Month: June 2020

The last time I had an actual positive review for a movie where Will Ferrell had a leading role was in 2010 for Everything Must Go. That is basically a whole decade of meh or worst.

“What about The Lego Movie? You can count The Lego Movie!” I did count that! I gave it a 2/4 and stand by that still.

So I will be clear that I fully intended to just ignore Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. Even the name hurts me a bit.

And then I got stupid one night and just put it on (I lasted like, a day). And the good news is, it could have been a lot worse!

Everyone cheer for something to make us happy…please?ABBA changed the world forever with their performance on Eurovision. I don’t know if that is true, but that is what I gather as an American who has never seen Eurovision. It is the main band I have heard come out of it and be really world vision, so I guess so?

It certainly changed the world for Lars Erickssong (Will Ferrell), who seeing that performance as a kid claimed he would one day win Eurovision as well. And he would take Sigrit Ericksdottir (Rachel McAdams) on this decades long journey, the girl who never talked but found out she can sing!

Decades later, they are Fire Saga, with hits and electric pianos. No one really cares about them in their small village, but they get gigs as the only band to play covers and silly songs. Lars’ dad (Pierce Brosnan) is a typical disappointed dad based on his son’s dreams.

But of course, somehow they make it to Eurovision! Thanks to plot. And that is where things get slightly more difficult. Highly rated to win Alexander Lemtov (Dan Stevens) out of Russia takes a liking to Sigrit and might put the duo in jeopardy before they can even perform!

Also starring Melissanthi Mahut (who is also Kassandra in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey), Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Demi Lovato, Graham Norton, Jamie Demetriou, Alfrun Rose, Elina Alminas, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, and Mikael Persbrandt.

Parts of this still look like the men are painted with the background.From the various plots and subplots, some of them stuck the landing and some of them floundered. The Icelandic villain is obvious throughout the film, but over so quickly and so unnecessary that it just takes away from the rest of the movie. If all of that was cut, they would just need to have a new explanation for one aspect of the film and it would still work fine.

What does work on the “villain” scale is Stevens the Russian singer. Because he isn’t really a villain. He isn’t even a bad guy. He is just not with Ferrell’s character, but he seems genuine in wanting his own success for himself and for McAdams’ character. He says things that are correct, and I have no hate for him as a character.

The only main character one would dislike is, (unfortunately? of course?), Ferrell’s lead. He has one goal and one goal only, but for whatever reason, that means he can be a dick to those who love him. His reactions make no sense. The viewer are supposed to hate him and find him annoying, but I’m not sure why because it makes me never want to rewatch the regular parts of the movie again. His only great reoccurring joke is the hatred towards the Americans.

Ferrell’s character is so bad, it makes us sad that McAdams’ is with him at all throughout the film. McAdams carries this movie for me, her character is so innocent and fun and wholesome you just want her to succeed and hug her. We can get it by the end, and sure, missed 20-30 years of growth between them before that. But still, come on, step up your game lady.

The music is the real reason why the movie can get a higher rating overall. It is so fun and interesting. Having past winners as cameos is nice, and the “Song-a-long” scene made me feel so Euphoric (while also annoyed at how auto-tuned it was, and how badly cut it was). Our final song of the competition was wonderful and I cannot get Ja Ja Ding Dong out of my head.

I offer some disappointment that a lot of the main characters aren’t the real voices uses. Of course Ferrell’s is his, its unmistakable. McAdams’ is apparently her voice and another’s mixed together, so it is “slightly” there. Stevens’, despite being a singer, is entirely dubbed by a more operatic dude instead of mixed based on Stevens’ own wishes. Even our Greek character is someone else singing! All of the Eurovision stars and actual musicians likely really sing, but they also are autotuned, so nothing gets to feel natural.

Overall, ESC:TSOFI is a cute story, an overall loving story, a story with some comedy and a lot more heart, and fun music numbers to keep you entertained along the way. It might be the pandemic talking, but it is something that feels necessary right now.

3 out of 4.

Against all odds, My Spy is finally out today, in the US, legally, August 26, 2020. It is available on Amazon Prime.

So how did it get here? Well, it was supposed to come out in August of 2019 (and likely would have been the best result in retrospect) but got moved back a month before that. It was pushed to a January release of 2020, then pushed again to a mid march release in 2020. You know what happened then. So about a week before coming out, it got pushed back to mid-April, to see what was going on in the world then.

And of course, before that happened, they cut their losses, sold it to Amazon and no theatrical release anymore. Well, it did come out in theaters in the UK in March. And in Australia in January, but hey, whatever, not like pirates exist.

My Spy annoys me because it is the last screening I saw in theaters before everything went down. The last actual movie I saw in theaters was Birds of Prey, the next morning, but that was already out for a month so no one cares about that.

And with it out today, finally, I can tell you why it sucks.

Here is a frame. It combined with all the rest made a poor film.JJ (Dave Bautista) is a big strong man, who used to be in special forces, and is now in the CIA. He likes to punch things and blow things up and isn’t used to being subtle. And because of that he is being punished. Yuck. He is being sent to Chicago (ew), with a tech support spy (Kristen Schaal) with the only purpose of spying on a family.

Why? Well, silly plot reasons. It involves nuclear weapons surprisingly. But a bad guy stole some weapon blueprints, brother of bad guy stole them from him to be a hero and not let them get out, brother dies. No one knows where the plans are, but maybe they are with the brother of the bad guy’s wife (Parisa Fitz-Henley) and daughter (Chloe Coleman), who have moved from France to Chicago after the death. Very sad times.

Unfortunately for JJ, because everyone is a noob, they almost immediately get found out in their safe house by the daughter character, who thinks she has found spies (accurate) but not sure why. Thanks to hilarious blackmail and set up, she uses JJ as a way to find acceptance in life. She gets “spy” training, and a friend in her lonely world, while JJ gets forced into her life as a neighbor, and starts to fall in love with a widow.

Typical spy stuff. Things go wrong. Bad guys. Ahhh-xplosions.

Also starring Greg Bryk, Ken Jeong, Devere Rogers, Noah Dalton Danby, and Nicola Correia-Damude.

Ah yes, tropes. 

My Spy picked a bad year to finally come out. Because of how many movies aren’t coming out this year, it is almost certainly going to make a lot of worst of the year lists. It might have made them last year too, but it probably would have been decent box office numbers, given its probably lower budget.

There is nothing excitingly new about this movie. It is your typical big strong man must become more loving or family man. Like almost wrestling turned actor film. I thought we wouldn’t get one of these any time soon since we were stuck with Playing With Fire last year. But this isn’t the genre’s fault, it is the wrestler turned actor fault.

Since we currently have John Cena and Dave Bautista doing that, they are both likely to have have one of these, and they happened to be very close to each other. It is our burden to bare.

This film offers nothing new, isn’t funny, and is rather stupid. It should have come out in January or August, because it would fit perfectly there in the movies people want to ignore. Now I suggest we all ignore it on Amazon Prime, like most of you planned on doing that anyways.

0 out of 4.

Can they make flight hijacking films worth it? I don’t think there have been hundreds on this topic, but a few already and they take place in such a small space. A plane. And there is a good chance that we will know how they end. After 9/11, there is almost no way it ends with the plane going into a tower, that is for certain. Either the good guys win, or it crashes somewhere else, but that is it.

Where can this genre go?

7500, not to be confused with Flight 7500, is a German/American film and was originally going to star Paul Dano before delays and scheduling conflicts. No matter how good this film is, I am going to say it would hav been better with Dano. I love Dano.

This is a poor man’s Dano.Tobias (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a co-pilot, young with his future right in front of him. He also has a girlfriend as a flight attendant, so that is nice, assuming no weird power dynamic is at play. The main pilot, Michael (Carlo Kitzlinger), is ready for take off and is pretty experienced. They take off from Berlin, should be a nice quiet night.

Just kidding! Highjackers!

A group of men immediately try to get into the cockpit when an attendant is bringing them food!

Oh no!

Tobias is able to close the door to the cockpit with only one man getting in the pit, and also help knock him out, but the pilot is a goner. Tobias has to man the flight on his own (which is okay) but he did get stabbed in the arm. He has to deal with a man inside the cockpit who could come to at any moment, and two men trying to barge their way in and are willing to kill hostages to get the door open.

What is a man to do? The air traffic controller tells him to do an emergency landing in a nearby city and to under no circumstances open the door. But when they target his girlfriend and other innocents, can he really keep his composure?

Also starring Hicham Sebia, Omid Memar, Passar Hariky, Aylin Tezel, Paul Wollin, and Aurélie Thépaut.

Always gotta be looking back scared, come on man. Eyes on the road.

Why Mr. Gorgon? Why should I watch this film? Does it offer anything unique?

Thanks for the leading question to the last part of my review! Yes, this film has one reason to give it a chance. Outside of some security tapes at the very beginning, and one other part, the entirety of the film takes place in the cockpit.

So yes, you are going to get a whole lot of JGL on your screen. He isn’t always on the screen. Sometimes our focus is outside of the front window, or the other characters in the cockpit, or more importantly, on his video monitor of what is happening behind the door when talking with the terrorists.

If anything, this definitely changes the way we see cabin fever, and builds on the claustrophobia and sense of being trapped in an unwinnable situation. That is where the movie shines.

I also have a theory. If they didn’t give us subtitles for the non-English languages it would have helped with the fear and helplessness. Because Tobias only knows English, so can’t even communicate well with the staff. This changes things if the viewer understands German or Arabic or Turkish (I believe all three are spoken), but then we could have added some scarier elements overall.

Instead, we get a normal story told in a better than normal way. It has fine acting, a lot of yelling, and some hard moral choices overall. Definitely worth a gander, since it is free on Amazon Prime.

2 out of 4.

One Cut of the Dead is a Japanese independent film from the last year or years, it is hard to say. It has had a weird road to distribution.

Made with mostly unknown actors and for a ridiculously cheap budget, it made back over 1,000 times its investment, which is a pretty goddamn unheard of percent for movies. I know it was hitting festivals and getting a lot of good buzz, and then at one point it was…put on Amazon!

But, it wasn’t supposed to be put on Amazon. Someone had an older unfinished copy, and just put it on Amazon prime for free. Did you know you can just do that? It is apparently really easy. And one it was on Amazon, many people rushed out to see it, and tell other’s to see it because it was a critical darling. The same day, news came out that the people who own it didn’t upload it, it was unfinished copy, and to please not watch it while it was worked out.

Well shit. That kind of screwed over a lot of things.

Anyways, at this point it is on amazon again, but for money, and the right version. So you can watch it and feel confident someone involved is getting money for it.

Like this guy who is holding the camera!

One man had a vision. Director Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu) had the idea for a zombie film, an idea that would be so scary and amazing. But his shitty actors were not giving him enough emotion.

We are talking take, after take, after take, and it just is not good enough for the director.

So while he went to go cool down, and the actors relaxed and got to know each other, normal stuff between takes. But something odd happened. Some sounds from the outside. Some…limbs from outside. Oh shit, real zombies! in the middle of their zombie film!

Now the director can get some real emotions out of his cast.

Also starring Yuzuki Akiyama, Harumi Shuhama, Kazuaki Nagaya, Hiroshi Ichihara, and Mao.

Those zombies aren’t going to double kill themselves!One Cut of The Dead is a unique film, there is no one who can deny that. In fact, it is so unique, it is also equally hard to even talk about it because it is a film that should be discovered, not spoiled.

And yes, the idea of spoiling can be kicked around enough, but trust us, the critics, me, when we say, just gotta go in some times to see the journey.

I couldn’t believe what the film managed to do and convey. It is extremely impressive, given the lack of budget or names involved, even from a Foreign film perspective. It required a lot of work. It required planning. And it required people who were creative as fuck. People who really had a vision and executed it perfectly.

One Cut of the Dead is a comedy more than a horror, and it will be hard to find something more unique than it before or after for awhile. Not even an American remake will likely be as unique. [As of writing, no plans for American remake, but sorry for jinxing it should it change in the future].

It is definitely an experience, and I watched it directly after Train to Busan! A very different foreign zombie film that is top notch in very differeny ways. And yet, this one still was able to stand out on its own.

4 out of 4.