Month: November 2015

The Stanford Prison Experiment was one of the coolest and scariest things I ever heard about, when I learned about it as a freshman in college. I don’t even remember in what class it was brought up, but the real life experiment was so fascinating I remember running home to wiki all I could about it. After all, doing my own research outside of Wikipedia seemed silly.

Hearing about it lead to hearing about all the creepy things people ended up doing in the name of psychology, before jerky standards were set in place. So now things like TSPE cannot take place for scientific knowledge, because you know, humans and shit. So instead of crazier and more ridiculous experiments, this is one of the top tier ones and I guess it will stay that way.

And although they can’t recreate this one for science, they sure can recreate it for film and TV. They did it in season 3 of Veronica Mars, they had that movie five years ago called The Experiment, and more!

But now, this film is about the entire enchilada. Nut just the test itself. But also the people behind it and what occurred before and after, for realsies, in Stanford.

How do you know someone went to Stanford? Don’t worry, they will probably …err, not talk about this.

In 1971, hair was everywhere and government oversight was only a legend. The 60’s were dead, so it was time to get serious. Dr. Philip Zimbardo (Billy Crudup) was a professor who wanted to simulate a prison in their own building. They would do it over the summer when not many students were around and offer to pay people $15 a day to participate in a two week experiment. After extensive interviews to make sure people weren’t crazy, they narrowed down the group of men and used a coin flip to determine who would be the prisoner and who would be the guards.

Zimbardo and his crew (Gaius Charles, Olivia Thirlby, and more), along with Jesse Fletcher (Nelsan Ellis), a guy he knew who went to prison to help “legitimize” the experiment, would monitor the halls 24/7. The men are kept to a strict contract, where the guards are in charge, the prisoners have very few rights, and there is to be no physical violence of any sort.

So the prisoners get brought in my volunteer police to arrest them at their homes to make it feel a bit real. They have to get naked, cleaned, and put into prison uniforms (which are closer to dresses to help break them down), and put into their cells. The guards try to break their humanity right away in order to maintain order and make it feel a bit more serious. The prisoners are referred to as their numbers not their names. They don’t get a lot of sleep. They are forced into exercise and other mental punishments, since they can’t just get beaten down.

And the prisoners break. They break quickly. Mentally and physically. It becomes quickly a torture job, as suddenly, the people who identify as guards feel they have to be mean and the prisoners feel like they are worthless.

And of course, even more dramatic and scary shit.

Some of the guards are played by Nicholas Braun, Moises Arias, and Michael Angarano, who plays the “worst” guard and calls himself John Wayne. He knows how to push buttons.

A lot more of the prisoners matter, and they are sort of led by Ezra Miller and Tye Sheridan. Other prisoners who play big roles include Johnny Simmons, Logan Miller, Ki Hong Lee, and Thomas Mann who joins later to fill in a spot after a prisoner has to leave.

Everything about this movie is real. Including the facial hair.

Want to see a bunch of male youths devolve into their primal forms and do bad things, but not on an island? Then this movie might be for you!

The filmmakers did an excellent job of really driving home the moments when people began to break under pressure. It is one thing to know that the prisoners were referred to as numbers, constantly having their number drilled into their head, and long amounts of time spent sounding off their number until the guards were satisfied. But it is another thing to see it happen. These, for lack of a better word, mental torture scenes are long, loud, and constant. Major props to everyone involved for making me feel sick to my stomach that things like this could have even happened.

From the prisoners, over half of the prison cast seemed to play an important role. There might have been 2-3 people who were just also there, but every single one of them had a personality that presumably matched reality and a lot of them got focus. We were able to see almost every single one of them break and lose any sense of hope. Seeing that is disgusting, but by golly, is it some fine acting.

For the most part, the guards were just lead by Angarano’s fine acting. Angarano has to play a person playing a role, not just some mean dude. It is sadistic and cruel, but surprisingly not physical. No, other guards devolve into physicality. He is just a mind fucker.

This can be a hard watch, but a good one if you want to learn some crazy shit about human nature, while also watching a lot of young new talented actors in the same film.

I love journalism movies. You may not know it, but I used to be a journalist. Yes, sure, 99% of my articles were reviews for a few papers, but damn it, I worked in the newsroom, I discussed articles occasionally, and I wrote at least one article on my own about a non movie thing.

But you know what is even sexier than journalism? Investigative journalism! You know, the journalism that requires investigations! Weeks to months to potentially years of digging around, looking for scoops, talking to witnesses, etc. That is like modern detective work, but where the pay is shit and you are only working for the greater good (or whatever).

Movies like All The President’s Men and Shattered Glass are examples of interesting or even great films that go through the real life process. Maybe some dramatization, but damn it, the facts are there! Spotlight is a new film, also about true events, and about the team that brought them to the public.

You can tell they are a real newspaper because they are actually working and not throwing footballs around.

The year is 2001! Don’t worry, September hasn’t happened yet. It is just summer time. You can tell it is a different time and place by the giant ass AOL billboard in the film. In Boston, life is pretty damn normal. People work, people go to church, people get drunk, eyyyyy Bawston. The Boston Globe is like a lot of other papers, they are worried about the internet taking away a lot of their jobs and trying to change things up. So they bring in this single, Jewish guy from Miami, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber). He is not a Bostonian, however a lot of the paper happens to be from the area. This really gives them a sense of purpose and makes them think they are helping their community, so they are worried about a non Catholic outsider coming in and doing bad things.

And guess what he wants to do? He wants to…make sure the paper matters for the community. Oh okay, that sounds good. But he wants to also do some follow ups on a story he read about. Some priest had apparently been molesting kids for years, but the paper only ran a couple articles on him. He wants follow up and research. So he puts the Spotlight crew on it. A four person team who does the longer projects on it. Lead by Walter ‘Robby’ Robinson (Michael Keaton) who has been with the paper forever, he also has on his team Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James).

But can they really do that? Can they (what most people would see it as) wage war on the church? They all grew up Catholic and have that culture ingrained in their subconscious? Could it really be a bigger issue and something everyone just turned a blind eye towards?

Also featuring James Sheridan, Billy Crudup, Neal Huff, John Slattery, and Stanley Tucci.

This was definitely not a real scene from the film, but boy is it convenient to showcase the actors.

When the credits began to role, I had the biggest investigative journalism movie boner ever. That shouldn’t sound graphic or surprising, because that is an oddly specific thing to say and thus doesn’t mean a lot.

I wanted to go out, quit my job (hah!) and become a journalist again to save the world from bad people. I wanted to call strangers and find out information. I wanted to jostle notes on a small pad of paper while people talked. Oh okay, I technically already do that during movies, but I want to be able to do it when I can also see the paper well and not in a dark room.

Spotlight is a unique story where everyone knows how it will end, but the journey is so fascinating that it still can keep the tense moments. Sure, we know the article gets published, but you can still let out a small fist bump when everything finally comes together, happy that justice and journalism finally win despite the enormous pressures to fail. This is some of the best acting I’ve seen from Ruffalo, Keaton, and Schreiber. Maybe second best for all three. I think they are better in Infinitely Polar Bear, Birdman, and Goon, respectfully.

If there is any weak point in this film, it has to be Slattery. His character just felt like he was a cartoon, being a weird sometimes foil, sometimes not, maybe bad guy, maybe not. It was frustrating with little to no payout.

But outside of that, go see Spotlight, go see some sexy reporting, and damn it, support your local paper.

Ha ha ha! A girl who sang about not wanting to go to rehab went to rehab! Ha ha ha!

Now that this obvious and shit joke is over with, we can talk about Amy. Amy Winehouse was a singer and upcoming British star. She had a soulful voice, very jazzy, and wrote her own songs. I cared absolutely nothing about her.

I knew she had a song Rehab and I knew she had a song Valerie. Valerie might have been a cover. I only knew about those songs, really, because Glee did them on their show before she died. Glee got really bad real quick, but by golly, it kept me up to date with the hip new music. Speaking of Rehab, what in the hell is the deal with that song? I don’t get it. I don’t get why people like it or what is the point of the song. But that is my silly rant.

The point is, I was a bit reluctant to watch the Amy documentary because I didn’t really enjoy her as a musician and she was just “another young artist who died from drugs early.” That quote was definitely too long. In all honesty, it is the same reason I haven’t seen Cobain: Montage of Heck yet. And I like some Nirvana songs. It is just a year with a lot of musician bios, documentary or otherwise.

I don’t care for Amy Winehouse, but I enjoyed this documentary.

Fun punny joke about one of her famous song lyrics that I totally know!

Her friends knew Amy would be a big success, and I guess that is why there is so much footage of her when she was early in her career. And honestly, the only reason to watch it is to learn about her before her big success, see how she was when she was a normal person before the drugs. All of this footage is a raw look on her life and it is very endearing.

This documentary can help you relate to Amy as a person, realize she is someone who might not have wanted all the success and fame. She wanted to write songs and her feelings and that was it. She wanted to love her boyfriend and friends.

You know, and more vague descriptions that probably sound like all real people.

Here is the thing. She was living a very interesting life. And seeing this side of anyone will be quite interesting. So give it a gander. See her reactions to things. And learn about her way more than you know about your own loved ones.

Writing a review without pictures would be like talking about Mark Ruffalo and not making a Hulk reference. You can’t do it.

Hulk had two personalities, regular, and rage. Mark Ruffalo in real life probably also has two personalities, something lame like celebrity and normal.

And in Infinitely Polar Bear? Well, I am not sure of the actual number, but they are all on his sleeve, all at the same time.

Fuck, he is already halfway into full on Hulk mode already. THE REVIEW HASN’T EVEN BEGUN RUFFALO.

Cameron (Mark Ruffalo) and Maggie (Zoe Saldana) had a picture perfect free spirited life. Except Cameron was found out to be Bipolar. It made a lot of sense, but they didn’t let that get in the way. They had two wonderful kids, Amelia (Imogene Wolodarsky) and Faith (Ashley Aufderheide). They were loving and awesome.

But eventually, Maggie couldn’t take it anymore. Cameron was getting too out there, too unsettled and she had to separate with the kids to be away from him. Cameron got put into a mental health hospital to get his life back on track. And now? It is awhile later. Cameron wants to visit and be with his kids and be with his wife, but she can’t allow it. The problem is they are very poor. She had been lying about their house location to get them into a good school, but after that has been “corrected” they find themselves in bad housing and going to a shitty school. So Maggie wants to get an MBA to make their life better.

The problem is that she’d have to go to NYC to do it because she can stay at a friend’s apartment for free. So she has to reconnect with Cameron. You know, so he can be a full time dad, watching them every day of the week for a year and a half on his own. Sure she’d visit on some weekends, but for the most part, he will have to be a responsible individual. And hey, after a year and a half, she will move back and maybe they can all work things out and be a wonderful family that isn’t on the poverty line.

Sure, why not, he can be responsible for other lives. On his own. To make things weirder, Cameron is actually part of a really rich family. It is just all in a trust owned by his Grandma (Beth Dixon) who gives away money from it, sure, but she is very stingy about it. So they get to be poor, while his family own mansions.

Strangely enough, if he transforms in the car, the car doesn’t lose any value.

Ruffalo was the emotional equivalent of a typhoon in this picture. Yes, I could have just made another Hulk reference but that would be lazy. He was all over the place, always energetic and hyper. Just sometimes he was loving life, sometimes he was yelling curses at little kids. Good family fun.

I generally don’t like learning about mental disorders from films, as they tend to over exaggerate the disease and show the most extreme versions. I always assumed being bipolar just meant someone changed from happiness to sadness real quick like. I was also turned off by the film title, it was weird and nonsensical but it makes a bit more sense now. Ruffalo isn’t bipolar. That is only two! He is infinitely polar. And a bear. Maybe they made that joke in the film and I missed it.

I should talk more about Ruffalo. He fucking wrecked this role. He smashed it. Argh I can’t stop. The references, it makes me so mad! Watching Ruffalo was a delight though. Every scene had a sense of charm and love around it, like they were a real, fucked up family.

A fucked up family. Like one that would introduce Gamma rays to their son, accident or otherwise. Damn it. Just watch the movie.

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

Dun dun dunnnnn. Dun DUN DUNNNNNNN. That is my impression of the main Rocky theme, you’re welcome.

I first saw Rocky about 5 or 6 years ago. I was pretty late to the game. But I liked it for what it was. I didn’t see any of the other films until this summer, in preparation for Creed. And since I never had to review any of those films for the site, here are reviews of 2-6.

Rocky II was hilarious, because half of the movie was Sylvester Stallone rambling about whatever comes to his head. He clearly is showing he has severe brain damage and Adrian apparently thinks his mental handicap is cute.

Rocky III gave us Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. It was okay, gave us the best montage fun with Apollo and Rocky though.

Rocky IV was my most quoted film, while I had only seen the fight between Creed and the Russian. It had a fantastic ending, where Rocky single-handedly defeated Communism and Robot Boxers.

Rocky V was steaming shit. What a terrible movie. Why the fuck was this made?

Rocky Balboa was 16 years after Rocky V, a sadder tale about an old man coming out of retirement to prove he wasn’t a pushover. And well, I honestly didn’t like it at all. Was a very different tone and was night time half the film, and just mehhhh. What a waste.

Kind like my thoughts when I saw that MJB was starring in the new Fantastic Four. What a waste.

And now there is Creed. They might have called it Rocky VII, but that one if it ever exists will have to be called Adrian’s Revenge.

Turns out Apollo wasn’t faithful. He had an affair out of wedlock and Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) was born. However, he wasn’t born until after Apollo died in the ring, so he never had a chance to meet his father. His mother died when he was young, so he was passed around the foster care and juvie system, always getting into fights, until about 10 or 11. That is when Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad) found him. She, somehow, found out about the affair and the kid, and since she heard the news, she wanted to adopt him so he can learn about his father and grow up in the proper lifestyle.

Now years later, Adonis is fighting in Tijuana, Mexico, trying to be a boxer like his dad, but in secret. Fuck real jobs, real responsibilities. He just wants to punch people in the face.

He wants to punch people so badly, but no one will give him a chance in LA. So he heads to Philadelphia. He goes to see Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone). Rocky is old, managing a restaurant, with no real family to worry about. He doesn’t want to. But he realizes that he might be the only real father figure that Adonis will ever have.

Even better, he doesn’t want people to know he is Creed’s son. He wants to become a fighter on his own, not by legacy. That’s good news. Fuck it. Let’s train the kid.

Oh and Adonis of course meets a lady. Bianca (Tessa Thompson), a soulful musician who is also slowly losing her hearing.

Also featuring Ritchie Coster, Tony Bellew, Graham McTavish and Wood Harris as various fighters/coaches. And a dude who looks a hell of a lot like Edward James Olmos. I have no idea who he is, but he was in the movie a lot as their team doctor guy, had no lines, but I couldn’t find out who he was on the IMDB page, because it was very badly laid out order wise. It might be Olmos. It might be a weird cameo.

You might be able to tell by his shorts that someone eventually let’s the name secret out of the bag.

Creed featured four montages. FOUR. Three of them training, and one a fight montage. All of that exists, but we don’t see Michael B. Jordan splashing the dying corpse of Sylvester Stallone. A shame. More movies need playful beach splashing.

In terms of themes and atmosphere, Creed is a bit closer to Rocky Balboa, but it is also a lot more entertaining. The best shot moment was during the “mid film” fight, where the entire thing was one long shot. Multiple rounds, corner talk, the whole shebang. It was wonderful. I figured they would do that for the final fight as well, but we had to settle with the walk from the waiting room to the ring to be the one long shot.

With Creed, they clearly want to turn it into a new franchise, since Stallone can’t possibly un-retire from boxing for the 50th time and the son route didn’t work out. Creed had some nice moments in the fights and I felt appropriate at the ending, but I don’t like a lot of elements as well.

For whatever reason, Rocky himself doesn’t have as much brain damage as he did in Rocky II, and they are making him progressively more and more normal. You wouldn’t expect that with age. SLIGHT SPOILER, but they make it so that Rocky also has a health concern. I won’t say what, I will say that it, again, has nothing to do with brain damage. It feels like an incredibly bull shit side plot, when they have perfectly reasonable and obvious health issues they could have instead brought in.

The back story for Adonis felt a bit shitty too. It seemed like they had to jump through hoops to get the backstory they wanted, again, over complicating it. The story was also incredibly inconsistent with Adonis’ feelings. He wanted to make it big without using the Creed name to get him by, but instead be a good fighter on his own. Mary Anne also had the same feelings, but apparently they both just figured they should get over it and embrace it, making some of his earlier journey feel a bit dishonest.

Oh well. Some good fights. And Michael B. Jordan was great in it. This should fix his career back up again quite nicely.

Going into The Peanuts Movie, I was worried. There are like, 3 or 4 Charlie Brown movies overall, and they were all made in the 1960’s and 70’s. That is a big gap in content. Yes, there was the longer lasting comic strip, and yes, there was a cartoon show or two I am sure. But in all reality, there hasn’t been new Peanuts stuff in a good long while.

So, will The Peanuts Movie just be a rehash of old material in a new way? Or will it be new material in a new way?

Regardless, it will be presented in a new way, so that is a positive. One of my biggest complaints about Winnie The Pooh from a few years ago, was that it was all material I had seen before, in the exact same art style as before. That was a rehash for no reason. That was a rehash for nostalgia profit. That is annoying. Although, John Cleese as the narrator for the film and the TV show that came out at the same time was a great idea.

Whether the material is old or new, damn it, at least they are portraying it in a new super CGI way, which better cover ups the nostalgia money grab.

“You keep using that term nostalgia? Are you really just upset with your own childhood and lack of fond memories?”
“Shut up, Lucy!” -Me

SNOW DAY! No school, the best news in town. Everyone is excited. Peppermint Patty (Venus Schultheis) and Marcie (Rebecca Bloom) are ready for hockey. Sally Brown (Mariel Sheets) is ready to exploit the situation as always. There is also of course Lucy (Hadley Belle Miller) and Linus (Alexander Garfin), Schroeder (Noah Johnston) and Franklin (Marleik Mar Mar Walker), Violet (Madisyn Shipman) and other Patty (Anastasia Bredikhina). Hell, even Pig-Pen (A.J. Tecce), Shermy (William Wunsch), and the little kid (Micah Revelli) are ready to play.

Everyone but one kid. Where the heck is Charlie Brown (Noah Schanpp)!? Sleeping in again, I see. Damn it Charlie Brown. We got shit to do, and you are off daydreaming and trying to fly a kite in a snow storm? It takes a special kind of guy to be Charlie Brown.

But their snow day is quickly interrupted when a moving truck comes into their neighborhood. Who could it be? Oh, a little red haired girl (Francesca Capaldi)! Oh shucks, she is pretty. And Charlie Brown wants to talk to her, but he is too embarrassed. After all, he is clumsy, he messes things up, he fails at most things. She would never like him, no matter what. Especially if he never talks to her.

Oh, and let’s not forget about Snoopy and Woodstock (Bill Melendez). That guy has been voicing Snoopy for fifty years! And for a few growls and dog noises, we also have Kristin Chenoweth voicing Fifi, the love interest. Yes, her super small role still qualifies her as the only real famous person in this whole movie.

Sorry Snoopy. You are truly the biggest star.

The Peanuts Movie is rated G for Good Old Fashioned Family Fun, and it is still an enjoyable film for child and adult alike. It isn’t even full of crude and sneaky adult jokes. The only adult joke in it is about Leo Tolstoy.

I honestly am not super familiar with past Peanuts content. I read some of the comics as a kid and have only seen parts of some of those movies. I might have seen a cartoon show a few times while growing up, but that would be it.

My main understanding is all the pop culture references so that I can survive as a functional human being. I know when to say “I got a rock” to get the cheap and easy laughs (Pro tip: Geologists love this line). The Peanuts Movie hit all the appropriate notes I could have hoped for in a Peanuts Movie, while also presenting it in a new (yet also familiar) art style.

See, the art style is hard to describe. Everyone is clearly rounder with more than 2 dimensions of shape. But the faces and the face styles are all still exactly the same as they have always been. I was a bit worried when I saw their faces in a poster, but it worked extremely well on the screen.

The Peanuts Movie truly is just a nice family movie. Sure, it isn’t an original concept. But it is a great introduction to a new generation and, of course, nostalgic trip for he older ones.

Bond Bond Bond. In case you missed my other reviews on the subject, I have no craps about Bond growing up. My parents didn’t care, so I didn’t get him in my impressionable youth phase, so the only Bond films have had Daniel Craig at the helm.

Casino Royale was okay, Quantum of Solace was terrible, Skyfall was interesting, and now we have Spectre. The internet tells me that the wiki page has spoilers on the subject and the trailer gives too much away. Apparently Spectre is a reference to an older Bond villain from a past film and they are redoing it. I think?

The good news is, I won’t have to compare it to something decades ago. Like always, I will just look at this film and see if I like it as a stand alone action spy film. And for those who are counting, this is the FIFTH Spy movie of the year. After Kingsman: The Secret Service, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, and of course, Spy. Strangely enough, the other 4 were all good movies. This might be the best year of Spy film ever recorded. Assuming the grand daddy of spy films can end the streak with a bang.

I’m sure this is just a metaphor.

Do you remember the last three films? Because you will need to. You especially need to know that M (Judi Dench) died in the last movie, and now there is a new M (Ralph Fiennes). The 00 program is potentially going to get shut down, what with half of their building destroyed in the last program and all. They have a new commander, who we will call C (Andrew Scott), who is going to bring all of the British agencies together and more transparent.

Bond (Daniel Craig) don’t give a damn. He opens the movie in Mexico City on the Day of the Dead, killing an assassin and a few other people who planned on blowing up a stadium! This doesn’t help his cause, and he gets house arrested in London for the time being, complete with GPS nanobot tracking in his blood. But like I just said, Bond don’t give a damn. He was told to kill the assassin, Marco Sciarra (Alessandro Cremona), by M (dead one) herself! She sent him a video from beyond the grave to get it done, should she die. So of course he followed orders.

However, in killing Sciarra, he stumbles upon a large and secret organization calling itself Spectre. His only clues involve using Sciarra’s wife, now widow, Lucia (Monica Bellucci) to find the organization and find The Pale King who is also involved in their bad evil guy plans…somehow.

Spectre is led by the mysterious Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz) who seems to know an awful lot about Bond. We also have returning favorites, Q (Ben Winshaw), Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), and Tanner (Rory Kinnear). Also returning is Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) from the first two films, and introducing his daughter, Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux). And of course Dave Bautista as scary intimidating no talking killer, Hinx.

This is…also a metaphor? Is Bond getting religious?

Spectre is not what it is hyped up to be. Heck, if you look at my reviews for the other spy movies that came out this year, you will see that they all earned higher marks, making Spectre, technically, the worst spy film of the year. The good news is that it is still at least okay or average and not complete shit.

Here is what is wrong with the film. Bellucci is used in like one scene, and never seen from again. Most of the actors don’t seem to be giving it their all. They really forced the love interest in this film, none of it felt believable and trying to make it a for sure thing is just lazy writing. A lot of lines I couldn’t even understand, due to mumbles or louder sound moments, allowing me to miss jokes and important plot points. There are plot twists, technically, but everyone you can see coming from miles away in the first 20-30 minutes.

But most of my complaints revolve around Waltz and his villain. First of all, Waltz is normally fantastic, but again, his character was always reserved and never felt scary or intimidating. His character also felt like he was barely in the film until the end. We needed a lot more of him for him to reach his true big bad scary levels. Most Bond fans know everything about the villain already, as there is only one notable Spectre leader. However when the reveal occurs, it is also mumbled quickly and then ignored. So for a non serious Bond fan, it does nothing, and for the serious ones, well, they knew it was coming all along.

They connected the villain from this film to the last three, but it all felt shoe horned, offering only a quick explanation and then moving on. More details would have helped understand the bad guys motivations, outside of the vague backstory they gave him. The villain also had a cool brain altering needle that would just take out important functions for whoever is getting tortured. Well. Bond had two pricks, and basically everything that was said would happen, did not. What the hell even was the point?

And the ending itself felt forced and dare I say, heavy handed.

Not saying there weren’t moments I didn’t like. I loved the intro, both in Mexico City (which opened with a very long shot), and the credits, with all the octopus imagery. Q and M were good. The Rome car chase, the train fight scene, and the plane ridiculousness were all very entertaining and well shot. Classic Bond moments from them all.

Lego Lego LEGO…s. I am going to pluralize the word. According to some standard, you cannot say Legos to describe the objects, before you cannot pluralize Lego. You have to say Lego Bricks if you want to talk about the object. That is super fucking stupid.

I am calling the grammar police out. They are legos. Get over it.

Legos are clearly bigger and better than ever now. With The Lego Movie being a resounding success, and many more movies planned, and their ongoing great game line, and their uhh…I guess just legos. They are a big deal. So it makes sense they wanted to cash in on that sweet Documentary money.

A LEGO Brickumentary goes behind the scenes of everyone’s favorite child building material. We will see what makes them tick on the inside!

Behind the scenes and inside the scenes, if you know what I mean.

A LEGO Brickumentary is mostly for people who really like Legos. An obvious sentence if any.

The history of Lego is actually not too long, so it goes through it rather quickly. Our narrator is an unnamed Lego man voiced by Jason Bateman.

What they then go through is the decline of Lego about fifteen years ago, how they started taking customer concerns to heart and making better product, some of the Lego cons and real master builders. They also go into some lines like Lego Architecture (and how it started), and a current fan contest that allows people to present their ideas for future sets, where one a year is chosen to become a real product for them.

Cool stuff! Kind of interesting. But in all honesty this is just a big ad for Lego to show how cool they are, and for you to like them even more. Nothing wrong with that, but since it is a Lego documentary about Lego, by Lego, it loses a bit more of its objectivity.

This is the type of documentary that you will find on one of those How Its Made channels in the future. It felt just like one of them, and isn’t something anyone would ever want to watch a second time or own. Just play with Legos, it will be a better experience than this…eh, okay experience.

A long time ago, in the before time, the summer of 2015, I saw a poster for The Gift. I was a bit intrigued, not because of the box, or the title, or the cast.

I was intrigued because it was written and directed by Joel Edgerton, who is totally an actor, and hasn’t written nor directed anything before this. Well, I take some of that back. He has directed some shorts I haven’t seen, and written some shorts I haven’t seen. Oh, and he helped write the story for The Rover with the actual director. I guess that is something. Needless to say, he isn’t just jumping in cold because he can do it as a famous Hollywood actor. He has some minor experience and this is his first attempt to show he can do things on his own.

And no matter what bad career decisions Edgerton makes, I will still like him as an actor for the feelings he made me feel with Warrior.

And for those excellent nachos he brought over for dinner one time.

Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) have just moved to one of the many suburbs around LA and are loving life and each other! They had a misscarriage. That sucks. But Simon has a sweet high paying job, Robyn doesn’t have to work, their house is basically a mansion, and oh hey look, there is Gordo (Edgerton).

Gordo apparently went to school with Simon, although Simon doesn’t really remember him. But Gordo says he really looked up to Simon. Simon was the bee’s knees and the cat’s pajamas. So as a welcome gift, Gordo gives them things. Some gifts, if you will. Robyn likes it, but Simon finds it weird, and doesn’t even like it when they have him over for dinner. Turns out Simon did remember Gordo, and they used to call him Gordo the Weirdo. Nicknames are hard, okay.

Either way, they find out that Gordo’s house is super big but he is alone as well. He has rooms with women’s clothes and kid stuff. Apparently he is going through a divorce and it is a tough time for him. Despite all this, Simon decides to call it off. He wants Gordo out of their life, it is too awkward everything that is happening and shit needs to stop.

Well, after this, they find out that he totally lied about that house. It wasn’t his. And their dog is missing. And Simon AND Gordo are lying about their past together. Anyways, all of this gets Robyn pretty discombobulated and their picture perfect life is going to start falling apart real quick.

The reason we invented big open windows is so we could do creepy things, right?

The Gift is a movie that needs to be unwrapped slowly. If you unwrap it too fast, it will all fall apart, so it requires a slow unwrapping to allow everything to fall into place. Of course, you the viewer don’t get to decide watch speed, so you have to accept the slower nature of the film. I was a bit surprised with how much happened early on. I only tagged 3 people because everything else was pretty damn unnecessary. Unfortunately, after the first act of fast moving plot line, the 2nd act goes pretty slow, while the third is mostly slow until finally the end.

The Gift is a drama based around a mystery. What happened between Gordo and Simon? What is Gordo trying to do now? Does he have a plan or is he just doing whatever weird shit pops up in his mind? Once we get the final reveal, it is a bit sickening and terrible at the same time. I can appreciate the results, but when I look back on the how, I get pretty annoyed. It is one of those perfect Rube Goldberg machines going on, but instead of random shit on your floor, dealing with people’s emotions and expected actions. It requires the level of brilliance of a person that is really hard to accept.

So an okay drama in the end. Clearly Edgerton had the idea for the twists he wanted to do and based a movie around that. Nothing wrong with that approach. It just really drags in the second act, with only a few scenes worth it after the fact.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {http://amzn.to/1GMHfsc}.

“Final Girl” is a term given to the last surviving female in a horror movie. This woman may have been in danger the whole movie. But somehow by the end she has enough gumption to slay the killer, or escape the building, or whatever. Hell, Ripley is a Final Girl.

Enough horror film had this happen for it to become a trope at least. I actually never heard about it until this year. Not just because of the movie The Final Girls that I am about to review, but because there was another movie also out aroudn the same time called…Final Girl. Yeah. It is pretty damn easy to get these ones confused. I haven’t seen such close titles for real unrelated movies since A Late Quartet and Quartet.

Now I will see Final Girl, some day. I have to given how easily it is to mistake The Final Girls. But to make matters even more confusing, they also share an actor. Somehow, Alexander Ludwig decided it’d be a good idea to be a lead in both films.

With an amazing shocked face like that, there’s no question how he landed the roles either.

Amanda Cartwright (Malin Akerman) was in a series of horror films back in the day, but now she is just struggling to find a job. All people remember her for is her role in Camp Bloodbath, now a cult classic, but a movie she doesn’t like too much. But this isn’t her story. You know, because she dies in a car crash early on in the film. Her daughter, Max (Taissa Farmiga) was also in the car but she survived.

Since then, life has been lame. Her best friends brother, Duncan (Thomas Middleditch), has apparently promised that Max would show up to a special screening of Camp Bloodbath. She agrees, reluctantly, as long as her friend, Gertie (Alia Shawkat) comes along. Chriss (Alexander Ludwig), a male friend who is totally into her, also comes along, which means the local bitch, Vicki (Nina Dobrev), who used to date him tags along as well.

And since this is hard to explain, I will be succinct: Some shit went down, and now they are trapped in the movie. Good news: Max can reunite with a version of her mother, that’s cool! Bad news: a masked man is trying to kill them all! But now that they are in the movie, it is harder to predict what would happen. Their mere presence changes the plot line for good, so they can’t rely on their movie knowledge to win this one.

Other campers are played by the likes of Adam DeVine, Angela Trimbur, Chloe Bridges, and Tory N. Thompson.

Honestly the only thing you need to be good at in a horror movie is your scared face.

Remember Cabin In The Woods? That was a genre bending, horror comedy that a lot of people didn’t know how to react to, but has eventually been accepted as a great and unique film. Cabin in the Woods is hard to define. The Final Girls is not hard to define, because I can look at it and say “It is like, Cabin in the Woods, kind of!”

A comedy horror means two things: It is usually funny, and it is usually not at all scary. They all just become parodies of horror without the fear behind it and this is honestly no exception. There are maybe “scary” moments, sure, but no one watching it will find it scary as per the norm.

Instead, The Final Girls should be judged on its comedy and it should be valued highly. Witty and fun, the cast of characters, and movie character stereotypes allow a lot of good deaths that follow and exploit common horror tropes. This is a PG-13 movie, which I feel limits some of the extremes they could have gone to, which is a shame. But the final fight scene felt nicely epic, some of the deaths were pretty creative, and the constant allusions that they were in a movie and not just a strange story were a very nice touch.

Overall, The Final Girls is a pretty good movie experience, and I hope they don’t mess it up with sequels. Hell, I like Alexander Ludwig now, and that is after I also saw When The Game Stands Tall.