Month: April 2017

Alvin’s Harmonious World of Opposites has a lot of things going for it right off the bat.

One: It has an amazing title. We immediately know who the main character is, and we know that there will be some fucked up shit in this movie.

Two: It is the first film I saw for WorldFest here in Houston, in an actual theater. I saw 16 of them before the festival started, but they were in chairs in my homes and at work and on my phone, not in theaters.

Three: The promo image for the movie (seen below) has a large assortment of pandas. So many goddamn pandas. Stuffed, cute, pandas. I actually have 5 stuffed panda toys in my house right now! I am not as obsessed as this main character, but I can certainly, and will happily, relate.

Squeeeeeeeeeee!

Alvin (Teik Kim Pok) is a bit agoraphobic, and he hasn’t left his small apartment in about 18 months. He talks with his friend (Nitin Vengurlekar) on Skype, his job is translating manuals into Japanese with a boss (Ailís Logan) who thinks he is at an office, and he orders everything online. His groceries, a shit ton of knickknacks, and of course panda themed items. He is a bit obsessed, but he doesn’t notice that of course.

Most of his face to face interaction is with his neighbor, Virginia (Vashti Hughes), a vile mouthed racist who blames everything on everyone else and cares not about her volume. Oh, and there is an attractive girl who lives below him, whom he has never talked to, but he has a peep hole in his floor into her bedroom. Erm.

Problem’s begin to really arise when Alvin finds some black substance leaking from the attic into his room. He has some neat freak tendencies, and it is entirely too gross, so he goes to check on it. And what he finds up in his attic he would have never guessed in a million, panda billion, years.

Also featuring Tina Andrews and Dessy Fitri.

If he doesn’t watch it, his foul mouthed neighbor might accidentally eat him.

Alvin’s blahblah is a short film, only about 70 minutes with a handful of characters. Mostly just Alvin and his neighbor, along with the weird lady who lives in her attic. In case you are not ready for the film, the first scenes quickly give us the neighbor on a “cunt” fueled rant to wake up the viewer.

Personally, my favorite scenes were just Alvin hanging out in his Apartment, working, living his life. As advertised, the attic magical “adventure” that he went on was sure, yeah, quite weird. It had gibberish language and a lot of silence. It was bizarre and a complete tonal shift from the rest of the film.

With some thought, you can sort of figure out the purpose of his trip and what it means for his character, it is certainly not given to you on a platter. At the same time, I have no reason to suspect my own interpretation of events are correct at all, and I can easily be reading it wrong.

If this movie was entirely about a man who had slowly turned into a hoarder who never left his small room, I probably would have enjoyed it more. The attic makes the entire thing unique and stand out, but it is just so extreme. It was still quite well done given the subject matter and time.

You know what is exciting nowadays? Getting people cleared of all charges from prison when they were innocent. Now, ideally, they would have never been in jail. And they would have been freed way sooner than 20 or so years in jail. Or way sooner than hours before execution. But every false person imprisoned that gets freed is worthy of celebration and a reminder that our justice system blows.

Technically this documentary came out in 2014 before Making a Murderer, but it is still a subject that a lot of people enjoy hearing about. The Innocence Project has been around since 1992, after DNA evidence helped clear a lot of people wrongly accused in the past. And A Murder In The Park is about Anthony Porter, accused of killing two teenagers in a Chicago park at night in 1982.

It wasn’t until the late ’90’s when a journalism class from Northwestern University and their professor decided to examine the case, found some holes, and made their findings public. They found out a witness recanted his testimony because he couldn’t have seen it, they put some more deniability in it, and even got someone else to confess to the crime. A pretty open and shut case. Porter was freed just a few days before sentenced to death.

Because of how close of a call it was, the state of Illinois decided to finally abolish the death penalty. Just imagine if an innocent person was killed by the government. (Psst, it is bound to have happened by now).

However, what if…what if Porter actually did do the killings, and him getting freed put a different, actually innocent person behind bars? That would be crazy, that couldn’t be real life…

That headline is certainly bold and emotion filling.

It turns out that a few journalism students and a professor with an agenda might not be as good at catching criminals as a police force. One person maybe recanted his testimony, but the police had five other people who saw the crime and agreed it was Porter. The guy they got to convince to the murder did so under duress. A private investigator was called in and he coerced the plea, much like a cop would do at their own building.

So they employed similar tactics that the police did, but this time they put an innocent man in jail to prove a point. Well, if their point was to get rid of the death penalty, they succeeded at that, and did a great thing. But the tactics used were deceitful.

A community could no longer trust their local police force. More lawsuits were held over this, and eventually, the “Real killer” was put free too thanks to all the fucked up shit that was behind the scenes. In the end, the criminal justice system was made helpless as one of their good arrests put doubt into the program and made the crime now completely untouchable due to all the shit that went down.

The documentary highlights an interesting story, but it does feel like a made for TV special. It was on Showtime originally, but the production quality just doesn’t feel like it is there. It presents the facts and tells a story, one that makes you want to question every criminal report you see from now on. And people who argue against it.

This same week I had a review of Win It All, and noted my disappointment that Netflix had dropped their ball on their original films finally. And no, I have not seen Sandy Wexler yet. But we all know that it doesn’t count against them.

Needless to say, I was still excited about Sand Castle, much like how I am excited about War Machine. By all means Netflix, start producing war movies, a new genre for you unless you count Beasts of No Nation.

At this point this review is just name dropping films. I better get to the point before I get sued or accidentally make money on advertisements.

“You know what would make this war better? Some ice cold Mountain Dew.”

This Afghanistan war is going to be from the point of view of Matt Ocre (Nicholas Hoult). He is a smart guy, but he enlisted only because his dad and grandfather did before him. He would certainly rather not shoot people, and he tried to get sent home by having a hand injury that he he used on himself.

But alas, it does not work, it heals “enough” and he is sent out with his unit. Staff Sergeant Harper (Logan Marshall-Green) is their leader, with other recruits like Sergeant Dylan Chutsky (Glen Powell), Sergeant Burton (Beau Knapp), Coporal Enzo (Neil Brown Jr.), and 1st LT Anthony (Sam Spruell).

After a hard and successful shooting mission, their small crew is asked to help with a nearby village. Their water supply was cut off, thanks to an accidental attack from the Americans. So they need water and need it bad. They are tasked with daily driving a giant tank (I mean like the kind that holds water) to a site 3 hours away to fill up, and back, while also helping to oversee the engineers fix the problem for the city.

You know, with people trying to kill them and steal water and things like that. Weeee!

Also starring Sammy Sheik, Tommy Flanagan, and Henry Cavill.

“This smoke is annoying, but later I am going to hit the shower, wash off the blood, and bathe in Dew. Mountain Dew, the fresh blood remover.”

My favorite war films are the ones that have higher amounts of drama elements versus action elements. Most war films in a real setting try to give us some sort of realism, so films that deal with the the heavy emotional toll, the human sacrifices, the citizens who get swept up in it all, the politics, those are my favorite. I could care less about all the bang bang shoot em ups.

And given that this film is mostly about a special operation mission, it has a lot of the above elements, filling me with moderate amounts of joy. Hoult being our main lead in a war film is pretty new territory for him. Sure, for whatever reason he keeps getting put into action films, usually with fantasy elements, but he isn’t a big buff dude war hero. (Oh man! Maybe that explains why he smart instead in this film! Shock!) But he does a good job of balancing war emotions with not wanting to get shot or kill innocent people.

The other members of their crew feel like a real tight knit community. I am always impressed with the bond the soldiers seem to have in a lot of these films, like the soldiers in Fury as a recent example.

My biggest issues come from the end, where thanks to PLOT, our group does have to go on a big action war effort. And it is at night, there are explosions, dead bodies, and lots of guns. Very typical war fare, but a scene that just bored me to tears after the excellent drama and skirmishes I had before. Dark scenes don’t make things feel tense for me, instead they just make me annoyed at what I cannot see and force my brain to fill in the blanks.

Overall a pretty decent effort, good acting from the main actors involved, and a decent story to go with the war.

Netflix has been on a role with its comedies and drama films coming out basically weekly. So after the last month or so, I was excited to see Win It All.

Joe Swanberg, the director, has done a lot of indie pictures, and honestly, a lot of them I have felt have only been okay. Teamed up with Jake Johnson though, who helped write this script, there was potential for greatness. (Yes, I know that he already directed him in Drinking Buddies and I didn’t care for that film). Despite that though, Jake Johnson was in Safety Not Guaranteed, which was wonderful! So I had hope, especially given the Netflix trend.

Although it is about gambling and a lot of gambling films seem to go in the same direction. Hopefully this one can surprise me.

Fat stacks of cash are not surprising. Where is my gambling for pennies film?

Eddie (Jake Johnson) likes the thrill of gambling. He is an expert on Texas Hold ‘Em, except for when he loses. At this point in his life, he has a small house that he rents, he works helping cars park correctly at large events, and spends most of his money at the table. Yes, he is addicted, but he stopped going to those shitty meetings.

And then his neighbor (José Antonio García) asks him a favor. He has to go to jail for about nine months, so he needs Eddie to store a bag in his place, no touching or looking at it, and when he gets back he will give him $10,000. Pretty sweet deal.

It doesn’t take long before Eddie opens the bag though and yeah, it is stocked with cash and other items. If he just borrows a little bit of the money as seed money, $500, he can win some major cash, pay it back, and start being a success again at life. I think you know where he is going with this.

Now down a shit ton of money, Eddie is fearing for his life. He has to get his life back on track, and fast. He will go work for his brother (Joe Lo Truglio), while also impressing a new girl (Aislinn Derbez), and trying his hardest to not gamble his life away.

Also starring Keegan-Michael Key as his sponsor, Steve Berg, Cliff Chamberlain, and Nicky Excitement.

When my legs are spread out, it is to show I am definitely paying attention.

I thought Win It All would be different, I hoped and hoped. I mean, a lot of gambling films are about the thrills of winning and losing it all, but the people in them rarely have “problems” with addiction. They go and say that our main character does, he goes to meetings, and then he fucks over his entire life thanks to gambling.

There is no way that he will save the day and win the girl through gambling. Absolutely impossible. That would be entirely unthinkable and a terrible message to send to those who have problems with gambling. And it fucking happens.

Major spoilers incoming. After getting even further and further into his hole, with the deadline of fixing it moving up, Eddie’s sponsor introduces him to a table where the stakes are incredibly high. And he gets even further in the whole. But sure enough, he puts the last of his money in and gets ahead, way way ahead. And he was going to keep going after getting far ahead. The only reason he stopped was because he had a heart attack, so he had to go to the hospital, and yay the day is saved! He even fixed things with the girl.

End movie.

Fucking what? How goddamn irresponsible. It could have been a complete shit storm where the film ended him dead after getting shot by the guy back from prison, and it would have been better. He could have not regressed and continued to work at his job and paid it off in installments, and it would have been better. But this ending feels incredibly poor tasting in my mouth, and ruins what was a completely average film.

Colossal is one of those films that I knew I couldn’t wait to see from the first trailer and concept leak. The idea sounded original, and originality in films is a rarity.

But it also had two of my favorite people! Anne Hathaway, who has been making a lot of stronger choices lately in her career, and Jason Sudeikis, who is normally pushed off as a side character and still rarely given his chance to shine.

So why not shine with giant monsters attacking South Korea? Who is excited? Just me?

This guy is totally excited!

Gloria’s (Anne Hathaway) life is shit. She got out of her small town to live in a big city, but she lost her sweet writing job and hasn’t found work in a year. She has been living with her boyfriend, Tim (Dan Stevens) who has had a stable job and a stable life. But Gloria has decided to spend most of her days sleeping, because she is up all night with some friends drinking, getting nothing done. Thanks to her lack of willingness to change and lies, she gets kicked out of the apartment and finds herself broke and alone.

So of course she heads back to her old home town, that she left so long ago. She can stay at her parents old place, because they still own it and it is empty. But hey, she will get an inflatable mattress and figure it out.

It doesn’t take long for her to run into an old friend, Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), who gives her a place to hang out (his bar), some house supplies, and a part time job. Heck, she gets some new friends in “crazy man” Garth (Tim Blake Nelson) and Joel (Austin Stowell).

And after a night of drinking and sleeping all morning, she wakes up to find that Seoul, South Korea got totally fucked up by a giant monster. And after few nights of attacks, she starts to notice that its mannerisms seem familiar. Could…could she be controlling the monster? But why? How? Those hundreds of dead people…

It is hard to reconcile your emotions when you know you wiped out hundreds, but no idea how.

If you watch a trailer for Colossal, it will look like a Comedy with some Sci-Fi elements, but it is so much more than that. As far as I can tell and hope, no trailer really just spoils the whole thing, but they all give the same sort of vibe.

Apparently this is the year of genre-bending films blowing me away, as this is only my 4th 4 out of 4 on the website from 2017 films, and 3 of them don’t get easily defined by one genre. Split, Get Out, and now this, all have multiple elements and tonal shifts that keep you on your feet and help reflect a grander film experience. Some would dock points off of Colossal for that, by being “scatterbrained” but that is only an issue if the film does not succeed on the multiple levels it tries to reach. But Colossal handles the later film drama extremely well, and the early film comedy/awkwardness/mystery elements.

Acting is top notch for our leads of Hathaway and Sudeikis. Hathaway made me hate her character, until it didn’t anymore (growth!), but I always hated her hair. Sudeikis had a lot more subtle great moments early on, before rising up to a level I have not seen before with him by the end.

Colossal is a film that is better the less you know about it, and I ensure you, I barely talked about any of the many intricacies of the plot. But spoilers be out there, so go out and swiftly see this film which deals with important subject matters in a rather unique way.

Two main things popped in my brain while prepping for and watching The Lost City of Z. First of all, cool title, really exciting, went in without looking up a trailer or description.

The first thing I realized? This was not a zombie movie. Sorry, a Z on its own just kind of screams that out. (Doesn’t help that Brad Pitt was a producer on both this film and World War Z).

Secondly, I had been pronouncing it wrong for two weeks. And if I pronounced it correctly, I wouldn’t think it was about zombies. That is because it isn’t an American Z, it is a Canadian Z, or a “Zed”. So before you look like me, silly as a goat, it is The Lost City of Zed.

These guys also look foolish, with spears in their faces. Just not as foolish as me.

Our story is about Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), a real man, with a real story, and real interesting facial hair. He is a British officer, but he has no medals to speak of, mostly training troops in case there is a big war (This is 10-15 years before WWI). His dad did some bad stuff, so he has to try and reclaim his family name to help elevate his new family. You know, his wife (Sienna Miller), and their little boy.

Percy is eventually chosen to go on a dangerous movie to Bolivia in South America. The Royal Geographical Society is going to have him lead a mission to follow a river, map out the area, and find its source. It is important for peace in the region and making money. Percy reluctantly goes on a multi year journey, leaving his pregnant wife behind, with danger and mystery in his future.

He gets a right hand man, Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson), who is rocking a killer beard. What he really discovers is that the savages there are not so savage, and there might be an older ancient culture hiding in those woods, he just has to find it to prove it to the world.

Also starring Clive Francis, Ian McDiarmid, Tom Holland, Angus Macfadyen, and Edward Ashley.

At least they have guns, the best invention for scary potentially zombie infested ruins.

Right off the bat, I disliked The Lost City of Z. It had a filter applied to it to make it look time period specific, which movies love, and it just distracts me. Seriously. The entire film it just distracts me. It makes the whole thing look odd, but I am apparently the only one who gets annoyed by these things.

The Lost City of Z is pretty long, over 2 hours. It is extremely thorough, impressively so at times, and I learned a lot about this man who did some pretty exciting things in South American exploration. The Costin character is also pretty exciting. But I actually learned the most about James Murray, an Antarctic explorer who also went on a mission and was kind of a dumb ass. Which isn’t fair, because this story about Fawcett would be super biased.

Outside of filter issues, I do believe this movie has a bit too much going on. Although World War I ends up becoming an important change in his life, it feels so weird to spend so much time on that front (heh), when we have already had two expeditions and know that a third one is coming before the movie ends. And at the same time, I wish they explored a bit more of his relationship with his kids and wife. The ending also takes some liberties with what happened to Fawcett, because the truth is a lot more unclear than that.

And all of these points are still pretty minor. It is a well crafted film about a non well known subject, and one that will interest many sects of people.

I didn’t watch The Magnificent Seven before now, because it is from one of the studios that I don’t get invites to. But despite that, I did WANT to see it, and then never got out to the theaters. And now it has been out for awhile and I still dicked around.

My bad. I wanted to see the movie because yes, I knew the story. It is a remake. But I liked a lot of the actors involved and wanted to give it a shot. A whole lot of shots. A village full of shots.

Basically now I just find myself in a gun mood, and want to watch fake cowboys shoot other fake cowboys. They have theme parks with that theme.

Let’s see…One…two…three…uhh, um…yeah seven. Looks like seven people here.

In the late 1800s, the town of Rose Creek is getting besieged! Or maybe just hoodwinked a little. A big time robber dude, Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), is trying to buy out an entire mining town for his own profits. He is not giving them a good deal, using threats and intimidation and actually killing to get his way.

So Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) and her friend (Luke Grimes) go out in search of help, eventually finding a warrant officer, Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington). He doesn’t want to until he hears about Bogue, which causes him to agree and start looking for other people to join his crew.

We got a gambler (Chris Pratt), a Mexican outlaw (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), a Comanche warrior (Martin Sensmeier), a tracker (Vincent D’Onofrio), a guy good with knifes (Byung-hun Lee), and of course a famed sharpshooter (Ethan Hawke).

Needless to say, they don’t have a lot of people. But they have some townsfolk, who are miners and farmers. Their lead villager (Matt Bomer) is pretty good too. If they set up defenses, put the towns people in easy areas to defend, they can probably stop a pretty big force of asshole outlaws from taking over. But it is a gun fight, so some people are going to get scared, and a lot of people are going to die.

Also starring Jonathan Joss in pretty intimidating role.

With lights that bright, there must be an angel or something in that corner.

The point of The Magnificent Seven is to watch some famous people act like cowboys, shoot each other, hopefully have some really cool skillful tactics, and be a bit enjoyable. And sure, it did feel pretty enjoyable.

I know I was hoping for a lot more to happen during the final siege. Or maybe a secondary skirmish after the initial one to give us more shenanigans. The big siege just didn’t live up to my expectations and hype. Some cool moments, sure, and I cared what happened to the characters, but it was just overall a little bit disappointed.

The good news is with a diverse cast of characters, it plays out like an RPG. Everyone has their own little bit of plot and characterization, it isn’t just 3 people and 4 “guys who shoot good” or anything. No, they said these seven people were magnificent, so they made them all really talented and different. Which is another major point of this film.

But you know what? It ended with a narrator describing their story and referring to them as magnificent, then credits. My eyes physically left my head to do a bigger roll at that moment. It is so…dumb. Just ugh.

Hopefully there is no sequel to this movie, but hey, just give me another reboot and do it better and I will be happy.

I can really get into a good shoot ´em up film. Ones with some plot, no plot, or a lot of plot (rare), I can really get behind losing most of the cast in a 90-120 minute time frame. I am willing to suspend my belief enough about the events that led to a long gun battle, and hope that the ¨main characters¨ end up actually dying in surprising fashions to make sure the genre keeps its unpredictability.

And I feel like Free Fire is the type of film that will fire in all cylinders to the parts of the brain that get me all jolly.

The cast is a real big reason for my excitement. Let´s just say that a lot of these actors I have been enjoying in almost every single one of their roles, yes even that shitty one, and always get excited to see them in a movie, even if it ends with disappointment.

Only one woman in the entire movie? I wonder who will probably “win” the fight?!

Never take a rock to a gun fight, unless that rock is Dwayne Johnson. But he isn’t here, so instead we got a few junkies and some Europeans who want to buy and sell guns.

On one side, we have Chris (Cillian Murphy) who needs some weapons for Ireland. He brought along his main muscle, the aging Frank (Michael Smiley), someone who helped set up the deal in Justine (Brie Larson), and a couple of stupid young guys to help make their crew look bigger and carry the boxes (Enzo Cilenti, Sam Riley).

They meet Ord (Armie Hammer), who makes sure the deal is on the up and up, another middle man type person, but basically a mercenary hired by the other side.

The other side is led by Vernon (Sharlto Copley), a South African, and his associate Martin (Babou Ceesay). Their muscle include Harry (Jack Reynor) and Gordon (Noah Taylor). But they brought a different type of rifle than agreed upon, so arguments start getting made, people are getting antsy.

The real argument comes from two of the lackies, unrelated to the deal, but once shots start firing and both sides start taking hits, all bets are off. It gets worse when two sharpshooters arrive (Patrick Bergin, Mark Monero), meaning someone was already looking to double cross someone else for some money.

Also featuring Tom Davis as a giant.

Generally, in the middle of gun fire, it is the best time to discuss pay raises.

I love Armie Hammer in everything. I am enjoying Jack Reynor’s up and coming career. I think Brie Larson is awesome. Sharlto Copley is the best part of a lot of bad movies, and the best part of some good movies.

But this film is another movie that I must have just overhyped in my brain. I knew that it was a short film, a one set location, and mostly about people shooting each other. There was the chance for a smart plot, but I didn’t expect one (and it obviously did not delivery one). But at the very least, I expected a lot of exciting deaths and amazing feats of showmanship.

Yet in the middle, it felt like it was dragging. They didn’t have a lot of people to start with, so the deaths had to be spread out and relatively slow. It just seems like every single one of them was a terrible shot. Most of them get injured relatively quickly, shots to the shoulder or leg, meaning everyone crawls for both cover and necessity. But it almost seemed bizarre just at how little people were actually shot versus the number of bullets used.

Maybe it was a realism thing, maybe it was because they didn’t know where to take it. But at least the movie is relatively funny. Hearing the quips in the background and the angst these people started to have with each other were pretty great. And now, whenever I hear Annie’s Song by John Denver, I will think of this movie fondly. Not as fondly as as I had hoped, but still a bit fondly.

I am starting to reach the bottom of my barrel in terms of content, and that is exactly where I want to be. Who the hell has even heard about Always Shine, let alone seen it? I am sure very few, if any of you. And that is where I want to be on my reviews.

I picked this movie to review because I knew one of the leads involved and liked her work. But I also liked how it was not even rated and barely released anywhere. Just a small town indie film that no one knows about, and a thriller at that.

There have been a lot of really good small budget thrillers with a small cast. They can do a whole lot with it. So even though I don’t get the title and expect nothing, I can still hope for the best.

Like every morning when I wake up in the middle of the forest. I hope for the best.

Always Shine is about two somewhat friends. They used to be super friends, but their friendship has waned. Beth (Caitlin FitzGerald) is an aspiring actress. She has been in some commercials before. She has been in a few B-Movies. She has an agent! And she is going to try to star in a new horror flick about rocks, but she will be the main female lead, a big step up for her.

Anna (Mackenzie Davis), is also an aspiring actress. But she doesn’t have commercials, she doesn’t have parts in films coming up, she has nothing. And damn it, she is a better actress than Beth. But her life sucks.

Despite their differences, they want to reconnect and have a getaway in the mountains, where the signal sucks, in a nice place owned by Anna’s family. Now they have to deal with each other, go out drinking and meeting people together, and get on each other’s nerves. In fact, Anna is basically starting to hate Beth, because Anna believes Beth is actively trying to crush Anna’s career before it can get started.

Things are not looking good for Beth.

Also starring Lawrence Michael Levine and Khan Baykal.

“It is called acting, bitch, and I’ve been in a movie with Zac Efron!”

I have seen Mackenzie Davis in only a handful of films, with only That Awkward Moment and Freaks of Nature having a major part. And honestly, I thought she did great and should be in more movies. I haven’t seen FitzGerald in anything.

Potential biases, Davis is definitely the stand out here, as she is the one pissed off, she is the one who has to carry the end of the movie, and she is just so damn intense. FitzGerald has to play a meek character, who has only one real decent scene on a panicked phone call to her boyfriend.

But a few good scenes does not make the movie. The entire final act is just slow and dreadful. It seems to serve no purpose. They play it out like a mystery, but I wasn’t sure which parts were supposed to be mysterious. And then it ends with the big obvious reveal, leaving me just annoyed at the previous half hour of movie.

Seriously, the ending is just so bad. It is supposed to be some sort of mental break down. But it is tame (and maybe realistic?) and makes for very unexciting film.

Also, I still have no damn clue what the title alludes to.

I don’t really get Peter Berg. He is such an interesting person, but I don’t get him.

He gave us the Friday Night Lights TV series, and for that, I can thank him. Despite problems during the writer’s strike, we still got an overall solid project that came from a solid film.

And then he did Hancock, which had a bad second half. Then he did Battleship. The real low point. After that, he began to have his Marky Mark obsession, as Patriots Day is the third “real story” film he has done with the singer turned actor in a row. I liked Lone Soldier. I was disappointed with Deepwater Horizon. And Patriots Day seemed like something that was coming out way too soon after the events.

And somehow these last two movies have come out within just a few months of each other. Calm down Berg!

This time Mark has an average amount of guns, right in between the other two films.

Patriot’s Day of course is a film, detailing the events of the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013, about three and a half years old when the film about it came out. Our main character is Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg), a police cop who is just returning to the force and has an easy first job back. Finish line at the marathon. Aw, how sweet.

Well, unfortunately, a bomb or two goes off, and a lot of people get injured and a police hunt takes off. And through the smoke, the fire, the wreckage, a lot of local heroes come out to help those wounded. But this is about the cops. And unfortunately, the cops do not find them right away.

Blah blah, the real story shows that they eventually get two suspects, in Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Themo Melikidze) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Alex Wolff). With a city on lock down, they try to escape, and eventually get caught. Or, well, one of them does.

Featuring a lot of big time actors, like J.K Simmons, Kevin Bacon, and John Goodman. Also Melissa Benoist, Vincent Curatola, Michelle Monaghan, and Jimmy O. Yang.

Not really a good image, so not really a place for me to make a joke.

After finally watching Patriots Day, I still only feel that this movie came out too soon.

First of all, it was apparently filmed on location. Where the guy hid in the boat? That was most likely the exact same neighborhood as it actually happened. Like those poor people need to relive those experiences so soon. A lot of footage from the film might also have been actual footage, I have no idea. Footage from police cams, or security cams. Either they made it all look as real as possible, or just used the real stuff, and either way I am uncomfortable.

The ending was the best part as, surprise!, it actually did switch to the real people involved. A real tribute to the cops at a baseball game after the fact, then brief interviews with some of the main people the film touch upon. Very brief, the whole thing takes just a few minuets before the credits. And holy shit, this is what the movie NEEDED to be.

In case you didn’t figure it out, it should have been a DOCUMENTARY! That is something truly respectable, something that doesn’t have actor cops and agents running around pretending a terrorist is loose again in your neighborhood, or recreating other painful memeories so soon after they happen. Fuck.

I know people complain about Hollywood being unoriginal, sequels, reboots, yadda yadda. But trying to rush out true stories to keep them relevant is the biggest scandal out of all of those. Most of the true story films that I enjoy end up being the ones I never heard about, where I learn something. I would imagine most people who saw Patriots Day were also glued to their TVs over these few days and even saw the guy get arrested in the boat. I didn’t learn much and it just felt…exploitative.

There should probably be a limit of at least 5-8 years before you film true events, just to give the world some breathing room.