Month: April 2017

Okay, let’s start this with my fast and the furious order of liking the films.

1, 5, 3, 7, 6, 4, 2.

And now that I have seen The Fate of the Furious, I would either put it after 7, or after 6. The trend continues, that I would have mentioned in a few of the previous F&F reviews I have done.

The even ones are not as good as the odd ones. It is science, bitch!

I think this is also some science.

F8 begins with Dom (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) in Havana, Cuba on a honeymoon. A honeymoon! Hooray! And it comes complete with a street race so absurd and contradictory, you can accept anything else the film has to offer.

While walking around, Dom runs into a stranded woman. Car problems, sucks to suck. Turns out it was a trap, this lady is named Cipher (Charlize Theron) (A name that always means villain in any movie that features it), and she has something to blackmail Dom with. She needs him to run a mission, he can’t tell anyone, and yes, it will involve betraying his friends and loved ones to do it. But part of the film is learning about the mystery, so why would I tell you now?

We have a lot of returning characters, including: Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), Tej (Ludacris), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), Deckard (Jason Statham) and Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), Elena (Elsa Pataky) and Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell). For some reason, no Brian, although he is mentioned a ton.

But also new characters! Mainly featuring Little Nobody (Scott Eastwood), underling of Mr. Nobody who is going to be geared towards our new Brian, Rhodes (Kristofer Hivju), Cipher’s main muscle, and Helen Mirren doing something or another.

Ending with Mirren is like popping out a secretive submarine out of nowhere, right car guys?!

What is it like to enjoy this movie? I truly cannot fathom it. It seems to be plagued with issues, from ridiculous character decisions, to plot points, to plot twists. I understand that not every character should be smart, but this group of people has now turned into an international task force that deals with apparently world ending problems, so they have to have some intelligence.

But instead we get a main character who says that ¨It doesn matter what is under the hood, but who is behind the wheel¨ before a street race. So when he is called out on that quote and given a shitty car, what does he do? A whole lot of quick modifications in order to change what is under the hood. Ah, thanks Dom, so it does matter, okay.

And that was just the beginning of the film, with the rest of the movie falling straight in line with those scenes.

We have a few mentions of Brian, but terrible reasons for not involving him. We have returning bad guys, meaning you actually have to remember the inane plots from previous films, and then watch as these bad guys gain sudden redeeming qualities and everything is fine again. We get a build up of a big fight, and it never gets to occur.

And again, we get poor decision after poor decision. In one of the above pictures we have all the cars driving in reverse to keep the middle car in place. Before that, they were just breaking to keep him stopped. But at this point in the film I had to scratch my head, wondering what their plan was going to be to actually stop him, because keeping him in place with a lot of moving tires is clearly not a good idea with no end goal. Before this scene we had a great idea with cars being hacked and forced to get in the way and block up traffic, but for whatever reason, that tactic had to be thrown out of the window for these scenes.

And you know what? The ending explosion and save rivals Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. That might sound harsh, but it is true.

Some amusing banter aside, if you like superhero films where there power is driving and surviving explosions, while also having lower than average intelligence, you will enjoy The Fate of the Furious.

At long last, America is getting graced with the movie everyone was talking about in Japan last year. No, not the fucking turtle movie. But Your Name, an anime that broke a lot of records last year, and it isn’t even produced by Studio Ghibli!

A lot of hype for this film, a lot of positive talk, and The Academy ignored it. Heck, I wouldn’t have been able to see it before the Oscars, but as long as it took the place of My Life As A Zucchini, then I would have at least understood why and been in the same place I am now.

And full warning for all of you purists, I watched this movie dubbed, despite the subtitle option later in the day. So my tags are going to be for the American actors who I heard talking, and not the original voices. Sorry, but not sorry.

There is just something magical about not having to read in the theater.

When Mitsuha (Stephanie Sheh) wakes up one morning, she seems lost and confused. A lot of talks about dreams. But her sister (Catie Harvey) and grandmother (Glynis Ellis) say she was a bit weird the day before. And so do her friends, Katsuhiko (Kyle Hebert) and Sayaka (Cassandra Morris). Mitsuha doesn’t remember a thing, but what she did sounds nothing like her! However, she does find a note in her book, with the question “Who Are You?”.

And then, the next day, she wakes up in the body of a boy named Taki (Michael Sinterniklaas). He has a penis and it is weird and she can’t even. But she tries to make it through the day, insisting the whole time it is a dream. She meets his friends (Ben Pronsky, Ray Chase), and manages to screw up the work shift, but she does help out an older employee, Miss Okudera (Laura Post), whom Taki has a crush on.

Great! Body switching. It seems to happen almost every other day, where they both switch bodies and have to live their lives. Which means a lot of genitalia confusion. Once they realize fully what is going on and that it isn’t a dream, they start to find ways to communicate with each other. They leave diaries about their day on their phones, so they can inform the person and make the transition smoother. And they lay out ground rules on what they can and cannot do with their bodies.

Somehow, they both seem to improve the lives of their temporary host. But that is only the beginning of the story, and it goes a lot of places once they decide they need to meet each other.

And no, they will not just meet casually on some stairs like this promo art will have you believe.

Oh no! My emotions! I seem to have dropped them all over the place it just makes me upset, sad, relived, and happy all at the same time! The film was at 105 minutes, but it seemed so much longer based on how much it was able to go over and with the tone shifts that occurred. My plot outline has to only go over the first third, before they try to meet. Maybe the first half, and talking more about it will only spoil the discovery for yourself.

My first thoughts were how I planned on explaining the movie to my wife, because she would enjoy the story, but as I cried in happiness at the end, I realized it is the type of thing that is better seen first, not spoiled.

If we are being completely honest, a lot of components in this film are pretty standard anime story fare, and the ending itself isn’t a surprise. But the inclusion of fantasy elements, even on the low scale that this film gives us, with some science fiction elements, it deals with some pretty hardcore stuff. I won’t say the film did it perfectly, but it tried to be different and original with its actual plot, despite the inclusion of pretty general character tropes.

I apologize for being vague, but it is just really important to me. Your Name is a wonderful experience. Not everything done in the film necessarily makes sense, and it takes awhile to understand a lot of it. But it should be praised for going in as hard as they did. The animation is also quite beautiful and it appears to take anime in a new level of eyegasm. At least somewhere they are still improving and kicking ass in the 2D animation department.

Your Name should be watched, and it helps conclude 2016 for being one of the best animated film years for a long time. It is a shame that 2017 is looking like the polar opposite in terms of quality.

To be gifted in academia, it can mean a lot of things. It does NOT, however, have to mean you are immediately great at math or science. You can be gifted at drawing, music, analytical thinking, synesthesia, you name it. It is a common misconception that gifted students have to be good at common school subjects.

When I was in NC, it was called AG then AIG, Academically Intellectually Gifted, but apparently in Texas it is just GT, for Gifted and Talented. The same key word is there, and it is supposed to give you a harder program to really test your limits and get more out of your education. For the most part, it is really just slightly harder material and doesn’t do a lot of training.

Being a gifted student and now teaching gifted students, I was very interested with what the hell the movie Gifted would be about. Would it be accurate? Would it show the appropriate struggles? Would the main character wear glasses?

Oh thank goodness, no glasses.

Our story is about Mary Adler (Mckenna Grace). She is 7 years old and about to enter the first grade. She doesn’t want to go, though, because she has been living with her Uncle Frank (Chris Evans) most of her life and she has been home schooled. Not fancy tutors, just good old fashioned books and practice. Sure they live in a small trailer, in a poor area, with Frank working as a boat repairman, but they are happy.

But she doesn’t want to go into a regular school. It will be too slow for her! And when she does advanced multiplication in her head to her new teacher, Ms. Stevenson (Jenny Slate), they know something is up.

Turns out she is the daughter of Pat Golding (Julie Ann Emery), a very famous young mathematician, who was close to solving the Navier–Stokes equations. It is part of the Millennium Prize Problems (Not Yu-Gi-Oh related), a series of problems that will help revolutionize math if anyone ever can prove them. And Pat killed herself when Mary was 6 months old, leaving her in Frank’s house.

But it turns out that Franks family is kind of crazy. Notably, his mom (Lindsay Duncan), who attempts to gain custody of Mary once she finds out how gifted she is. Frank doesn’t want to put her in a fancy academy school for high level training, he wants her to grow up normal, with friends her age. And thus, a nice legal battle is actually the main focus of the film. Woo, lawyers!

And Octavia Spencer is in here too, of course, as wise next door neighbor and friend.

Now picture the lady who starred in Obvious Child as an elementary school teacher. Yeah, I can’t either.

Gifted is okay, in almost every front. The acting, the story, the feels. I only cried once, which is surprising, given it being about a dad like figure with a young daughter. There was an incredibly cute scene where the girl was having a crisis, thinking that she was never wanted by anyone in her family and her mom, so Frank took her to a hospital to see baby announcements post births. To show happy families and to relate how it made them feel as well. It was touching and powerful.

But this film isn’t great at the same time.

We have handfuls of math problem montages, close ups of symbols and numbers that I guess most people won’t understand, close up of the girl’s face, and back and forth, with some nice chipper music. The worst was when she was doing an advanced math packet in her first grade class. Because that montage included Jenny Slate looking longingly at her while she sat at her desk.

And it still had some nice jokes though. Jokes about math teachers and beards. Jokes about how less civilized people will use the word irregardless. Those cracked me up, which made the movie a bit more bearable.

Gifted is a relatively simple film about an extraordinary, fictional character. Watching a first graded do differential equations isn’t exciting, because this is a movie and the actress could be doing anything. In real life, if this was a real story, it would be amazing. Oh well!

My Bakery In Brooklyn (Potentially now just called Bakery In Brooklyn), is a small time movie that came out earlier this year. A january film, and you all know what they say about January movies.

But that usually means films released in the theater. There is no stereotype about VOD only films released in January, just the normal VOD stereotypes. But not all films straight to the internet are bad, so this one has a chance.

And technically, I only decided to watch it because I knew one of the main two leads, a girl who was in both Prom and Scream 4 (in the same year) and not a whole lot more. I had to see where she went from there!

She went straight into the hands of a lawyer, good choice!

Vivien (Aimee Teegarden) has a lot going on in her life, and she is about to go to Europe! But she is also dating a cute guy, a lawyer (Ward Horton), who works for a bank. She is close to her cousin, Chloe (Krysta Rodriguez), is a television producer (or something), for a cooking show with a famous chef. It is a hard job, but she has nutrition training and is up to date on all the latest trends.

And then their Aunt dies. It was sudden and unexpected, but she left the bakery she owned forever to Vivien and Chloe. Well, Chloe knows a lot about cooking, and Vivien was about to leave the country, so they basically agree to just let Chloe run it and have it. Until she changes her mind and shows up anyways.

Turns out they have different ideas on how to run the shop. Vivien wants to keep it traditional and honor her aunt. Chloe thinks they need to modernize it all, keep up with the trends, make it more healthy, and that will increase the profits and neighborhood image. They bicker and bicker, and even put a line down the middle of their bakery, in order to decorate and run it as they see fit, and compete to see who gets more business.

But guess what? The tax man cometh, and the bank is going to take their store thanks to unpaid debts. Damn it, Aunt. Now they have to work together to get a lot of money. And the boyfriend lawyer? He works for the banks. Ruh roh!

Also starring Aitor Luna, Anthony Chisholm, Blanca Suárez, Enrique Arce, Ernie Sabella, and Griffin Newman. And most of them have their own subplots too.

You see that? Right there? A goddamn line in the middle.

True story. I probably wrote this review the same day I watched the film. It was really easy to write, it just flowed off my fingers, and I trashed the fuck out of this movie. Which I still plan on doing. But for whatever reason, when it came time to post it two weeks later, it was completely missing outside of pictures and no revision history to speak about. Fuck.

This is not a movie anyone will care about, nor will anyone really want to read I expect given the lack of recognition. So normally in these cases, I would cut my loses, be upset, but not try and rewrite it. But I gave this movie a 0, and it came out in 2017, and if it ends up being one of the worst, then damn it, I need it to exist so it can be on a worse of the year list. So please, check back in 2018 to see if I actually did waste my time with this.

Here are the problems with this movie. First, there are too many side plots. These side characters who are involved seem to go off and do their own things, but don’t add much to the main story. Secondly, the ending is a complete and total cop out. But thirdly, of which I plan on mini-ranting, this is not a movie but a motherfucking sitcom pilot.

Sure, it is longer than a normal show, and this could’t work in the hour long format, so it would have to be a half hour comedy. But to assume that I would get to see a real film has me feeling a bit bamboozled. Being a pilot is the only way to explain why it is so terrible.

All the side plots? Good, it gives them something to work on and expand over the season, since they don’t help the movie at all. The cop out ending? It allows a longer plot where it may eventually backfire and have a goal later. But the acting isn’t great, the problems are minor, AND THEY PUT A LINE DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE BAKERY.

THEY. PUT. A. LINE. DOWN. THE. MIDDLE. OF. THE. BAKERY.

This is like number one on the list of things a bad sitcom eventually does, when two people have to share a space. It always ends badly, it is always stupid to watch, and everyone knows it. Yet it is 2017 and they added that plot point to a movie? I feel like I am just not being respected with this pile of crap in front of me.

My Bakery in Brooklyn? More like, My Shit in Brooklyn. And I will flush it. That is the proper thing to do, no matter where it is.

Who is The Most Hated Woman In America? Is this another documentary about Hillary Clinton? Shit, I can’t tell from the title if it is a pro or anti Clinton film.

Maybe you could tell from some of my Christian film reviews, but I identify as an Atheist and honestly, there are not a lot of films about atheists where it is important to their identity. Well, in this movie, it is the entire identity.

So this film, another random Netflix beauty, tells a story that is extremely relevant to my life, while also being an important part of American history.

And as a bonus, it is about a goddamn woman who did it all. A double win.

I just wonder where they got the title from.

Madalyn Murray O’Hair (Melissa Leo), a woman who is very proud of her name and doesn’t want that bad boy shortened. She has had some troubles in her life, but she is making it as a single mother. And yes, she is living with her parents, but it doesn’t mean her life is bad. She cannot find a man to provide, so she just decides to work on her own.

And she is educated. She wants her boy to be educated too, even if it means disagreements with her family. And one time she has to take her son to school because he missed the bus, and lo and behold, she hears the classroom reciting The Lord’s Prayer. She tries to make a fuss to the teacher, but she says it is part of their job to have a devotion period, and refuses to listen.

So she takes her argument to the top. And that means the Supreme Court. And in an almost unanimous decision, her argument holds and prayer is taken out of school. And thus, the hatred.

Now, O’Hair doesn’t stop there. She does go after the Pledge of Allegiance too, or at least the “Under God” line. That doesn’t end up as successful, but she does found American Atheists, an organization to give them a voice. And sure, she makes some money along the line.

But O’Hair’s life is anything but normal, and this story goes into a lot of the weirder and more unfortunate parts.

Starring Brandon Mychal Smith, Juno Temple, Michael Chernus, Rory Cochrane, Alex Frost, José Zúñiga, Josh Lucas, Vincent Kartheiser, and Adam Scott.

Yep, this film goes into a lot of clearly hilarious places.

This film does not follow a linear path to tell its story. In fact, right away, we are met with an old lady getting kidnapped in Texas. Yes, Texas, the state that certainly loves its Jesus. The kidnapping case ended up becoming widely known at the time, partially because of how long it took before anyone cared to find her, given how much she was despised by the local community.

This woman was a one-lady powerhouse, who knew how to argue, knew what she wanted and was willing to fight for it. She wasn’t pleasant though. She was (apparently) manipulative of others, including her family, to make sure her and her legacy made it on top. She even dilly dallied with some of the men of the cloth to get some sweet profits, going on a debate tour over the USA.

And that ending? Man, that ending is rough. I almost had to classify this as a Dark Comedy, but only a small shocking bit does not make it into that territory. It took me awhile to really comprehend it, but that is because sometimes the truth is not pretty and it they can’t just ignore her downfall.

The Most Hated Woman in America is informative about an important legal matter in our countries history, and it is always good to learn a little bit about your heroes you did not know existed. A bit sloppy, some slower moments though means it is still not in the elite territory.

Kurios – Cabinet of Curiosities is currently playing in Houston and tickets can be bought here.

If I were to say that me and Cirque Du Soleil go way back, that would be a bold faced lie. In my life I have gone to the circus, but the last time was probably around 1st grade. And it was a small one. So no circus that is all about the achievements of the human body like Cirque Du Soleil. Although, a year or two ago, I went to Sea World, and saw a sort of water gymnast animal thing that might have been close enough.

Needless to say, I was stoked at the opportunity to get to see my first CDS performance, titled Kurios – Cabinet of Curiosities. The topic itself is fascinating to me, as I have been to a real “Cabinet of Curiosities” a few years ago.

The cabinets used to just be eccentric collections of stuff that people showed off, which helped evolve into the modern museum. But the title can still be used, especially if the stuff doesn’t have a real theme and is just a lot of weird and interesting figures.

So my first Cirque Du Soleil performance, technically my second circus, and technically my second cabinet of curiosities. Clearly I am over qualified to write about live spectacles.

It is like the cast of Little Nemo AND Finding Nemo collectively fucked a steam engine.

The before show was not reason enough to really show up too early, outside of getting better parking spots. They had a small event to showcase the opening of the tent, but it is not something worth breaking your back over to get there in time. But a good time for photos, souvenirs, and making sure you know where the pissers are.

The seating area was a bit smaller than I imagined as well, because damn it, I have a big imagination. Tightly packed chairs, not a lot of leg room or places for you to put your cups. But they are stadium seating with a few big walk ways so the performers can do pre show antics with the crowd. The start of the show is a bit of a start soft as well, with characters doing minor activities for a good 10 plus minutes while people get to their seats and finish their conversations.

The first real part of the show gives us a nice glimpse into their band and singer, setting the tone and sound for the rest of the show. The opening act then throws character after character onto the stage, to fill the viewer with a sense of wonder. Wondering what each person will end up doing, or if they are just a background character, of course. Technically they start the focus with banging on sticks and a juggler, which sounds like nothing new, but it feels like a grand party.

After that we get a series of weird and awesome tricks, displays, and athleticism. And weird shit! And honestly, it was all a blast.

I looked up official names, but my initial description names make me laugh more. We had a woman who just struggled so hard to ride a bike correctly, a group of contortionists who were freakishly erotic, while also reminding me of Beyonce and Hand Models. But the two top performances of the first half involved upside down mirror worlds and a guy standing on some shaky shit. Well, technically both of them should have involved standing on some shaky shit.

Why stand on shaky stuff, when you can fake fly?

While waiting in the bathroom line, I figured it would hard for the second half to be as entertaining as the first, but that is because I apparently used to be a dumb shit nostalgic fool.

Because the second half was so goddamn amazing. And that is whre the Finding Nemo elements come in, along with a little bit of Steve Zissou.

We get a giant net with trampoline level bounciness to drape the stage. And on that net is of course men in raincoats. What is that? No, they are actually strange fish men, and they got mad hops. I have never seen trampolining that precise, in terms of height, types of spins, and even the way they were able to stop was a sight to behold.

After that is some yo-yo tricks, some “Siamese twins” on ribbon ropes, some hand puppets, and then our striped strong dudes. Like some Popeye side character, they danced and jumped their way onto the stage.

This one I just needed to get a picture of for the review because I could not believe it. A big part of their choreography involved them putting their hands together, jumping on their hands and flinging them through the air. Again, words fail me, but the amount of height they got off of this maneuver just felt unbelievable. I wondered if you could photoshop live video in front of your face. It flowed so well and it sort of felt like looking at a classic video game double jump in real life.

Kurios – Cabinet of Curiosities is worth the money to see. They put on a show, I smiled the entire night, and I want to see it again and again. There are people out there who can do amazing things, and you just gotta sometimes go underneath a tent to find them.

They seriously have put Mario to shame.

For some reason, I tend to find movies about deserts pretty dry.

No but really, large amounts of a movie in the desert drain the life force out of me. I could not at all enjoy Sahara. It is why I am afraid to watch Last Days in the Desert. I felt like I was dying during Lawrence of Arabia. (Sacrilegious, don’t care).

And Queen of the Desert just looks like the much shorter, female version of Lawrence of Arabia.

Just people, probably feeling miserable. Miserable and hot.

Queen of the Desert is actually a true story about Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman). Not only did the movie just look like a female Lawrence of Arabia, she was basically doing the same thing as T.E. Lawrence and extremely well known for it. Shit, she KNEW Lawrence. We have someone playing Lawrence in this film. (Even the music is reminiscent of LoA, but at this point, I am now in the analysis part and probably sounding annoying).

The connections are never ending!

She traveled the middle easy, helped to figure out borders, dealt with different political regimes, and had some time for romance on the side.

Also starring David Calder, Damian Lewis, Christopher Fulford, Jenny Agutter, Jay Abdo, with James Franco as Henry Cadogan and Robert Pattinson as T.E. Lawrence.

Camels are about as much of a fashion statement as what dull color you will wear to match the dunes.

I probably never gave Queen of the Desert a fair shake, technically, but it really bored me to the ground. Occassionally something interesting would happen, but it is indeed just Gertrude Bell, doing things in the desert, getting famous and talking to political people, and then the movie ends. Sure, there is some potential romance as well. And I laughed when I saw Pattinson as T.E. Lawrence. Mostly because I was not expecting the character, but he was just so well shaven and I watched this movie right after The Lost City of Z, where Pattinson played a different historical figure but with a great beard.

What disappoints me about this film the most is not the dull feeling I had throughout, but instead that it was directed by the great Werner Herzog. He has directed so many qualities film, and to have this one just drag (thank goodness it wasn’t 3+ hours) made me question his purpose. Honestly, it looks like he just wanted to tell her story, and he should have just made a documentary about that subject instead. He is better at those.

I can’t even figure out how to talk more about this. Just pass this film, there is so much better out there. A book about Gertrude Bell will probably be more useful to your time. Or a wikipedia page.

I think 100 Streets was made completely as a joke. At some point in the review, I will get into why the whole concept is pointless, or at least it is in regards to the titles.

But if you have Idris Elba in a movie, you are totally not allowed to talk about streets.

Quite famously, one of the more recent authors of the 007 books, Anthony Horowitz, said that Elba was “Too Street” to play James Bond in a movie, giving the world confusion, rage, and quite apparent calls of racism.

So that is reason one why this movie is probably a joke, and one I am just starting to get.

Elba is so street, he is on a balcony above the street. With a gun of course. Typical, streety, Elba.

The plot of 100 streets is about the lives of three households, all within 100 streets of each other in London. Let’s start with the bigger stars. Max (Idris Elba) is a retired Rugby player, captain of a team, very famous in London and rich. He has a wife, Emily (Gemma Arterton), and two kids, but they are currently separated. So he lives alone. He has a drug problem and is focused too much on things outside of the family. So she is seeing someone else and annoyed at his existence.

We also have George (Charlie Creed-Miles) and his wife Kathy (Kierston Wareing), who are struggling. They are poor, kind of. George is a nice guy, he sings, he drives a cab, he coaches. They are looking to add a kid into his life, but some stuff in George’s pass come up, and also he accidentally kills someone.

And finally, we have Kingsley (Franz Drameh), a drug dealer who has been arrested. He has a pregnant girlfriend and lives with his mom, but he is trying to better his life and considers himself an urban poet.

And this is their story, with parts interconnected, including other people who connect their lives. People like Ken Stott, Ryan Gage, Tom Cullen, and Ashley Thomas.

This would be sexier if she was with her husband, Elba, known gangster and criminal.

How big is London? I know it is a giant city, tons of people, one of the biggest business areas in the world. But if I had to define it by its number of streets in one direction, is it ever more than 100? I don’t know, I can’t tell. I know NYC probably isn’t bigger than 100 streets in a direction. Something like Houston would be, but it is sprawling outwards and giant.

Either way, 100 streets is a giant amount of distance, so it might as well be about three random groups of people who occasionally run into each other. A normal multi plot film. If it was 15 streets, maybe they’d have something, but I still think that is a big chunk in a residential area.

As for the movie, it is overly dramatic and incredibly uninteresting. There can be sad moments, slightly chaotic moments, but it is just so hard to care about any of these people. We can care a bit about Kingsley and his plot line, as he is the guy super down in the dumps, basically living on the streets and screwed. And as soon as he finds a way to better his life, his own karma comes up and bites him in his ass.

The plot lines never really feel like they conclude. They are just moments in a few lives, and they aren’t great moments. A lot of drama, some okay moments, and a lot of “Who gives a fuck?”

Even though it is February, I still barely have any films from 2017.

So finally, here is something that came out in January 2017 that I am reviewing after the fact, so that I can get more than 1 or 2 new a week only. That’s right, now I can begin catching up to the year we are in. And normally, watching January movies means only one thing: shit.

Split is a film that broke that mold. And I have been told by many people that The Autopsy of Jane Doe is also worth the effort and won’t be a shit.

So here’s to hoping it isn’t shit. And some parts of me are hoping it just a really in depth look on how autopsies are performed.

Taking out body parts, looking for weird shit, creepy dead bodies, that is what I need.

Tommy Tilden (Brian Cox) is an autopsy-mitrist, getting old, but still quite excellent at his job. His son, Austin (Emile Hirsch), he is training to take over. Austin is getting pretty good at it too, but he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life hanging out with dead bodies.

He has a girlfriend (Ophelia Lovibond) and they plan on moving away together, leaving his dad behind. He hasn’t told him yet of course, but eventually he totally will!

Then the Sheriff (Michael McElhatton) brings in a new body, a young girl. She was found partially buried in a house with no identifying marks, so she is just called Jane Doe (Olwen Catherine Kelly). There were more bodies in the house, but it looks like they were killed trying to leave. The sheriff says this body is a priority, they need to know the cause of death by the morning, so it is going to be a long night for the Tilden’s.

Of course, while performing the autopsy, they find a lot of weird shit. Abnormalities in her body, strange features. Then, of course, bad stuff starts to happen to them in the laboratory. Power flickers, radio goes haywire, next thing they know, they are locked inside and it is not looking good for any of them.

“What did you say?”

The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a film that wants to keep things very simple. We have a small set, a small cast, and a simple plot line. No added in exorcisms or anything, just a dead body terrorizing a few people. Something to make you feel claustrophobic and a bit worried about dead people.

Perfect for horror enthusiasts. For me? A regular guy? I thought it was a bit dull. I wouldn’t say anything is bad, but given the space and foreshadowing, most of it just makes sense. I didn’t find myself surprised let alone scared.

It is still a good effort. The problems are more with me than the film itself. It isn’t like it has bad acting or shitty camera work. It just didn’t end up being the film for me.

Clearly it just didn’t have enough autopsy jargon.

Would You Rather came out a few years ago, and is pretty strange title to randomly show up on my reviews. I mean, I have been pretty consistent doing things from the current year or year before, and rarely two years prior. But Would You Rather came out in 2012, straight up 5 years ago, which is theoretically the end of my always shifting bar for reviews.

And honestly, I watched it because I really wanted to. I needed a psychological horror, and I discovered this one with plenty of actors I knew. I don’t know if this went into theaters, or straight to DVD, or what, but it exists and I really haven’t heard people every talk about it.

So watching it was for an itch. Reviewing it? Well, it was worth talking about. And I am weirded out that the title doesn’t have a question mark. Even though sure, the three words are the beginning of a question and not an entire question, it still feels strange without it.

“Kind of like a dinner with only three courses,” – Rich version of myself.

Iris (Brittany Snow) lives alone with her younger brother, Raleigh (Logan Miller), who also is dying. He needs good insurance and a blood marrow match for a big surgery, or you know, he is going to die. And Iris can’t even get a job to help maybe pay for it. Life sucks. But Iris’ doctor, Dr. Barden (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.), knows something that might help.

You see, there is a rich dude, Shepard Lambrick (Jeffrey Combs) who runs a charitable foundation. They want to invite Iris to a dinner, and afterwards there will be a game. The game will have one winner, and the winner will get what they need monetary wise for everything to be wonderful again. And she is desperate, so she goes without giving her brother the specifics.

Long story short, they have to play a game of Would You Rather. But not only do they have to choose (and have to choose in 15 to 30 seconds), but they have to do the task. And they involve violence, and pain, and have a good chance of killing people. Oh joy. And if they try to back out, they die. Only one winner, and one survivor.

Iris quickly makes two friends in Cal (Eddie Steeples) and Lucas (Enver Gjokaj). The other contestants include Peter (Robb Wells), a gambler from Vegas, Linda (June Squibb), a woman in a wheel chair, Travis (Charlie Hofheimer), an Iraq war vet, Conway (John Heard), a skeptical old man and former alcoholic, and Amy (Sasha Grey), an evil looking hot girl.

Also featuring Bevans (Jonny Coyne), a very skilled manservant, and Julian (Robin Lord Taylor), the sun of Shepard.

This party is poppin’!

I wanted a psychological thriller, and really, I got only a bit of one. The first round was relatively lame, but still, it started off the game immediately with pain. Less on the mind game side, more on the torture side. The second round was…well, also just various torture, with more death potential, and more focused on being mean. The third round there was no subtly, but basically a task for every person that could kill them. And the fourth round had some mind games, thankfully.

What I am getting at is that this film scratched the surface of a good film, but couldn’t really deliver. Too many of the eight people died “outside of the game.” The would you rathers were never really that fun or exciting. The characters themselves excited me a bit, but never enough to fully love the film.

And let me just say that there was a moment that had me somewhat shouting at the screen, because it was going to be terrifying and gross. My wife had to come and check on me to make sure everything was okay, causing me to quickly shout at her to not look, it would be terrible. And then the film didn’t even show the terrible act, it cut away, no CGI or props or anything. It would have been a defining moment.

The film also had a weird subplot with the doctor character, and I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE PURPOSE WAS. I might have missed it, but I think it went nowhere. The ending was also pretty predictable.