Month: April 2015

Sometimes, you hope a documentary allows some amount of surprise. But other times it is impossible. With The Woman Who Wasn’t There, as soon as you find out who we are talking about, you know exactly what happens.

But that makes sense. There is no way to surprise someone, because if it was about just some woman, Tania Head, who happened to be a 9/11 survivor, you’d wonder why you were watching the documentary.

So of course, Tania Head is not really Tania Head. She is instead Alicia Esteve Head, from Barcelona, Spain. This documentary talks about her 9/11 claims, her story, what she did, and how she got found out.

But she did get to meet famous people along the way!

Needless to say, she wasn’t even in the USA during 9/11. That didn’t prevent her from starting a 9/11 Survivor support group on the internet, where she fabricated a well researched story. She had a job in the building, she had a fiance/husband in the other one (who totally existed), she had a hero in there that existed, and she had good information.

Just you know, all pieces of other real stories and put hers together making it a big grand tale of sadness, grief, and luck.

I hadn’t heard of this woman before hand, nor did I hear about this scandal in 2007 when it was found out. But hey, a nice relatively short documentary summed it up decently.

The documentary tried to play it out like a creepy thriller, but that is silly, since again, we know how it ends by the end. Despite old interviews with Tania and Tania’s old friends, it still just felt like a waiting game of “Oh did she screw up here?!!? Nope…”

The biggest let down of this documentary/story is just how quickly it ends after the aftermath. Tania did a good job of hiding from the internet and trying to bring her life back together. It ends with only one sighting after the fact in the documentary, but if you go to the wiki page above you can see some more detailed after math information that came out post documentary.

A fucked up story and an okay documentary.

True Story is a True Story! And given the cast, it is going to be a hilarious romp about a real life situation that is probably grossly exaggerated!

Or or or or! No, maybe this is a pseudo-sequel to This Is The End? Our main characters playing themselves, maybe pre-Apocalypse!

Wait. What? This is a Drama/Thriller? But but…the cast. This doesn’t make sense.

I think I need a moment before I write this review. Please close the page and come back in ten minutes to finish it to let it all sink in.

We can wait all day.

Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill) is a reporter for the New York Times and Christian Longo (James Franco) is a prisoner who maybe murdered his wife and three kids!

Basically twins. Finkel only learns about Longo after he was found in Mexico, using Finkel’s name as an alias. Finkel had his own problems, like maybe fabricating details of a story about African refugees to make it sound worse for one guy. But at least his problems don’t involve murdering his family.

So Finkel heads over to Longo in prison to figure out his story. Figure out why he was using his name. Figure out what lead him to his current situation. You know, the mind of a killer. Or the mind of someone in a terrible situation. Hey, that’d be a good book probably. Finkel should write it. Yeah.

And Felicity Jones is in this movie! The main 3 all Academy Award nominated people! She is Finkel’s wife. And Ethan Suplee is in this movie! Not nominated though. And not a wife.

If prison movies have taught me anything, men can be wives as well.

This movie is directed by Rupert Goold. Haven’t heard of him? Well, this is his first movie, his only other directing coming from two TV shows of British TV. I think for a first time movie, he did a good job.

Now, the first third to maybe even half felt incredibly slow to me. And a drab boring. It was reducing me to close my eyes quite frequently. Despite that, throughout the film the shots were normally set up beautifully. Good framing and a lot of longer shots allowing the actors to act.

At times, it did feel like too much though. Too much time of characters just staring off into distance, feeling angsty, with dark brooding music. Too much of the film trying to turn it into a bigger mystery than it really ended up being. It doesn’t help that Franco’s character has the slowest talking voice ever.

It was an okay movie, and again, some of the acting was top notch at some point. Felicity Jones felt mostly wasted outside of one pretty intense scene. Some very good visuals. But really a movie I probably wont want to see again for a long time.

Shit. Do any pictures of this movie exist that aren’t just of these guys talking at a prison? Looking accross the internet that is basically it, minus a courtroom picture or two of Franco, but they look the same as well given the outfits.

Oh here’s another.

2 out of 4.

When I heard they were making a movie version of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, I didn’t have a good or bad impression. I was more indifferent about how the quality might be. Instead, I was worried about typing out the title, or getting the adjectives all out of order accidentally.

These are the fears that I run into most often in my daily lives. And getting imprisoned incorrectly. Just those two things.

But hey, technically I have read this book before. Technically I own it. But I think, for the most part, I won’t let the book plot line bias my thoughts on the movie version. There should be differences. Should be TONS of differences. The book is just a kid, maybe 8, complaining about his day, then it getting better. I think. Sounds correct, but it has been awhile. Very simple plot. The only difference is, it looks like everyone in Alexander’s family is about to get royally fucked up by a day. So if anything more slapstick shenanigans than the book.

But maybe also a few more life lessons on how to not be an asshat?

Lesson #1: Do not drug the peter pan cast member into believing the kids in the play are actually teddy bears.

Alexander (Ed Oxenbould) is about to turn 12 years old. He has a lot of shitty days. He is generally grumpy and complains a lot too, so it is a wonder no one wants to be around him. To make matters more Terrible for Alexander, his family is perfect. His dad (Steve Carell) is an Astophysicist or something, PhD and all, but currently being a stay at home dad. His mom (Jennifer Garner) is heading out to be VP of her publishing company if this new baby book launch goes well. His brother (Dylan Minnette) is a popular junior in High School, dating a babe (Bella Thorne) and heading to prom! And his sister (Kerris Dorsey) is the lead in the Peter Pan play and just generally successful.

So Alexander is grumpy. He also found out some dick kid is throwing a birthday party the same night as his, but better with blackjack and hookers, so no one will show up to his. And there his family stands. Perfect and happy. So at midnight, he has a tiny cake with a candle and wishes his disease upon his blood.

Seemingly, the little twat has devil magic in him or something, because sure enough the family have a Horrible Day. Car problems. Oversleeping. Very Bad. Sickness. Typos. Animals. Flames. Babies. Destruction of property. No Good.

But Alexander doesn’t have a bad day. So I guess he has that going for him!

And of course there are other people! Donald Glover, Megan Mullally and Jennifer Coolidge!

What a smug as fuck look Alexander has, despite wishing he could be his brother.

OH NO THIS MOVIE DOESN’T FOLLOW THE BOOK DIRECTLY WHAT THE FUUCUCUUCCUCCKKKKK.

Just kidding. But on a related note, there was one big huge problem with this movie. Alexander. Not just the actor, who I could ignore for the most part. He was completely average, bland and annoying. Probably an actual 11/12 year old. The more annoying fact is that in this movie, he doens’t have the bad day. Just his family. Does this make the title wrong? No. But he should be having a shitty day too. Instead of having a shitty day, he becomes a weird silent observer throughout the day, every once in awhile giving a shocked face, while the rest of the movie deal with their problems and have zany adventures.

In this way, it feels like Alexander is the 5th or 6th most important person in a movie about him, allegedly. So the family? They are all pretty good. There are some good amusing parts, good clean fun for the family. Well thought out disasters for them to conquer. And Alex is a smug motherfucker just existing. Unfortunately, it ends with the birthday, which is a good experience for everyone, the bad day basically over. So it also ends with a lame feel good fest and kind of a boring note.

I am just saying. This movie already barely features Alexander. Might as well cut his role out entirely. Makes the title shorter too. Instead, we get to see a movie about rich as fuck people having a bad day. Which I am pretty sure is the plot line for lots of films anyways.

Sparky spark sparks.

Nicholas Sparks. Famed romance novelist who writes a book and then immediately turns it around to also make a movie. A genius. Basically gets a movie a year!

Even better, these films don’t usually have crazy budget requirements. He really just needs two young fresh faces, maybe middle aged, depends on his story. Just needs some attractive people, a couple of flash backs, and a romance.

So now we have The Longest Ride. And don’t worry, I saw The Best of Me the day before, I just wanted this review to come out first because it was more relevant.

I went in seeing no trailer or a plot description. Just a hope that it was about a rodeo and not a road trip.

Rodeo confirmed! Excitement technically more than zero!

This isn’t just about the rodeo, this is about Luke Collins (Scott Eastwood), who is one of THE best bull riders out there, from a little old state called North Carolina. Well, Luke had a big fall, he couldn’t conquer the biggest baddest bull Rango [I have found out this bull is a real bull for bullriding competitions and actually was one of the best. I say was, because he passed away before the premiere of this film after 7 years]. Now, a year later, Luke is back in North Carolina and ready for his come back. He had to take quite a bit of time off, but he wants to get into that big championship tournament again, so he needs to get back to riding.

And while riding, this North Carolina boy meets this New Jersey girl, Sophia (Britt Robertson), who is about to finish up her degree at Wake Forest University. She falls for him, despite the fact that in 2 months she is moving up to NYC to start an internship as an art curator or something. Well, Luke, being a country boy from North Carolina trying to save his families farm, he wouldn’t get that art stuff. He is a farmer! Not an art-er!

Unrelated, they find a car crash one rainy night. In it is some old dude, Ira (Alan Alda) who has a special box, which unfortunately isn’t a surprise dildo collection, but instead, letters and shit. They were all to this Ruth (Oona Chaplin) chick. So we get a side story of his love with her during World War II, she an escapee from Italy, both of them Jewish. Super sweet I guess.

But yeah. North Carolina Rodeo boy! New Jersey art girl! How could they live and love? And what can they learn from that old dying man???

Also with Melissa Benoist randomly in another movie as sorority girl, Jack Huston as Ira in the past, and Lolita Davidovich as Luke’s momma.

I can never get over how much Scott Eastwood looks like his daddy.

Did I mention that Luke was a local boy, from North Carolina doing all this? Because the movie made sure you knew. Basically every time an announcer was talking about Luke, often multiple times in the same event, they would bring up his North Carolina-ness. I mean. It is a southern state. They have rodeos there too. They make it seem like he is the lone person to ever rodeo out of the place. As if it was a Hockey player from Kenya.

Lately, Sparks’ movies have tried to have more layers in them. I blame Dear John. Maybe it has always been a thing and I didn’t realize. But I guess he can’t write a simple romance anymore and just let it be a romance story. This one is plagued with flashbacks, in the form of the old guy/WW2 story. And it feels incredibly long and doesn’t add a lot to the story. Are parts of that plot line necessary? Sure. But to include so much and take us out of the romance promised to us, it felt annoying. This is the longest movie this guy has done too, so it really weighs on that parts feel cuttable. Especially when the side story seems to have its own side story included.

Parts of it are sloppy too. Some of these flashbacks are shown to us when character is reading a letter. However, thematically, these parts make little sense. If he is writing a letter to his lover, would its contents actually be a full on description of what they just did? Hell no. One letter he prefaces with the fact that the night was a great one. It was about their first kiss and dating. Yay. That same flashback letter also apparently included a long love montage and eventual engagement. Jeez. Some day indeed.

I just hate bad flashbacks. Later on they made sense because it was the old guy just telling a story to them. But fuck the early ones.

My other biggest issue is the actor who played young Ira. He looked nothing like Old Ira, he was painfully awkward on the screen, and sucked up the place. The lead lady had moments of weakness too. But flashback Ruth and modern Luke? They were pretty decent for the most part. I gotta stop talking about this, because I have almost hit 900 words. But overall it was okay, and its biggest weakness is Sparks’ trying to get too many layers in his stories. Sometimes simplicity can work.

The Voices is a movie that came out in early February that I really wanted to see as soon as I heard the plot. But I am not talking about the plot right now, I am talking about Ryan Reynolds.

He had a relatively quiet year in 2014, but that is because he was working so hard to make 2015 a full year for himself. First with this movie, we have at least three other movies where he is the star or a main star coming out this year, across all genres. Family drama, dark comedy, action, sci-fi-drama. How diverse, Ryan! You really want to get away from the stoner comedies! And let’s not forget that next year he gets to be a Superhero and an animated voice again. Jeez.

Maybe it is just that he got himself a better agent. Or maybe ScarJo was holding him back and Blake Lively is actually good at something?

…Yeah, you’re right. Probably the agent.

All he really wanted was to dance more in his movies. The Sam Rockwell clause, if you will.

Jerry (Ryan Reynolds) is just you average loner guy. He doesn’t have a lot of skills, working as a worker in a factory that makes toilets. Like, lifting and boxing. Very minimal skills. He lives alone with his two pets, a cat, Mr. Whiskers (Ryan Reynolds) and a dog, Bosco (Ryan Reynolds). No, don’t worry, he isn’t dressed up as his pets. He is just their voices, because they totally can talk!

Well, only to him. No one else can hear them. Did I mention Jerry had an abusive child hood, where some seriously fucked up shit went down? Yeah. He is taking pills for his head voices, from his therapist Dr. Warren (Jacki Weaver). But the pills make the world a much sadder place and make everyone seem mean. No, he is happier without the pills.

After all, there is a cutie at work Fiona (Gemma Arterton) who gave him notice and danced with him at the holiday party! So he likes her back. But maybe she didn’t like him too much and she was just friendly. Oh well, either way, they should date.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t have many people to ask advice too, because he doesn’t have any real friends. Guess his pets will have to do. And his cat his a straight up dick. Also featuring Anna Kendrick and Ella Smith as the rest of the accounting department at his work!

In retrospect, maybe he should have played has the animals in costumes as well. It worked for Wilfred!

Yeah, we get to see Ryan Reynolds play a serial killer and make some pet voices too. Hooray! The first thing I noticed while watching this movie is that it was carefully crafted visually. Someone knew exactly what they wanted to show and how to show it. And the visuals again, were great. The use of color, the difference between his life on and off pills, how other people perceive him, all great. The next thing I really enjoyed was…Ryan Reynolds!

Hey, that is pretty good, because he is the star/main character of this movie. But he actually acts. He isn’t the douche bag role, or a simpleton nice guy. He is a full character and it was kind of impressive. Not sure if because I don’t expect that much from Ryan or what, but I really enjoyed it. Sure, his voices were fun too.

If I had any issues with it, I would just say I didn’t like the ending as much. Things started to unravel, everything went crazy, Jerry was losing it, which all makes sense. But the actual ending just felt a bit of a let down. I was expecting something more, and it just didn’t keep up the momentum that was building. Now the credits were great though. Hell yes to those credits.

Overall, still, a very interesting an enjoyable film. After all, it is pretty weird, and I fucking love weird.

I wouldn’t be lying if I didn’t say I was excited to see this documentary. I heard about it months ago, and my body was super ready. It just was ready too early, and then I forgot about it for a month or so…

But hey! Now it is out and watchable. An HBO documentary, so you know they could put money towards it.

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief is a powerful title already pulling no punches. Obviously, this 2 hour documentary is about Scientology, like, the whole thing. From its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, to its start, to its current people in charge. And of course, their shady practices.

Shit, did I just describe the whole thing? Man, this was a quick review.

But I forgot to talk about celebrities!

In a way, it looks like this documentary was made and put together specifically for one person. John Travolta. When you think of Scientology, you think of two celebrities, him and Tom Cruise. Travolta used to be their poster child, now Cruise is. Cruise apparently is way too deep right now to be touched and is much newer in the group comparatively. But Travolta has had friends and close companions in Scientology who have now left and speak out in this documentary, about the travesties of the group, and what had to be done to keep the message from spreading.

So if he could hear it and believe, he would have a strong enough voice to help change a lot of people away from the cult and make a difference. But he has already said no thanks to that and defended it some more. Oh well, must have a lot of blackmail on him and Cruise.

Instead our biggest celebrity is Jason Beghe. And the documentary doesn’t get into the super hardcore rumors that you hear about. I guess that is because they didn’t want to get sued. So at the same time, while this documentary is super informative, if you saw the South Park episode on the same topic, you would know a lot of it already.

Are you excited? They made a sequel to The Woman in Black!!

Why do I hear crickets? Must be my refusal to try to buy more bug spray. I personally have no idea what anyone else thought about The Woman In Black, and I am far too lazy right now to look something like that up, but I thought it was a dull. Harry Potter did nothing for me. Just was an period piece British film, with a shitty ending, and a shitty everything else also. I would have never guessed a sequel could have happened.

Because now we have The Woman In Black 2: Angel of Death. I have to assume Great Britain went bananas over the first film. I am pretty sure it was a remake or a book or something first, and they probably like anything set in their country.

From what I can tell this thing isn’t even really related to the first movie. Different actors/characters. Maybe a different ghost, but that would be Troll 2 levels of dumb. Honestly, if it has anything to do with the first film, I wouldn’t even remember.

Oh it’s a creepy looking doll that a kid likes. That’s normal in horror now, I guess.

This sequel takes place in World War II, which is either before or after the first film. Again, I remember jack shit about it. We have a very universal concept here. Britain is getting bombed occasionally, so a lot of kids have lost family. Orphans and double orphans. Eve Parkins (Phoebe Fox) is a teacher of orphans, and their school is going to go leave the bustling city of London to live in the countryside instead. You know, where the Nazis should not be bombing. Her headmistress (Helen McCrory), Eve, and a bunch of kids head out to live in an abandoned building, to be safe.

But of course they won’t be safe. This is a horror movie sequel. And it is the country so we have inherently creepy looking people like Hermit Jacob (Ned Dennehy) running around. Thankfully there is a hunky man, a pilot, Harry (Jeremy Irvine), and another guy, the air raid warden (Adrian Rawlins). Gosh, could they be anymore safe?

Anyways. Haunted mansion type movie. Little kids going missing. Mute kid (Oaklee Pendergast) is of course involved, cause that bitch can’t talk.

But oh nelly can he scream. Suuu-eeeee! Suuuu-eeee!

Yawn yawn yawn. No surprise. A sequel to a movie I disliked I didn’t find great. But man, it was just so dang boring. And British. Not that British things can’t be scary. But this doesn’t at all feel like a concept worth even creating. They didn’t add anything new to the horror genre.

It just seems like a ham fisted concept, that vaguely is related to another film, to make money. It is literally Troll 2ing us. Right in front of our eyes. Oh, the ghost is a woman in black, who hates kids? Fits. Done.

Fuckkkk. It is just. It is full of boring characters, boring plot, boring scares, and nothing new. Throwing in a bad ass subtitle doesn’t make a bad ass film. It makes it generic.

Generic horror is maybe worse than generic comedy. Maybe. It’s just the level of mediocrity that we should all avoid in order to make it through the night, actually entertained. Boooo boring. Yay entertainment.

I like history. By that, I of course mean History I can relate too. You know, western cultural stuff. Cough cough.

But hey, old Egyptian history is super close to that. It is like, pre-Greece. Similar to Mesopotamian stuff. So it kind of fits the narrative.

Of course, The Pyramid probably doesn’t have any real history in it. But it might make reference to pharaohs, or some important event. As long as it tries. As Above, So Below was a horror movie that tried to add some historical elements into it, along with a couple decent fear moments. So I am definitely giving The Pyramid a chance. As long as it isn’t aliens.

(Sighs) It’s always aliens.

And you thought there was nothing new to discover about pyramids. But thanks to science! and technology! they have actually found a NEW Egyptian pyramid. Who are they? Dr. Nora Holden (Ashley Hinshaw) and Dr. Miles Holden (Denis O’Hare), a father/daughter Archaeologist team. This pyramid was discovered underneath the sand, so it is way older than the other pyramids. Old enough to be buried! Oh man! The discoveries!

So many discoveries, that they are making a documentary about its discovery, the digging up, and hopefully its juicy/sexy insides. Sunni (Christa Nicola) will be the director/star, and she wants an emmy. Also has Fitzie (James Buckley) as a camera man. They even have a 3 million dollar robot thing to walk the halls before anyone else and discover traps, or pit falls, or whatever.

But unfortunately, Egypt is having unrest. A lot of political turmoil, so the crew is going to have to stop before they can go inside. Well that sucks. Maybe they can just quickly have the robot go in real quick to get some footage before they wait for some time. Maybe they can quickly go in there to get the robot once it breaks down. Maybe they can get out once they get lost and walls seem to be closing in around them. Maybe…

Also featuring Amir K and Faycal Attougui.

My daddy always said, “If you find a human size hole, you should crawl through it. For Science.”

This film for the most part is of the “found footage” genre. We have a couple cameras for documentary / science reasons, and a robot with cameras! But also, a lot of scenes are just regular camera scenes too. It kind of just flowed how it wanted to (See picture 2), and went with a regular camera to make a better movie. And you know what, good for them. End of Watch did that, and End of Watch was fucking amazing.

But the found footage I don’t think was done great either. Annoying in all the wrong (right? How do I make this sentence?) places.

The actors weren’t too great. Seemed like another case of smart people, dumb decisions.

But overall, I still think the movie was okay. Why? Because I really like “the villain”. The Pyramid has secrets. I will just say we aren’t stuck with aliens, nor are we stuck with some lame mummy. They at least attempted to do something cool with this movie. They tried something, by golly! And the reveal didn’t wait for the last five minutes or anything, we got to see it multiple times and the reveal didn’t ruin the scare. The scares were okay. Not fantastic, just okay. Much like how I think about the overall movie.

One word, relatively new, much fear.

Unfriended. How could someone be so cruel? Don’t you know they’re human too? …I’m gonna watch it anyways.

Sure, one could look at the title of the movie and the plot and think, “Yep, just another shitty modern horror.”

But for some odd reason I found it drawing. I thought it could have been made for me. But then again, I enjoyed the movie Smiley, which was also about modern tech things and a killer. Unfriended is already such a cold term, I can’t wait to see how they make fun of it.

And if you hate the title, you have to admit that it is better than the original name for the movie: Cybernatural.

Who would have thought the new face of evil was previously a sign of laziness?

Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman) killed herself. She was a pretty, relatively popular high school girl. But then she got super drunk one night at a party as a junior. Someone posted a video of her drunk, including the embarrassing after math and suggested she kill herself. Sure enough, she did it.

But that is old news. That is the past. That was a year ago today.

We should instead talk about sex. Because what is the point of skype if not helping take your long distance relationship to the next level? Or close distance relationship with over protective parents. Blaire Lilly (Shelley Hennig) and Mitch Roussel (Moses Jacob Storm) are teasing each other when they get forced into a giant Skype call with all of their friends. Fatass Ken (Jacob Wysocki), prep looking Adam (Will Peltz), and party girl Jess (Renee Olstead).

But hey, there is some glitchy other user in their chat. Some billie person. It can’t get kicked out, it stays when they restart the call, and it has no profile picture. Oh well, must be a glitch.

What is not a glitch is Laura randomly messaging a few people. Someone must have hacked her account and is trying to scare her friends. That’s not cool. Unless of course, it is a spirit doing all of this, and wanting to possess the group of friends into committing suicide. But that’d be awkward. Also there is Val (Courtney Halverson), as the random stuck up bitch other popular girl.

Sexting is so middle school.

Did I mention this entire movie takes place on Blaire’s computer screen? She has a mac of course, a nice laptop. Has the Spotify, the Skypes, the iMessage, the Facebooks, the ChatRoulette. She has it all. And the entire film, again, is through the screen. You might be thinking one of two things: Modern Family did it first. And that sounds terrible.

Technically, the Modern Family episode came out before this one, but this film was released a long time ago in film festivals. So who knows if Modern Family even knew that. As for the other fact, no, it is totally entertaining. Mostly thanks to the directors incredible attention to detail.

First of all, the movie is set in real time. The clock in the top right corner moves every minute, and by golly, it matches a real minute. The computer screen is incredibly realistic, as are Blaire’s typing speed, cursor movements, and literally just tabs open/search history. Everything. It feels realistic as fuck. Shit, there are even a couple hidden jokes I found in it.

At the same time, some of the attention to detail seems to be a bit lazy. For instance, previous messages randomly disappearing despite tabs never actually getting closed. There was one moment when Blaire had to share her screen in the Skype, which I guess is doable. Cool. But she never unshared it then did some awkward things after the fact, but it had closed by that point and that didn’t become a plot point for her being dumb. Long amounts of time with no one talking on Skype while Blaire does something else. Maybe she takes off her headphones during these moments, I don’t know. Things like that. The details are both infuriating at times and almost awe-inspiring. A lot of them they can just blame on computer ghost/hacker shit though, I guess.

Oh yeah, and this movie would have scared the poop out of me if I didn’t already poop four times that day. A huge part of it is the noise I would say. So many scares come from sudden noises. Incoming messages, Skype calls, wall posts, typing noises. All of it. Ahh. I never really want to hear a Skype call noise ever again, so I hope I can change it. I had to sit with my hands over my face so many times thanks to knowing that something fucked up was about to happen and I didn’t think my body could handle it.

Unfriended is new and modern, it has a unique enough twist, it is perfect at its 80something minute length, it is scary and tense, and it is overall a frightening time. Now excuse me while I burn the laptop that I wrote this review on.

Starting to have an official spot for Giveaways!