Month: January 2018

A few years ago, we got a movie starring Halle Berry where she played a 9-1-1 call operator. It was called The Call. You may remember it? It was bad. In it, she was haunted by a past mistake and vowed to not make anymore again. And eventually, we got a kidnapped girl, where she was on the line, and she was going to help her anyway way possible.

Even if it meant leaving her post, tracking her herself, and killing the guy who took her, because holy shit what?

That came out in 2013. In early 2015, this film Kidnap was supposed to come out. It was already finished, but the company had financial troubles, then bankruptcy, as it kept getting pushed and pushed. Some will say its for money reasons, others will naturally assume it is because it looked so much like The Call 2 that they wanted to distance themselves. But alas, here it is now, over two years after the original date, and we won’t even be able to tell the movie is dated.

A third movie will come out probably where Berry herself is the kidnapper.

When a parent loses a child, it is very sad. No matter the circumstances, it is sad and I would cry over a lot of movies on that subject. For the movie Kidnap, you know that her child is going to get grabbed, and that is the whole dang plot of the movie. A kid gone, a mom angry and a race against time and apparently traffic to save that kid.

Karla Dyson (Halle Berry) is a single mom, divorced, and living a job as a waitress. Not a rich existence. Speaking of rich existence, her ex and his new wife are pretty dang rich, so life with them would be swell. But her young son at six years old, Frankie (Sage Correa), seems to love being with her too.

And they go to a park, a fair, and sure enough, Karla gets distracted. Her divorce lawyer on the phone letting her know that the dad is actually going to go for full custody, and will have the money to probably get it. Oh no, but she is so poor! And yes, this leads to someone grabbing her kid while on the phone about this, and of course, running off with him.

Thankfully she sees him in the parking lot, so she can run and chase after them, and in her car! She loses her cell phone almost immediately, so she just has to barrel down the highway after this vehicle, where her son his being held. And then a lot of things happen in this chase down. Destruction, death, injuries, and more! All because a lady won’t just give up hope.

Featuring Chris McGinn and Lew Temple as the bad people.

Good to know we get at least some seat switching in this car fest of a film.

I don’t really know what the target audience is for Kidnap. Parents who are afraid of the worst? People who think Berry is an action star of some sort? Or people who just have bad taste in films.

Just like The Call, this one is just bad from start to finish. Regular person goes on a justified (maybe) vigilante chase taht lasts over an hour. Along the way, tons of car damage to regular innocent people. Also some people get killed, like at least one cop and friendly helper person, along side regular people just living their life. So many people get hurt.

And literally. Literally. I cannot imagine a situation where the kidnapper wouldn’t have just threw the child out of their car within the first five or so minutes. For whatever reason, our bad guys were soooooo determined to get and keep this kid, you’d think there was some giant special prize behind the whole thing. Like a reason that the kid was special. Like something involving the dad, hiring some people for a million dollars to make her look bad. That is what I could only maybe hope and assume. Except it was just random.

A random kidnapping. And an extremely determined couple for no reason. And a lady who just makes a lot of spur of the moment, crazy decisions, no matter who gets hurt along the way.

It isn’t an entertaining movie at all. I was just staring at it, wondering what the hell were they all thinking. And the ending? They decide to sweep all of the problems magically under a rug, because fuck good movies.

When I sat down to watch Mom and Dad, I did not know I was sitting down to watch Mom and Dad.

It was a secret screening at the Alamo Drafthouse, apparently everyone there knew what was happening except for about me and five or so others, due to inner circles and all. I learned it was by Brian Taylor, who did the Crank films, Gamer, and the second Ghost Rider.

And believe you and me, if someone had told me before I bought the ticket, before I showed up, if I knew what it was and what it was about, I definitely would not have wanted to come.

A whole film about rich people eating breakfast and arguing?!

Brent (Nicolas Cage) and Kendall Ryan (Selma Blair) have been married and together for decades, so of course they have two kids. Before hand, Brent used to be quite the wild guy. Sowing his seed, driving his muscle car, loud music, athletic and more. Kendall had career aspirations, travel plans and general life goals, but then out came Carly (Anne Winters).

One wasn’t enough, and they waited way too long because they also had Josh (Zackary Arthur) many years later. So much that Carly is a sophomore in high school now, and Josh is confusingly aged. I mean, I guess he isn’t in kindergarten yet, but also, he is clearly like 9 or 10. Odd.

Needless to say, both kids can be buttholes. They have ruined their parents lives by merely existing. The daughter is stereotypically bitchy and hating of her parents, the boy is just super annoying, messy, and ruining his dad’s stuff.

This is a lot of introduction to say, that HOLY SHIT. SOMETHING HAPPENS, A TERRORIST ATTACK, BIOLOGICAL OR TECH, WHO KNOWS. But the instincts that parents have to protect and go to great lengths for their kids, get reversed, so that they only want to kill their kids, at all possible, no regrets at all.

Yep, a lot of family on family death is about to go on.

Also starring Joseph D. Reitman, Lance Henriksen, Olivia Crocicchia, Rachel Melvin, and Robert T. Cunningham.

Nicolas Cage at his cage-iest.

Since the birth of my daughter, parent/kid things in film, heartfelt moments and the like, they have all made me sadder. I cry all the time. When I found out where this movie was going, I was absolutely horrified. I mean, could I handle it? Did I need to get up and leave?

In reality, I only really needed to put my hands in front of my eyes in frightful anticipation only a few times, but especially during the hospital scene. The flashbacks in the film were very helpful, breaking up the very fast pace of the film, to give us some strangely touching scenes with Cage/Blair.

Okay let’s back up. Early in the film, you could tell something very strange and new was happening. The shots were so quick and dynamic, with lens flares, for seemingly regular ordinary things. It really put the viewer on a state of panic early on, even if there was only one bad thing to happen at the start. It helped lead up to the dread and panic that was to come, allowing the viewer to transition nicely into the full on freak out mode.

And let me iterate, I think the idea behind this film is terrible. And terrifying. Extremely fucked up. It took me many months into 2017 before I reached the most fucked up film of that year (mother!), but I can’t imagine anything topping this one, and it is two goddamn weeks into the next year! The reason I am mainly giving it a higher review because it definitely frightened me, it made me feel, and it didn’t get extremely exploitative at the same time.

Oh, some exploitative, sure. Just not extremely exploitative.

I am frequently reminded that I should be watching more of Yorgos Lanthimos‘s movies. And not just because he is a guy who keeps bringing some out.

My first experience with his film was The Lobster a year ago and it definitely was an experience. I hadn’t seen any of his previous work, but The Lobster was so far out there that I knew this was a director who wanted to do his own thing and not give a shit about what people thought about it. This is the same thought that Terrence Malick must have, but I don’t like his work.

And now he has The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which is wonderful on its own thanks to the trailers. They told me nothing about the movie, but it was visually sexy and clearly different from The Lobster at the same time.

I really should get around to watching Dogtooth, but he has another movie coming out next year, so we will see if it ever happens.

Damn right you eat that spaghetti now. Don’t want it falling out of your pockets later.

Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) is a really good surgeon. Well, most surgeons are good. I only assume he is good because he is rich, and surgeons are generally rich after they pay off those loans. He has a wife (Nicole Kidman) and two kids (Raffey Cassidy, Sunny Suljic), the typical American household and life. Everything is going so swell.

Steven is also friends with some boy named Martin (Barry Keoghan), who is older than his kids. Martin is a bit slower developmentally, but he lives with his mom only. He had a dad, but the dad died several years ago in a car crash, and Steven has been sort of a mentor to Martin ever since.

But Steven starts to act a bit stranger than normal, and he has already been a strange kid. After introducing Steven to his family, strange events start to occur to his family. A paralyzation affects his son so that he cannot walk and all of the big fancy doctor tests cannot tell them why. That is only the beginning of the problems that affect their family and it seems to have to do with Martin. But why? Why is the big question.

Also starring Alicia Silverstone and Bill Camp.

This might be right after his heart was with a text message.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a quiet film with an unsettling plot behind it, that I chose to not fully reveal. Given the choice our main character ends up making it is something ripe for sadness and anger by many viewers. Good, good, let the emotion flow out of us.

I honestly had no idea where the movie was going on, and once the plot gets fully revealed (which is does VERY quickly and seemingly out of nowhere), every moment gets a little bit scarier. Keoghan has one of the more punchable faces I have ever seen in film, true here and in Dunkirk, but it really works with the character they created. He is unnerving, but not in a cartoon villain sort of way. I will say the film didn’t really do enough to explain his actions or his own mental capacity, so it should definitely be dinged for these reasons.

But let’s just say, some shit is up, it affects this family quite unfairly, and we have to watch most of a film as they deal with shit that continually escalates until a final decision is finally reached. After all the build up, the ending itself was pretty shocking when it came to the hows, the whys, and the whos, but it also makes sense in an eerie way. After all, it is an eerie movie about some people with some strange feelings about reality, so it is also fitting.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a creepy film with some horrifying moments, but one that could have been better with a lot more backstory and explanation when it comes to a few characters. Less can be more, but I think this film had too much less.

I had absolutely no intentions of watching The LEGO Ninjago Movie earlier in the year. When this and The LEGO Batman Movie were announced, I honestly wasn’t too fond of either idea, but this idea less so because I don’t know what the fuck a Ninjago is. It is one of their brands, but never anything I touched, so who cares.

I just wanted a real sequel to The LEGO Movie more than anything, so these off shoot films were very “whatever” on my radar.

And then I ended up being so disappointed in the Batman film and animated films in general that I needed to give Ninjago a chance. I needed to check every crook and nanny to see if all the animated films were bad. And you know what? I think this one was hated right out of the gate, with people who had very similar thoughts to mind.

No one wanted to give Ninjago a chance, which is why there hasn’t been a lot of hype for the film. And yet it, in my mind, is the better LEGO film of 2017.

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Featuring so many members of Silicon Valley also had to be intentional.

In the city of Ninjago, normal city things occur, bakers, bread buyers, bread eaters, you name it. There is a giant volcano near by across the bay, and in it lives Garmadon (Justin Theroux), a four armed evil ninja mad man who wants to take over the city, become its mayor, and rule it with his man evil fists. He is a big pain, always destroying things, bu he never wins thanks to a group of young teenagers with attitude.

You see, there is a protective ninja force in town! They have Mechs that can help them stop Garmadon every time. They all have cool elements too: The Fire Ninja (Michael Peña), The Lightning Ninja (Kumail Nanjiani), The Water Ninja (Abbi Jacobson), The Ice Ninja (Zach Woods), The Earth Ninja (Fred Armisen), and The Green Ninja (Dave Franco). Yes, the power of Green. Sucks even more for The Green Ninja, besides his lame element, because his dad actually is Garmadon.

Despite Garmadon being out of his and his mom’s (Olivia Munn) life since he was a baby, everyone knows he is the son of Garmadon and teases him non stop, because his Ninja identity is a secret. This enrages him of course, along with his anger at his dad and the fact that they never truly win. Despite the warnings of their master (Jackie Chan), the Green Ninja tries to use the ultimate weapon against Garmadon, which ends up putting the city at an even bigger risk without hurting Garmadon.

Fuck.

Now the Ninjas are going to have to find the Ultimate Ultimate Weapon, and discover how to be real ninjas without relying on Mech technology, in order to save the city, defeat Garmadon, and you know, be better people.

The story about his extra pair of arms is actually a funny one, you see….

Does the Ninjago movie have a lot of ninja stereotypes? You betcha. Does it focus on only one main plot point of the lost father/son relationship? Of course. Does it rely heavily on jokes about this relationship, bringing them up again and again? That’s another affirmative.

I believe those would be the reasons it is getting some pretty sad reviews overall. And yes, relying on one line of jokes through the majority of the film is a problem. But the good news is, it is more than just that line of jokes, they are just mostly pushed to the side or hidden in the background. In all of these LEGO movies there is a shit ton going on at all times, including quips from various characters, some without real names. And they carried the film for me.

I could have done without what felt like a long montage about learning how to throw. But the conversation about not knowing how to throw early on was amazing. And so on and so on. I found a lot of the characters to be quite amusing and thought they did well as a martial arts parody film.

But more importantly, the size and scale of this movie was appreciated. This movie is probably better to me because of comparing it to Batman. But Batman was too big. It had its own world that was unfortunately overstuffed, intentionally, so much that the had to bring in 20 or more characters to make the joke. But in Ninjago we have a handful of important characters dealing with issues in their city and not relying on outside pop culture references to tell this story.

In fact, this is one of the few reviews where I didn’t have to end my middle section with “Also starring!” and a huge list of people I couldn’t easily fit in to the plot description. It is a nice, self contained story, that amused me over the small run time. And that is why I can put it above so many other animated films this year.

2017 was a great year for horror. It exceeded my generally low expectations for the genre. It exceeded in a way that is inverse to the way that animation was a disappointment.

So I was a bit suspect of finding another good horror film after all the rest. But Raw looked really good despite knowing very little about it. I knew it would make me uncomfortable, it would have gore, and has shit ton of blood.

Heck, I didn’t even know it was a French film until it started and I got blasted with subtitles. Adding the foreign element is what made me realize early on that maybe it could also be great, because I knew America must have reached its peak.

There hasn’t been this much blood in a film since Army of Darkness. Which is arguably British.

Justine (Garance Marillier) comes from a very uppity family who expect good things out of her. She just got accepted into veternarian school and is excited about making the world a better place for animals. Her older sister, Alexia (Ella Rumpf) has already been there for a year and will help her get situated. Oh, and her entire family is vegetarian, they have been her whole life, and that is obviously relevant to the plot.

Now in France, I am led to believe that getting into a specialized school like this one is sort of like getting into a fraternity in America. They have hazing for the new recruits and a rush week, but it isn’t really optional since it is just everyone in the school. They have to submit, or else. As part of the submission, they get dumped with animal blood before important photos and are also forced to eat raw rabbit kidneys as part of their initiation.

So Justine doesn’t want to do that, she has NEVER eaten meat, and she doesn’t want to start now. She tries to get her sister’s help, but the sister denies their vegetarian upbringing and eats a kidney, so Justine has to as well. This does not go well, as she immediately feels sick. Hell, she ends up getting some sort of food allergy symptoms as well from it. No good.

And yet, his opens up something in Justine. She starts to crave meat, but made a big deal about being a vegetarian as well. So her gay roommate (Rabah Nait Oufella) tries to help her sneak this new obsession without others noticing. But it isn’t enough. Justine is constantly hungry, constantly looking for more and more. And you know where this obsession is leading.

Also starring Laurent Lucas, Joana Preiss, and Jean-Louis Sbille.

Keep working on the Andrew W.K. cosplay little girl.

(Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it) Raw felt like a very authentic (whew) tale about, well, some cannibalism. Not a lot of cannibalism, just some. It had human emotions, it had great realistic actions from unrealistic situations, and the whole thing just felt raw. Fuck, I made the pun. That didn’t last long at all.

But seriously. I didn’t even know Raw was French when I went to see it. I have heard it hyped for a half a year and just assumed another indie horror film that gets rave reviews. It is good to see another country coming up strong with new ideas.

Raw has a some gross scenes and they just happen sometimes so unexpectedly it will take you by surprise. It doesn’t shy away from sexuality and hazing, normal college experiences, it just adds some extra human elements. Again, please understand I am referring to the eating of humans.

Raw is gross, it is creepy, it is well made, and yes, it is raw.

Bet you never heard of Fun Mom Dinner!

With words like that, it sounds like an absolute blast! It has fun! Mom! And dinner! The exclamation points are provided by me, free of charge!

First things first, it looks like it is trying to be a quick cash grab for those Bad Moms fans, which I am sure there are dozens of them. Or at least enough dozens to make a sequel worthy. There have actually been a lot of girl group films this year, with also Girls Trip and Rough Night both happening this summer. I wonder if this is all a result of Bad Moms, or are women just being catered to in films finally?

If so, I apologize that the movies they are throwing at you seem to be so shitty.

A less famous version of Bad Moms, no way?

Being a mom is hard and usually it lacks fun. So some mom’s like to go out once a month or so and just have fun, drink some booze, and make sure they aren’t surrounded by kids 24/7. Namely it has been Melanie (Bridget Everett), a high intensity mom who volunteers a lot and is rules happy at the school, and Jamie (Molly Shannon) who is divorced, loves Instagram, and also very involved. But they want to invite Emily (Katie Aselton) to their ranks on the next night. She is relatively new to their school, seems involved and seems nice.

Emily seems to think it will be a good idea. After all, she does want a break and she does need new friends. She just asks if they can bring her other mom friend, Kate (Toni Collette), who has been bringing kids to that school longer. They actually know about Kate, as she has been downright rude most of the time and pretty stuck up when it comes to hanging out with moms. But they agree, in honor of the spirit of their night.

After some husband convincing, the ladies are off, and of course, their plans are not going to go as expected. Thankfully, I am sure, they will grow with each other on this crazy night of theirs and no one will get hurt.

Also starring some dudes like Paul Rudd, Adam Scott, (both of them were producers) Adam Levine, Paul Rust, David Wain, and Rob Huebel.

I will agree that unicorns and Cheez-Its is my kind of party.

I went in expecting Fun Mom Dinner to be a worse version of Bad Moms. And what I got instead was not something worse than Bad Moms, just something just as as bad as Bad Mom’s.

And that is really all I should have to say. It has a lesser production quality, more people in it, an occasional laugh, but an incredibly forgettable story.

What was it about again? I forgot, especially since this review is coming out many weeks after the fact that I wrote this. I don’t want to read the middle part later again. They have more drugs and alcohol than expected, we have to watch the dads actually be fathers (shocking), and people make mistakes. Thankfully, they come closer through the experience.

I honestly don’t have anything really to say about this one. It wasn’t the worst film of the year, it just wasn’t close to being good.

Tonya Harding is currently living in infamy, as the most famous figure skater ever. More people know her name than Nancy Kerrigan. More people know her name than the other figure skaters since then and before.

Tonya Harding was one of first people to be sensationalized around the world thanks to the emergence of the 24 hour news cycle. Yes, she was involved in a terrible scandal. A scandal we have never really seen before or after, or if we did, it was a lot more subtle and professionally done.

I, Tonya is a film more about the once incident that will forever define her life, unfortunately. It is about her youth, her skating career, her relationships, and sure, some time after as well.

And about her happiest moment, in which she was clearly, very goddamn happy.

Tonya Merigold Bethany Harding (Margot Robbie) (I made up those middle names) grew up poor and unloved, which is really how she was most of her life as well.

Her mother (Allison Janney) was the one who spent most of her time raising her, with a lot of failed marriages, men who could no longer stand her. She was beaten, but her mom still put most of her money into skating lessons, because Tonya showed skills at the young age of three. Tonya was crass, a red neck, vulgar, and everything that her mother taught her to be.

This led to some contention in the ice skating community, who demanded their skaters be princesses. She was often not treated right by the judges, even if she landed the hardest of tricks perfectly.

A hard life led Tonya to a hard man, Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), a couple of people who married their first love when neither had a strong education. More beatings, more of a shit home life, and yet still, Tonya succeed on the ice.

All of this led up to the 1994 Winter Olympics, and I am sure you heard a lot about that one.

Also starring Anthony Reynolds, Bobby Cannavale, Bojana Novakovic, Caitlin Carver, Julianne Nicholson, Paul Walter Hauser, Ricky Russert, and Mckenna Grace as little Tonya.

The real torture is probably how long it took to do her hair.

I didn’t really know what to expect going into I, Tonya. Again, I really only understood the woman behind the incident through parodies and Weird Al. I knew it was classified as some sort of Dark Comedy, and usually Dark Comedies aren’t based on real events, even if they say they are. I also know that this whole thing is from Tonya and companies point of view, Nancy Kerrigan had nothing to do with this film, so there was a chance of bias.

And so I tried to look at it objectively, just as a film, telling a story, not worrying about how it matched up with real events. Like how I did for The Greatest Showman. And yet it was hard to do that as characters constantly broke the fourth wall to tell if these things really did or didn’t happen, and I don’t just mean the documentary feel of the film for some parts.

But at this point I am stalling. I, Tonya was masterful cinema in my eyes. It took a tragic and strange event and gave it human qualities. As far as I am concerned, Tanya Harding was a tragic figure growing up and very misunderstood. She had to struggle a lot through poverty, physical abuse and mental abuse from those who loved her, and yet she still became a success. And fuck it, I believe she wasn’t involved with the incident at this point. Movie has set my mind to a certain point, and I just feel so incredibly sad about it all.

I, Tonya made me laugh a ton, made me cry, but more importantly, it made me think. That sounds like a canned response, but it made me think about what it means to be a celebrity, what it means to have your lives completely under camera all the time, and how you aren’t allowed to ever be weak unless you want to be trampled.

Except when it comes to Trump. The mockery is justified.

Insidious here, get your insidious here! Can’t get enough of those James Wan other worldly horror films? Then we got a new one here!

At this point it is the fourth Insidious film, but we are delving straight into the side story parts now. We don’t get a number, we get Insidious: The Last Key. It took Paranormal Activity to get to film 5 before it abandoned their numbers for a side story instead.

Just because there is a last in the title, don’t assume it is the last Insidious film. That is a lie in every horror franchise, no matter what they say.

Instead, at this point, go in expecting some more details and unfortunately a lot more questions.

It is important to have your security look nice before they fuck up a spirit.

Our favorite psychic, Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), didn’t have a fun time growing up. This takes place after Chapter 3, and before the first film still, where she is rocking out with her two sidekicks, Tucker (Angus Sampson) and Specs (Leigh Whannell). Except she gets a call from a dude (Kirk Acevedo), who lives in Five Keys, New Mexico. Specifically, he lives in the home she grew up in. And again, this was not fun.

You see, Elise basically always had this ability. The skills to see dead spirits, talk to them, and really feel their pain. While it is cool for old Elise to do that, young girl Elise doing it made it really creepy. Her dad (Josh Stewart), worked at the next door prison (which had a high execution rate I guess), and he didn’t like her saying she saw things. He did the only logical thing in his mind, in the 1960’s, and he had to beat it out of her every time she decided to lie about ghosts.

Hooray child abuse! Oh yes, we get a lot of pained girl screams and pleads for those who need to feel sad inside.

Anyways, also as a kid, Elise was visited by demons, helped free a powerful thing, and inadvertently killed her mom? Jeez. Either way, now, a billion years later, Elise has to return to the home that has too many memories, to hopefully put a stop to what started her a long time before.

Also starring in the past and the present ish, Caitlin Gerard, Spencer Locke, Aleque Reid, Ava Kolker, Pierce Pope, Bruce Davison, and Tessa Ferrer.

Breasts and horror go together sure, but sometimes even fully clothed it can feel excessive.

The beginning of the film is probably the best part of it, so after the long introduction of 10+ minutes (it feels like), just go ahead and leave. We start in the 60’s, it is creepy, we get the child abuse, the arguments, the scares, the creepy key stuff, and the deaths. Once we get back to modernish times, the film quickly just falls apart.

Sure, the sidekicks have some good jokes. And they tried to make some sort of coherent plot, that had its moments. The suitcase scare later on is bound to be a highlight.

But every damn time they go into The Further it just feels so goddamn stupid. And a significant portion takes place there, along with multiple entities and places. It just feels like they are just making up that place as they go, and whatever happens there is what a writer feels like doing, with no limits or cares in the world! It especially featured the worst acting of the film and the effects were, well, ghastly.

Don’t worry, we have tons of bad acting throughout the film as well. We get someone who is in his 70’s playing the dad to two daughters who are clearly supposed to be early 20’s and not apparently be awkward at all. An easy fix of saying “Granddaughters” instead would have made it less weird. Speaking of weird, the daughters have a lot more plot than one would expect. One of them is featured above and it is honestly the worst time I have seen a horror film try to also make a scary scene sexy. Imagine her having a panic attack on the ground, breathing up and down very hard. It isn’t sexy, no matter how much the boobs move, it is just uncomfortable and takings you out of the film.

The acting is bad in the flashbacks, and generally just bad when really any character interacts with any other character. It certainly doesn’t feel like the end of a series, but really, the beginning. But again, the beginning was neat, and some jokes made me laugh.

When you claim to watch bad movies so others don’t have to, you often get asked if you have seen certain bad movies. I would say the film I have been asked about the most by a landslide would be Cube. Because I like shit like that, and math. Didn’t see that coming did you? Well I’ve seen Cube now and the first sequel.

The movie most requested after that would easily be The Room, something I didn’t rush out to see. I saw the “best scenes” compilation on YouTube and just put that in a “one day” bucket. Then The Disaster Artist has to go and not only come out but receive awards nominations. shit. That meant I HAD to watch The Room finally. I couldn’t go in blind. What’s the point?

So I saw it still slightly reluctantly. Powered through. I get the appeal but I still won’t see it again. And hey now I can watch others talk about it!

Just not in the goddamn theater, that’d be rude.

Sometime in the late 1990’s, Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) was a struggling young adult. He thought about being a famous actor one day, and he was even taking acting lessons. He just wasn’t any good. At all. At. All. Nothing helped, he didn’t display any emotion, it was a lost cause. But in those same classes, he found a dark and mysterious man named Tommy Wiseau (James Franco). Now this is a man who knew how to channel his emotions and really bring that raw talent to the stage.

So Greg wanted to work with Tommy, and Tommy agreed. He was a bit weird, but he really brought it out of Greg and Greg started to feel confident. After years of friendship, they moved to LA, with Tommy financing everything, to become real actors. After it didn’t work out well, especially not for Tommy, Tommy started to write and figure out his own movie. This piece became The Room, a film that is iconic today, and the rest of this movie is how it was made, the trials they faced, and the hurdles that were overcome. Also how Greg began to move on by getting a girlfriend (Alison Brie) and trying to separate from the Tommy umbrella.

And only some talk about being a vampire.

Given the people who made this, it is no surprise how many famous actors are in this film: Seth Rogen, Paul Scheer, Zac Efron, Josh Hutcherson, Charlyne Yi, Bob Odenkirk, Hannibal Buress, Joe Mande, Nathan Fielder, Andrew Santino, Jason Mantzoukas, Megan Mullally, June Diane Raphael, Jackie Weaver and Ari Graynor. I could have also swore a minor character was Margot Robbie, but the credits won’t let me confirm that.

As we learned in The Room there is never a bad time for football.

I wonder how much your perceptions of this film changes based on your opinions of The Room. If you have seen The Room many times since it came out, were totally in that cult movie aspect, I think you will enjoy The Disaster Artist a whole lot more than someone new to the topic. Obviously this is a film where you sort of need to see The Room before seeing it to really get it at all, but there is a huge difference between me watching it a week before The Disaster Artist and years prior.

Because hey, The Disaster Artist is a pretty funny film. The Francos do a good job of setting the stage, building up the Wiseau mythos and so on. And sure, I can agree that James acted well, only because we obviously have a real person/character to compare him to. But if this was just a movie about a bad production, this is the type of thing that would be panned for unnecessarily ridiculous director guy.

So it is a very hard thing to judge. Was it actually well acted only because he acted like Wiseau accurately? Or does well acted need to be something more than accuracy to a subject? It is a hard subject to answer, and not one that I will go into real detail here. But it is something on my mind and something that certainly would tell me that it certainly shouldn’t be winning awards for its acting.

The Disaster Artist was a film that made me laugh and remind me of a shitty film at the same time. It is a very strange genre of movie, very meta, and it will gain its own cult status I am sure. Double features for the next 20 years! However, in reality, I really just want to read the book to get the full story and won’t bother too much with the film version many times in the future.

When you think of Hostiles, you think of a group of angry people. Knowing that this movie is set as a western, with cowboys and American Indians, it sort of brings Pocahontas to mind. I know, it wasn’t cowboys, but close enough. And famously in that movie we had the song Savages. Throughout history, generally Savage was used when the “white” side ran into natives in another land. But in this song, they both saw each other as savages! Equality because both sides were different and didn’t trust different things.

Except you know, the part where in Pocahontas, the white people were actual terrible invaders and the bad people and that was it. So they tried well, but still failed in that regard.

Anyway, I think of that song when I hear Hostiles (and probably also for the movie Savages). Going into it, I assumed that every side and every new character was probably a “hostile” individual, and that no one should be trusted or given a gun.

When everyone is this aggressive, you just need to have the gun out at all times.

Set in 1892, we find ourselves in the Western United States. The Civil War is over, but the Spanish-American war had not yet happened. Soldiers at this point didn’t have a lot of responsibilties. Mostly keeping the peace, in forts across the country.

Captain Joseph J. Blocker (Christian Bale) has been in the army for about 25 or more years at this point. He has seen and done a lot of things. He was at Wounded Knee not to much longer before. And he hates the Native Americans. He h as seen what they have done to “honest, Americans” and is disgusted by that fact. Hell, most of his career has involved killing them or rounding them up, but he also has only done what he is told.

And now he is being told to do something unthinkable. He has to return Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his family (Adam Beach, Q’orianka Kilcher, and more) to their homeland. He has been imprisoned for seven years and it has been long enough, especially since Yellow Hawk has the cancer. It has turned into a big deal for their government to send him home to die with his people and forgive past crimes, hell, even the president has signed off on it. The press are involved!

Blocker doesn’t wan this job. And it will be his last one before retirement. He has his crew (Jesse Plemons, Jonathan Majors, Rory Cochrane, Timothée Chalamet), he had his weapons and supplies, and he had a terrible mission.

And along the way he will also pick up Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike) a very recent widow who lost her family and house to a group of Native American horse thieves, and (Ben Foster) a former soldier, turned prisoner for doing unthinkable crimes and trying to run, who needs delivery to a fort for a court marshal.

Also featuring others, like Stephen Lang, Peter Mullan, and Robyn Malcolm.

Shit, everyone gets a gun in this movie.

Hostiles is a film that is just a little bit over two hours, but one that feels much longer. The first scene grabs you and the film refuses to let go the entire time. It keeps your attention by gripping characters, extremely great acting, authentic everything, and slightly terrifying plot.

It doesn’t keep your interest like a modern cartoon, by flashing shit at you every few seconds. No, the scenes are long, detailed, and showcase real human emotion. Hard decisions don’t just come naturally, but they are often decided in between scenes. But in this film, we have to watch actors think through their moral issues and figure out what they need to do. And on its own, that might not seem too appealing, but it just shows the amount of attention to detail that went into this film.

Scott Cooper directed this film and I will be honest, I haven’t really enjoyed anything he has directed before. That is from Black Mass, Out of the Furnace, and Crazy Heart. All films that are known for one reason or another, some good, some not so good. But none of them really reached me.

Hostiles reached me something fierce. Bale has a good chance of getting nominated. Watching Pike play such an unhinged character gave me flashbacks to Gone Girl, she does such work here as well. All of the other side characters are clearly their own individuals. The film kept me guessing with just how scenes would play out. The characters are complex individuals, so their actions won’t always be obvious from earlier in the film.

Hostiles is just a great film on all fronts. The soundtrack, the acting, the story, the pacing, the cinematography, shit, even the costumes. Westerns are rare, but it seems like every western we get is basically gold at this point.