Month: September 2015

I am happy to say that before I watched The D Train, I knew absolutely nothing about it. I had only briefly seen the poster/DVD cover. Enough to recognize the two leads.

I actually thought this was a war movie. Again, quick glance at the cover, I thought the arm in the background was like, a gun strapped to the back. I thought they had just won a war!

Or you know, a movie about trains or something. A lonely New York meet up that turns into friendship. Fuck it, let’s just go into it.

Quit yelling. I’m trying to relax on my couch, far away from war and trains.

Dan Landsman (Jack Black) is a weird dude. But we will get into that. First let us talk about his normal tendencies.

Dan has a wife (Kathryn Hahn), a 15 year old boy (Russell Posner) and a baby girl. He has a boring job doing something and has been there for awhile. It isn’t particularly rewarding, but it pays the bills. His boss (Jeffrey Tambor) is an older guy who doesn’t like new technology and is generally swell.

And he is the self-appointed head of the Alumni committee for his high school class. The others (Kyle Bornheimer, Henry Zebrowski, more) don’t agree with a head, but whatever, they have a 20 year old reunion to prep for. No one seems to give a shit and turn out is looking low. Things turn around when Dan finds out that the coolest kid in school, Oliver Lawless (James Marsden), has finally made it after all this time. He was an actor and wanted to be a big star and now he is in a national television commercial about sun block!

OH MAN SO COOL. He thinks if he can convince Oliver to come to the reunion, more people will show up, and he will be a hero! He just needs to fly out to LA to convince him in person. So he lies about it as a business trip to his boss and wife, just to hang out and party with Oliver.

And Oliver is a great dude. They get drunk, they get happy, they dance, they flirt with women and Dan is able to convince Oliver to show up!

And also, something very different happens. Something that has never happened to Dan before. Something that will make his trip home and subsequent weeks leading up to the reunion very weird and uncomfortable.

Enough to drive a mediocre middle aged man to drinking? You betcha!

From the description, it looks like The D Train can be a very uncomfortable movie from start to finish. An average dude in a boring life, put into a super liberal party setting, with a man he has strangely idealized for decades. He has always wanted to live vicariously though him, but now he has the opportunity to seem cool and actually celebrate with the man. Life is wonderful!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t an uncomfortable movie, just a boring one. Sure, there was that one scene. And like, a good scene at the reunion, and maybe another good joke. And that is it.

The best thing really about this movie is that it was a different sort of character for Jack Black. Not different like Bernie, but more just regular dude. So good job Jack, diversifying your resume. That will be good help in the future assuming you need it. Marsden unfortunately adds nothing to the film. Hahn does a pretty good exasperated housewife though, sick of her husband’s shit.

The plot isn’t even that bad. With some work, better dialogues, and better…just scenes in general, it could have been a solid movie. Instead this movie is about a nickname and a dream gone wrong, and is completely forgettable.

Surprise, surprise. That was my emotion when I left The Maze Runner movie last year. Going into it, I thought I would hate it. I thought it would just be another terrible young adult movie adaptation that a company wanted to film to get that sweet post-Twilight money. It had a laughably bad trailer with some cringe dialogue, but I left it excited and wanting more.

Sure, I knew that whatever happened, there should be no more mazes after the first one, so calling it Maze Runner anything afterwards doesn’t make a lot of sense. Blame that on the author not coming up with a better series name.

This time, for Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (dropping the “The” was a solid choice), I am going in basically blind. I haven’t seen trailers for it or TV spots. I just want it to surprise me with whatever else is going to happen. This review is also so late because I wasn’t able to attend the press screening for the film, because I instead saw The Visit. Regardless of what has happened, this franchise has gotten some money out of me.

They don’t have to tie me up like these poor saps. Besides, I don’t carry loose change.

Remember where we left off? We got out of the fucking maze, that’s what. The evil Corporation WCKD (Wicked) who was testing on them have been killed and resistance group has saved them. Yay!

Or are they really the good guys? The first film already implied they were bad, so things shouldn’t be too weird to assume they are indeed bad. Even though they are being taken care of by the wonderful Janson (Aidan Gillen). The surviving crew is immediately debriefed, checked up physically, and welcomed into the facility. Forget who we have? Well, there is our main dude Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), the certifiable GOAT Minho (Ki Hong Lee), the minority, Frypan (Dexter Darden), and the sweet one, Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster). Yeah, I too am surprised at how few of them made it out. I really thought there was more.

Oh yeah, and then there is the woman, Teresa (Kaya Scodelario). She doesn’t have a lot of personality so I forget about her.

Needless to say, bad things happen at the new facility, so Thomas and Crew end up escaping. They gain the help of Aris (Jacob Lofland) and Winston (Alexander Flores), who helm them realize this place isn’t good. They are collecting kids from all over these mazes for some …wicked…reason.

Now they have to go into The Scorch, the name for the desert, and survive against the elements. And against the Cranks, which are like the infected humans that they are immune to. Basically zombies. Then they basically go from area to pre-established area, each with their own notable leader, who have their own new world agendas. They are kind of like a fleeting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Along the way they will meet Rosa Salazar, Giancarlo Esposito, Alan Tudyk, Barry Pepper, Lili Taylor, and of course, Patricia Clarkson.

But first, they are going to get sand in every nook and cranny.

At over two hours, The Scorch Trials thankfully tries to fit as much as possible onto the screen for us viewers. So much that it is hard to imagine the film as a whole. I’d rather break it down, which means I am going to make another Likes and Dislikes list. Last time I did this was with Avengers: Age of Ultron!

Likes:

• Right off the bat, things get tense and there is quite a lot of action in this movie.
• The soundtrack can keep you mostly on the edge of your seat!
• The Cranks/zombies are an interesting add on to the series. They are fast zombies basically and it was totally unexpected. Some of there scenes were quite terrifying, helping blend this into a more hardcore Dystopian future film.
• For the most part, beautifully shot with great camera work.

Dislikes:

• The intelligence of the characters would not be consistent. They would do something really smart, but then something terribly stupid just so the plot could lazily move forward. The standing around during the sewer scene is a prime example.
• There continues to be very cringeworthy dialogue.
• The film feels like it doesn’t have a cohesive story to follow. Just a bunch of small barely connected parts. And like I said, the main characters don’t feel special, they just feel like they are meandering in the middle of something way bigger than themselves and they are insignificant.
• One scene in particular where a character does a “Noble Suicide” because he is going to turn into a Crank. How? By shooting himself in the head and telling everyone to leave him alone an keep walking. Not only was I pretty sure they were out of bullets by then, but also what the fuck, you are about to die, you don’t need to keep the gun. Just kill yourself so they can get the gun back. There are fucking zombies out there.
• The glass breaking window scene was as nonsensical as they come.
• Teresa was so useless. She was like an emotionless blog used to move the plot forward, usually thanks to Thomas trying to do something for her.

This may read as being a bit nitpicky, but in all honesty, there were a lot of cool moments, and a lot of bad minor or stupid moments. After a second movie I feel like I should actually know more about what happened on this planet. If there is one movie left I feel like I should know more about their overall end goal by now, instead of running around like headless chickens.

I was pretty sure I would have given this film a 2 when I started writing it, because at least I was entertained in the film and I was even scared at points. But a disappointing finale, along with a lot of scenes that made me tilt my head in confusion, leads me to realize this is poorly put together. When your film starts to break down once you think back on events and plot points, that is never a good sign.

Hell, this is the same reason why the last Transformers movie got a 1 instead of a 2. Plot doesn’t hold up. Hopefully the third movie can restore some sort of awe and greatness to this franchise. And, you know, not just be a spray painted golden turd.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {DVD}.

When I grew up, I feel like I went and did sleepovers all the time. Probably just selective memory happening. And you know, barely remembering elementary school things anyways.

I didn’t realize until later that it is probably used as a way to give the parents a break from their kids for a whole night. And then the other parent would pay it back later and watch the kids overnight at their house. Plus, the kids think it is awesome. It is a win-win-win.

The Overnight is about a sleepover for little kids. And by that, I mean a kid sleepover from the parents point of view. And by that, I mean the parents are also sleeping over. And by that I should clarify that no actual sleep happens. In fact, the kids aren’t actually relevant at all in this movie. The beginning of my intro was merely a red herring to fill up space. Suck it!

This photo is also a red herring, as no one in the movie is actually Amish.

Being an adult in a new place is weird. Making new friends can be weird, because no one knows how to do it as an adult. Your friends become people you work with or that you somehow meet due to your kids knowing. You can’t just show up to a group of people in a bar, say you are new in town, and be instantly accepted. Like a kid could do on a playground. You just can’t.

That is the situation Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Schilling) find themselves in. They have a young boy and have recently moved to California. They have no friends, which is especially bad on Alex who might just be a stay at home dad. I can’t remember. Either way, AJ does get invited to some kids birthday party, so they attempt to go and meet new people to have new friends.

Well those people are dicks and Alex doesn’t talk to them. But a boy starts playing with his kid, so that is good. And the dad of the boy notices Alex and Emily so he does the responsible adult thing and introduces himself. Kurt (Jason Schwartzman), who thinks Alex and Emily are just swell, so he invites them over on this very same night for a pizza dinner they had planned. That way their kids can be better friends and Kurt can tell them about the area. Yay play dates and pizza!

They soon after meet Charlotte (Judith Godrèche), his French-esque wife, and everyone hits it off great! Good food, drinks, and conversation. But Charlotte and Kurt realize that our newbies are overstressed from the kid at home and recommend letting him sleep for a bit while they have fun, that way they can get a nice break for awhile. Sounds good. But as the night goes on and the alcohol continues, things get a little bit weirder and a little bit naked-er.

Yep, we’re about to talk about penises everyone.

That’s right. The male human penis. Not really a staple of cinema yet, but it definitely appears in comedy probably the second most across all genres. That is of course, after the porn genre. If you haven’t picked up my not so subtle text, I am heavily implying that both Scott and Schwartzman drop trou for the whole world to see in this film.

But that is only kind of true. Sure, in the movie, we get dick. But we get fake, prosthetic dicks. Neither dicks in the movie are the real actor dicks. But they sure are realistic, so it might as well be their real dicks.

Speaking of dicks, this movie is about a bunch of actually good people (not dicks, get it?), but the couples are just experiencing relationship problems. So of course the weird events that begin to unravel involve their bodies and their own desires, but not in the creepy “Wait, is this just a porno?” way. Everything is a lot more natural. I won’t go out and say realistic, but natural.

The Overnight is not a rip roaring comedy with tons of gags and slap stick and poo jokes. No, it is just putting a relatively normal couple of people in what most people would describe as bizarre night of events. At times it is deep, loving, and sensitive — none of those are supposed to be read as innuendo.

Overall it is a well acted film and my only major complaint would be that not enough ended up happening throughout the film. A lot of personal conversations, a good amount of amusing moments, and enough real moments to let this film be a relatively unique experience.

Good news everybody! Another 50 reviews down on my website, another Milestone Review ready to announce.

Some people tell me, “Hey, Gorgon Reviews, why do you do a longer ridiculous review to celebrate every 50 reviews? No one gives a shit about 1450 or 1100.” Well, first, that is harsh. And 50 reviews, at 5 a week, means I just did 10 weeks of hard work and I’d like to do something fun.

Sure, once I get to 1500, I could start doing them less often. But there are so many supposedly bad movies from the early 2000’s that I haven’t gotten to watch, and they deserve my attention and love! Which is why I will treasure review 1450 (that is today), just as much as review 1500 (in about ten weeks).

Today I am looking at The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, a film I knew was ridiculous when I was a kid. Spy Kids was one thing, this one was just sillypants sillypants. But I realized that there is a connection between this film and some of my other Milestone Reviews, and connections are fantastic. That’s right, a member of Twilight is involved in these films, which is all the more reason to watch this movie.

And I will dissect it like the strangest most unethical science experiment.

Max (Cayden Boyd) is our hero, and he is neither shark nor made of lava. No, he is just a boy in middle school or something. He keeps a dream journal. And sometime early into the school year, let’s say first week, he tells his totally true story about summer vacation.

You know, how he met Sharkboy (Taylor Lautner). A boy who was raised by sharks since he was like six, letting him gain gills, fins, claws, crazy teeth and everything. Self proclaimed King of the Ocean. He is friends with Lavagirl (Taylor Dooley), from Planet Drool. She is made of Lava and can shoot lava from her hands.

Anyways, they went back to Planet Drool at some point in the summer and he hasn’t seen them since.

Foreshadowing.

Guess what. His class totally doesn’t believe him. Because he is of course full of rotten cow shit. Mr. Elictricidad (George Lopez) wants him to redo the assignment I think. And this kid named Linus (Jacob Davich). He is a dick and picks on him with other kids and they steal his dream journal.

Don’t worry. One kid believes him, Marissa (Sasha Pieterse), so they are practically dating. She is also Mr. Electricidad’s daughter.

But if he bangs the teacher’s daughter, how will he also get with Lavagirl?!

Needless to say, his parents are also sick of his shit. His dad and mom (David Arquette, Kristin Davis) are probably going to get divorced because of his shitty dreams and how much he thinks they are real despite being 11 or something. They ignore his pleas in regards to his dream journal and told him to forget that stuff.

Next day at school, giant electrical storm hits and everything gets scary. No worries. Sharkboy and Lavagirl show up, much to everyone’s surprise. So they take Max on a shark rocketship up to Planet Drool, openly acknowledging that he should know how to get there since he made it all up.

Yes, Sharkboy and Lavagirl know they exist purely in Max’s head, in his day dreaming world, and they aren’t having an existential crisis. Even with this knowledge, Max doesn’t realize that everything that is happening is hogwash.

Not even magical hogwash, just normal dream based hogwash.

Oh hey, Planet Drool. Things are not as they should be. This is where all of his dreams and goals live, including the unfinished ones. Guess one, there are electrical storms here too!

Oh no! A bad guy, with a TV head named Mr. Electric (very original dreams) is ruining the place! He even has all the other kids on a roller coaster forever, keeping them awake. If they sleep, they can ruin dream world with their own dreams.

So they save the kids and battle Mr. Electric and lose terrible, putting them in the Dream Graveyard. I wish I was making this shit up.

“Okay, Mr. Lopez, just say all your lines really close to a camera lens. Trust us.” – Producer

With the help of a never finished robot named Tobor (Also Lopez), they escape there and go to a happy place of milk and cookie dreams. They realize that someone else’s dreams must also be in Planet Drool making things go to shit. Mr. Electric isn’t the only bad guy.

Lavagirl and Sharkboy feel incomplete. They don’t know where their future is going and are missing parts of their past. They need answers! But Max doesn’t remember everything. What a fuckwit. He also apparently has powers of his own, but again, he doesn’t remember it.

However, they eventually convince him to take a nap, in his dream. Sharkboy sings a terrible song. Dream dream dream dream dream, and note that they are clearly already in a dream, and he has to go to sleep in said dream.

He’s got the magic touch, some would say.

Needless to say, his quick nap gives some answers. They also find out who is behind most of the negativity. Some dick named Minus (Yes, it is Linus), who has his dream journal. Bad news for Minus is that they realized that Max is the Day Dreamer officially, so he can imagine things on the spot and they can come true.

Sure, it took Lavagirl and Sharkboy back and forth going to the brink of death for him to realize this shit, but it happened. So eventually Minus realizes he is being a dick and he is cool again.

This does not save the day. Mr. Electric gives no fucks and he says he will destroy Max where he can’t protect himself. So he goes back to Earth.

Of course he did fuck up the entire dream journal first. Whattadick, Linus, Minus, Bo-Binus.

Back on Earth, Mr. Electric intensifies the electrical storm, causing tornadoes and things start to fall apart. Mr. Electricidad is offended by the creation, since it has to have been Max’s dream come to life. But whatever. Deal with it.

Somehow Sharkboy and Lavagirl arrive to help save the day. They also make Max’s parents realize they still love each other and family is important. All in the same disaster!

I forgot to mention that on Planet Drool, there was also an Ice Princess (Marissa) with a Crystal Heart. Their plan was to find the Crystal Heart to freeze time, to allow them enough time to fix the planet. It turned out to not be too necessary. But Max brought it to Earth, so they use it to defeat Mr. Electric instead.

This is where everyone learns that dreams are what you make of them, and you should make them come true.

If you want to be the lead in an all Shark riverdancing experience, then by golly, make that shit happen!

I have a hard time believing that Robert Rodriguez, director of Planet Terror, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Sin City, thought in any capacity that this movie was decent. Yes, it came out in 2004. Yes, CGI was not as good as it is today. But this is beyond bad. This is like a $10 used bin in Wal-Mart CGI, if that existed.

The main draw to this movie would have been it’s 3D, I guess. But again, 2004 was well before Avatar came out and they changed the way 3D worked in theaters. This was probably shitty red/blue sunglasses 3D, so I am sad that I didn’t get to experience the 3D with my version. It was clear what they wanted to do with the 3D with the cheesy scenes and I am sure it came across just as bad.

Not to over-scrutinize a shitty kids movie but…the plot makes no sense and seems to fall apart the further it tries to play it out. The acting is bad on all fronts, adults and kids alike. Lautner was brought in because as a youth he was really good at martial arts, and all the flipping and jumping was actually him. He still is good at that now, but it was more impressive when he was like ten. Who would have thought that a kid with the shitty rap lullaby video would turn into a weird sex symbol.

If you hate visual messes on the screen, you will also hate this film. The entire dream world landscape was just ugly and bad.

Yeah. I may be harsh on this. But again, Rodrgiuez must know this is terrible, but he did it anyway for the lols. That is the only explanation for this mess of a pointless film.

The internet can be a dark and scary place. And that is based only on my limited experience as a regular person. But in reality, I have only seen the surface of what the internet really offers. So I can sound cool, I will start using the lingo and refer to regular internet as Surface Web for that reason! I watched Dope, which means I know what I am about to talk about.

But there is a darker side of the internet. A deeper side. A Deep Web, if you will. This part of the internet has “non-indexed content”, or pages that cannot be found through simple searching. In this area, a lot of fun stuff can happen, including: anonymity. That is one of the biggest complaints about our lives. If we want to remain anonymous, we have to basically go off grid to do so. Everything tracks us, our phones, our search history, everything. But the deep web is where people can just do things that they want to do without worry.

Sure, some of those things might be very illegal activities, like hiring hit men or child pornography. But there is also less serious stuff, like simple selling of drugs or other contraband, and just a community of people who can be honest with one another. Deep Web is a documentary that explores just what is the Darknet and talks about Silk Road, a famous website for drugs and more, that went to trial recently. And interestingly enough, it was directed by Alex Winter, aka Bill from Bill and Ted. Admit it, you were wondering what he was doing with his life.

To make things even better, the documentary is narrated by Keanu Reeves himself.

Bill and Ted’s Darknet Journey!

Enough joking, this is SERIOUS BUSINESS. After all drugs are bad right? Well, not if you listen to like, 5 of the documentaries I have reviewed (And meant to review). Silk Road was a place founded to buy and sell goods with anyone around the world, using bitcoin, an untraceable (if you do it right), currency. It was the safest and best way to get drugs and is one of the biggest reasons Bitcoins became so valuable.

It then goes into the sites eventual take down by the FBI, how they did it, and how they captured the supposed creator or owner of the site, Dread Pirate Roberts aka Kirk Ulbricht.

Of course, naturally, it then goes into the trial, the investigation, shady things that happened and very shady things that happened. This trial ended this year, so it is recent. The point it makes is that the trial wasn’t fair, and the government did illegal things and broke a lot of real life privacy laws to do what it did. Is that guy really the Dread Pirate Roberts? Hell if I know. Probably. But doesn’t mean that I would be fine with the government stepping so far outside their laws to catch him.

It is just a snowball effect. If it is fine with one person, it is fine with everyone, and it is more fuel for the NSA to keep their sails on course.

Now, despite all of this, I still think the documentary went way too long on the trial information. Halfway through it, I was finding myself bored and more susceptible to distractions. A lot of pauses started to happen as I cared less and less. I can agree something sucks, and I can say it started out great, but I wanted a bit more information on Deep Web and other things going on there. Over 75% of this is actually just about the Silk Road and the trial, but damn it, the documentary wasn’t called Silk Road.

For the most part, I tend to avoid films that begin with the word Love. I did a theme week a few years ago watching a whole lot of films that began with Love, and for the most part I was disappointed. Here’s a snapshot of those films and review ratings as simple reminder. Basically, since I watched Love and Other Drugs, no other Love film got close. A few strange ones did a good job, but for the most part, they were all meh, bad, or shit.

But new movies keep coming out, and occasionally they start with love. I still don’t mean that in a story telling sense. As I review new movies, I will of course still watch them, but I won’t actively seek out a film with this strange specification. Regardless, I was slightly interested to see Love & Mercy.

That is because this bad boy is about the “greatest rock album” of the 20th century, Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys Brian Wilson!

Less surfing, more strange sounds and a journey through one’s mind.
So… mind surfing.

In the mid-1960’s, The Beach Boys were everywhere. In 4 years they had already released 10 albums, a lot of them about surfing. They were world famous, tours, money, all that fun stuff. But Brian Wilson (Paul Dano) wanted something more. None of them actually ever surfed, it all felt fake. He was a composer at heart and had a sound in his head that he needed to record and let the world hear!

So he didn’t tour with the group to focus on their next album. He pulled out all the strings, getting great orchaestra players to figure out the tunes and sounds without any words for most of the music yet. And he did what he always wanted to do, to make what would become the Pet Sounds album, despite all the naysayers.

Also, it is the mid-1980’s. Brian Wilson (John Cusack) is mostly alone, on a lot of drugs, and under the guidance of a caregiver Dr. Landy (Paul Giamatti). He cannot see his kids, he is under constant watch and other people make all of his main decisions in life.

His life sucks. His life might have always sucked. But there is some hope, in Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), a cars saleswoman he meets one day. They start to date and she starts to see how bad his situation is. She wants to get him help because she is starting to like Wilson, who seems to only be a shell of a person at this time.

Oh and I guess some other Beach Boys are in this movie. Played by Kenny Wormald, Graham Rogers, Jake Abel and Brett Davern. They have various speaking parts in this movie and some of them butt heads with Brian when they hear his album concept. And of course, Bill Camp gets to play the dad of the Wilson kids and former manager and not former mean person.

Sometimes you just wake up in the morning and think, “Fuck, even my art is beach themed.”

What is this, the year of the musical biopic? A lot of them tend to be terrible VH1 Behind the Music level films that tell a story we have all heard before with some sweet tunes. But 2015 has given us Love & Mercy, which you know I will call amazing, and Straight Outta Compton, which was definitely amazing. I would like to thank Get On Up from August 2014 for this. It was a good musical biopic, not on the level of the above films, but better than average. It seems like the genre can do no wrong!

Why is this one fantastic? Thankfully it is for multiple reasons. First off, the acting from Dano and Cusack is incredible, yet very very different. Yes, they play the same man about twenty years apart, but they are very different times in his life where he has a very different psyche. In Dano, you can see the artistic genius at show but also see how he starts to crack and fall apart despite the currently good events in his life. For Cusack, he plays a more typical drugged up/mentally ill person trying to make his way in the world. While a good performance, from an acting stand point it didn’t seem to be breaking new ground like it did for Dano.

Again, Cusack was actually really good in this, but to me he was overshadowed by Dano who was really really good in this. And besides, it was a bit hard to imagine Cusack as anyone other than just a bit more out of touch Cusack.

But that is just the first reason! The other reason comes from the plot and accuracy. I, like a lot of people, would love it if the bio films were more all encompassing instead of focusing on a few events. But they picked great (read: sad) times in Wilson’s life to really tell the story of what he has overcome and what he has accomplished. But to tell a coherent parallel story always takes some gusto. This is the first major movie directed by Bill Pohlad, who has produced a lot of great films. It is a very impressive first outing, an incredible work for him and the writers who pieced together this movie.

God Only Knows what we would have done without the Pet Sounds album and eventually this film.

Circle Circle. Dot Dot. Everyone knows that is what you need to get your cootie shot. Except for my wife, who asked why I drew boobs on her arm.

No one wants Cooties. They are gross and carried by other gross kids. Fuck those asshats, trying to spread their germs on you. Or worse, COOTIES.

When I heard they were making a horror comedy about actual cooties and how the outbreak starts, I will admit I was interested. Zombie movies are trying very hard to be original now, so why not make a whole lot of kid zombies? That adds a new dynamic, morally and comedically, with lots of room for potential. It makes sense, if you think about it. Kids in general have potential, so Zombie Kids should have potential as well!

Although, with their shorter arms the whole thing just might be child’s play.

Clint (Elijah Wood) is a fancy book author who used to live in NYC. But times are tough, and he is living with his mother. It is the start of summer and he has lucked his way into a summer school teaching gig, as a substitute. Anything to pass the time, I guess. If anything it can get him out of his slump. He is trying to write a horror book about a possessed boat and he is only about a chapter in.

Needless to say, the kids at summer school are kind of dicks. But at least the teachers are mostly not dicks.

Well, Wade (Rainn Wilson), the athletic director is a dick. But everyone else is eccentric or fine. Oh hey, there is Lucy (Alison Pill), who he went to school with. She seems relatively normal.

Other teachers include people played by Jack McBrayer, Nasim Pedrad, and Leigh Whannell. And let’s not forget the crosswalk guard Jorge Garcia and the janitor Peter Kwong!

Anyways. Some sort of infected chicken nugget causes it all. Girl eats it, starts getting sick. She bites another kid, and soon, kids are running around the school, biting and attacking anyone in site. Fucking kid zombies.

As for some of the kids, we had Patriot (Cooper Roth), the biggest dick in the school, Dink (Miles Elliot), his lackie, Tamra (Morgan Lily), patient zero, and Calvin (Armani Jackson), a kid who didn’t get bit and gets to hang out with the adults! There was another girl that hung out with them, but I forget a name. And of course, Ian Brennan as the normally vice principal, but for summer, principal! He wrote the narrator of Glee.

Here’s what you missed last time on Cooties: Fuck these little fuckers!

Cooties ended up being a lot more graphic and violent than I expected. Horror Comedy usually means a lot more comedy and horror is more of a sub genre. Like, “Oh yeah, there are zombies, so there is a horror element, but we are all just hear for the laughs.” No, the zombie kids end up being a bit scary and definitely very gruesome in their attacks on the teachers and parents at Fort Chicken. Add in the booming loud noises department and I was constantly taken aback. Yes, they made loud noises to scare you, and yes, that is lame. But they were still unexpected.

I actually had a mostly enjoyable time with this film. The banter in particular between Wood and Wilson was the highlight of the film, along with one of the teachers being ridiculously smart in biology out of nowhere. A lot of it however falls apart with the ending. They just don’t stick it. It is as if the writer/director didn’t know where to take the story. With only 10 or so minutes left, our characters were in a new situation. No real time to fully appreciate the situation, just enough time to showcase something cool and end with a cliffhanger.

The movie is also afraid to kill off the teachers. Anyone who seems to have lines is encased with plot armor. The kids lose any real scare when they turn into just things that run at them just as doors are closing. At least early on there was mass chaos, kids chasing other kids, teachers getting fucked over who were outside, etc.

Despite everything, Cooties was entertaining in ways I didn’t expect, and pretty decent on the joke department. I would watch a sequel in the future, should it happen, with some amount of optimism. But in all honesty, despite unresolved story lines, I don’t think a sequel has anywhere it could go that would set it apart from other zombie films.

“You know what your website needs?” I hear these words all the time. People offering suggestions for genres, or movies to review. I like suggestions, so this is great. “Your website needs more horror films from other countries.” Well, that is a very specific request. But let’s do it.

Now the person who requested that most likely meant something Asian. They have a lot of crazy scary horror films, if I am to believe my friends. Since I am afraid of scary things, I never really jumped into that subset. So instead, let’s take it slow and dive into European Horror. Specifically, Austrian.

Oh hey, look at that. Austria’s official submission for Best Foreign Language Film in the next Oscars is actually a horror movie! That means it is either really good, or Austrian cinema is really lacking.

That is why I am looking at Goodnight Mommy, or, Ich Seh, Ich Seh (which of course does not mean Goodnight Mommy in German). I assume the name change in English is because they didn’t want their film compared to Foghorn Leghorn.

“Ah see, I see, sons, why are you wearing those masks?” – Foghorn Leghorn playing the mother.

Lukas (Lukas Schwarz) and Elias (Elias Schwarz) are twins, let’s say 11, living in a secluded and rich house in the Austrian countryside. There are farms nearby, woods, a lake, some caves, everything they could want. And eventually their mom (Susanne Wuest) comes home! Yay!

Or…or does she? Their mom was involved in some sort of accident. She had a lot of surgery on her face. So her face is wrapped up in bandages, with just her eyes and mouth visible. But the boys believe that something is different. Their mom is meaner and more distant. She has created a lot of rules that keep the boys mostly in home or right in the yard.

She doesn’t take them to town. She orders in food so they can just be alone for a good long time while she heals. They are alone and they are pretty certain that the lady is not their mother under the bandages. But with a dad out of the picture and no real ability to talk to anyone, what are a couple of kids supposed to do?

Also featuring Hans Escher as a priest and Elfriede Schatz and Karl Purker as two Red Cross workers.

“Why the hell aren’t you showing any faces in these pictures?” – You, the reader.

On the comment card after the film, I wrote “I am completely unsettled.” That wasn’t descriptive enough though. I should have also mentioned that my jimmies were in fact rustled as well. In all honesty, the best way to describe my emotions after the film can probably only be described as an emoji, but I don’t use those and I don’t want to find the appropriate one.

This is not a typical horror. It isn’t full of scares throughout, but a good chunk of the film is instead just a bit eerie. The directors spend a lot of time building the mood before things really start to hit the fan. There are glimpses of madness, but they are in short bursts, or told through dreams, letting the creepiness build.

But the in the entire third act, we reach the level of things you come to expect from the drama, and it pays off wonderfully.

Two aspects of this movie I really enjoyed. One, it is a mystery of sorts technically. But the mystery doesn’t seem to be that important. I imagine most people will “figure it out” before they finally reveal what is going on, but that doesn’t take away from the film. Once I had my guess, I enjoyed watching the film to look for hints or clues to see if what I thought was right. It was still a good experience.

Two, the directors used a lot of silence which is a lacking sound from most modern horrors. Silence is a wonderful tool that can be used to make a situation far more tense. And I don’t mean “Silence, followed by loud scary noise to make you jump!”. No, just silence to make the gross or scary a bit more realistic and thus a bit more darker.

I don’t want to see Goodnight Mommy again. My body couldn’t take it. I hope some of the more graphic scenes eventually leave my brain completely because of how brutal they were. Goodnight Mommy has to be a good horror film, because it scared me into wanting to see it a second time.

Today we are going to flash back to the year 2010. Animal Kingdom was nominated for a shit ton of awards, including an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Not only was it nominated for a shit ton of awards, it also won a shit ton of awards. It is a highly decorated, Australian crime drama film.

Fast forward a years, to the end of 2011. I saw Animal Kingdom in a Blockbuster on Blu-Ray for sale. I bought it, thinking it looked interesting and determined I would watch it shortly. I mean hey, it won awards, it must be good!

About a week later, I was about to make good on my promise, put it in the PS3 and started to watch it. Twenty minutes later, I had to stop the film as I realized I had no idea what I was doing, I was too busy multi tasking, and then I got tired and said I would get back to it eventually.

WELL EVENTUALLY IS FINALLY HERE TODAY, FOLKS! I have owned it on Blu-Ray for almost four whole years and I have wanted to watch it since I bought it. Clearly, there is no better film I could have picked to showcase on the last day of my Fucking Finally week.

Given the title, it should come to no surprise to you that everyone runs around on all fours.

This is a story about a family. A family who all happen to be criminals.

J (James Frencheville) lives with his Mum. Or at least he did until she OD’d. Now he is going to movie into a home with his grandmother, Smurf (Jacki Weaver). Don’t worry, that is just a nickname.

Also in the house are a few of his uncles! There is Baz (Joel Edgerton), good at robbing places. There is Craig (Sullivan Stapleton), who sells drugs and makes quite a living off of them. The oldest uncle, Pope (Ben Mendelsohn) is not in the home, he is in hiding and wanted by the police. And the youngest uncle is Darren (Luke Ford), who kind of just exists and does what he is told.

Somehow, with this noble family of thugs, a bad thing happens. Baz gets shot and killed by the police, for “no reason.” This pissed off the brothers. They wanted to get even and kill a couple cops. And using J to steal a car, they set up a trap and got their revenge.

Well, now J is involved with his family way deeper than he ever planned. Suddenly, a detective (Guy Pearce) is investigating them. They have a family lawyer (Dan Wyllie) telling him to not say a thing, everyone assuming he will be the weak link that gets them nailed.

J just wants to hang out with his girlfriend, Cole (Laura Wheelwright). And more importantly, he doesn’t want to die from crooked cops, angry family, or AIDS. He didn’t mention the last one, I am just assuming.

She has the grandma sweet guilt look down pat.

[Editor’s note: The ending of this review was lost hours after I originally wrote it. The ending of this review might be shit as I try to badly recreate it. It just sucks ya know?]

First and obvious question, was the film worth the wait? Yes, thank goodness, it was still an enjoyable film. Now I will admit, one of the main reasons I still wanted to watch it was because of Edgerton. I didn’t know who Edgerton was when I first tried to watch this movie because I hadn’t yet seen Warrior. But now that I know him, I want to see more of his movies. Little did I know his character would die in the first 15 minutes. Oh well.

Acting wise, everyone did a pretty good job. I am happy it focused a lot more on the drama aspects instead of an action movie. The first 45 minutes were a bit slower than I’d like, but the last hour was still captivating despite the lack of “pew pews.”

I am happy to report that I don’t regret buying the Blu-Ray. It adds some prestige to my shelf, as I don’t have many Australian films anyways.

Man on Wire is another documentary I have inexplicably just avoided. I blame the year it came out, 2008. Right now I am only watching things from 2010 and on! A five year window is very important for my website to feel modern and fresh. If you ever google recommended good documentaries, Man on Wire will be a relatively recent one always recommended, along with Grizzly Man.

Needless to say, it has almost always been on Netflix as well. A very easy documentary to get access to. There is also the ticking clock element here, with The Walk coming out in a couple weeks. You know, the movie version of this same old story that was probably only made because of how allegedly good the documentary was. I have to watch this, because a film based on a film is totally something I should do as a reviewer. Nothing like reading a book before the movie. And that is why I chose Man on Wire for my 4th day of Fucking Finally week.

The documentary is about Philippe Petit, an eccentric French man, who is really confident in his balance.

And he had dreams. He had dreams of showing the world how good he could balance. He was just a guy who had a type rope and would walk it in the park, getting better over time. But he wanted to reach for the stars. He wanted to tight rope walk on national land marks.

Kind of like my own goal to take a poop in every National park in America. It is just something that can drive someone to do weird things.

Hey look. A dude on a string!

How weird? Well, homeboy went and tight roped on top of the Notre Dame chapel thing. Kind of cool. But not that impressive. Then he went to Australia and did it on top of the Sydney Opera House. Boring. Gravity works differently in Australia because they are all upside down. We all know that.

Those things were all for the kids though. His real life long goal was the Twin Towers in NYC. He knew it when he first saw a picture of them in a magazine before they were finishing being built. That would be his greatest life moment. One day.

So he did it! Before they were even finished. With many months of planning, sneaking, with a group of friends and acquaintances to help him pull of the best art crime of the century. Man on Wire is his story, told by him and his friends (yes, still alive!), through reenactments and real footage.

And despite knowing the outcome (success, good job!), it is still somehow unbelievably tense. The music department does a fantastic job, along with the reenactments of keeping away from the guards in their many trips to make their plan work.

But the reason this documentary works is Philippe Petit himself. This man has a huge ego and is clearly in love with himself. But he is also giddy and excited in the telling of his own story (I would be too if it made me world famous and helped me not have to really work much again). His enthusiasm is contagious. He doesn’t even sit still for the interview, getting up several times to make a point more clear by acting things out.

Petit is the kind of guy you invite to a party, assuming you don’t care if it becomes all about him.

Petit is the kind of guy who can make a really good sandwich, and will share it with you, but only one type of sandwich.

Petit is the reason this documentary is so well loved and a fantastic thing to view and listen to. I hope Joseph Gordon-Levitt can pull him off!