Month: June 2017

So many January films, so little time. In January, most of my reviews were of Oscar quality films, trying to catch up before the Awards ceremony of everything that would be nominated. So I missed a lot of January releases, and to be fair, a lot of them didn’t even have prescreenings.

The Bye Bye Man had a prescreening, it just wasn’t worth me leaving my house for.

January horror films can be some of the worst things to sit through. For some unknown reason, they really want to make January the second scariest movie after October. They really don’t have to try that hard though, given the quality of the movies that come out in that month.

It would be hard to find someone that isn’t scared of how bad things like I, Frankenstein are.

Yeah, still not as scary as The Legend of Hercules.

A long time ago, some weirdo with a rifle decided to kill his friends and family in a small suburb, then he killed himself. He kept saying “Don’t Think It, Don’t Say It.”

Now lets fast forward to the now times. A group of kids in college, ready to take over the world. We got Elliot (Douglas Smith), his girlfriend Sasha (Cressida Bonas), and their friend John (Lucien Laviscount). They get a house together off campus, you know, for college things.

Eventually, Elliot starts seeing some weird things occur with a coin they find in a night stand. This night stand is something they just bought in a sale and brought over to furnish the place. It is full of strange writing, erratic, “Don’t Think It, Don’t Say It,” like a crazy person.

Blah blah blah, a seance happens in their place, from another friend (Jenna Kanell), and things get even more trippy. The friends start to hallucinate, thinking of this Bye Bye Man fellow (Doug Jones), with a dog, and train sounds. Just acknowledging his existence is enough to get him to mess with your life, and so the more people you talk to about him, the more people who will die or get killed. Hooray!

Also featuring Carrie-Anne Moss, Erica Tremblay, and Michael Trucco.

This part is amusing if you imagine Abe Sapien from Hellboy coming at you instead.

You know what, if I was just analyzing the plot, or the acting, or the characters themselves, this would be an easy 0 out of 4. But I was intrigued by one, and only one aspect of the movie. The camera work was top notch. The opening scene really sort of drew the viewer in, with a few longer takes, having this random guy take a rifle and shoot his family and neighbors.

I really enjoyed the opening, which had a tragic moment happen in the bright sunlight, it felt fresh. And when it got modern, the film got darker. More scenes took place at night, or with tinted lenses to really give that…modern edgy look or whatever to them. Because now we are dealing with college students, living on their own, party party! The film got notably uglier, but the camera work was still pretty decent from my point of view.

And yet, that is the only positive notes. As I already said, plot bad, acting bad, characters bad. Tone was bad too. Mythos for The Bye Bye Man was all over the place. It really made writing the whole movie quite easy when you can just say the characters hallucinate whatever with extreme detail to get them to do anything. It feels lazy.

Also our star, Douglas Smith? Honestly, he has such an uncharismatic face, it is annoying to watch him for most of this film. Which is mean. I don’t hate you as a person Douglas Smith, but you don’t match the role that you were given.

This film is an easy pass, but it will probably have thirty sequels, because YOLO.

Oh my damn. Here we go. A continuation of a bad franchise, hitting its trilogy mark after an equally bad spinoff. Does that sound familiar? This summer is Deja Vu-ing.

I will be honest when I went in with the lowest of expectations with Despicable Me 3. I mean, how could it get worse? It really couldn’t. It would just be more of the same, probably.

But it was announced over a year ago that Trey Parker, of BASEketball, Cannibal! The Musical, and yes, South Park fame would be voicing the villain. Parker! Crude humorist! Apparently it is something a lot of R rated people do, voice a kids movie so that their kids can finally see something that they have done.

At first I thought it was just another rando-celebrity signing instead of a nice voice actor. But then I remembered that Parker is a voice actor, he voices a shit ton of characters. So it won’t just be his regular talking voice, but an actual character! Hooray!

And that character ends up sounding up mostly like Randy Marsh.

And if you look closely, it should look a bit like a Randy too.

For whatever reason, this franchise still exists with the title of Despicable Me, because as we all know, Gru (Steve Carell) is now a “good guy” taking care of his girls and his wife, Lucy (Kristen Wiig), who needs no taking care of. They are both members of the Anti-Villain League, and you know, trying to stop the bad guys.

After a failed encounter with Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker), an 80’s kid TV star whose show was cancelled due to puberty, and now world villain playing his character as an adult and relying on 80’s themed reference weapons, Gru and Lucy are fired from the AVL! Boo new director (Jenny Slate).

Sad times, being fired and jobless. But he promises to not resort back to villainy, for his girls (Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Nev Scharrel. Note: the last one is new, Agnes used to be Elsie Fisher but I guess she got too old). Also, hey look at the timing, he gets a notice that his long lost twin brother is looking for him. Apparently his parents got divorced when they were babies and they decided to break up the twins. The fuck, right?

Blah blah blah, his brother is Dru (Steve Carell), super rich and lives in a land that is like Denmark, or Northern Europe. It is time for Gru to learn about the family business…being a bad guy! His dad was a famous bad guy, and now Dru wants Gru to teach him how to be bad. Oh no.

Also featuring the voices of Steve Coogan, Julie Andrews, and Adrian Ciscato.

Don’t worry, Dru also speaks in a high pitched voice to help tell them apart.

Despicable Me 3 is basically as bad as I had imagined, but not worse. For those keeping track, I am saying that Despicable Me 3 is a better movie than Cars 3. It had issues, but not as many. It had some better moments, but not too many.

It is another franchise that decides to keep adding permanent characters to keep things interesting, instead of just making an interesting story with the characters we have. Last one we got Lucy, now we have a now twin brother Dru. However, having Gru’s father being a very famous villain/criminal who was super successful, is shit. They show photos of him in the new lair, and yes, he looks like Gru. So somehow Gru, master villain himself, has never heard of another bad guy who is older than him but looks almost identical? Unheard of. It is such a cheap cop out to introduce sudden new family members, and quite lazy.

Speaking of characters, there are too many and therefore not enough plot for all of them. Like poor Edith, I think that is the middle kid. She just exists in this film. She has a handful of lines, but doesn’t have her own story like the other two girls. Their stories Margo and Agnes, are incredibly minor though and just feel like filler because of too many characters.

The movie has the minions leave Gru, because they need to be bad things and need a villain, but he doesn’t want to. Hooray less minions right? Nope. Two of them stay behind so we get to have them with Gru still, and we get to see their minion adventures as they wander the town and prison.

I guess I don’t have a lot more else to say. With Despicable Me 3, you get a lot more of the same. The plot is weak, the sideplots are weak, some catchphrases to get people quoting the film, the animation is kind of shit (where the characters are all extremes, like too thin, too fat, etc), but that has been the norm. Just another bad animated film in the year with a lot of bad animated films.

At the time of writing this introduction, Baby Driver was listed on Wikipedia as a British-American action crime comedy jukebox musical film, and when I first read that my heart skipped several beats. I am now dead. [Editor’s note: I have gotten better, and the Wikipedia article has since been shortened.]

Those genre’s together just seemed too good to be true, and it was. Because a jukebox musical means, 1) It is a musical, and 2) That the songs that the character sing already exist and come from the charts. But I knew this wasn’t a musical, just a film that really, really, really, loved music. Music that yes, at different times, may have hit the charts. And even if the main character sings some of them, they still don’t qualify it as a musical.

Which is sad, but I am mostly certain no one will turn a plot like this one into an actual musical. Or at least, not for film, but you never know with Broadway turning out 2 or more “Movie title, the musical!” films a year.

“Elevator, the musical!” is coming up and down this fall.

Baby (Ansel Elgort) loves music. It is a major part of his identity, there are always earbuds in his ears with an iPod playing a song to help the situation. When Baby was a kid, his parents got into a car accident with him in the back seat. They died, he survived, and he gained an ever persistent noise in his ears that won’t go away. The music helps dull it out.

Baby unfortunately got into some trouble. He became very good at cars, being one of the best drivers around despite his young age. But one day, he messed with the wrong man, Doc (Kevin Spacey), and lost a lot of his merchandise. And now, to pay Doc back, Baby has been the driver for several bank robberies in the greater Atlanta area, with his share always going towards his payment. But as soon as he pays off Doc, he wants out. He just wants to drive and be free, he definitely doesn’t want to hurt anyone.

Baby works with criminals, however. And criminals can be erratic and put his family in danger. His family being his foster dad (CJ Jones), who is now in a wheel chair, deaf, and needs a lot of attention. And Deborah (Lily James), a waitress at a diner he frequents who shares his passion of music and is generally a free spirit. So when the criminals start doing bad things, it is Baby’s duty to get out of it while protecting those he cares about.

We have quite a few criminals played by actors like Jon Hamm, Jon Bernthal, Jamie Foxx, Eiza González, Flea, and Lanny Joon. Also featuring Sky Ferreira and Hal Whiteside.

Everyone knows that diners are the best place to go for music and pie.

Baby Driver, from start to finish, will keep you on the edge of your seat and the edge of your car seat as well when you are heading home. Don’t watch this movie during the day, because you will want the roads empty so you can blast music and drive (responsibly) maybe a little bit faster. It will take over you, especially if you are a movie goer with varied music tastes.

Elgort has been in quite a few teenage romance / young adult films. The Fault in our Stars, Paper Towns, Divergent, even the Carrie remake. But Baby Driver is finally his jumping off point into something greater than all of his parts before combined. He is now part of a cinematic masterpiece, playing a role unlike his other characters, and hopefully will lead him to a lot of better roles in the future. Elgort might be a star, especially lucky after he didn’t get the Star Wars gig.

The cinematography, the action, the variety of characters, the dialogue, and of course, the music, make Baby Driver a must see film. I especially appreciate at how diverse the music ends up being, from all sorts of decades and genres. In addition to that, having the action FIT the music is an incredible achievement and allowed me to sit in my seat in awe.

I can’t talk enough about how wonderful an experience Baby Driver was. It is a film that I want to see again in theaters and will pick up on Blu-Ray day one of its release.

Paterson is a film that came out in 2016, near the end, a limited drama, that I totally missed. A few of my friends put it on their best of the year list. And I totally missed it. I feel so ashamed.

Ashamed specifically because it played in my city in advance with the director attending to do a Q&A.

But I am mostly ashamed because Adam Driver has been in some pretty solid “indie” films over the years, you know, the ones that aren’t Star Wars. In reverse order, he was in Silence, Midnight Special, What If, Inside Llewyn Davis, and of course Frances Ha!

I should be jumping out of my shoes to see an Adam Driver film. Jumping out of them really far. Super far. Way up there. You know where.

In OUTER. SPACE.

Paterson (Adam Driver) is a bit of an odd man. One may even say he is a character worthy studying. He is named Paterson, and he happens to be born and raised in the city of Paterson, New Jersey. Hooray parents! Speaking of Paterson, there is an epic poem named Paterson, written by real life poet William Carlos Williams, also from that city.

That doesn’t seem relevant, but that is because I forgot to mention that Paterson, too, is a poet! He has a secret little poetry journal where he works on his craft. Occasionally he will tell his wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), one of these poems, but he is very secluded when it comes to the poems. You know, they are not ready yet.

You can’t make a lot of money as a poet, especially if no one sees your work. His actual day job is a bus driver, the master of his route, allowing him to overhear on many strangers’ conversations that can inspire his work. He talks to the same coworkers, and always stops by the same bar to talk drink and talk to the bartender, Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley).

Paterson has a very simple life. He is a quiet man, and this is about a week in his life.

Also starring William Jackson Harper, Chasten Harmon, Rizwan Manji, and Masatoshi Nagase.

Here you are slaving over poems, and your wife has shit on her face. Your home life is a wreck!

This film is definitely a character study, like I was told and warned. I was a bit afraid that the film would end in some way showing that his whole week is some strange loop that he is stuck in, because yay sci-fi. But no, it was just a week in his life. I was worried as the days went by that something terrible and drastic would happen to him. A death, a break up, a new baby, an accident, just something. But most people don’t have major events happen all the time in his life, so it is realistic in nature.

And sure, technically a major event does happen, but not one you would expect at all. A smaller tragedy, and one Paterson handles exactly as you would expect his character to after being with him over the previous 90 minutes.

Paterson is realistic. It is well acted and Paterson is clearly a character not Adam Driver just hanging out. His wife is an interesting character as well, and the side stories he overhears and interacts with are interesting blurbs about characters we will never see again. I thought the ending was a cute moment as well.

But overall, I never really fell in love with the movie. It never really drew me in. I was always an outside observer and didn’t have a lot of personal attachment to the story. Oh well Adam Driver, you had to have an okay review at some point from me.

The “of the Planet of the Apes” films have been met with some pretty critical acclaim in the last few years, especially after the rebooted Planet of the Apes film was so dismal.

And hey, for Rise? I totally agree. An amazing film, great acting and a plot that made me cheer for Apes instead of just humans. Just a silly romance subplot stopped it from being a great film.

Unfortunately, Dawn just didn’t really do much for me. It was an okay film, but I believe it received more praise for being a pretty standard plot, but with Apes instead of tribal humans. Some cool moments sure, but it was also forgettable.

I had no idea what to expect for War, but I would hope with a long run time, it would put an end to humans once and for all, so the Ape society can begin to grow into what we already know is the end goal.

Which is horses and apes riding horses in the future, right?

War is set only a few years after Dawn, where the apes have mostly gone into hiding in the woods. Koba (Toby Kebbell) is the one who started the fighting with the humans, and Caesar (Andy Serkis) ended it. A few apes are still pissed off and left to rabble rouse, but the rest of the apes just want to live alone. However, humans don’t give a fuck, blood was spilled, and they want revenge. So they keep venturing into the woods, hoping to take out Caesar and the rest of the apes will scatter.

Thanks to a scouting mission, a few apes found a desert on the other side of the mountain where the apes would be able to flourish. Humans are super dying out so they are likely to leave them alone.

But leave them along they don’t. A small raid enters their compound hoping to get Caesar, but get some other apes instead. Boo, hiss. Caesar mad. Caesar wants revenge on the soldier in charge of the humans in the area (Woody Harrelson). So he takes his very small band of soldiers on a potential suicide mission.

Starring Gabriel Chavarria as a human soldier, Amiah Miller as a human deaf girl, and a whole lot of people as apes. Like Judy Greer, Steve Zahn, Terry Notary, Aleks Paunovic, Devyn Dalton, and Karin Konoval.

“Well, are you feeling lucky…Ape?”

Trilogies usually go one of three ways. There is the the rare but incredible trilogy that is amazing with every iteration. There is the more common trilogy where the sequel surpasses the first and the last film is a let down. Or there is a trilogy where it starts off good, and each iteration loses a bit of its soul, giving us a worse and worse film.

And a lot of you would assume this might be the second trilogy because people loved Dawn, but to me, this is the third type of trilogy. Dawn was okay, War was kind of shit.

At almost 140 minutes with War in the title, you would expect a giant battle to, most likely, bring about the end of mankind to start this whole Planet of the Apes thing. Maybe. Well, the Caesar journey with his band takes awhile to follow the humans. On the way, they have another Ape who can talk who joins them, and a deaf girl. This part drags, and even when they make it to the human encampment it drags. I found myself falling asleep, despite being an early screening and having finished an energy drink before it.

The ending is about the apes being enslaved and needing to get to get broken out of a prison system where they are slaves, and the humans are fighting with each other. There is also a new iteration of the Simian Flu, that causes humans to lose their voice and potentially become aggressive, reverting them back into a more primitive form.

The ending break out is not a brilliant plan. It involves the humans being incredibly incompetent. When plot necessary, apparently no one is standing guard at the military compound, so a little girl can walk in and have a long conversation. When necessary apparently a guard will behave like someone who has no military training, and no one else will be on guard duty. When necessary, the fighting between humans will stop enough so that the humans can fire on some apes that none of them were able to notice even escaped. This scene includes a soldier that is so upset with these apes, that he cannot stop firing despite a looming other human threat, that he cannot turn around to get his own grenade launcher. When necessary, an ape looking for redemption will use a weapon to take out a single human, instead of just doing the more obvious move to complete the task that Caesar was trying to complete. When necessary, a giant deus ex machine straight out of Mulan will save the day, but this time no daisies are involved.

The ending is a mess, the middle is a bore, and the beginning is predictable. I didn’t even get into the ridiculousness of the Simian Flu change, and deciding to have a girl who was deaf for real, not deaf for flu reasons. War for the Planet of the Apes is a waste of a film that tried to go a deeper, personal route, and just left feeling a bit superficial.

I wouldn’t say I am the best cook. Nor am I the best individual to make sure everything in my fridge stays fresh until it is used. We have thrown out plenty of leftovers, and vegetables, who never had a chance to shine. (Because vegetables suck!)

What I am trying to get at is I understand when food gets bad, and it does right before I want to use it.

As for people, I don’t know when people get bad, but Breaking Bad tried to examine that. The Bad Batch is both about bad people, and about bad food. I think you can understand what I am talking about with that.

Stop staring at her winking ass, I am talking about eating people NOT…the other thing.

In the future, The United States sucks a bit more than normal, and there is a section of Texas they have decided to just cut out from the rest of the country. Texas. It makes sense. Beyond those gates is a desert wasteland, claimed by no country, so the people who inhabit it have no rights or laws. This is a prison. People from the US are sent here and called The Bad Batch. They are the freaks and unwanted members of society, or those who cannot fit in. And they are sent to the wasteland to die or thrive, they don’t care, they just need them gone.

And when Arlen (Suki Waterhouse), Bad Batch #5040, is dropped off, she finds herself lost, confused, and immediately captured by a group of cannibals. Now don’t worry, she is able to escape this muscle clad community back into the desert, but not before losing her right hand and right foot.

Thankfully a lone wanderer finds her and dumps her off at a community called Comfort, where she is able to get back on her feet, well, foot, to try and make ends meat of this new society she has been thrust into. And what she wants is revenge.

She apparently goes into the wasteland with a gun, searching for crows for food, and hoping to find someone from that community to kill. But this time she finds a little girl (Jayda Fink), born in the wasteland, forced to live as a cannibal. And now Arlen’s life will really begin to change.

Starring Jason Mamoa as the Miami Man, Keanu Reeves as The Dream, Giovanni Ribisi as The Screamer, Yolonda Ross, Diego Luna, and Jim Carrey as a Hermit.

Don’t worry, it is hard to tell even without the glasses that this is Jim Fucking Carrey. I didn’t know until the credits.

When The Bad Batch exceeds at a mark, it exceeds at a very high level. In terms of world building, it created a post apocalyptic society without having to make an actual apocalypse occur, which is pretty awesome. It goes fully into creating a believable enough atmosphere for the characters to live, thrive, and interact with. It only had a few communities in the film, so it isn’t as expansive as something like Fallout, but it gets the job done for a feature film.

The other thing this film excels at is its cinematography. Barren wastelands hardly are sexy to look at, and it is still true with this movie. But the camera work gives an addition to the characters isolation and thirst, by forcing it on the audience. The colors in Comfort are also vibrant at night to explain their drug fueled, care free attitude towards life. It is a visual spectacle.

The Bad Batch does have some issues with pacing. Despite a rough plot being given, it was really hard to figure out at times just where the movie was headed. It was unpredictable with character actions, so it wasn’t obvious just what the hell was the point. It also dragged heavily in the middle.

A lot of people are likely to be upset at the ending as well, including me. Based on the plot, I couldn’t tell where it was heading of course, but still found myself left down based on where it ended up.

If anything The Bad Batch is a visual spectacle (and not in the CGI infused version of that word), with an amazing world and some weird shit going down. But it is easy to get a little bit bored and have your mind wander off at points.

The Last Word has a relatively pretty poster to look at. It conjures up specific colors, radio, and of course music. But at the same time, it makes me think of the SNL sketch for Schweddy Balls, poking fun of NPR level talk radio.

It also makes me think of The L Word, which is unfortunately a show I don’t have any references to outside of the knowledge is about lesbians. Which hey, maybe The Last Word is about lesbians too. After all, the cover is two women! Maybe they are lesbians!

What I am saying is, I think this movie will be two hours long, about lesbians on NPR talking about balls.

There is a very high chance I am disappointed with this level of thinking.

Harriett Lauler (Shirley MacLaine) is an old lady who knows what she wants. And she knows how to get what she wants. And she doesn’t trust a lot of people to do things correctly, so she often has to take over and do itself. That includes her own gardeners and cooks.

No one likes her. Her relationship with her daughter (Anne Heche) is nonexistent. Her relationship with her past coworkers is weak as well, despite making them and her very wealthy. But while reading an obituary of one of her old acquaintances, she is amazed at how wonderful that person seemed after death, while still being truthful.

So of course Harriett goes to the newspaper to find the obituary writer, Anne (Amanda Seyfried), to make sure she can write her obituary as well. Just like, early. To make sure it is good enough. Sane people totally do this all the time.

And with this task comes, eventually, a change to Harriett’s life for the better. It is never too late to become a decent human being.

Also starring AnnJewel Lee Dixon, Thomas Sadoski, and Philip Baker Hall.

No one expects them to rob a bank, that’s the point!

The Last Word gives us Shirley MacLaine playing a huge bitch, which on its own might be worth the price of admission. But if you only want to pay for movies that take you on emotional whirlwind and leave you breathless, then, well, you might want something more.

Because really, this is a safe and simple film. It goes into a deep topic, dealing with your own mortality and legacy at the ends of your life. But it is also a feel good film, watching this woman better her life finally and start to better the lives of those she decided to make close to her. This drags the film into really average territory.

In reality, what she does is probably really hard. But the opposition she is met with is very limited so the struggles don’t feel incredibly real. The point of the movie is to inspire those to change their lives for the better, to realize it is never too late, which is a great moral. However, this film just feels hokey with how it accomplishes those goals.

I will note, Seyfried’s speech did make me a little bit sad near the end. But not weepy, just sad. So it had a lot left to go to make me connect with it at a real emotional level.

Havenhurst came about on my radar because, like at least 50 reviews on this website, my flashdrive was left at home and I needed something.

But I will admit I liked the name. It could technically be considered a calming or warm sounding place, but at the same time, the opposite of all that. It brings up the idea of a haunted house, thanks to those double H’s. It could really draw up some fears of isolation or claustrophobia.

Then again, the main draws for me for this film were the short run time and the fact that I recognized a lead. I am but a simple sheep, at the end of the day.

Havenhurst harks homeless hotties and heinous harbingers of hazard. .

Jackie (Julie Benz) loooooves her alcohol. In fact, she is an alcoholic. But she is trying to get beyond that, going to those meetings and getting her life back on her feet. Thankfully, there are many opportunities for her.

One of them is Havenhurst, a hotel/apartment esque building that offers homes and rooms for those working on recovery. They can stay there as long as they need, unless they return to their vice, whatever it is. Then old Eleanor (Fionnula Flanagan) will evict them, no questions asked, and they are on their own to make mistakes, never again to return.

Well, Jackie had a friend there, Danielle (Danielle Harris), but she went missing. She might have been evicted and gone somewhere else, but she hasn’t seen her in so long she suspects maybe some foul play.

The hotel seems to change over time, some of its hallways, and she hears screams occasionally. Thankfully she has a foster kid sidekick (Belle Shouse) and a cop friend (Josh Stamberg) to occasionally have them listen to her theories.

Also featuring Toby Huss, Douglas Tait, Dendrie Taylor, and Jennifer Blanc-Biehn.

“Oh no a bad guy, get him little girl!”

Havenhurst opens with a death of a character. Sometimes horror films take awhile to get scary, Havenhurst said no, death first, then plot, then more death. The death just felt silly though, without context, putting me in a mood ripe for making fun of the film. It doesn’t help that this film attempts to maintain some levels of mystery so that the viewer can sort of play along with our hero, except that right away we know that yeah, there is some murders afoot, so she isn’t crazy.

And a film has an uphill battle if it wants to maintain some suspense while also basically letting the viewer know a whole lot more than the characters. Usually mysteries are from the point of view of the protagonist with a few teasing moments.

I am annoyed at how un-seriously I took this film. Because when it revealed a bit more information (in a pretty silly way), I loved the idea they presented. Again, it was presented in a bad way, in more ways than one, but the connection to American lore was top notch.

Havenhurst has below average plot, acting, thrills, and more. Thankfully it is short and we can all move on from this film.

Studies have shown that reviews that feature “Lake” in the title end up being better than expected when writing said review.

Of course, my only review before this was the movie Flakes, which was, I admit, better than I imagined it would be. It was quirky, off beat.

Shimmer Lake, it has plenty of quirky actors in it, but I am not sure how off beat it will end up being. I did go in with low expectations, despite the Lake theory, and as you can see, hey, it was better than I imagined.

There was less sexual tension in this movie than I imagined as well. Look at that gap between police officers!

Shimmer Lake is also a story told in reverse. Similar to Memento, sure, but it is on a day by day basis. We start our story on Friday, and we see how the entirety of Friday plays out, then we see Thursday, all the way to Tuesday.

Because you see, on Tuesday, there was a bank robbery. And this is a small town, Shimmer Lake, so everybody knows everybody, and heck, a lot of them are related. Like or Sheriff Zeke (Benjamin Walker), whose brother, Andy (Rainn Wilson), a lawyer, just helped rob a bank on Tuesday. Andy worked with two other locals (Wyatt Russell, Mark Rendall) robbed a bank when it had a well known surplus, and Zeke was shot in the theft.

And now they are still about the town, Zeke is sure of it.

We just have to figure out how all the players are involved, which of course is revealed slowly while telling us backwards. We also have a judge (John Michael Higgins), a couple of FBI helpers (Rob Corddry, Ron Livingston), the deputy (Adam Pally), and the wife of a robber (Stephanie Sigman), and somehow one or more of them are involved.

And don’t worry, the lake is not the answer to the mystery.

Blueprints and alcohol are the best items to help with a bank robbery.

About three fourths of the way into this movie, I wondered why it was being told in reverse. It didn’t seem to be adding really anything extra to the story. It seemed to be Memento-ing because people liked Memento.

But of course by the end it all became a bit more clear. And yes, Shimmer Lake is a film that will be better the second go around. I don’t know if I will ever really watch it a second time, but I would like to see what clues give it all away and make this story tick.

It was a bit hard to label this movie, because there are a lot of actors who are mostly in comedy films filling out the roster, and I think that adds a strange aesthetic to the whole film. I am calling it a Dark Comedy in that regard, because it is normally comic actors acting serious, in events that are larger than life.

Shimmer Lake isn’t a film that is reinventing the wheel or adding something entirely new to the industry. But it does try to stand out and, as I implied earlier, ends up being a better ride than expected.

When did The Space Between Us come out? Shit, I don’t remember. This year maybe, or last year and I am super far behind. [Editor’s Note: It was this year! First week in February, I am not super far behind!]

I think I received an invite to this one, but a better looking movie was at the same time. I didn’t know anything about this film either, based on a book, some sci-fi romance plot, and that is it.

Poor Asa Butterfield, he is getting typecasted into a lot of weird roles. And if he had kept his mouth shut, he’d be Spider-Man probably (which is also, technically, weird). It’s good to be able to follow your passions when you are this young, I guess.

Riding on a motorcycle without a helmet is not a good passion to follow.

At long last, humanity is going to reach a new level! We are going to Mars. Not as visitors, but as new tenants, to terraform parts of the area. To live, and study and make a viable new home for mankind. It has long been the dream of Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman) since he was a child, and now he is at NASA leading the expedition from home. A team of astronauts, led by Sarah Elliot (Janet Montgomery), are willing to dedicate their lives to getting there and staying there, for science and shit.

Except Sarah had a secret, even from herself. She was newly pregnant. So on Mars she gave birth to a boy, Gardner (Asa Butterfield), and died during childbirth. The first human born not on Earth, amazing. But also a PR disaster, so NASA agreed to keep the boy a secret. Being born in a weaker gravity would mean that the bones would develop also more brittle, and he likely would never be able to come to Earth. Keeping him a secret was the best way to save their mission and the boy.

Well, a decade and a half later, Gardner is weird and lonely, the only child still on Mars. He has the internet and communicate with people of Earth, but he knows the severity of keeping his secret. One girl he talks to, Tulsa (Britt Robertson), seems like his dream girl, but long distant relationships are terrible. And with enough begging and pleading, they finally decide to bring him back. He has a lot of surgery to add stuff to his bones, but this is the future so whatever. He flies back to earth, and has some issues.

BUT HE DIDN’T COME BACK TO EARTH TO BE TESTED. He came back for love. To find Tulsa. Also to figure out who his daddy is, that too matters. And he won’t let anything get in his way, gravity, nothing.

Also featuring BD Wong, Carla Gugino, and Scott Takeda.

And he won’t let a lack of gravity keep him from getting dat kiss.

Where’s that Hercules disappointed gif when you need it? This could have been an incredibly amazing movie. One that brought all viewers to tears, with its beautiful actual star crossed lovers story. But it was driven down in mediocrity.

At the beginning of the film, there was potential. Sure the whole thing looked incredibly cheesy. Like a hallmark send off to Mars instead of how it might actually look. The interview with the crew before where Sarah awkwardly answered questions and no one else spoke was uncomfortable, but still, the story was a really great one.

And then he got to Earth. And then it wasn’t just awkward it was just a let down. They were on the run from the NASA security trying to get him back, because of course, his body was failing him due to disease, gravity, whatever. But it just failed to reach any deep or meaningful level.

And damn it, it was so close to an amazing story. Well, the idea was close to an amazing story. What was delivered was just trash. This might actually be an average movie, but I left with a worst taste in my mouth just because of how badly it presented a good idea.

The day after watching it, I could hardly recall anything of note. It just is not a film that will stay with you based on how incredibly underwhelming the whole thing ends up being.