Month: July 2014

I really don’t think I can come up with a clever introduction to this review of Cuban Fury. Literally, no amusing anecdotes at all.

Well, maybe one. This movie is about a big guy salsa dancing. Hey. I am a big guy, and I was a big guy when I was on a Salsa Dance Team and a Ballroom Dance Team. I think I’d be able to relate to it very nicely.

I also like two of the three people on the cover. But I won’t tell you who is who.

I think I literally own that exact outfit. Actually, both outfits.

Bruce (Nick Frost) used to be a great salsa dancer. He was arguably the best of the best with his partner, rising through the ranks and proud to be a dancer. Then he quit. He was getting embarassed. People made fun of him and he quit. What a kid.

Now look at Bruce. Middle aged, working for a random company, miserable and fat.

But he is a bit interested in this person at his job, Julia (Rashida Jones). Just she is really pretty and he isn’t. He accidentally stumbles upon her at a Salsa class. SALSA. He can get back into form and do something impressive, she might like him.

Kind of very creepy, actually. But what is creepier is the other work mate, Drew (Chris O’Dowd), your standard dick, also is in to her and sabotaging Bruce and getting to hang out with her. But he is only an okay dancer.

Bruce might have the wrong ideas about why he is doing what he is doing, but with the help of his former coach (Ian McShane) and a very…intense man from a dance class (Kayvan Novak), he is able to relearn the steps he once knew. But more important, he is going to learn self confidence, trust in himself, and realize he shouldn’t be doing this to impress a woman. He should be doing it for himself.

But hey look, he still gets her in the end. I guess.

Alright alright alright. The plot line is straight out of the 80s / 90s, yes. That is terrible. It is literally about a guy who is fat and ugly (personality wise too) playing the blame game and thinking he can’t do anything right. We should be past all these types of films. So that is why, despite the initial conditions, I was happy to find that it was more about his own personal journey and gaining confidence than winning the girl. Sure, that was a driving factor, but in reality by the end he knew he had to do it for himself and no one else. Yay some sort of moral!

But outside of that, unfortunately the movie didn’t have a ton going for it. It was an okay story and some okay jokes for the most part. There was one scene in particular that caused me to rewind the movie a little bit back, just to rewatch it again because it actually ended up being hilarious and I wanted to make sure I saw it correctly. That was great. If you see it, you will know the scene.

But you know. O’Dowd was a typical jerk, a lot of the plot was a typical underdog sports movie. It just didn’t have a ton unique going for it. Sad to say.

Oh well, time to ignore this one forever.

Movies that examine the human condition and push “normal people” to their breaking point tend to excite me and scare me at the same time. Whether those are based on real or fictitious events. For example, one of the better known examples of a movie I am talking about would be The Experiment, a fictionalized retelling of the experiment that was actually done with similar results.

That is terrifying.

Exam isn’t based on a real test, but it takes elements from those sorts of psychological thrillers.

It could also be considered a bottle epi-uhh. Bottle movie.

Eight people are looking for a job. After passing grueling tests/tasks, none of which are shown or explained, they are the final eight people who are in consideration. There isn’t a lot of knowledge about the job details, but it requires being a leader, making tons of money, and changing their life forever.

We don’t know their real names, each candidate was just given a number, a desk, a paper, and a pencil. One of the candidates decides to call each person by their descriptive name of skin color or hair color and they seem to stick. So we have White (Luke Mably), Black (Chukwudi Iwuji), Brown (Jimi Mistry), Deaf (John Lloyd Fillingham), Asian (Gemma Chan), Blonde (Nathalie Cox), Brunette (Pollyanna McIntosh), and Dark (Adar Beck).

There is one man who tells them the rules, The Invigilator (Colin Salmon).

1) No trying to communicate with him or the guard (Chris Carey) at the door.
2) No spoiling their test.
3) No leaving the room.

They have 80 minutes to answer one question and one question only. Then, you know, the movie plays out.

“How does paper even work, really?”

Exam early on was able to keep my interest. There wasn’t a lot of music, it was just people talking and a lot of mystery up in the air. The viewer watching will want to pay close attention to everything going on to try and figure it out before the movie explains it all. It excelled there.

I was disappointed this wasn’t a real time movie. It is 100 minutes long, and an 80 minute test. They had a few minutes before the timer, and a few scenes after it. It would have been so much more creative to just literally give us an 80 minute exam. But no, time was sped up and skipped on multiple occasions, I think creating a more disappointing movie atmosphere.

Secondly? The ending was kind of…well…dumb in my opinion. They will explain everything to you, but even when they do, it still doesn’t make too much sense. It is the result of trying to be too clever and thus potentially just angering your viewers instead of making them feel enjoyment.

So there you go. An okay acted movie, with a lot of build up, but it all just flattens by the end. Still enjoyed the tense moments and human nature, however.

For those of you who don’t know what a Walk Of Shame is, what, have you never seen a movie/tv show set in college?

A Walk Of Shame happens after a one night stand. Usually the sex takes place at the man’s place and then the women is left walking back to her apartment or dorm early in the morning wearing the same outfit she had on the night before. This becomes even more apparent when the outfit is a dress or something one might wear to the clubs.

I know absolutely nothing about this movie besides who it stars, but the title probably explains about half of the events in the movie.

Yep, looks like the title nailed it perfectly.

Before we get to the shame walking, we can talk about the day before. Meghan (Elizabeth Banks) is a TV Anchorwoman. She had a few misshaps in her early reporter days, becoming one of those youtube bloopers because a cat attacked her, but now she is on top. On top of a dinky station.

She is applying to work at a much bigger station looking for a new anchor, but they want someone who is squeaky clean. No scandals, no sex tapes, no awkward tweets. So of course Meghan wants it bad.

But she doesn’t get it. And her boyfriend breaks up with her. What a shitty day. So her friends (Gillian Jacobs, Sarah Wright) decide to take her out to the clubs, make her put on a “slutty” dress, to get drunk and meet men.

This is a success, she has an enjoyable night with the bartender/writer (James Marsden). But she wakes up really early. She has a voicemail from the night before. The person they chose for the job won’t work, so the big fish are coming to see her show that afternoon. If she nails it, she gets the job!

But she is slightly hungover! And her car just got towed! And her purse was in the car! And she left her phone in that apartment!

Oh golly, will Meaghan be able to make it in time without ruining her public image?

Also featuring a few other people as gang members, cops, taxi drivers, and news team helicopter pilots. But I won’t tell you who is who. Bill Burr, Ken Davitian, Lawrence Gilliard Jr., Alphonso McAuley, Da’Vone McDonald, Ethan Suplee and Kevin Nealon.

These guys are all helicopter pilots.

So what is the main point of this movie? A series of unfortunate events to put a upper middle class person onto the streets, dealing with people and situations she never considered possible? Yeah, but more so is the focus on the dress. Because she is wearing the dress in the middle of the night / early morning, people assume she is a prostitute and treat her as such.

That means that Walk Of Shame has, for the most part, one joke, just told in a different way over and over again. Not only that, but every situation is because of terrible communication. Every time Meghan starts to talk, she does it in the slowest most awkward way possible (nothing like her actual character, someone paid to talk well) and decides to do whatever it takes word wise to make sure that people will not realize she isn’t a prostitute. It was pretty dang annoying after the fifth or sixth time.

Walk of Shame does some have some amusing moments in it, and even the premise isn’t too terrible. The execution however felt incredibly lazy and the ending was a bit disappointment. I mean, James Marsden isn’t supposed to get the girl. He is supposed to have a girl and that girl leave him for another.

The very end, a small speech is given about how her outfit shouldn’t determine the way people treat her, which is great, but it is really quick and I don’t think the movie really conveys the point that well.