Month: December 2015

Did you know that being a movie reviewer could be quite hard? It is. Sure, you think it is just putting on a movie and watching it. But to be the very best (like no one ever was) you have to watch them all. The good. The bad. The grotesque.

I am happy to say that in a little over 4 years, I am now reviewing my 1500th movie. That is right. A Milestone Review. 23 months ago, almost exactly was when I reviewed my biggest milestone, my 1000th review. That was of course The Human Centipede.

I tell the story of why it took so long, and honestly, the delay for The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) is similar. I don’t want to watch this. I know I had to someday. Might as well save it for a special occasion. And hey, in 500 more reviews I think you know what we will get for that review.

I tried to make sure the pictures weren’t completely inappropriate. Only one of them kind of is.

Or for some of you, all of these are inappropriate.

In this sequel, The Human Centipede is just a movie. That means the sequel is set “in the real world” instead of the world of fiction. And in the real world, things are much more nasty.

Our star (?) is a man named Martin (Laurence R. Harvey). Martin, as you can imagine, has a lot of problems. He was sexually abused as a kid by his dad, and now his mom (Vivien Bridson) hates him for getting him locked up. He is over weight, sees a shitty psychiatrist (Bill Hutchens), has his own pet centipede, and of course, is obsessed with The Human Centipede.

I think it is in black and white for the censors to allow the movie to exist.

His only responsibility is a security guard job where he sits in a booth and stares at video of people in a parking deck. Yes, the parking deck security guard is the lowest form of security guard, but it is necessary. He also ends up watching the movie over and over. He might get off on it. And you know my might is not even a guess. Some sick shit happens in that booth.

But not as sick as his book, that he is writing. He is watching the movie constantly to learn from it. He wants to make his own human centipede. But not with only 3 shitty people. No. He wants 12.

He is anti-social though. He doesn’t even know 12 people. He needs strangers.

The other issue with Martin is that he is not a trained surgeon. He doesn’t know how to operate on people, to attach them to one another or anything. Well, not in a real science or sanitary way.

He has to use basic tools. Even if he did know how to do it the right way, it would take so much time to make the 11 connections that most likely parts of the centipede would be dead before he could even finish. And that would be sad and awkward. More sad and awkward than the human centipede in general.

I don’t think playing the “what is more awkward” game makes a lot of sense in this movie.

Good news! He is also obsessed with the real life actors who played in the movie! Like Ashlynn Yennie, our starlet who survived the first film. Well, this sneaky guy Martin somehow pretends to also be a casting studio. He offers all three members of the centipede to audition for the new “Tarantino movie”. Unfortunately, Yennie’s agent is the only one to take up the offer and she shows up all happy. But now the “Real life” Yennie gets to be part of a centipede as well.

Some nice layers to this movie. You can tell they had the best writers working on it all.

This is all Martin. CGI free and ready to party.

Who are our lucky victims? Well they are played by Emma Lock, Maddi Black, Kandice Caine, Dominic Borrelli, Lucas Hansen, Lee Nicholas Harris, Dan Burman, Daniel Jude Gennis, and Georgia Goodrick,

Some of these people are dicks. Some are just party chicks. Some were prostitutes and cab drivers. Some are noble family people. But all of them are people who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and Martin took the first people he could get his hands on. Even if they had a kid in the back seat.

Martin knows party tricks as well!

I feel like I am stalling. I totally am. Dude hits everyone over the head with a crowbar. All the time. Apparently that knocks them out. This is the most unrealistic part of the movie. There should be a lot more dead people.

Anyways. Martin flips his shit. His mom wants him dead for the reasons listed above. She angers their skinhead neighbors and tells them it was his idea, just so they can rough him up and kick his ass. Eventually he retaliates against her and obvious shit happens. This causes him to finally go through with his plan to put the 12 humans together.

Warning, the next photo is my one “graphic” photo. But the calmest one I could find. I needed one.

AHHH CENTIPEDES SO GROSS.

Anyways, he puts them together. Some people die before he can attach them, so he doesn’t get to put all 12 together. That is a shame.

He gets to have his centipede though and it gets him super excited. VERY EXCITED. If you graphically understand my meaning. It is very bad for the last person in line, that is for sure. And I will say it was one of the two most disturbing things about this movie.

Unfortunately, it was followed up immediately after by an even more disturbing scene. One that made no sense and literally had me going “WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK” out loud, despite watching it alone.

Needless to say, after these two terrible scenes, people in the centipede start to fight back. One guy in particular breaks his head free from its confines, breaking the centipede in half. This, along with other events and voice mails, makes Martin very upset. He snaps even more than he did before and well, a lot of people then start to die. Mercy killing really at that point.

Yay gross shit. Literally.

You don’t want to know you don’t want to know you don’t want to know.

Normally I try to keep these milestone reviews extra funny and extra spoiler-y. No details needs to be ignored.

I kind of failed on both points with this big one. It is hard to make great jokes when you are so appalled. It is hard to spoil the worst things when you want to scrape them from your brain, not type out descriptions making it more real.

The first film may have tried to make a creepy horror along with a few gross scenes. This one went full on yuckville. It only wanted to make disturbing scenes. Scenes that would ban it from a few countries. Scenes that would make you want to turn it off.

When I watched The Green Inferno, I paused it frequently due to some very graphic scenes because I couldn’t take it. However, this time I never paused the movie. I just needed it to get over with and didn’t want a pause to make the overall experience that much longer.

This film is so nasty though and that is all I can talk about. It really shouldn’t have been made. Yes, it accomplished its goal. But at what cost, film makers? Your director was so preoccupied with whether or not he could, he didn’t stop to think if he should.

Don’t watch this movie. And I have to watch the third one. I don’t know if it is worse, I just know the centipede is longer and it is a prison or something.

Apparently UNC Chapel Hill is the center of everything when it comes to colleges. They had all the sports scandals, and thus, were highly featured in several sports documentaries.

And now they find themselves featured highly in The Hunting Ground, a documentary about rape in college campuses. This documentary was made due to the positive response that The Invisible War received, about rape in the armed forces.

In case you didn’t know, yes, I did go to UNC Chapel Hill, so regardless of topic, it is always jarring seeing people walk around places I have walked, telling their stories. Now, sexual assault in colleges is a real issue and definitely not something anyone should take lightly. It is a real issue everywhere. But why is it potentially more prevelant in college?

Well, in college, you have thousands of young adults, making mistakes high on hormones. Access to drugs, and alcohol, when they aren’t legally to drink it for the most part and therefore go to excess because freedom and shit. Fraternities that haze their pledges by making them harass women, and sororities having rules forcing them to party and drink at fraternity parties. A lot of bad things. And you know, dudes who believe that no doesn’t mean no.

It centers a bit on UNC because two women, who had their plights ignored by administration, decided to check in the legality of their lack of effort. They decided to pursue their cases through the Board of Education as a Title IX complaint, noting that they are not making their campuses safe. If the college is found breaking Title IX, they would lose all government funding.

That is kind of a big deal for most universities, especially the public ones.

This documentary is chilling. Hearing these personal stories, seeing the alledged reactions from administrations and police, it is shocking. Basically, colleges don’t like reporting sexual assault numbers, because no one wants to be the school where people get raped. So instead, rape happens everywhere and is swept under the rug. This is especially true for when it happens to star football and basketball players. They won’t get in trouble until after an upcoming season or tournament. They might get suspended for 1 day or during the summer. They might get expelled after graduation, which means nothing.

But unfortunately, this documentary also has controversy. There were some emails that made interviews look sketch, and one of their crew members edited Wikipedia pages to make the stories match the documentary. Oh, because apparently not all of the stories they told in the documentary are factual and they are leaving out specific information that might make some of these cases not so clear cut anymore. Yes the articles I linked are biased, but they were reported elsewhere as well.

That makes me worried. Hell, while watching I was just waiting to see if they’d make a big deal out of that mattress girl, who was doing that bizarre senior thesis / point thing about carrying around the mattress that she was raped on everywhere because the school did nothing about it. They only showed her for like, 5 seconds near the end, not a big central piece, which is good since it looks like from anyone else looking at it that there was only consensual sex involved.

I don’t mean to get political, but I do hate it when a documentary, in an attempt to drive a single point home, ignores everything that might weaken their point. There is biases, and there is lying.

Rape in colleges is a problem. It happens a lot and administrations are not doing enough to combat it or punish those who have done the deeds.

But being sketchy in your documentary about it doesn’t fucking help.

I mentioned just yesterday that I watched Mississippi Grind solely for the fact that it was nominated for an award. There are several other films nominated for Spirit Awards that I could have watched right away, and I picked Youth.

No, it wasn’t nominated for a Spirit Award. But it might be nominated for an Oscar. In some form or another. I don’t want to be too obvious with my movie choices, and Youth seemed like a nice out of no where film that no one would ever expect me to watch.

“I’m very very sneaky sirs.”

Youth, of course, stars two old people. Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) is supposed to be a baller as a fuck music composer. He is famous and people love his songs and work. But you know, he is old. So he is on at a resort in the Alps with his good buddy, a filmmaker, Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel). Mick is doing research for his next movie, which he believes will be his greatest work yet. He just has to figure out the ending.

Their vacation starts to get weird when an emissary of the Queen (Alex Macqueen), yes, the British one, visits Fred hoping he will conduct a symphony in honor of a big birthday celebration. Well, Fred, despite being his proper British self, says no. Huh. Rarely do people say no to the queen.

It should be noted that these two friends are also related now through marriage. Fred’s daughter (Rachel Weisz) married Mick’s son (Ed Stoppard). Except now Mick is leaving her for a pop star (Paloma Faith, apparently a real pop star?) for very shallow reasons.

There are other big names at this fancy as fuck resort. There is Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano) an actor who is well known for playing a robot, the most recent Miss Universe (Madalina Diana Ghenea), and even a fat…football player…dude. Or something. That one was weird.

Either way. Shit happens at the resort. Bad and good things. Also Jane Fonda.

And all the pictures for this film make them look really pervy.

Youth is directed by Paolo Sorrentino, a man who I know close to nothing about. He is Italian and mostly has Italian films, but his most recent one before Youth was The Great Beauty, which was also acclaimed and loved. But in all honesty, I don’t remember anything about it. At least the last two films (The only ones in English) seem to be about rich people living fancy lives, but you know, having issues.

The best part of Youth is the cinematography. The movie was shot on site of an actual “You Will Never Be Rich Enough To Go Here” resort, and it is probably better looking than you can imagine. Imaginative shots, montages, colors, almost every shot is wonderful. Youth is rated R for its Graphic Nudity, and by that, naked people everywhere. As it is the only way to stay at a resort.

Beautiful film, decent acting, and hard for me to relate to. I am probably wrong, but I guess the title refers to older people trying to reclaim their youth and show they aren’t old. They are making movies. They are enjoying life and the beautiful women around them. But at some point they have to realize that they are old, life is no longer as grand as it used to be, and they sometimes have to make difficult choices.

It is easy to get lost in this film and at points, I felt it was just too intellectual for me. Some of the imagery was out there and I kept losing track of what the film was even about. Naked people. Oh yes, it is about naked people.

Originally, I was trying to avoid Mississippi Grind. I figured I could just wait a few months and get to it when I get lazy. But sure enough, this movie has earned some award nominations from the Spirit Awards, the awards for independent films. And for last years awards I did a pretty pathetic job of watching those movies. I started too late, when I was busying myself with the Oscar nominated movies, so I rarely was able to watch films from just Spirit. They needed to overlap!

Now, this film might be one that overlaps too. It might be nominated for Oscars, technically. I just don’t see it because it is such a small movie and no one seemed to care about it when it was released.

But here is a reason to care about it. Ryan Reynolds has been working really hard to release movies this year, and this is number four for him. Four films this year! All of them starring Reynolds. Not bull shit cameos, but lead man roles. I only enjoyed The Voices, because Self/Less and Woman In Gold were shit. But at least he is working hard before Deadpool comes out and disappoints us all.

You shouldn’t be willing to bet it all on comedic and financial success. That’s a shit bet.

Mississippi Grind is about Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn) and Curtis (Reynolds), two very old timey dude names. But only Gerry is old. He is a loner, divorced with a step kid, and he surprisingly likes to gamble. He lives in middle of nowhere Iowa, but he still plays small time poker games. Must have lost too many big steak hands in his past or something. Gerry and Curtis meet in one of these games, as Curtis was just driving through. He is charismatic, likes to tell stories, and likes to meet people. He doesn’t care about winning, but he is still addicted to gambling and the people. Gerry is addicted to gambling and money.

After night of friendship and drinking these two become the most unlikely of friends. And guess what, Gerry finally has someone who shares his love of gambling! Curtis invites Gerry to travel with him, towards a big poker tournament in New Orleans. Sure, they need a shit ton of money to enter it, but they will just stop at tournaments along the way, winning money and having a blast. They can do more than poker. They can bet on horses, on dogs, play craps, whatever the fuck they want.

Fuck responsibilities. Fuck jobs. Fuck old loved ones. Fuck cares. Let’s gamble and live life.

Also featuring a lot of people in smaller roles, so I will only mention Alfre Woodard, Analeigh Tipton, and Sienna Miller.

Some dudes too I guess. But who cares about those fucks.

I feel like I know Curtis and Gerry, I really do. These strangers met and talked and hung out, and I feel like I was maybe the third, silent stranger on their trip, laughing, yelling, and doing dumb shit. You could probably say that for most movies, as you are always watching them, but for some reason it feels a bit personal with these two shitheads.

I call them shitheads of course, because I am an asshole, and addictions are a real thing. But they just cannot stop gambling and they bet on everything. They bet on their last $100. They bet with other people’s money. They steal and lie and keep on going. They are despicable people, but despicably your friends.

I think Mendelsohn and Reynolds did some top notch acting. They were very believable, and Reynolds wasn’t stuck just playing some pretty boy.

The biggest downfall would have to be the story. It is one we have all heard before, in a way, and there are definitely better gambling films out there. But the simpleness ends up being one of its strengths, when you realize gambling is only part of the film, with the people being the main part.

Potential spoiler? I was worried this movie would turn out being like Fight Club but with gambling. It wasn’t. Everyone was real. That’s good. A Fight Club twist would have been terrible.