Month: March 2015

I know. I missed out on a lot of January movies this year. They are slowly trickling down to me though. And I need to watch them all too. How else can I make a worst of the year list if I don’t see some of the best potential films that January want to offer me?!

I already saw Taken 3. But now I get to see The Boy Next Door.

Title wise, I only have to compare it to The Girl Next Door. And despite how much my younger self was really really excited to watch it for…reasons. I was left disappointed and never looked back. Little did I know how January this movie would be.

They had an exact replica of the room I write reviews in this movie!

Claire Peterson (Jennifer Lopez) is an English teacher at a high school. If her job profession didn’t bore you, the actress probably did. She is getting divorced from her husband (John Corbett), obviously, because that is really the only person she could get divorced from. He cheated. They have a teenage kid, Kevin (Ian Nelson). Ho hum.

Well, gossip time. A boy moved next door. Noah Sandborn (Ryan Guzman), just moved in with his grandpa in a wheelchair. He is going to help out. Such a nice guy. He also likes English Literature, like The Iliad. And he is friends with Kevin! And he helps out at the house too. And he apparently looks good naked.

Anyways. Claire and Noah have some of that sex thing. She was feeling bad. He was around. Kind of a mistake, since he is also in high school. Now in HER high school. Sex with a student is uncomfortable.

Especially when he transfers to her class. Starts hanging around a lot more. Starts getting threatening/agressive. Prints pictures of them naked together. You know, classic courting techniques. Turns out Noah has a not so spotless past. Mistakes have been made, and Noah might be a little bit too threatening. Dun dun dunn.

Also with Kristin Chenoweth as another teacher. She serves a role in this movie.

“Looks your in the kitchen. Allow me to grope your butt?”

The best way to indicate sleep through text is to just type the letter “Z” a lot. But I don’t think I could hold down that keyboard button long enough to indicate how much I would have rather slept than watch this movie. It didn’t even have the common courtesy to put me to sleep. My eyes were wide awake the entire time as I watched a terribly acted, terrible plotted, movie.

I can’t think of a single nice thing to say about it. Jennifer Lopez? Why the fuck is she in movies at all? Why were both the female leads singers in the first place? I mean, sure, Chenoweth has been decent in some things before, because at least she is in Musicals. But J-Lo ain’t in anything good. She doesn’t fit this movie at all, or her character.

It is uncomfortable, but not in a good way. It is uncomfortable because of just how pointless and shitty the whole film feels. It wasn’t ever scary, outside of knowledge that someone let this movie get made. Not only was it devoid of thrills, it was also devoid of any real risks. Anything to make it separate itself from straight to DVD horror films. I’d rather watch a straight to DVD horror film. At least someone of significance might at least die or something. Jeez.

No Good Deed is my first negative experience with a company screwing over a critic. Well, first and only.

Days before No Good Deed was set to come out, all screenings around the US were canceled. Press, public, and otherwise. Why? Well, this is the message that came with it:

Screen Gems has decided to cancel the advance screenings of NO GOOD DEED. There is a plot twist in the film that they do not want to reveal as it will affect the audiences’ experience when they see the film in theaters. Screen Gems apologizes for any inconvenience.

Yep, that says a lot there. Namely that hey, there is a big plot twist. Thanks for that, assholes. And since when have movies with plot twists been spoiled ahead of time by reviewers? I am sure it happens, but is it a big deal? Not at all. Most people don’t actively look for the twists, most people ignore it.

This was when I was still seeing everything I could in theaters, but I figured because of their shenanigans, I knew I’d wait til I could rent it for next to nothing and not reward them for this crap.

And I was excited to see it too. It hurt me, when the film left me. It hurt deep down.

It felt like a rain cloud was following me around for weeks.

Colin (Idris Elba) is a bad guy, maybe a sociopath. He was in prison for five years and up for parole. They got him for a manslaughter charge, but his crimes have also been linked to more than one missing woman. They just couldn’t prove anything. So just a manslaughter charge. Families are mad that he is up for parole. Well, obviously, he doesn’t get it, no matter how reformed he looks.

Well, he says screw that, and escapes from the transport anyways. What a bunch of dicks, not letting his reformed ass out of jail. So he goes to his old lover’s house (Kate del Castillo), finds out she has been cheating, and you know, kills her. She wasn’t faithful to him!

While driving away, he gets into an accident, and walks to a nearby house. Pouring rain, late at night, pretty bad times. Terry (Taraji P. Henson) is home alone with her baby and little girl. Her husband (Henry Simmons) is away on a golf trip with his dad for his dad’s birthday. So after a bit of help, she trusts him enough to let him in, dry off and wait for the tow truck. Things get even more interesting when her BFF (Leslie Bibb) shows up for their girl’s night.

But clearly Colin is messed up in the head. And Terry is for the most part alone with someone she doesn’t realize is dangerous. Is she going to get punished for helping a stranger? For doing a GOOD DEED?

Hot dogs and mac and cheese? What is she, six?
Oh. Yeah, she does look six. Carry on.

Something something plot twist. That was IT? That was the big moment? I am going to talk about the plot twist so hard, without spoiling it, because that is what they didn’t want me to do. Sure, I am pretending I am a big shot movie critic who has some clout, not just a dude with a website, but shush. It happened, it didn’t make the movie better, it just attempted to add some sense to everything.

It was more or less a plot point, not a plot twist. Twist implies some sort of change, whether it be in direction or maybe just a loop di loop. So the twist is terrible, which doesn’t help the movie.

The movie itself has very little character development. I thought I would get a shit ton out of something that Elba agreed to be in, but he is as cardboard-y as the rest of the cast. I think the movie moved too slow, too slow for a suspenseful movie.

I don’t know what else to say about it either. Not to entertaining, and the big twist couldn’t save it.

Ah-ha! The elusive Song of the Sea! I have found it at last.

I tried to get all five of the animated picture movies ahead of the Aademy Awards, but I only reached four. Damn foreign flicks. And the only reason I got to see it finally was because of its DVD release. I can’t feel the least bit special about this, outside of completing them all.c

I don’t think I have ever seen a movie from Ireland/Wales. So this is a big first one for me! Outside of the ones with the fancy footwork. This means I am a bit excited to see what I assume will be fancy footwork in animated form.

Unless the Leprechaun movies count. Then I have seen too many from Ireland/Wales. They should stop having movies at this point.

“You guys have Rapunzel? Fuck your Rapunzel. We got /this/ guy!”

This film, like any good animated film, starts with the death of a parent. Parents! Who needs ’em!

Ben (David Rawle) lives in a lighthouse, with his dog, Co, his father (Brendan Gleeson), and his mother (Lisa Hannigan). The mom is pregnant, and they want to finish the painting of the selkie, a Celtic myth.

PLOT TWIST. Pregnancy is a bit bad. Comes early. Mom dies. Saoirse (Lucy O’Connell) is born. And it is not pronounced the way it looks. Six years later, Saoirse still can’t talk. She just doesn’t like it. And after a few close calls with the ocean, their granny (Fionnula Flanagan) takes them back to the city to live away from the sea and their life and their dog.

Well, Ben says fuck that. He is going to run away and escape back to his dog and his life. Screw the city. And I guess his sister can come too, as long as she listens to him. Oh yeah, she also found a magical cloak that can turn her into a seal. Totes cool. And a magical conch shell. And like, fairies and owls and other crazy shit.

…

I am trying to say Saoirse is a selke.

Also featuring Colm O’Snodaigh, Liam Hourican, and Kevin Swierszcz, which is the hardest last name I’ve ever had to type. I am in no way confident it is spelled right.
in

Lord of the Dance prepared me zero for this shapechanging shenanigans.

Well, first of all, I am happy to announce that the pictures above do not do this film justice. This film is pretty. Prettier than a cat in a shark costume. Was it prettier than Big Hero 6, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, How To Train Your Dragon 2, or The Boxtrolls? Well, maybe one of them. I won’t say too. Because basically everything was pretty in their own unique way. And it has its charm and simplicity that goes along with it.

Also, the main characters were cute as well. Going on their adventure, solving problems. Sure, the girl is a selke, so she has a huge important role. But Ben does his fair share of problem solving along with Saoirse. They are pretty equal. And of course the Dog.

There is only like one song, but it is decently catchy. Wish there was more.

But if I had any problem with it, it seemed to move too slowly at times. If you could imagine a person telling a story, and that person keeps getting distracted and rambling every once in awhile? That is what it felt like watching this movie. Just every once in awhile. Kind of just hoped it would hurry up and move on. Not losing complete interest, just a little bit.

I can see why this one was nominated, but also, I definitely don’t think it was the best overall.

Drugs! Have I tackled any documentaries about drugs in any way on my website yet? Looks like I haven’t.

Me and drugs have an interesting relationship. Or at least a lack of one. I don’t understand them, have no desire to do them, yet also, don’t care if other people do them. I know the basic things. Like pot. Pot is definitely less dangerous than smoking and alcohol, and I support people’s right to do those things. I am the kind of guy who thinks people should be able to do whatever they want, for the most part, as long as it doesn’t endanger others.

The Culture High is about that, but at the same time, way way way more.

Like. Literally everything. The documentary is at 2 hours length, and it has so much dang information in it. It isn’t just about marijuana, and its health benefits or lack thereof. No, it is about the entire drug industry, pharmaceutical to the war on drugs. It is about for profit prisons and incarceration rates. It even touched on the Kids for Cash thing. It is about lobbying groups and bribing politicians to follow corporate interests. It is about how sweet the Internet is and how the government would rather it be controlled.

I mean. Shit. It is probably secretly about your mother as well.

It is apparently also about my fifth grade science project.

Did I mention this was about everything? Because holy shit, it got around and I really want to emphasize this point. I can’t even begin to talk about all the people they had talking. From news correspondents, to people who have earned PhDs, to Joe Rogan, to everyone in between.

Despite all the great info, most of which I have seen before in documentaries focused solely to one topic, it felt like the documentary overall seemed to lack focus because of it. The flow was off. I kind of forgot every once in awhile that this was about marijuana legality in America!

This is the type of documentary that would be good for someone’s first ever documentary if they had no idea some of the shady shit that went down in America. But for me, it could have had a stronger focus. I technically don’t care if pot gets legalized or not. Like I already said, I am all for rights.

But my main con is that it just smells super damn terrible. Makes me almost vomit.

Febreeze yourself, please.

When I grow up, I want to be a cobbler. I don’t think anyone has said that in at least 150 years.

But at least it is a funny word.

Times are strange when you find Adam Sandler in a VOD movie with very limited theater release. His movies have practically printed money the last few years with the minimum amount of effort. Sure he sold out, but he can’t hear the complaints due to the hundred dollar bills falling out of his ears. And plus all of his friends get parts in his movies, and he uses the same crew. He is at least a good guy in that regard.

The Cobbler is about magic though. Or something. I dunno. Bring it on.

“‘Bring it on’ Adam said, as he slowly slid the red heels on for the first time.”

Max Simkin (Sandler) lives in modern day New York. He lives a boring life in down town, running the shop that his father (Dustin Hoffman) abandoned. He doesn’t really enjoy it, but he needs money. He also has to take care of his mother (Lynn Cohen), whom he lives with. There are protests lead by Carmen Herrara (Melonie Diaz), trying to protect the residents and store owners from higher rents, driving them from the area and forcing to sell their livelihoods for cash.

You know what. That sounds nice to Max.

But first he has to deal with some rude customers. Like this guy Leon (Method Man) who needs some shoes repaired that day to pick up that night. Well, Max’s main machine breaks. Shit. He finds a manual one hiding in a back and makes it from that. And wouldn’t you know it, eventually he finds out that machine is magical. SPARKLES AND EVERYTHING. Well, no sparkles. But in boredom, Max puts on the guy’s shoes waiting for him, and he transforms into that guy. Aw shit, shape changing powers. After all, Max is the owner of their soles.

How will he use this power? For good? For evil? For sex? To be a super HERO? No. Not the last one. Kind of all in between.

Also featuring Steve Buscemi as the neighbor barber, and a whole lot of other people, like Dan Stevens, Ellen Barkin, and Elena Kampouris.

For a guy who fixes shoes for a living, there are quite a lot of shots of him being shocked at having shoes.

Despite the movies flaws, I don’t think that they are the fault of Mr. Sandler. I know, that may sound crazy, but it is true. The problems must all lie instead with the directing, script, and whoever made decisions behind the scenes. Because honestly, Sandler was fine in this role. Disgruntled Jewish middle aged worker, poor and bored with life. He fit the bill really well. His character also made sense for his new powers. He isn’t a great guy. He uses his power for as many shenanigans as he can figure out, until his shenanigans run away with him.

But despite the decent enough pun/premise, the movie just fell completely flat.

The movie didn’t know what it wanted to be. A comedy, a drama, a dark comedy. Its indecisiveness rested on the main characters indecisiveness. Shit, it feels like a family movie for the most part, outside of some partial nudity, attempted sex, and murder scenes. Basically everything outside of that is extremely family friendly outside of a few moments. Kind of super awkward.

The movie also dragged. It only took 20 or so minutes before we got to both the power and realization of how to get said power, but everything else was extremely slow. Not to mention not really funny. At all.

Damn it! This movie could have gone to so many good places. And everything is just so damn drab and boring about it.

I could start this review talking about sequels that never had to be made. I could talk about the long time between movies (twenty years, or I guess, eleven if you count Dumb and Dumberer).

But no, I will just be the bigger man and realize why this movie was made. Jim Carrey wants to revitalize his career after a series of not great films, and Jeff Daniels is currently really hot, from The Newsroom, Looper and other dramas. Basically, it is identical to how it was twenty years ago, I guess.

So here we are! Dumb and Dumber To. It could always be worse. It could instead have been a sequel to something unrelated, like Cast Away.

Wait? What is this? Is there a Wilson as well? Fuck.

Again, this movie is set about twenty years after our friends began their trip back from Colorado. Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) has been in a paralyzed state since he didn’t get the woman, apparently, and Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels) has been kind of taking care of him. But now Harry needs a kidney, so he has to go find one.

Well, it turns out Harry has a kid. Yeah. Right? He apparently got Fraida (Kathleen Turner) pregnant decades ago but just found out about it now. Well, she gave the daughter up for adoption. Now they have to travel and find her!

Well, again, Penny (Rachel Melvin) lives in a big rich house. Her “dad” is Dr. Pinchelow (Steve Tom), a super famous smart dude, rich as fuck. She has to go to a tech conference to accept an award in his honor, because he doesn’t like going to them. Also, Pinchelow’s new wife (Laurie Holden) is trying to slowly poison him in order to get those fat stacks of cash for herself. You know, with Travis (Rob Riggle), who I honestly forget how he is related to anyone.

Yeah. So, road trip, murder plot, and trying to get with a lady or two. Basically the same movie, right?

This time it has cell phones! The thing that can solve most problems for everything made before the year 2000.

Dumb and Dumber To is kind of a hard movie to describe without hating yourself and feeling like you are giving too much away. But then again, so is the first one. But in some cases, if the description sounds terrible despite my best efforts, then again, it just might be terrible.

Maybe it is nostalgia. Maybe it is generally better. I have no idea, but some how Dumb and Dumber is good (is it?) and this sequel, arguably being of comparable humor, quality, writing/directing/acting, is not. Guys. Is Dumb and Dumber bad?

I mean it is of poor taste of course, but would people who didn’t grow up with it hate it if they saw it for the first time as an adult? Man, nostalgia can be a fickle bitch.

No matter what way I look at it, Dumb and Dumber To is just a boring movie, with old film call backs, and the occasional smile or chuckle. Rob Riggle felt terrible in this movie, but to be fair, he is terrible in most movies. It’s that douche face he has, forcing him to play douche characters. Any plot twists were boring as well.

And just…fuck. Fuck The Farrelly Brothers. Make them stop now. We are done with their work.

I don’t think you want to know what I do in the shadows. Usually it involves lurking, dodging sunlight, or cooling off.

Now that I think about that, two of those three descriptions are very vampire-like. Hey, what a perfect title. What We Do In The Shadows is, after all, about a few dudes sharing a flat in New Zealand.

And they are vampires.

And this is a true story. You know, because this story was definitely made, truly.

And they started the hippest band in New Zealand too!

Vampires! They sometimes need roommates. We have Viago (Taika Waititi) who set up this documentary, I guess. They all had to sign waivers to not eat the camera crew, but it should work out. He is only 317 years, so a bit of a late middle ages vampire. They have Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), 183 years old, a baby, and the most brash of these vampires and more of a pseudo ladies man. Let’s not forget Vladislav (Jemaine Clement), aged 862. He used to be a much bigger deal, but his age is getting to him and he is losing a lot more of his powers. He doesn’t impale people people as much.

And don’t forget about Petyr (Ben Fransham). He is about 8,000 years old. He has basically lost it, looks super un-human, very savage. He freaks everyone out but he has basically earned it.

And this is their life! They still drink human blood, they have some human groupies who help them do certain tasks, but they are incredibly behind times in terms of technology.

We learn of past loves, why they prefer virgins, their interactions with other supernaturals (zombies, werewolves, witches).

Also featuring Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, Stuart Rutherford, and Rhys Darby, because of course Rhys Darby.

“Oh. My. GODDDD! I LOOVVVEEEEE Rhys Darby!”

New Zealand and Flight of the Conchords. Although it looks like Bret McKenzie had nothing to do with this movie, it is easier to describe as vampires meet FotC. Because that type of awkward uncomfortable humor is very prevalent throughout the whole movie. This movie had a ridiculously low budget, I am sure most of the guys being friends working for next to nothing and splitting the profits. It is a great business model for them too, as with kickstarter and word of mouth, it has spread slowly throughout America for people to see.

Blah blah blah. You don’t care. Is it funny? Heck yes it is funny. I personally would have liked a lot more of Petyr, thought he was underused, but I guess you can’t tell an 8,000 year old vampire what to do.

I am also glad that with the different types of Vampires that Twilight didn’t make the cut. At first I thought I wanted it, but realized how quickly it would have just fallen into a a one trick pony to be referenced occasionally, and not had any real characterization or goals behind it.

Also, this movie has a lot of great quotes associated with it. I don’t remember a lot of them, but I do remember laughing.

Either way, if this movie comes to your area, give it a chance. You will probably have an enjoyable uncomfortable night.

I have written many times about how disappointing DreamWorks has been in the animation department. The TL;DR is that all of their movies are terrible, bad, or average, unless they involve Training Dragons or Fighting Pandas. They have two good series right now, but everything else has been pretty bunt or miss. I liked Shrek too, sure, but not really anything post Shrek in that series.

Going in to see Home, I was already biased. Mostly because DreamWorks made a short called Almost Home that wasn’t too exciting. It premiered last year, and was kind of shitty. They showed it before at least two of their movies too, so I had to see it a second time and go “Yep, still don’t like it.” So when I found out it was a tiny prologue to a movie coming out this year, I of course was not excited.

I definitely wasn’t excited when I found out about the voice casting. Well, one person was exciting. The rest seemed to be the now standard big names for big names sake in order to make money.

Seriously. This movie has almost nothing going for it ahead of time.

Can’t even give me a full mustache to be excited about.

The Boovs are known for only a few things: Their color changing based on mood, their tentacles, and their ability to run away. They are great runners. They run from any threat and go based on probability. If something has less than a 50% chance of a success, the run. Captain Smeck (Steve Martin) is their leader because he is the smartest and best at running away. He was even able to get them to run away from the Grok (Grog? I really don’t remember) alien race. But now they are running from this big bad enemy, and they think they have finally found a place to hide.

Earth!

So they put all the Humans in one big colony in Australia, leaving the rest of the planet for themselves! Unlikeable Oh (Jim Parsons) isn’t the same as all the Boov. He likes other things so he is weird and makes many mistakes. Including inviting the entire galaxy to his new apartment warming party. Including the evil alien race by accident. Whoops. So he is now on the run, having a big bad mistake.

And while on the run, he runs into Tip (Rihanna), short for Gratuity. Yeah. Apparently they were able to get every human except for one little (old? hard to tell) girl. She says middle school, but her voice screams 20 year old. She wants to find her mom (Jennifer Lopez), he just wants to escape and make things better.

So they work together! Traveling with a slushie based car hover craft and running away from everyone else, who also wants to run away. Especially when the big baddies come along too.

Jeez. What a mess they have made. Also there is Kyle (Matt Jones). Fuck you, Kyle.

Tip was named as such after her friends gave her a helpful hint on living life to the fullest.

Yeesh. So Rihanna didn’t fit that character at all. DreamWorks tends to have that issue though. The Croods was 100% awkward because of Voice Choices. So Rihanna made her girl sound way too old. Jim Parsons worked as our main character. It was pretty great. Jennifer Lopez was pointless as crap. She had very few lines, overall maybe three scenes technically. No reason to have a big name in such a pointless role. (Or, maybe that is the best place for a big role?). Martin did pretty good at his Captain, reminding me a bit of Sgt. Bilko, but more shitty of a character. And I am actually happy for Matt Jones, getting to be top listed as the only other character with any significant lines.

It is quite obvious why they brought in Rihanna though. She made a whole damn CD for this movie. Half the songs were song by her, J-Lo threw in one as well. And they all sounded kind of the same as a result. It became accidentally funny by the end, hearing the same different song, one after another.

And finally, I got really annoyed by some minor inconsistencies. They had some poor plot decisions to make the movie move forward, their reason for Tip not getting taken was silly, and then other small things like, taking all the pointless toilets away from the area, and then still having houses with toilets. Just minor, rookie movies at the end.

But guess what. This movie was actually still entertaining. It was funny on numerous occasions, and you really do grow to like Oh and Tip by the end. Odd voices aside, Tip is great in that she is a strong independent black woman who don’t need no Boov in her life, for the most part.

The animation was also spectacular at times. Dreamworks has always tended to make some pretty movies, and this one is no exception.

I am able to see through all the poor choices that this movie made in production and with the plot. The movie itself, as an experience, visually and character wise, is much better than the cover would make you seem. Yay for a movie changing my mind! Well done DreamWorks. Now I don’t feel so bad about having to wait so long to see Inside Out.

Presented by Zach Galifianakis? Well, ain’t that just fancy! He is an Executive Producer, so who knows what that means. Maybe he helped come up with the idea. Maybe he provided all the funds to release this documentary. Maybe he just bought it from some film festival.

Either way, Craigslist Joe is not about Zach Galifianakis. It is about Joseph Garner, some dude who wants to run an experiment. He gets a lot of free things off of Craigslist, and noticed a lot free services or well. So, with the economy like it is, he wanted to see if he could live off the kindness of strangers on Craigslist for a month, while also traveling across the United States.

And apparently it is pretty easy, the traveling part. Rideshares is a tab on Craigslist, and people offer rides sometimes for cash, sometimes for free, sometimes just to switch on and off the driving responsibility. So that was actually really easy.

His goal was to start in Cali, and get to the other side and back in thirty days. He also is doing this during December, the most giving and caring of months, so that is going for him.

It only took him five hours to look this homeless.

Also he got to have a phone, laptop/charger, and a camera man of course. No money. He would only go do activities / events that were advertised on Craigslist. As for avoiding homelessness, he would only ask for places to stay either on Craigslist itself or through the events that he went too. So while on this, he got to try a lot of things as well. Free intro classes, open houses, volunteer stuff, you name it. It was probably a very humbling experience.

But at the same time, observation changes everything. If you wanted to recreate this, you would probably fail. You know why? Because you don’t have a camera dude following you around. Of course people are going to be more generous, more willing to let him crash on his couch, if he has a dude filming it for the experiment documentary. This lets people know he is safe and lets them look really good.

And this kills the documentary for me. Was this is a good idea? Sure, why not. It would be better if he had just saved all emails, phone calls, etc with people though and went alone. That would be the real test. Having it all recorded as it went down made this a feel good hug fest advertisement for Craigslist, when in reality, it would be really easy to do if you had his same initial resources.

Ugh. Partially why I don’t buy the movie Bully. I have to assume kids were egged on to perform for the camera to pick on the kids being followed around. They can’t make a whole crew invisible.

Again, great idea. But bad idea to make it a documentary.

The Divergent series has the honor of being the next Hunger Games series, movie wise. Even if The Hunger Games still has one more movie yet to come out. You know. Successful trilogy, third one split into two boring as fuck movies to milk more money out of teenagers. Whatever.

I wanted to like Divergent a lot more than I did. But, TL;DR, it wasn’t a completely original dystopian plot line like it made it look like. It was kind of nonsensical at points, left a lot of questions, and it ended up just being a damn high school clique movie, in its most basic form.

HOWEVER. Insurgent can be something completely different. If the ending of Divergent is any indication, Insurgent shouldn’t be a shitty high school clique movie. It should be a smarter sci-fi dystopian action movie. Class warfare shouldn’t be an issue. Just rebels vs the government. Good. This one can be a huge improvement.

Pls don’t let me down. Plsssss.

I was just as surprised as everyone else over the erotic lunch based three way scene.

The last movie ended with our heroes, Tris (Shailene Woodley), Four (Theo James), Peter (Miles Teller) and Caleb (Ansel Elgort) escaping out of Chicago and heading past the wall into the magical world of the unknown. After all, the wall was put up to protect them from the dangerous outside that had monsters and bad people and shit.

Wait a minute. Sorry. No. They just go into the forests outside of the city? Not outside of the wall? Oh…well then…okay. I guess they are just hiding out from the hippies, trying to figure out what the hell Jeanine (Kate Winslet) wants to do, now that she took out all the working class selfless people. That’s right, only four factions now fuckers. The nerds, the jocks (which are scattered and small), the student government, and the hippies. Because it is still a high school in Chicago. Speaking of those factions, we get to see things from the hippies and the student government finally. The hippies are lead by Johanna (Octavia Spencer) and the SGA is lead by Jack Kang (Daniel Dae Kim, of Lost fame!).

Either way, the plot of this movie is our heroes on the run. Not physically, because apparently it is super easy to hide from almost everyone in Chicago, despite them only using like 5 buildings for most of the population. Their GPS systems must all be out of wack. Also, Jeanine found this mystical box under Tris’ old house that her parents were hiding. That is why she killed them by the way, looking for the box. Didn’t you know that they wanted it from the first movie? (I literally don’t remember it, but it may have been hinted or mentioned). The thing is, this box has a message in it, written by the founders of the caste system. It will let them know how to deal with all these Divergent assfaces. They just need a really strong divergent to open it. Hmm, wonder who that could be…

This movie has a huge number of other people of course. We get the return of Jai Courtney, Mekhi Phifer, Ray Stevenson, Maggie Q, Ashley Judd, Tony Goldwyn, and Zoe Kravitz. But we also have new people, like Naomi Watts and Keiynan Lonsdale! Woo~

Oh, and didn’t you hear that this one featured Bieber?*

As soon as I finished this movie, I was immediately asked by people what I thought about it. And I shrugged. I didn’t know. It took me a long time to figure out exactly what I liked, disliked, and how I thought about the film as a whole.

Here is one thing I know for certain: Insurgent is better than Divergent. For sure. I had a lot to complain about Divergent. You might have heard about me doing so in my review of Divergent. But I still thought it was at least okay. So here is another thing I know: Insurgent is not good enough for me to give it a 3 out of 5, the like it category. It is a 2 out of 4 like Divergent, just a better 2 out of 4.

I was able to see this movie in IMAX, only my second movie to do so after Edge of Tomorrow, and it did feel good on the gigantic 3D screen. It had a lot of CGI based special effects going through these tests or whatever they were called and for the most part the looked pretty decent. It had more action than the first film. Real action, not bullshit “dangerous training”.

On the other hand, the plot was pretty basic. It was very predictable, especially when it came to reality versus simulation. The only wild card was Miles teller. We mostly just had teenage angst carrying the rest of the plot, so it was pretty linear. Major plot points seemed like they were added on as an afterthought (read: that box thing that wasn’t mentioned in the first film at all). And of course, this film still doesn’t feature outside Chicago, which to every one that isn’t a book reader, was pretty sure how this one would start. But whatever.

The film also still features a huge amount of confusing plot decisions and material. Maybe reading the books would fill the gaps, maybe they are shitty in the book too. Who knows. I know this is still entertaining enough to warrant a watch, but not enough for me to want to buy any of the series still or read the books. And the last movie being another shitty two parter means the franchise is probably at its high point right now. So sad. Please go back to Spiderman, Shailene.

* – Bieber jokes are still funny, right?