.

Also he has an eyepatch. For some reason. I feel like I should mention more names of people in this movie. Like Stacy. Okay. That isn’t weird. How bout Beat Box Busta Bill, Sugga Nigga, and Stacy’s Dad. Damn that last one is weird.

Either way, this movie is completely ridiculous, as expected. But it wasn’t ridiculous enough. It is clearly a parody, everything is over the top, the dialogue is ridiculous, it cannot be meant to be taken seriously, so I won’t.

But seriously, where is my deadly DDR game? They only danced a few times in this game, and it all looked tame as shit. I wanted more extreme.

Maybe that was the parody part. Making me wish it was better? Either way, I can’t give it an amazing review. Just because the movie was a lot tamer than I would have hoped.

2 out of 4.

I have decided to have a theme week. Are you ready? Apocalypse Week. End of the world shit. You know. It seemed appropriate with the new movies coming out this week. In case you are curious in the future which movies are part of the week, I have tagged them all as Apocalypse Week as well as their normal tags.

This mostly came about because I finally had access to Rapture-Palooza and watched it a few days after seeing This Is The End. Similar theme? Heck yeah. It was pretty easy to find a few more to shoe-in too.

I’d like to get my shoe into Anna. Or something perverted/sexy. I am bad at this.

As already stated, this movie begins with the apocalypse! Yay! Lindsey (Anna Kendrick) and her boyfriend Ben (John Francis Daley, who you may remember from Freaks and Geeks) didn’t believe in any god figure, so they were left behind, along with most of their family. Well, their moms were set. Kind of. But that is it. So now they have to try to live life as if there was no fire and brimstone, because what else are they going to do?

Anyways, life is very different. We have wraiths running around to cause trouble, their neighbor (Thomas Lennon) came back as a zombie, but for whatever reason just wants to mow his line. There are meteors that fall from the sky, usually to ruin their day.

Hell, Ben’s dad (Rob Corddry) sold his soul to the devil. Satan, or as he likes to call himself The Beast (Craig Robinson) has taken up residence in Seattle, and is out to party. Rapture is basically over, hell on Earth has happened, and people are just trying to get by.

But then he spies poor little old Lindsey, and he wants her. He wants her hard. Not just because she is a virgin either. So he asks her out, knowing that if she says no, he will kill everyone she has ever loved. Well damn. Guess she has to go out with him. Not without working on a plan to kill/trap him for a thousand years first though!

Rob Heubel plays a security guard, and Ken Jeong plays…eh. I don’t want to tell you.

Basically every time they are together, you can hear Craig Robinson say graphic things to Anna Kendrick. Worth the admission price? Probably.

Craig Robinson may have saved this movie from being a total dud. Yes, it felt like he was just playing a very arrogant and cocky version of himself, but he really bombarded Anna Kendrick with some vile stuff, and she took it all like a champ.

Anna also served as our narrator and I found her voice and attitude great for the role, giving zero fucks about the world falling apart around her. I also enjoyed a few of the gags, including pot head Wraiths, and the part near the end with Ken Jeong…even if it made very little sense.

However, it wasn’t an amazing movie on its own. It is okay, decent, not horrible, just not amazing. I understand why it never hit theaters, it is just plain weird. Yes, I do like weird, but this is a different type of weird I’d say. Quirky maybe. It could have been a lot better, and shit, might have worked best as a TV show. I could see the whole movie being an entire season, not like 22 episodes, but a solid 10-12. Introducing new problems, and just kind of nonchalantly dealing with them and giving not a fuck in the world.

2 out of 4.

I am not sure why it took me so long to see Tooth Fairy 2. It definitely came out to DVD when I was still at Blockbuster and watching everything that came in front of my face, but we must have been closing soon, because it just never happened. Thank goodness I get bored enough to throw it on the laptop, and can write this review.

Here is what I won’t do. I won’t complain the same rant I did in Tooth Fairy. But it is still true, and it is still very annoying, and yes the rating reflects that, for sure.

Good news, they brought back the pink tutu joke from the first movie, but you know, made it for 3/5 of the film!

Alright, this movie takes place in small town who gives a fuck. Larry Guthrie (Larry The Cable Guy), yes his name is fucking Larry, is dating a woman (Erin Beute). Surprise. Well, en route to a nieces one year old birthday party, they stop at a bowling alley.

Oh hey, chance to win a car. Just have to have name called in a lotto, then get a 7/10 split within three chances. Surprise surprise, Larry gets his name called, and does the most ridiculous shot ever to not only get the split but also several strikes lanes over. He is a local hero! Woman is mad at him for missing party, despite winning a new car. She is a bitch.

A year later, he is alone, and she is going to marry a guy running for mayor now (David Mackey). Way to fail. Well, he ends up ruining the fact that the tooth fairy isn’t real. Because he tells a kid the truth, he gets punished by tooth fairy. He now has to do tooth fairy-ing, collect 10 teeth in 10 days or else they will take out his favorite memory.

Kind of fucked up. Do you see where this is going? Good. I am done with it.

Thankfully they give him a…better outfit eventually?

Fuck this movie. It is worse than the first one. It takes all the good parts of the first one, and replaces them with shit. Seriously. The last one at least had hockey! And a better story line!

This has a bowling scene, and a mechanic who learns to what? Not tell kid the truth? I am confused.

He learns eventually that family is more important, and swooning over a woman. But holy shit, he won a bad ass car in the most amazing shot ever. She be trippin’. He was right, it is a 1 year old birthday party, who gives a poop?

Whatever. This movie was a bad idea from start to finish, and I even kind of liked the first one.

0 out of 4.

I saw the trailer for Quartet once, probably. I think. Yeah, just once. Looked interesting. Comedy about a group of old people musicians. They might sleep around.

Then I realized. Literally, just now, that I actually saw a trailer for A Late Quartet, and not Quartet. Yep, two different movies about old people musicians within six months of each other probably. That explains why I thought I saw cellos on the cover of Quartet. Whoops.

Hey, statistically half of that applause is probably for the other film. Gloat less, please.

In the UK, there is a retirement home for older musicians. Basically, every single one of them end up going too, if they were a big deal, they are totally there. Strange that none of them just live out their life in luxury and want to go to the retirement home.

Well, despite all the big names, the retirement home is constantly fighting to stay alive. They have a yearly gala to raise money to try and stay afloat, where they all put on a show of music and singing. Some dancing too, maybe.

Big news! Jean Horton (Maggie Smith), famed opera singer is totally joining their ranks now that she has a bad hip. But, gossip side, she was supposed to marry Reginald Paget (Tom Courtenay), but cheated on him and left him broken hearted. She might not have known he was at the same home, even though it makes perfect sense.

Well, Reginald’s good friends, Wilf Bond (Billy Connolly) and Cissy (Pauline Collins), decided that they need to convince Jean to sing in the gala with them a special piece. A famous Quartet that they all used to do back in the day.

But Jean doesn’t want to, because she is worried she can’t sing as well anymore. Not to mention the awkwardness of being around Reginald. Oh boy, if they do convince her, will they actually be good? Also featuring Michael Gambon as the Gala director, and Sheridan Smith as the head nurse.

Maggie Smith’s contract says she cannot appear more than twice in the same review.

Fuck this movie. Shit. Like, nothing happened. This is the first time director role for Dustin Hoffman, and I couldn’t be more disappointed with the end result. It is actually just some secret love song for famous opera singers and musicians in the 50s to the 80s, and they might have used actual people to play the other house guests. So most of the film was old people singing to change between scenes, which is fine as a transition, but the scenes were never really that good.

It was slow. But more importantly I noticed something. The practicing for the gala was shown in a montage. I was getting worried they wouldn’t actually give us the group singing. After all, they are actors not singers. Lo and behold, when it came time for them to perform, we got jack shit from the actual actors, making this film feel like 100 minute of just teasing us. Come on, let Maggie Smith get her sing on, fuckers.

The only redeeming quality for this movie, and for why it is not a 0 out of 4, is for Billy Connolly. Hot damn, his character was hilarious, and pretty fantastic.

1 out of 4.

Hooray, review 800! Are you excited? Well, too bad. Because I am excited. Like normal, you can check out the rest of my Milestone reviews by clicking that link that I just provided.

Because Twilight is over, I have decided to go the “Movie So Awesome, it must be talked about in more than 500 words,” and this one was suggested by a reader.

Shoot ‘Em Up. Have you heard of it? You should have. It came out in 2007 and basically attempted to make one of the most over the top, most ridiculous, gun shooting based movie. More ridiculous than Smokin’ Aces even. Although this movie doesn’t feature a dead Ben Affleck. I also am going to give a lot of spoilers for this movie, but really, I doubt words and straight pictures will ruin the experience for you.

Let’s talk about Smith (Clive Owen). He really likes carrots.

If you don’t eat your vegetables kiddy. Or we might have to force you.

The movie begins with Smith sitting on a bench. A very pregnant woman (Ramona Pringle) runs by, panting heavily, and scared, and it becomes obvious she is being chased by a hitman off to kill her. That doesn’t seem fucking nice at all. So Smith kills him with that carrot. Fuckin’ A.

This freaks out the woman, who goes into labor. Too bad a SMALL ARMY OF PEOPLE attack the shit out of him. So he has to play doctor, easing her through the pregnancy, while shooting the bad guys. This is literally five minutes into the film.

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Seriously, eat the carrot. It will help your vision, and help you shoot people.

Well fuck, while breastfeeding, the mom gets shot in the head. By fucking Paul Giamatti, who really wants that baby dead. He even has a special pistol that requires a thumb print to fire, so do all of his men. That doesn’t help Smith, when he wants to use it. Unless he cuts off someone hand that is.

Oh yeah, this whole time he has a baby in his hands too, just trying to survive. Because they want the baby dead!

Babies are important. Why in this movie? We are not sure. Maybe he will grow up to be president?

Why is a gun better than a wife? Because you can put a silencer on a gun. Hyuck hyuck hyuck hyuck. Paul Giamatti is hilarious.

Either way, eventually Smith doesn’t give a shit anymore. He wants to get rid of the baby, deciding to just leave him in a park on one of those playground merry go round things. Well, they try to snipe the baby. Fuck. So he does what he has do, and SHOOTS THE FUCKING PLAYGROUND ROUNDABOUT THING to make it spin, so the baby can’t be sniped. What! What! What!

Yeah, fine, let’s get the baby, and let’s find a way to feed it. He needs milk.

“Fuck you, ya fucking fuckers”. Actual line during this scene.

To the brothel! Why? Because they have fetish stuff going on. Including a lactating whore. Donna Quintano (Monica Bellucci). Great, now the baby can survive later. I guess. In fact, she turns out to be double useful, hooking on the street to get some money to get the baby a bulletproof vest. Because why the fuck not.

Babies need protecting. Spoilers, they end up having sex later. Guess what? People attack them during it, but is Smith going to stop the sex? Hell no. He is going to finish, and shoot some bitches.

That was a double joke there. Talk about shooting your load.

They also go back to his normal hideout. Oh yeah, I am totally telling this out of order. Not even mad yo.

Well, it turns out they try to kill him there too. So he hides the baby and woman in the dumbwaiter. More deaths happen, but even more so, his entire staircase is full of people ready to take him out and he needs to get downstairs. How do you take them out? Dominoes? Nope. Too simple. You need a rope from the ceiling to the ground, you need to slide down that rope, and AK shoot everyone in a killer fucking spiral of doom.

That’s what you need to do.

This is like The Boondock Saints scene, but 23x greater.

They eventually find out the baby was part of some sort of genetic testing. Not a super soldier. But at least one man is supplying all the sperm. Kinky.

This is all wrapped up in a conspiracy of course. Maybe an anti-gun senator? Maybe going against Hammersmith (Stephen McHattie), a gun supplier? Either way, it will lead to a shootout in a gun factory. WHICH MEANS A SHIT TON OF GUNS FOR EVERYONE TO SHOOT. YEAHHHH.

But it would be too simple to just shoot all the guns. No, he needs to set gun booby traps, all attached by strings, letting him just take out everyone. DOES THIS MAKE ANY SENSE? NO? Well it shouldn’t. Because SHOOTING YEAH!

Not a relevant picture to this part of the plot.

I am running out of time. Here is a list of more ridiculous shit that happens in this movie.

A gun is used as an engagement ring.
Everything can be used as a weapon.
Babies are fucking doable.
A plane ride and an assassination.
A SKYDIVING SHOOTOUT.
And lets not forget shooting bullets out of your fingers by sticking your hand in flames.

Fucking fuck.

MORE CARROT BASED DEATHS. There are at least five.

Like I said above. Shoot ‘Em Up is one of the wildest movies I have ever seen. The action is always there, the one-liners are very one-liney, and the deaths start over the top and only escalate. There are no real normal deaths in this film, everything is ridiculous.

I don’t even have anything else to say. I described some stuff, you should see this thrill ride. It is more ridiculous than a video game.

3 out of 4.

When you first heard about The Internship, you thought one of three things:

“Oh great, a movie where the jokes are only at the expense of nerds and old people trying to be hip!”

“Oh great, a giant advertisement movie for Google!”

“Oh great, an Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn movie trying to recapture the magic that happened with Wedding Crashers in 2005!”

Well, to be fair, I think all of these ended up being true.

Because why the fuck not, they also play some quidditch.

Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) are a great team and have been for decades. They sell watches and they have personality. Sales have been down this year, and they find out in the middle of a potential big sale that their company has folded. Great, what are two unskilled salesmen to do with the economy like it is?

Well, get a job at Google, of course! Or at least an interview, for an internship, that could lead to a job. While not being extremely qualified candidates, they are able to smooth talk their way into the intern process, because not every applicant should be a perfect nerd 20-something with no actual life experience.

Needless to say, they are not popular amongst the other applicants. Only one team of interns will be guaranteed to receive jobs by the end of the summer and when it comes time to pick teams, they are stuck with the other nerds who weren’t picked (Tiya Sicar, Tobit Raphael, Dylan O’Brien) and the newest and most nervous group manager (Josh Brener, who you may remember last summer in this Samsung Galaxy S3 commercial before movies).

As expected, this turns into a group of ragtag individuals, trying to work together to overcome the odds and become the top team by summers end. Along the way, Nick has to try and woo a higher up Google employee (Rose Byrne), Billy has to overcome his inability succeed, and they all have to figure out ways to beat the supergroup made by Graham Hawtrey (Max Minghella), and also convince the head of the interns (Aasif Mandvi) that they aren’t complete losers.

A comedy like this of course has a lot of cameos, including Will Ferrell, Rob Riggle, and Josh Gad.

Heh…heh…heh…Noogle.I know the entire idea of this movie probably is a turn off to a lot of you. It looks formulaic, almost like a 1990s comedy (Another aspect of the film that I cannot defend). But it also has something else that is hard to value that really turns it into a decent movie. It has heart.

Wilson and Vaughn have amazing chemistry together, which is a fact we already knew. But it is amplified so well into this film! The dialogue is just so great, the two are able to make the entire thing still feel real and natural.

The Internship is not the funniest film of the year, no where close, but reports say that I giggled pretty consistently throughout it. The film accurately also showed the pressures that college graduates face today, where they can be perfect their entire life and still have trouble/stress once they hit the real world.

I did hate a few of the “speeches” by the end of the film, when they were announcing the winners. I think they cheapened the results by going about them that way, and could have easily been more clever about it. I’d say The Internship is worth checking out, but only if you are want a feel good story and if it is a matinee.

3 out of 4.

Originally, I felt that the ad campaign for The Purge came a bit later than most movies. I didn’t hear about it or see the trailer until Evil Dead, which was in March!

But they really ramped up the ad campaign in the last few weeks, almost to annoyance. Needless to say (because I am a coward), the trailer frightened me, and gave me great hope that this movie would provide scares along with philosophical debates about ethics, morals, and the human spirit.

The year is 2022 and America is a peaceful country! Unemployment is less than 1%, and there is basically no crime. Why? Because we have changed the way America works! Every year, for 12 hours, everything is legal in the United States. Murder, theft, you name it. No police or firefighters will be on duty, everything is fair game. It lets people vent out their frustrations, and become wild animals if they so choose.

A lot of rich people choose to stay inside with fancy security systems. Like James Sandin (Ethan Hawke), a fancy security systems salesman. He has the fanciest securest house on the block, because of his profitable year, so his wife (Lena Headey) and two kids (Max Burkholder, Adelaide Kane) are set!

But once The Purge begins, the son sees a homeless man (Edwin Hodge) running down the street. He noobs it up, opens the door, and lets the homeless man in. This opens an unfortunate can of worms when an unruly mob of masked college students clamor outside of their villa, wanting to get their purge on. The polite leader (Rhys Wakefield) gives them the chance to turn the homeless man in, and they won’t attack the family. But if they wait too long, they will tear down their walls and kill everyone inside. Oh snap.

Looks like we have quite an ethical conundrum on our hands. Can they willingly send out a homeless man to his death? Can James willingly let a man die, if the life of his family is potentially on the line?

I mean, he looks trustworthy, that polite leader. The first thing I noticed about The Purge is that it is almost painfully short. 85 minutes in length! That is usually a warning sign. That means the plot doesn’t last long enough to fill a full movie. Or they realize the idea gets old really quick.

But the length was really appropriate for the plot, and I never felt like it dragged too much. There was some long scenes that were just heavy in suspense, but when you are wandering around your house in the dark, looking for strangers, you aren’t just going to run around every corner.

It was somewhat predictable, with the plotlines, yet equally surprising. I loved watching Ethan Hawke go on a kill streak to save his house. I would have stood up and cheered, if I didn’t respect normal movie watching practices.

It could have delved more into the ethical nature of the entire Purge, but I liked that it used subtle features to tell us the backgrounds of various characters, without outright saying them to our face. I do think they harped on the idea of murder too much, when other laws, like downloading music and stealing a car are just as legal. Time to get the misses some new bling, I say.

The movie is full of jump scares with only a few scenes that made me leave my seat, but I think it still is an interesting addition to the horror genre.

3 out of 4.

The reason it took me so long to see Liberal Arts is because for whatever reason, I refused to watch it outside of a RedBox rental. Yet somehow it was rented out for months, and I just got slapped in the mouth over and over again.

That doesn’t make any sense. But if you saw my review for Happythankyoumoreplease, you would have seen my comparisons between Josh Radnor and Zach Braff, getting their indie movies on. But now Josh Radnor did a second one? Come on, Braff is way behind now. Stop it Radnor.

But please, continue being the old dude at college parties. That’s for cool people.

Jesse Fisher (Radnor) is a 40 something man living in NYC and just being kind of miserable. He has a job, has a life, but there is no fun. But when his professor, Peter Hoberg (Richard Jenkins), announces his retirement (in mother fucking Iowa) and wants one of his favorite students to show up. Sure. Why not. It is his favorite professor too.

Well, during the festivities, he meets Edie Parker (Elizabeth Olsen), a 20-year old college student who is all sorts of perky and happy. In fact, they go on a date. Not weird. Kind of weird. Nothing happens. But they agree to write each other and exchange music.

That gets them all excited. Then they see each other again. For sex? Maybe for sex. He also meets an old teacher he used to like (Allison Janney), a depressed individual who likes the same books he does (John Magaro) and a person who may not be real who is helping him achieve his desires (Zac Efron).

Aww yeah. Again, maybe sex will happen. Maybe.

Is this sex? I don’t even know.

So what happens when Josh Radnor tries to out indie Zach Braff? Well, it actually works out really well.

First off, Elizabeth Olsen is the younger sister of the twins. She also seems to be totally sane. She won a lot of awards for her role in Martha Marcy May Marlene, but I haven’t seen it yet. Well, clearly I should, because Olsen rocked this movie as well.

Liberal Arts deals with a lot of tough subjects. There are multiple supplots outside of the “Go to college, maybe deflower someone who really likes you” subplot, yet they all also deal with Radnor’s character. One man, many subplots. I love the random ones with the depressed kid, and a dazed and confused Zac Efron. It also took me awhile to recognize him as Efron, not at all expecting him to have a role like that.

There are plenty of awkward scenes as well, dealing with a man who is trying to find his place in life, and going back to his roots to figure it out. Everyone acts well in it, and it doesn’t go the way you’d expect it. Shit, there is even a discussion about Twilight in it, without mentioning the book title.

I’d say check it out. You will realize that Radnor might be a better director/writer than a sitcom star.

3 out of 4.