Tag: Asa Butterfield

Greed is probably my 2nd favorite game show of all time. I think it had a good balance of trivia, team work, back stabbery, and good money prizes. I am annoyed it didn’t take off more. My favorite would be Survivor, if that counts as a game show.

However, this doesn’t have anything to do with the game show, outside of the concept of needing…uhh, money. And Greed.

I couldn’t tell what I was really getting into when I accepted the invite. It had an orange dude on the cover, so I didn’t know if it was going for Trump parody, a different person, a mockumentary or what. I did know it was going to be British, which means strange humor.

This doesn’t look like British humor! These are clearly Brazilian outfits!

Sir Richard McCreadie (Steve Coogan), or Greedy McCreadie from his non-fans, is a dick. An older, relatively wealthy, dick. He grabbed himself by his bootstraps, had already a large sum of money, and turned himself into a fashion icon.

Sure, most of his companies failed. Most of them went bankrupt and somehow the assets went to his family. His wife (Isla Fisher) was able to profit off of them the most, and a lot of it went into Tax Free havens. He borrowed money from the banks to pay for companies, that then went into the companies debt, not his own. He knew the system and knew how to make it work for him and his own, no one else.

>Well McCreadie is about to turn 60. He is annoyed about the bad press, the investigations, and the negativity. He is going to throw a giant bash for himself, regardless of what conditions his workers face. He is going to have the best party, in Greece, with all the stops pulled out. He also has a writer (David Mitchell) doing his life story. He has a lot of random workers like Amanda (Dinita Gohil) whose mom works in his factory, and a son (Asa Butterfield) who can’t stand him.

Yep, this party is going to be the best or the worst.

Also starring Sarah

Solemani, Tim Key, Asim Chaudhry, Ollie Locke, Kareem Alkabbani, Pearl Mackie, Jamie Blackley, Shanina Shaik, Jonny Sweet, Sophie Cookson, and Shirley Henderson.

He’s not Trump. He is more competent.

Greed was weird. It had good moments, and lame moments. I want to be positive and focus mostly on the good.

I enjoyed the strangeness of Mitchell’s character, the writer, who was above it all and awkwardly placed at the same time. Name dropping literary references, not being sure how to handle the lavish dicks all around. He is our character going through the same emotions the audience go through, except he has a bit more say in what happens by the end.

Other actors of note include Gohil, Key, and Chaudhry, who all give us realistic feeling characters. And sure. Coogan as our asshole rich man, with his slick and creative slurs. The rest of the cast isn’t given a lot to work with, outside of being unbearable rich people for the most part, doing dick things and living fake lives. It is more of a script issue than anything, but none of them stand out in a positive way to elevate the film.

The film gets really weird with the end. Often, real stories give us text updates at the end to let us know about the real characters after the events of the film. This one did that as well, except it is about fake people. Instead it talked about real issues, with a lot more weight and passion that didn’t seem to match the scrutiny during the actual film.

Sure, it had rich people doing bad things, and they noted it as bad. It still didn’t seem like such a big deal in the context of ridiculous characters. So it felt like a harder attack at the end. They should have done a better job at being more explicit with the message they were really going for overall.

On its own, its is an okay movie, with some interesting elements. In retrospect, especially how it was filmed, it might have been even better as an actual mockumentary, as it already had a lot of good elements there.

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.

Hey look, a movie based on a book! You know. Like most movies.

But this isn’t any book. This is Ender’s Game. A very famous sci-fi novel from the 1980s, that is required reading in some/many schools now! So, that can mean a few things. It can mean angry mobs of book fans when the movie of Ender’s Game turns out unfaithful, or it can just mean a buttload of money.

That’s right. Buttload. Not even getting into the personal thoughts and opinions of the author, Orson Scott Card, but there are 20 separate books/collections/short stories that he has published in this story. Ender’s Game was the first one to get published, but it is now like, the middle book. Jeez.

Apparently his games just involve very large octahedra dice.

In the future, shit is all bad. Big alien force came and killed a lot of people, but a hero was able to think on the fly and saved the day for everyone. Hooray!

Well now, almost fifty years later, the alien forces are building again and the threat of a new attack is high. They have begun to train children to become their new generals and commanders. Due to growing up with realistic war video games, they are not as afflicted by things like morals or death or killing. Heck yeah!

Our hero is Ender Wiggan (Asa Butterfield), third born from his family, and taking a stab at joining the academy. Well, he is good. He just has to march through rank after rank, school after school, to be deemed good enough to eventually, finally, maybe, go against an actual alien fleet. But until then, it is really just a series of…games.

Harrison Ford is a commander, Viola Davis some sort of…officer. Abigail Breslin is Ender’s sister, Nonso Anozie a sergeant, and a bunch of other kids are played by Aramis Knight, Suraj Partha, Moises Arias, and Hailee Steinfeld. Hailee, who of course starred in True Grit and was called a supporting actress back then! Whoa.

Yes of course Ben Kingsley is in this movie. Just in the last third.

I decided to sleep on the analysis part of the review, and not write it all in one sitting like usual. After watching the movie, I still had so many questions. Ones I would bring up here, but I can’t spoil them because I am not a dickface.

I am really surprised this movie was under two hours, because it felt a lot longer. Here is why. Most of the movie is Ender training at consecutive harder and harder levels. He has to go through a fleet academy thing, he has a break down, then battle school, then battle school at the next tier, he has a break down, then battle school leading his own group of “soldiers”, then he has another break down, then he has to go to commander school, then another breakdown, then his final test.

Just. So many god damn tiers. It felt long because I knew that even though the beginning felt super rushed, the ending confrontation with the evil bug aliens would also have to be potentially rushed. So it felt like a lot of waiting to me.

Outside of that annoyance, and certain inconsistencies near the end that really had me confused, I did enjoy many parts of this movie. It dealt with emotions and morals that are very important and need to be discussed, but it didn’t delve on them as much as I would have liked. Aka, it was just quick, like a lot of the movie. Nothing really felt dealt with, and I don’t want to wait for another movie for things to be dealt with. Probably won’t happen. It didn’t make a ton of money, and Thor 2 is next week. Sooo, yeah. Probably going to be considered a flop, unfortunately, because acting was good.

I am sure that if I read the book a lot more would make sense. Presumably a lot was left out, and I hate it if I have to read a book to fully understand what a movie is trying to convey.

Hugo won the award this year for “Most Nominations at the Oscars”. Fuck you, its a thing. They only won 5 of the 11 though, and all for the unimportant things like Sound Editing and Sound Mixing (This is where the Sound Editor and Sound Mixing people tell me to eat a bag of dicks, and then storm off into the night).

Which is surprising. Usually that movie that has the most nominations seems to be a shoe-in for winning Best Picture. But it didn’t. But why? Here’s what I think.

The people who choose who wins are not children. Just kidding. Its true, but thats not why. CALM DOWN READER.

Story is a weird one to describe (That’s why!) so here is an attempt. Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is an orphan boy who lives in a train station in France. His father was a clock maker, made him love movies and such, then died in a museum fire. He was taken in by his uncle, a lame watch maker, and taught to run to the clocks in the station / main bell tower, and then the uncle disappeared. So now on his own, he has decided to live in the train station in secret, work the clocks, and fend for himself.

There is also an automaton/music box thing that he believes belonged to his dad, so he is trying to repair it by stealing knickknacks and repairing parts. Some people don’t like that, mainly the chief inspector of the railway (Sacha Baron Cohen) who hurt his leg in “the war” and Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley) a toy shop owner. He also meets a girl who likes books, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) who is (Gasp!) the granddaughter of the mean toy shop owner. Boo!

I feel like I am giving away too much if I go further, although you still don’t know what it is about. This movie is about…movies, the birth of them. The first movies were all short, but one French dude made all these amazing sci-fi/fantasy epics, for the time. The stories were weak but they were imaginative at least, and had “magic trick” illusions thanks to nice editing. Some were even partially colored, thanks to painting the actual strips.

But most of these movies were lost thanks to the war, needing money and selling the strips for cash. Damn.

Also kind of based on the true story of the film guy, and his actual work is shown in the movie too. Emily Mortimer and Christopher Lee also have some small roles in the film too (small to me).

I’m saying the dog and the mustache were more important overall. In my eyes.

What’s good about this movie? A lot! This is like a fantastical world created from this movie, based off of a book. Which is based off of kind of true events. Minus the boy and stuff. But still. It looks amazing, if not also kind of fake at parts unfortunately. Acting was good, and by the end it felt like a great journey.

I think the problem people might have with it is figuring out what the movie is just about. An hour into it, you still really won’t know. It is hard to explain, because it takes awhile to get to the actual essence of the film. While watching I had to guess where it was going. My guesses were wrong because the clues given didn’t help at all.

So maybe direction could have been a bit better in my mind. And honestly, I felt bad for the Inspector from the first scene. He was supposed to be some mean guy, but never really showed off as that until later.