Tag: Ashton Kutcher

Clearly, it took me a long, long time to watch Killers. Like three years is forever in movie years.

But why? Well, the trailers made it look super un-interesting. So that is a downer. Second, it stars That guy who I only liked in One Movie. (But to be fair, I tend to dislike most of the cast of That ’70s Show in movies)

And it came out around the same time as Knight and Day, a “similar themed movie” which I loved. A lot. But I bought Killers anyways, knowing one day I would just have to suck it up and watch the dang movie.

There is nothing you can really do to make me look at him and think Action Star.

Spencer Aimes (Ashton Kutcher) is not your ordinary dream boat, apparently. No, he is some sort of spy/assassin, but he wants to get out of the game. Good timing really, because he is in Nice, France at the same time that Jen Kornfeldt (Katherine Heigl) is, along with her parents (Tom Selleck, Catherine O’Hara).

But he wants to give it up, and now seems like a good time. He also runs into Jen and they start to hit it off quickly, while both hiding some secrets. Oh well.

Good news, they hit it off, and three years later, they are living together and everything is fantastic! Except, maybe Spencer’s boss never really accepted his resignation? Maybe he still expects him to help out? For whatever reason, the boss contacts him in this trying moments, where Jen thinks he is getting bored with their relationship and cheating on him. Next thing you know, one of Spencer’s friends is trying to kill him.

What?? For some reason, a $20 million bounty has been placed on his head. Shit. Now all these assholes are coming around trying to get their kill money on, which means he for sure has to tell Jen about his past.

The rest of the cast is full of cameos, of their friends, and coworkers, some of which might be other assassins sent to kill Spencer, some of which might be just actual friends. Who knows?! They include Rob Riggle, Usher, Katheryn Winnick, Casey Wilson, Lisa Ann Walter and Kevin Sussman.

Nope. Gun doesn’t help either.

Good news, the plot wasn’t what ruined the movie!

No, the plot ended up being okay. Not knowing who from your friends and family might be assassins sent to collect on a bounty? Leaves for a lot of potential action and comedy, not to mention improvised weapons.

Katherine Heigl wasn’t bad in this movie either. She played her role well. I couldn’t believe Kutcher at all, but I made that obvious. Selleck was nice too.

What kind of killed it for me is how long it took to get to the assassins, friend or foe, oh god danger, part. I think it was about 45/50 minutes into the movie. That is far too long! What was going on before that? A bunch of gossip, some love stuff, typical romcom secretive bull crap. Yawn yawn.

Because the second half was actually a bit entertaining, minus the extreme miscast of Kutcher. Maybe he could have been in the first half, and then they could have secretly replaced him with Gerard Butler for the second half. A man who is getting put into romcoms, despite only being great at action and musicals.

Oh well. I think I only spent a few bucks on this movie anyways.

Well, if no one else is going to say it, I will.

I thought the title was better when it was written out as jOBS. It made me laugh and it was cute. Sure, some saw it as disrespectful, but I thought it was funny. Steve Jobs had a sense of humor after all, and this movie isn’t even a full biography.

Now we have the title as Jobs, (Trailer) which is a terrible name for a movie if you try to Google it without any extra words.

Sony is doing their own Steve Jobs movie that is being written by Aaron Sorkin, based on his biography from 2011. It will come out within the next two years, it will probably include his death and it will have a more serious tone.

“Draw me like one of your French Girls…”

The iPod. You probably have one. It helped change the music scene forever. Our story begins with a press conference of its release in 2001, then takes us back a few decades to get a more complete story.

It takes us back to Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) while he is already in college. I mean physically he is in a college, but he is a free spirit and not actively enrolled, despite being a pretty smart dude. After some design classes, we then see him working for Atari. He wants to be innovative, but everyone else just wants to keep the status quo. It turns out, he doesn’t work well with others, so he has to be put on his own projects.

But once his friend Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad) shows him an invention he is working on, his life changes. Woz has made a machine that will display text that you type on a “keyboard” when hooked up to your television. Mind blowing, I know. That way you can see what you are working on, as you work on it.

With an eventual investment from Mike Markkula (Dermot Mulroney), they soon turn their garage corporation start up into a very successful corporation, leading the personal computer craze with the Apple II launch!

They even become a publicly traded company! This becomes bad news when they end up in development hell with the Lisa computer (and eventually the Mac) spending tons of resources and time on a machine that Steve will not release until it is 100% perfect. This leads the board of directors (J.K. Simmons) to get a new CEO for the company, John Sculley (Matthew Modine), the man who invented the Pepsi Challenge.

Jobs tells the story of a man who had a vision, and had a hard time getting that vision to the public. Steve Jobs would walk over anyone to achieve his dreams too, even his friends, because he really isn’t a nice person. The movie basically takes us up to the release of the Mac computer in the late 90s, in their attempt to make it sexy again. and briefly talks about the release of the iPod.

The Woz was later made even more famous thanks to the show Code Monkeys.

Basically, what I learned from this movie is that Steve Jobs could be a real jerk. He ignores his friends who helped get the company off of its feet. He threatens to sue his competition. He refuses to let people who work with him who tend to differ in opinion. He even refuses to believe his daughter is actually his.

He was not a swell guy.

What I dislike most about the movie is how disjointed it all feels. It is not a complete story by a long shot, only focusing on a few major events. By skipping around every few years, we are left to catch up every time the movie skips to another important event.

The ending included an inspirational radio quote by Steve, but it came about pretty suddenly. It was odd that they didn’t even talk about the idea for the iPod, and only mentioned it in the first scene. If they had it in complete chronological order, they could have at least ended it with the iPod scene, which would have provided some sense of closure. Partial biography or not, as a movie, it should have a coherent plot and an ending.

Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs did give him a chance to actually act for once and I’d say he did a great job. But the rest of the acting was just okay and overall this didn’t feel like it did a good job of telling me a lot about Steve’s life outside of a few specific events. It didn’t try to find out why he was a jerk to his friends, or where he got his inspiration from. I hope the next movie they make on his life is a bit better, and gives a more complete story.

Haha! Ha ha ha! See what I did there? [Future readers will note the posting date].

Because of the really fucking large cast of New Year’s Eve, I decided that all of my tags will not list the actor name in parenthesis like normal, just tag the character. You can see the name if you hover your mouse though. That will make it at least a small mystery, if you don’t care. Maybe fuck with you a bit. After all, something needs to make it more interesting.

Except for Ryan Seacrest. He only plays himself, always and forever. Just like Bloomberg.

YEAH ITS NEW YEAR’S EVE IN NEW YORK CITY. Time to party! Well, maybe. People gotta work, shit is still going down.

Like hospitals! Turns out people still are giving birth. But did you know at this specific NYC hospital, they have decided to give away a $10,000 prize to the couple who birthed the first baby of the new year. One Man/woman couple has been planning this out for months. The other man/woman just found out about it today. Who can push out a baby first? Also, doctors. They are a thing.

The opposite of babies is happening, people are getting old and dying. Like that one old guy. His doctor doesn’t know if he will make it to the new year. He might though, hopefully the daughter will make it in time. But until then, a nurse shall keep him company, despite her own “Date” that night to worry about.

One woman is fed up with the holiday mess. She has a boss who sucks, and wont give her time off despite already promising it. So she quits, and really wants to complete all the resolutions she made last year before the new year. Well, its impossible. But she gets a courier to help her anyways.

The courier’s sister is having problems with her daughter, who really wants to go out to times square for new years. The courier’s friend is jaded about new years, after a bad break up the previous year. He gets stuck on an elevator with an uppity girl, who really needs to get to times square for her job. What job? Back up singer to Jensen, huge celebrity who is performing on the main stage!

Turns out he only agreed to do this job, to get closer to an ex girlfriend of his. She runs a catering business, and demanded that she cater the very fancy party. Pretty sneaky sis. Too bad he also has to deal with very busty fan girls.

One man just watched his last single friend get married. He is the last one! But no worries, he has to go to NYC tonight anyways to do a speech for his work. Good year or something. But last year he met the woman of his dreams, just didn’t get her name. Will she be at the location that she promised to be at a year later? Just who is she?

But lastly, when you think of NYC NYE, you think of the ball drop. Someone has to run that thing, damn it. The woman in charge is on her first year, and is good friends with the head of police too. But there is an issue. The only way to fix it is to call back a fabled old mechanic, who they fired earlier in the year. Whoops. Awkward.

Nothing says a new year, like Ashton Kutcher, right?

I can honestly say that I found basically none of these plot lines that interesting. That seems like a big problem. Unlike Valentine’s Day, which had some storylines that I enjoyed (and still need to review!), this one had nothing for me. Shit, I also have to review New York, I Love You, another similar movie (Except rated R).

The best part of the movie for me is that I got paid $18 to have it. My first copy didn’t work, got it exchanged at Wal-Mart, they messed up the return (Which I pointed out), but laziness occurred, an I profited. Hey, that’d be reason enough to give a 4 out of 4 in my book. More people should give me money to own a movie.

When you look at Brother’s Justice cover, you will think “Huh, some action comedy movie with Dax Shepard? There is no way this is good.”

If you do think that, then congratulations, you agree with Jon Favreau!

Commence forming opinions based off of cover…now!

When I read the back, I thought it was even dumber, so of course I went to watch it. This is a “mockumentary” but involving real people. Dax Shepard is done with Comedy, Employee of the Month was the pinnacle of his acting and it is all downhill from there. He wants to be an action star, not an action comedy guy, just straight up action. He comes up with the movie title “Brother’s Justice” and not much else, but decides to try to pitch his idea. He gets his friend and producer Nate Tuck to go along with him, 75%/25% split, to get this movie and idea made.

So, I think msot of the actors in the movie are in on the joke. Bradley Cooper and David Koechner definitely are. Tom Arnold super definitely. But I think Favreau, Ashton Kutcher, Carson Daly, Teen Choice awards are the only real people who weren’t in on it. (Famous wise that is).

A few of the interactions were definitely hilarious. The first Arnold scene, the Kutcher home invasion. But most of it just fell flat. The viewer doesn’t understand the purpose of it that much, and also won’t find any of it real. It seemed a bit too long too. At 80~ minutes. There were fake trailers in it as well, of past failed projects, but they all pretty much were “mehh”.

Jeung Guns behind the scenes.

Although it contained interesting elements, it mostly just felt like filler, or some sort of TV show. No one is going to watch this and call it the best film ever. I also think it has 0% favoritism on Rotten Tomatoes, but who cares about those guys, right?

Hey look, an R Rated romcom my brother said was really good. No Strings Attached refers to sex, completely. Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman want to have sex, and not worry about a relationship. That is the whole plot in a nutshell.

I should let you know that I don’t think Natalie Portman is the hottest thing ever. Not my style of chick. Kind of creeps me out. But her with Kutcher is pretty unbelievable, so I had a hard time accepting that part. Anything with Kutcher seems to automatically get a negative grade from me. I won’t even watch Killers (besides thinking it trying to copy Knight and Day and also be worse at it). Okay, I will watch Killers eventually, but man will I be biased. Kutcher cannot be a serious main male lead, and can only stick to awkward comedies I think. They keep putting him in these romantic comedies though, so I guess women find him attractive.

Not these women though.

As a movie focused entirely on sex, it had a lot of sex related humor. Jokes were pretty funny, but mostly from the supporting cast (Portman’s roommates). But by the end I was kind of bored with the movie, and didn’t really like the ending. I almost thought “the dawson” played douche doctor guy, but nope. Some other dude I have never heard of.

Cary Elwes ninja’d his way into a pseudo cameo role though. Beardface doctor. I might be rambling.

“It’s Beardfacé. Why do you people insist on calling me Beardface!?”

2 out of 4.