Month: October 2015

Thank goodness this film is called Burnt. Based on the title and poster, of Bradley Cooper in a chef’s outfit, I can make inferences though. It is about a angry chef, that was wronged and he wants revenge. Maybe. He could be a Gordon Ramsay like character and his life could come crashing down.

I am happy it is called Burnt, because it used to be called Adam Jones. Movie titles where it is just a fictional characters name are already bad ideas, because they don’t mean anything. And if you character is Adam Jones? One of the plainest damn names of all time. It didn’t feature a cool name like Enrique, Pierre, or Sadrik. Just Adam. Jones.

Naming aside, it turns out Adam Jones wasn’t the original name either. The original name was Chef, and we all know why that title was eventually changed. Hell, the plot of Chef was the first thing I thought of when I heard the word Burnt. As long as it is as good as Chef, we should have nothing to worry about.

Hey, it has food in it! Another similarity!

If you didn’t already guess it, this film is about Adam Jones (Cooper)! Turns out Jones used to be a big deal. He lived in Paris and worked for one of the finest restaurants and eventually its head chef. While he was in Paris hear earned himself TWO Michelin Stars. Which is a pretty big fucking deal. But he did some bad things. He was on almost every narcotic, and it messed with his brain. He burned bridges and disappeared from his friends, his coworkers and lovers.

He actually put himself into exile. He shucked oysters for two or three years in New Orleans, getting clean, sober, and his focus back. And now he is ready to take the cooking world by storm again. This time: London. He wants the third Michelin Star. He wants to be one of the all time greatest chefs. He just has to try and reconcile a lot of relationships and find good talent to help him get there.

Obviously it won’t be easy to fix all the issues. He left Tony (Daniel Brühl), a Maître D’ and close friend, in a shambled restaurant. He ruined his good friend and former sous chef, Michel’s (Omar Sy) new restaurant. There is the daughter of his former mentor, Anne Marie (Alicia Vikander), who he was dating at the time. He has a now rival chef, Reece (Matthew Rhys), who used to be a coworker and is now a Three Star chef. And there is Helene (Sienna Miller), a great young chef who he wants to take under his wing, but refuses to work with the guy based on his reputation. She also has a daughter, Lily (Lexi Benbow-Hart).

Here are some more important-ish people. Some of his new chefs are played by Riccardo Scamarcio and Sam Keeley. Emma Thompson is a psychiatrist who has to monitor his blood for any narcotics. Uma Thurman plays a big deal food critic in London. And Sarah Greene is the Hostess for their new restaurant, basically a little Tony.

If I get a plate that has fingerprints on it, I send the whole thing back, personally.

It turns out that my guess on him just being Gordon Ramsey was pretty accurate. Not British Gordon Ramsay, but American shitty TV Gordon Ramsay. He owns like 3/4 of Fox reality shows at this point, and Fox has the worst reality shows. They commercial break at tense moments or cliff hangers, they encourage language just so it can be bleeped out, and half of the episode is a recap, or the intro/outros that transition with the commercial breaks, which tell you what you will see and what you just saw. Except this is a movie where adults can see adults do adult things, so we get to hear the glorious Fucks and so on. One long scene early on during a particularly upsetting service, it is like just a big Hell’s Kitchen break down.

But thankfully after that moment, it gets better. He becomes less Ramsay and more actual character. He has growth in this film, he does’t yell 100% of the time, but he maintains the same passion and drive throughout. It was nice to see his highs and his lows. It was not as nice to see his stunt double clearly in one scene, and in another scene, have his face bloody with a piece of skin falling off and in the next scene a minute or two later, magically only a small cut. Those were dumb moments.

I think Cooper did a good job leading a film that wasn’t a straight up comedy. His French was also surprisingly good, that is, to a lame American’s ears at least. Thankfully, the rest of the cast was really great as well. Let’s give them their own sentence, shall we?

Miller was good as the main female lead, and she wasn’t a typical romance pretty face – she rocked it. I usually see Brühl in more interesting roles, but he helped carry the film and the restaurant with his simplestic and seemingly perfect performance as the best Maitre D’. Sy I don’t see in a lot of films, but this is the second French-ish role. His character had nice surprise and intense moments. And Rhys was a limited role, but brought his own unique intensity to it all.

Yay acting! Are there cliches? Sure. But it is a well done cooking movie that doesn’t make one feel stupid for not knowing how the fancy foods work. It tells a fun story and doesn’t turn into a sappy romcom ever. Yay food!

I have not seen a lot of actual horror films made by Eli Roth. He is supposed to be a big name, but when I looked at his directed list I had seen…well, zero. I thought he had directed Aftershock, but I was wrong about that.

But I am sure I will watch Knock Knock at some point! That is some sort of Thriller and it is on VOD exactly when it was supposed to be. Apparently The Green Inferno was not as lucky. Made in 2013, it was supposed to come out in 2014, but shit hit the fan, and it got delayed over a year. Which is why Eli Roth even has two movies coming out only roughly a month apart.

Speaking of intro small talk, the film was clearly inspired by Cannibal Holocaust. That is a film from the 1980’s which introduced found footage before it was even a thing. It was very gruesome, realistic, and basically the same plot of some white people heading to the rain forest to get eaten. In fact, people insisted at the time that it must have been a snuff film! The title itself was the name of the movie that was being made in Cannibal Holocaust.

“Ooooh hair, my favorite.”

Being an activist in college is one of the easiest things to do with your free time. Once you walk through a quad or a pit or a hallway, you will find dozens of protests happening all around you. Every day. Guaranteed. All you have to do is stand around, do a chant, and maybe (maybe!) hold a sign.

Justine (Lorenza Izzo) is just a bright eyed and bushy tailed freshmen in NYC. She gets interested in the activism, but her roommate (Sky Ferreira) thinks the local group on campus is too crazy. They plan to go to Peru! There is a logging company who is illegally taking out trees and threatening to remove local tribes from their homes! They will dress up like loggers, tie themselves to trees and record their actions straight onto the internet. That should stop them from hurting them and get people to care about their group and hate on the one company. Sweet. That goes fine enough. Outside of spoiler stuff.

The real issue occurs when they drive to leave the jungle. Something goes wrong with their plane, killing half of the crew as it crash lands back into the jungle. This is where they are quickly found by the local friendly natives. Just kidding, they are all painted red and totally scary. They tranq those college students and capture them to bring them back to their village.

And guess what? You already know what. They eat people! Yay!

Now they have to figure out how to survive the tribe, run away, survive in the jungle, and get back to America as soon as they can. And guess what, again! They ruined their best chance of escape by making the logging company stop their illegal actions. Life is a bitch some times.

Starring Ramon Llao and Antonieta Pari as the main two village people. As for our other activists, we have Aaron Burns, Nicolas Martinez, Magda Apanowicz, Daryl Sabara, Kirby Bliss Blanton, and Ariel Levy as our leader.

“What? Tribal mom got your tongue?”

I have heard some of Roth’s movies have been very graphic and hard to watch. Why the fuck would I ever want to go back and watch Hostel if that is true? The first major torture porn right, outside of some Saw movies? Well, The Green Inferno, if you didn’t already guess it, was very graphic and hard to watch.

I had to look away numerous times throughout the movie, my stomach unwilling to negotiate with the eye terrorists on the screen. Eating people it turns out can be pretty gross. Unfortunate, if everyone was simply just eaten, that’d be a boring and just gross film. They do a good job of keeping more of the deaths diverse so that it doesn’t get stagnant. Although watching that boy from the Spy Kid movies felt very weird for me.

As a horror film, it did its job in terms of grossing/creeping out the viewer. It definitely isn’t boring, outside of some of the earlier moments before they make it to the other country. It is super violent and should make you uncomfortable.

But it feels all very cheap at the same time. Overall the film lacks a lot of substance. It is trying to make a statement about social justice types, or America butting into things, or…something else. It just does it in a terrible way. “Don’t do this, or you will get eaten by the natives.” Cultural exploitation aside (which I do not care about), it isn’t a strong link and ruins any message it was trying to make.

For those who like gross stuff, this is your movie. If you want anything besides that, well…uh, not this movie then.

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

Insidious: Chapter 3? CHAPTER 3? This is why we can’t have nice horror movies in America. Gotta fucking franchise everything.

James Wan has even gone down this road before. He directed Saw and watched it drivel into a sorry state of a franchise. He did The Conjuring, which was great, and that followed up by a terrible Annabelle from someone else. This franchise from the first to Chapter 2, I have always found it just okay, but at least he directed the sequel. He didn’t let someone Saw the fuck out of it.

Until now. Now it is directed by his writing friend, Leigh Whannell. So Wan hasn’t completely abandoned it for the super hero films he is now directing, but it is still just another film series that doesn’t need any new material.

What made the news of this sequel even more disappointing was finding out that it was a prequel. Prequels sound great because they can answer questions directly that might have been brought up about the past. But Paranormal Activity 3 tried to do this method and all it did was waste our times and actually answer close to nothing.

Good. A new face to the franchise who won’t affect anything at all.

Hey, that new face has a name. Quinn (Stefanie Scott)! And she has an issue. Her mom died awhile ago and now she thinks her mom might be trying to contact her. She tried the normal methods of contact and nothing worked.

So she found herself on the door steps of Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye). She heard she was a powerful psychic who could talk to those in the afterlife. But an accident in Elise’s life had her retire, vowing to never do it again. But eh, the plot has to move along some how, so she does it anyways. Elise doesn’t like what she sees, so she tells Quinn to never try to contact her mom again.

And guess what? Now Quinn and Elise have a demon fucking with them. It gets worse when Quinn gets hit by a car, breaking her legs. Now she has to rely on her dad (Dermot Mulroney) and younger brother (Tate BerneyT) to take care of her. She has a bell to ring when she needs help, a nice sudden sound making device to make things extra creepy.

This film also shows where Elise meets Tucker (Angus Sampson) and Specs (Leigh Whannell), who of course you would recognize from the previous, set in the future, movies.

When jumping around the time domain, sometimes colors get all sorts of fucky.

What does one do with a drunken franchise, early in the morning? That is the only way I know how to describe Insidious, as its movies attempt to give us something deep but end up just stumbling around all the place, slurring their words, and personally thinking they are the best. The first two films ended up being weird, with a couple of random scares. In Chapter 3, we got the prequel that no one wanted. Did we need to see how Elise and her goons met? No. No we did not. Now, it also alluded that shit went wrong for her in the past, and thankfully they answered that question through dealing with demons in this film. But why not have an actually younger Elise, facing that problem head on before she retired from psychic shit? Actually change up how we see the character?

Instead this film takes place, I don’t know, a year or something before Insidious. If you were reading this as a book, it would be a confusing placement to throw in a flashback chapter for people who have been supporting (albeit important) characters.

Unfortunately, this film is also the weakest of the three in terms of plots and actual scares. It stars a family that I end up feeling nothing for, despite their hardships, because it isn’t the same characters as the first two films. There is no Chapter 4 currently planned, but the director/writer/costar said that if it was, he would probably place it after 3 in the plotline, but before the first. That would officially just turn this series into “Elise and the Boys Para-normally battling demons!” That is fine, but to me that clearly just makes 3 and 4 spin-off films, and it is kind of shit that they are just calling it Insidious.

Most of this review is just arguing semantics. That aside, I didn’t like the film, and thought it was a boring side story from an already meh series.

It turns out there are more than just popular wide released horrors happening this year. Yes, they are the ones we all hear about and have been mostly disappointing. But there is indie stuff out there, and the indie stuff ends up being the best.

You know, like The Babadook, It Follows, and Goodnight Mommy. All from this year or last year. So when I found out about The Boy I decided to wait a couple of months to make sure I could review this around Halloween instead. That’s the level of dedication we provide here at Gorgon Reviews. Delaying reviews to fit silly little themes.

The only worry with indie horrors is that sometimes they can go a bit too slow. Usually they build up for an amazing payoff, but if the journey isn’t worth it, then payout be damned, no one will care.

As long as the movie has a good early hook, the rest should be fine.

Life as an only child can be boring. Especially if you live in a small town. Wait. No. Near a small town. You actually live in a hotel by a small mountain highway road. Sometimes people stay there, but usually it is dead and boring as shit.

It doesn’t get any worse for Ted (Jared Breeze). His mom left some years ago with a client who stayed in their hotel frequently, leaving just his dad (David Morse), an empty shell of a man. So he just works in the hotel and finds things to do with his time. Some of these things are bad or questionable, but since he is alone so often, who will care?

Sure people still do occasionally come to the hotel. Like William Colby (Rainn Wilson), who just so happens to get into a crash right outside the hotel and, being a secretive man, doesn’t want to go to the hospital to rest. Or that other family with the little boy, who after staying a night, find that their car no longer works.

Man. Both of those things sure are strange. I hope Ted isn’t behind all of this and, if so, I hope he doesn’t do anything worse.

I, uhh. I got nothing.

As expected, The Boy, like a lot of indie films of this genre, had a slow built up, all culminating towards a huge ending. So, starting from the end, I can say man, that shit was crazy. Imagine me making a gang pose while I said that. Maybe even while covering my mouth and saying “Ohhhh.” It had some very intense moments and the use of visuals and music were excellent with it.

And throughout the film, there were several moments of teetering on evil and not so evil, so that I never really knew when, if, and how often he would snap. They filled their purpose and had me worried.

However, this film is far better defined as a Drama Thriller, not a horror. I would argue a lot of the film is slow and harder to get through (/easier to zone out during). There already wasn’t a large cast of characters, but the mystery about Wilson’s character really started to make me feel indifferent. I no longer cared about the pay out, and started looking for other plot lines to get me interested.

The Boy is not the film for everyone. But if the director turns it into a trilogy (source: another reviewer audibly telling me), then it might have some better moments in the future.

Ah, horror remakes. We need at least one a year right? We’ve had Carrie, Evil Dead, Fright Night, and many more. It is easy and hip and cool to do. Hell, I know it sounds like I wrote that like a sarcastic asshat, but for those three films in particular I ended up liking them or thinking they were okay enough as a remake. I didn’t hate any of them.

Then Poltergeist flashed its way onto our screens like a lightning bolt. “Not so fast, mother fucker!” it clamored through the speaker box.

I may be jumping the gun with the review, but Poltergeist decided that instead of making a nice modern update with its remake, it would instead just…take more of the same elements from the original, cut out a lot of the horror bits, and instead turn it into more of a Sci-Fi Thriller. Yeah. Fuck the original, right?

And always fuck clowns, obviously. As long as its consensual and not Vulgar.

Big day for the Bowen family! They just got a new house. And hey, it is really low because of the stagnant market. Definitely not because no one would buy it. And it doesn’t have many neighbors. Who cares. They can afford it, which is the most important thing in this economy. They don’t have much of an income right now. The dad, Eric (Sam Rockwell), insists that his wife, Amy (Rosemarie DeWitt) not have to go back to work, because they can totally get through this without that. So yeah, Eric is kind of a dick.

Either way, they have their three kids, Kendra (Saxon Sharbino), Griffin (Kyle Catlett), and Madison (Kennedi Clements), in order of oldest to youngest. Kendra is DGAF oldest sister, so you can ignore her. Madison is the one who starts saying things and talking to entities in her room alone. Griffin is the only one who believes that something weird is happening.

Either way, outside of funky static TV stuff, other electronics are also acting wonky. It turns out that this house used to be built on an Indian Burial site. That was decades ago (Oh man, is this technically a sequel!?). But weird stuff happened and people got angry, so they had to pay a settlment, I think, and agreed to move the graveyard to a different location. Well, then why the fuck are spirits still angry? Why are they somehow bring the barrier between worlds and stealing their youngest daughter?

Also featuring Jane Adams— and Jared Harris.

Maybe this is a metaphor for letting the TV be your nanny?

Poltergeist has about three scary moments in it. Maybe. Calling it a horror film almost feels ludicrious. It has a lot of other things though!

It has a lot of zero character growth. Rockwell’s character is completely cardboard. A completely unrealistic person given anything that happens in the movie, and even more sadly, he doesn’t even dance. The mom and older daughter role are almost completely unimportant.

It is all about little boy and little girl. And occasionally some adult comes around and does something, but when the girl gets sucked away (for a majority of the film I guess), it is mostly up to Catlett to keep us entertained. He does an okay job, in terms of kid stuff. But he cannot save this boring mess of a film.

That’s right. The biggest shame of this remake is not that it isn’t scary, it is the boringness of it all. It honestly feels like they went so light and fluffy with the whole thing that they wanted it to actually be a PG horror film. It was hard to get through because of how uninteresting it became after only 15 or so minutes.

Greetings Ghouls and Boys!

Yes this is a Saturday update, because when people ask me to be part of a Blog-a-thon, I generally become part of that Blog-A-Thon. The lovely folks over at Channel Superhero have decided to host 31 Days of Tales From The Crypt, with 30 or so different reviewers each tackling a different episode of the famous horror series.

And so I did what any reviewer would do. I scoured the episodes not yet taken for any actor or actress I recognized. A long stand alone episode series like that, I knew a lot of big names must have been involved before they got their break. I then put a list together and rolled a dice to determine which one I would watch.

So now, I present you my very spoiler filled review of This’ll Kill Ya, from June 27, 1992, Season 4, Episode 2.

Blue hue means the sex was good right?

George Gatlin (Dylan McDermott, yes he is the one I definitely knew) is the boss at some high tech research lab on the verge of solving big and great things. He just has to boss around Pack Brightman (Cleavon Little, oh shit the lead from Blazing Saddles) and Sophie Wagner (Sonia Braga) to get their research done.

Well, the drug they are working on is not ready for human testing. They make that clear and their annoyance that George puts his insulin on the same shelf as the drug. You silly boy. They easily get mixed up! Ha. Ha ha.

Not only is George a dick, he is also a bit rapey. In that he totally sleeps with Sophie. She doesn’t want it, but they have done it in the past so whatever.

Needless to say, they have decided to get some revenge. The next day during his insulin, oh no, they accidentally put in the drugs instead! No no! Now he will totally die later!

George finds out later that they were totally up to something and this was not an accident. Already drinking, this puts him into a rage and he totally kills Pack! This brings us to the intro, when he drags the body to the local police branch to turn him in. But it is okay. George killed him first.

TWIST. Just kidding, as you already knew. They only pretended to put the drug in him, to teach him a lesson. And they had to cure anyways. Now he just killed a guy for a small joke. Ha ha ha.

His germ phobia is not a joke though. He will only shake hands if he is wearing a baseball glove.

So I haven’t really seen any of these, but if you had to start watching the series, this should not be the one you start with. It was shit, it was obvious, and the plot wasn’t that good. Knowing two thirds of the actors didn’t even help my enjoyment. It was an over dramatic simple tale that might have worked as a short story, but is completely forgettable on the screen.

I also didn’t realize that this show was originally on HBO, but that definitely explains why I never got to watch these. Despite that, my surprise was real when I suddenly saw nipples on the TV.

So uhh. I probably won’t watch any more of these episodes, being so disappointed with my first outing. Edgy for the time, this does very little for the modern viewer.

I expected to hate Jem and Jem and the Holograms going into the screening. That is why I picked it! I make an end of the year worst movies list, and based on the trailers alone, this one seemed like it could maybe even contend for the number one spot. Those trailers were awful. I didn’t even watch the cartoon show of the same name, but I could tell it was nothing like the cartoon.

It looked like it wanted to be a made for TV movie on ABC Family, only a step above a Lifetime original film.

So yeah, the film had a lot of work in front of it before it even began, which is a shame. But hey, maybe Jon M. Chu, famed director of such film classics like, Justin Beiber: Never Say Never, Justin Bieber’s Believe, G.I. Joe: Retailiation, and some shitty Step Up movies could be its saving grace.

Don’t look at me with those disbelieving eyes.

Jerrica (Aubrey Peeples) is your average 18 year old girl. About to finish high school, living with her aunt (Molly Ringwald), sister Kimber (Stefanie Scott), and two foster sisters, Shana (Aurora Perrineau) and Aja (Hayley Kiyoko). Okay, so she isn’t normal. But they all like to sing and play music so that is something fun. To bad Jerrica is super shy and would never do anything about it.

Until, you know, she does. After getting all emotional about the fact that they may lose their home, Jerrica puts on make up, a wig, and writes a song about loneliness under the stage name Jem. Her sister tricks her and uploads the performance to the YouTubes and somehow it goes viral. It goes so viral that Erica Raymond (Juliette Lewis), CEO of a made up big record company is offering her a small contract to play a few shows. She is super interested in her mysteriousness and plans to exploit it for maximum monetary viral wealth!

The girls are fine with it, transporting them all the way to LA where they have to learn how to be “rock stars”. It is important to note that their dad (Barnaby Carpenter) died when Jerrica was around 7 or 8. He was working on building a robot called 51N3RG.Y (pronounced Synergy), and he left it unfinished due to his sudden death. She likes to carry it around and stuff.

We need more dudes in this movie, which is why we have Ryan Guzman playing their “caretaker” and watcher to make sure they don’t get into trouble while in LA, Nathan Moore as a driver/bodyguard like person, and Ryan Hansen as a cameo as a security guard.

I have been told that Woody Allen cameo’s as the keytar.

Jem and the Holograms was not the worst movie of the year. Was it bad? Certifiably in every way. But it wasn’t a full on 100% cringefest.

First of all, the movie had no idea what it wanted to be. It goes from teenage sudden stardom film, to a long scene involving the Synergy, looking like it was taken directly from Earth To Echo. The scenes with the robot become a strange Sci-Fi Mystery throughout LA. Other parts of the movie literally seem to be almost identical to Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. I of course recognize that because I actually saw that concert doc. The plot is like a bad mash up of Hannah Montana and Josie and the Pussycats. Lewis overacted and was playing a non funny Parker Posey in that film I just mentioned.

That’s not all. It awkwardly referred to the band as a rock band, but they only sang pop songs. The song that went viral had absolutely no reason to go viral, realistically it would have never happened. They should have made it a much bigger deal. The fans she gained from the song would have hated every other thing she did, because the few songs after were nothing a like and very fake feeling.

A character says he hates newer bands because they are all auto tuned crap. The response? They sing a song a capella, but it also is processed and you can tell it doesn’t sound remotely real. Literally this happens right after the complaint about that. How can they do that to us? Related, another moment during the movie in a song, they lose power and finish it again, without instruments. The awkward echo during the song is still somehow apparent, although it doesn’t make sense to be sung.

Here is a picture of an attractive male to break up my bitchin’.

One more major annoyance, this one is a SPOILER. Part of the plot to get out of the bad contract that breaks up the friends involves a will a character never knew existed. They steal the will and when it becomes apparent, without even showing it, they just mention part of it, and suddenly everyone changes what they were doing and they win the day. Not actually proving anything, just saying vague things. The bad character says something like, “You don’t even have the will, only I do!” The whole movie (and for years) it was in a safe, but for some reason she was randomly carrying the packet in her hands at that moment? Similarly, the dialogue was generally always terrible.

But it DID have some moments. Miraculously, out of no where, I found myself crying at a beautiful moment. I blame my newborn baby on that. Every time recently a film has had any sort of emotional “Father Daughter” moment, it affects me deeply. Also, there were some good songs. “Way I Was” was pretty damn good and the only thing similar to the original viral hit.

This movie is objectively bad. But, damn it, it has its moments.

So last week I tried to find a scary documentary, I failed to find something in a few minutes and settled on Gideon’s Army, which ended up not scary at all. So I had to change my criteria a bit. I am still planning on trying to review more current and newer documentaries. But fuck it, they are documentaries. I can review older ones of these, most of you don’t just sit around watching documentaries, so you probably haven’t heard of the older ones either right?

Yep. Everything is available now. Or else it stays too hard to find good documentary content.

Thanks to this, I can talk about serial killers. Maybe, yeah. H. H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer. Definitely an eye catching subject matter about a dude I have never heard about before! I quickly learned this is definitely someone who I should have heard about before today, and a crazy interesting subject.

Holmes was like the perfect killer. He got his doctorate, studied anatomy and chemistry and got a bit rich. In the late 1800’s, after all the Jack the Ripper stuff going on in London, Holmes was living in Chicago and he wanted to kill.

Psychopath isn’t a detailed enough word to describe this man. To get to the crux of his insanity, you have to realize that he built what was called a “Mansion” in the middle of Chicago with many floors, that he used as a sort of hotel. At least, the third floor was definitely a hotel. But the 2nd floor was a labrynth of rooms twisting hallways, with fake staircases and more. And the basement was even worse.

That is where he kept his mustache comb collection.

Needless to say, he killed a lot of people, but the numbers are unknown. Hell, there are two books out there suggestion that Holmes was also Jack the Ripper before heading back to the USA, but without reading them, I don’t believe them. Seems too “movie” and not enough “Reality.”

Oh hey, back to this documentary. It is only a little over an hour long. And yeah, it is kind of poor quality. The only thing making it a bit average is that the story is actually a pretty sweet one, which goes into his mistakes and how he got caught, his eventual trial and execution. But it is filled with old timey black and white clips to showcase people in old horrors being scared, and it is incredibly cheesy.

It felt like they only talked to 2-3 historical experts to tell the tale, with the majority of the story coming from the narrator, Tony Jay. It was a poorly done documentary on the subject, but it is the only one we have.

What it did was get me interested on the subject. I want to now read (or audiobook) the main story on the subject, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. Even better news is that this is totally being turned into a real movie, so watching this documentary ended up being me just doing some basic amounts of research. Do you want to see Leonardo DiCaprio with that stashe and killing people, directed by Scorsese? I know I do.

For some reason, Happy Madison is developing a bad rep. Adam Sandler‘s production company has been around for awhile and has brought in such classics like, Jack and Jill and Grown Ups 2! Hell, just this year we already got Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser.

With such a rich pedigree, how does a company like that get hated on? Hell if I know.

And then there was Pixels, their third film of this year, and one I thought would be completely animated given the posters. Whoops. I obviously figured it out before I watched it, but damn, I don’t think I have ever been fooled like that before. Sure, it could be loosely based off of a Futurama episode, but that was a cartoon, so everything is fair game.

Unless they wanted a giant Mickey Mouse here, then they’d have been fucked.

Brenner (Sandler) was a big deal, in 1982. He was the master of the local arcade, able to see the patterns in the games, creating high score after high score. Hell, he entered into the national arcade tournament and made it all the way to the finals. He lost though to Eddie (Peter Dinklage), a cocky son of a bitch though, because Donkey Kong has some real random elements to it, so he can’t quite figure it out. Oh well, it didn’t ruin his life.

After all, 33 years later, he is working for what constitutes a Geek Squad like company, installing technology in rich big houses. Oh hey, and his best friend, Cooper (Kevin James) ended up as president (married to Jane Krakowski too). But he is seen as a buffoon. Who gives a shit though, because Aliens are about to attack!

Oh yeah, there was a third friend, Ludlow (Josh Gad), who was pretty good at games too, but became a conspiracy nut. And looks like he was write about aliens at least!

The strange thing about these aliens is they are attacking using what looks like arcade games from the early days. You see, after the tournament, they sent digital copies of the games and a lot of pop culture items into a time capsule into space. And alien race took the games as a challenge and built giant replicas of these games to attack the Earth. Each side will only have “three lives” so the first to “win” 3 of these attacks, wins overall. If Earth wins, they leave, if Earth loses, everyone dies. You know where this is going: losers from the 1980’s have to save the day!

Also starring Michelle Monaghan, Matt Lintz, Sean Bean, and Brian Cox.

I’ve had a nightmare like this before. I was playing a real life centipede, but I had no ammo.
Basically insects just fell on me from the sky.

Maybe its the nostalgia, maybe the cool effects, or maybe Dinklage giving his impression of the guy from King of Kong, but Pixels wasn’t super terrible. I know everyone around me said it was bad and they hated it, but I also know they went in ready to rage on it.

Pixels definitely had its moments, but the best parts were the clever ways they “fought” the various levels that totaled the many cities around the world. Having Pac-Man terrorize NYC as they chased him with cars? Come on, that’s clever.

There are unfortunately some lamer elements to the film. Having a cheating subplot? Waste of time, and ruined some of the fun. Q*bert? Fuck Q*bert. That mostly felt like an annoyance more than anything. Creepy suggestion that a woman can be a trophy? Well, you know.

But overall for the most part, Pixels was entertaining. It could have had more fun real life battles instead of an all out attack at the end to cameo in games. If we got even more in depth levels, it would have been great. It was like an advanced Nick Arcade. Just one that probably should have gone for the PG-13 rating, since it probably didn’t deserve PG at all with some of the jokes and language thrown in.

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

Seth MacFarlane is not my favorite person. And I didn’t even think his Oscars were that bad. I just think his movies have been pretty sub par as of late. In A Million Ways To Die In The West basically every joke fell flat for me.

And then of course there was Ted. Sure, there was some amusing original material in there. But as I watched it (in theaters), I couldn’t believe how date it had already felt. The humor was almost 100% focused on current pop culture trends. They had a few 80’s pop culture jokes thrown in to balance it out, but it was way too current. I knew most of the things I found amusing I wouldn’t bat an eye at in five or six years anymore.

Needless to say, I was pretty dang worried about Ted 2. Would it just be more of the same of Ted? Yeah probably. I don’t need 90 minutes of shitty pop culture in my life.

But if it was entirely about stealing Tom Brady‘s semen, then we might have something here.

Ted 2 takes place some time after the original. The main difference is that John (Mark Wahlberg) is divorced, probably because Mila Kunis didn’t want to be in another of these movies. Now he is basically afraid of commitment to anyone. Ted (MacFarlane) is still married to Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth), but their relationship is strained. They might even get a divorce. So they decide to do the time honored tradition of having a kid to save their marriage.

Ted has no penis, so sex wouldn’t work. They work on sperm donations, but that fails too. So they decide to adopt. But the problem is, Ted cannot do it because apparently he isn’t classified as a person and doesn’t have person rights. This changes everything for Ted. Now he loses his job, his marriage is now nulled and can’t legally do most things! He is just an object! Oh no!

So, in a nut shell, that is the point of this film. He wants to fight the ruling in court, so he can get his life back. That is why they have a lawyer (Amanda Seyfried) who is chill and likes to smoke pot, hooray! At the same time, Donny (Giovanni Ribisi) is helping Hasbro fight Ted in court. If it is ruled he is an object, they can take him back, find out what makes him magical, and make Ted’s for everyone around the world. Weeeee.

Also! Morgan Freeman, Sam J. Jones, Patrick Warburton, John Slattery, and John Carroll Lynch.

The good news is that Ted 2 relied on less pop culture references to get by this time. Outside of quite a few recent Patriots references.

The bad is that the plot is kind of shit and not worth watching. Let me clarify, the plot idea isn’t a bad one. It could make a good court room comedy film. But they only vaguely focus on that. There are barely any scenes in the court room, really only two major ones at the beginning and end. The first court room scene only takes a handful of minutes, but the film would rather Ted and John just sit on a couch and tell jokes.

Ted 2 as a result just doesn’t have a lot to offer as a film. In recollection, I am having a hard time trying to remember any moment I found really funny. I was completely chuckleless. The writer only had a rough idea for the plot and maybe a couple jokes, but I assume the majority of these scenes were thought of independently of having a real place to put them. So in a way, Ted 2 was a lot like a Family Guy episode.

There isn’t a lot to say. Ted 2 just isn’t good. Not as bad as AMWTDITW, but not as good as its mediocre first film.

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