Tag: Alan Ruck

Gringo had something funny occur with their PR screening ahead of time. Our screening wasn’t until the week of release, like normal, but they actually sent out the real invite for it over a month early. Now, normally, these invites are a week to two max early. If any earlier, we get save the date notes or whatever to let you know it is coming up, but this was just the regular invite to respond to for RSVP purposes.

So of course I accepted, and the only reason it is much later a review is because I was sick that day, couldn’t go, and had to watch it weeks later in the theaters. I wanted to see Gringo, it looked fun, and sure, it had a plug on The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale. Let that be a lesson for you, advertising can work. Why else would I still be using old spice body wash every day?

Gringo has an interesting name, given what I think I know what it means, and that we had a film awhile ago called Get The Gringo, which was also a bit better than anticipated. I had high hopes for Gringo given it setting, its very fun looking cast, and of course, because of Mr. Copley adding his own weird style.

Which one is the gringo though, really?

Our story is about Harold Soyinka (David Oyelowo), a man who never can catch a break. He has a high job in a pharmaceutical company,but he isn’t rolling in the dough like the people in the higher levels. His wife (Thandie Newton) is an interior decorator, but only has one client and is bleeding their money. His boss (Joel Edgerton), is a hardass, a dickwad, and all of the body parts between those two. But he makes that money, he is good friends with Harold, and he got him the job in the first place.

Harold has to work and travel to Mexico frequently for their job, where they have the pharmaceutical factory set up. They are making a weed pill, so to speak, so that when America starts lifting those bans, they will have the product and infrastructure in place to take advantage of the now open market.

Because we are talking about drugs and Mexico, it should be obvious that the Cartel is also involved. Harold doesn’t know about that of course, he is a good guy, but when dealing with his boss’s mistakes, he is about to see how little he matters in the grand scheme of events.

Also starring Carlos Corona, Alan Ruck, Kenneth Choi, Sharlto Copley, Charlize Theron, Melonie Diaz, Amanda Seyfried, Harry Treadaway, and Yul Vazquez.

Ooooh, looks like they finally GOT THE GRINGO! Oh, wrong movie. Sorry.

Gringo is an example of a story with a lot of separate plot lines amongst the characters, where no one character is sure of what is actually going on, and all the chaos that occurs from these miscommunications and lies. But also, with death, violence, and comedy. So yeah, going for a Taratino film feel.

Out of all the many cast members, the only one to really shine is our star, Oyelowo, who seems to have perfected that scream freak out look that he gets to do over and over in the film as he continues to get shit upon. Because that is the movie. Bad things happening to his character, despite being a relatively good guy, and him never getting out of his situation.

If you hate crazy plot lines, you still might enjoy it for Oyelowo’s performance, where he seemed to show a different side of him. A more excited side, compared to more of his very serious roles recently.

The movie did feel quite long, given the twists and turns along the way. And hey, I didn’t know where it was going most of the time. So it was a surprising thrill ride that did still have me on the edge of my seat. A lot of bad people in this one, and one guy to root for. A good classic film position to be in.

Give Gringo a shot, at least just once.

I know that War Machine has been a term for a long time. I mean, Black Sabbath sang the song War Pigs which uses that term, so it had to exist probably at least since the 1960’s as a sort of protest term maybe during Vietnam? Normally, I might look that up, but I am just spitballing here.

Clearly the Netflix original film War Machine is referring to it in this way, about modern conflicts and maybe war profiteers.

But as you all are aware, there is War Machine of the Iron Man/Marvel movies, and he is probably big enough to have taken over that title. Maybe they picked the title to just piggy back off of that Marvel money. That Disney money.

Like war profiteers.

The face you make when you have been a heartthrob for decades and now have to play a role with gray hair.

General Glen McMahon (Brad Pitt) is a leader in the United States Armed Forces, and has dedicated his life to his career. He was born on an army base, coming from several soldiers. He graduated from West Point, like all eventual war leaders, and so on. He likes to get shit done, he has his close crew of soldiers he can trust, and he doesn’t appreciate things getting in his way.

This is set a few years ago, with Obama still as president, and he wants to end the war in Afghanistan. They are now dealing with insurgents, making it an impossible to win fight, but damn it, he was put in charge and he will put it to a close. He has to make assessments and come up with a plan of attack, everyone in the government is hoping for the best. But McMahon doesn’t do what is heavily suggested, he is going to do what he knows is right to defeat the bad guys and save our troops.

However, as command of the troops, he is finding a lot more of the job involves not warring, but instead dealing with incompetent or annoying world leaders, including his own. The politics of war is unnerving and getting to him, preventing him from doing his job. It seems like he is put into that place entirely to be targeted by newspapers, the media, other countries, protesters, blaming him for a war he didn’t start and is just trying to finish.

And as it is a war movie, there are a shit ton of people involved, so here a lot of of the more important ones. Alan Ruck, Anthony Hayes, Anthony Michael Hall, Aymen Hamdouchi, Ben Kingsley, Daniel Betts, Emory Cohen, John Magaro, Josh Stewart, Meg Tilly, RJ Cyler, Scoot McNairy, Tilda Swinton, Topher Grace, and Russell Crowe.

Photo ops allow people to dress up fancy, show their medals, wear cool hats, and apparently drink tea.

Satire films are hard to pull off, especially if you want to avoid the now ugly valley called parody. War Machine does a decent job of maintaining its satire status without dipping down to any sort of parody territory. What it doesn’t do a good job of is being an amazing satire film.

For satire to work, everyone has to be able to get it, understand the real world events and how the art is flipping it on its head. It would be hard for someone to not know about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the film does go into a level of detail that would require more than the layman’s knowledge. Not a whole lot, just some, so that could be considered a negative to a lot of viewers.

I loved Pitt in our leading role here. He gave such an honest performance and was fully in that character. It never felt like the character was intentionally trying to be the butt of a joke, always very serious in ways that became amusing just to an outsider perspective. It just had a lot of truth to it, a wonderful thing for Pitt to have accomplished in this movie.

I wouldn’t say this is a perfect or extraordinary film. It was a decent watch, one I won’t probably ever go running for again. I will also like to point out how amazing Swinton was in this film. She had only one scene and her character is named German Politician, so someone you would assume is just a dumb cameo, but she killed it and added a lot of gravity to the general’s situation.

GhoOoOoOoOssSsssT ToOoOwWWwnN.

Am I doing it right? Definitely not at all to be confused with Ghost World, which is about Scarlett Johansson handling 2nd billing early in her career.

No, Ghost Town actually has ghosts in it. And it assumes there is an after life. Controversy? Not at all. People love ghosts. As long as they aren’t trying to kill them.

Currently no idea if these are the ghosts people love.

Ricky Gervais is a Dentist but hates people. Social situations he is not the best in, and tends to always keep to himself. Won’t even hold an elevator. Doesn’t talk to his coworkers. But when he goes into a routine surgery for some bowels problem, due to an anesthesia error he technically died for about eight minutes. He only found this out after asking his surgeon, Kristen Wiig, if any complications arose because he claims to be having hallucinations.

Turns out those hallucinations are real, and that they are ghosts! Ghosts who find it odd that a live person can see them, so they begin to harass him into helping him solve some of their last wishes. Because clearly if Ghost stuff is happening, their time on the Earth isn’t over! One of the more persistent ghosts is Greg Kinnear, who we get to see die first in the film! He was a cheating son of a gun, getting a new apartment just to have to cheat with his wife, Tea Leoni. But she finds out form the Realtor, and just assumes it was a gift for the both of them! Yay new place.

Well that apartment building is where Ricky lives and he has been very unpleasant to her. When he finds out Greg’s goal is to stop her marriage to a human rights lawyer, Billy Campbell, because he is a “bad guy”, he agrees only because the rest of the ghosts are supposed to leave him a lone. They agree the best plan of action is to get her to fall for someone else (awkward) and by george, Ricky wants to do it himself.

But he is still an asshole / bad guy / socially inept. Not to mention Greg lied about getting the other ghosts to back off. What else was he lying about? MORE QUESTIONS THAT MAKE YOU WONDER WHAT WILL HAPPEN? Also, lots of other ghosts. But Alan Ruck is one, so he is my favorite.

This is my idea of a good time.

First off, Wiig was only in this movie for about two scenes. Pre surgery, and worrying about his hallucinations post surgery. The first scene isn’t really much, but that second scene is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in awhile. I’ve seen the first part of it on Scene It before, and now it all makes sense. So she gets a credit role for that.

The plot is kind of predictable, just not the path. You know eventually he will probably begin to change his ways, be more friendly, help out the other Ghosts, etc. Maybe find love? But it wasn’t a straight line and was an actual good journey. Took some elements from a 90s movie Heart and Souls, staring a pre-coked Robert Downey Jr, but neither were the first to assume ghosts are on Earth until they finish a task.

But I found the only thing not only funny but enjoyable. Pretty much the exact opposite of The Invention Of Lying, another Gervais “comedy”. Plot was descent for what it was, and didn’t go into any sort of religious stance.

Extraordinary is one of my favorite words. Especially if you say it for real, and not the shortened way (Extrordinary). Extra. Ordinary. That means beyond ordinary. It means AWESOME.

Well, for Extraordinary Measures, I figured it would be about spies or secrets or government or something. I mean. Look at the cast! Nope. It is a feel good movie about curing diseases. Damn it!

Well, at least we might get some hxc science.

Brendan Fraser plays high up not CEO but business guy who does something. What does he do? Not important. He leaves that job in the movie. But it has nice health insurance. That is good, because out of 3 children, the last two have Pompe disease. Which means something, but just picture kids in electrical wheelchairs, with a fatal disease that means they probably wont make it to 10.

But when the doctor tells him that his two children will both probably die within a year, him and his wife, Keri Russell, freak out. But Brendan freaks out more, leaves working during an “important meeting” and flies out to Nebraska to find Harrison Ford, MD. Ford is a better theorist than he is a scientist, and he believes he knows how to help cure Pompe disease. But he’d need money, and it will take awhile. Brendan says he an get him that money in a month (half a million dollars!).

Well, he only gets $90k. But that is way better than expected. So Ford, grumpy old Ford, says they will have to start their own business and lab, get money from investors, to work on this. But he needs a CEO to do it, and even though there are plenty more people qualified than Brendan, none of them would have the same drive that he has (You know. Trying to save TWO kids). So he quits his job on a gamble. Alan Ruck (who has one scene) tells him it is crazy, but you know one, you have to be crazy sometimes.

So the movie tells of the tale of them trying to get funds, trying to rush science, and do whatever it takes, even if it means their pride have to take a bashing, to find and develop a cure. For added guilt, Coutney B. Vance is a friend of theirs, who also has two children with the disease.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” “Alive.”

So, this is a feel good movie, based off of the real story. So here are some spoilers. Yes, they find a “cure”. Or at least one one that if administered to infants can get rid of it, but one given to older children can get rid of the dying thing (not the whole, cant walk and etc thing). Yes, the children are still alive today (Posted Jan 26, 2012, for anyone reading this in the 2030s or whenever in the future). Yes, pharmaceutical companies are bitches. Also, no cows were harmed in this movie.

I wasn’t sure if Ford was the best choice to play scientists looking to start his own biotech company. Because he just seems super old. But hey, its Fords movie, so he will be a big role if he wants to! Fraser didn’t entirely mess up the movie either. His goofiness was appropriate, and it seemed like he really cared for these fake, not really Pompe looking kids of his. But everything is expected, and really, nothing too different about this movie and other extraordinary measure like movies.