Tag: Brad William Henke

Guess what? I liked The Visit. It creeped me out a bit, had some humor, but overall was a good balance and a decent story. It had a twist, but didn’t really make or break the movie on the twist, so it didn’t get hated for it either.

And that is what M. Night needed to do. He needed to take the twists focus away from his film, because they lived and died by how good the twist became. He can still do twists, but he had to make sure he had a great film regardless of twist.

I was looking forward to see Split. I didn’t see any trailer, any synopsis, just a director and the main actor in a poster. I was excited because I wanted to believe.

I was excited to see M. Night finally kick some ass again.

I was basically as giddy as a school girl, like this little boy here!

Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy) is your regular, average, teenage girl. Well, except she has black hair, so that makes her moody. She goes to detention a lot, has unreliable parenting, has run away before and is a person who likes to keep to herself. But she was invited to a classmate’s party, because it would be weird to invite everyone BUT her. After everyone else had left, Casey’s ride isn’t there, so she gets a ride home with the birthday girl, (Haley Lu Richardson), her other friend (Jessica Sula), and the dad.

But the dad doesn’t get in the driver’s seat. Next thing the girls know, they wake up in a locked room underground, and this creepy guy, Dennis (James McAvoy) is talking strangely and threatening them. There is talk about…a beast?

Long story short, turns out that Dennis is more than Dennis. He is Patricia. He is Hedwig. He has 23 different personalities. He has been mostly non threatening, sees a shrink (Betty Buckley) and everything, but it looks like some of his personalities have taken over and have other plans. The girls are going to have to work with their kidnapper if they hope to escape their kidnapper.

Also featuring some flashbacks with young Casey (Izzie Coffey) and her dad (Sebastian Arcelus) and uncle (Brad William Henke) out hunting.

Dennis is super cereal all the time, and also enjoys young girls dancing for him. Your average joe.

I ended up really enjoying Split. Like, like liking Split. It just shocked the hell out of me.

First of all, it is a very strange movie. I am not going to say that it is accurate scientifically or anything, but based on the universe M. Night created, it totally fits and is plausible. But it is still very weird, while keeping the aura of mystery and thrills, all wrapped up in a psychotic bow.

A lot of cool things happen along the way thanks to the story, but in all honesty it is just McAvoy and Taylor-Joy carrying it. The other two girls are forgettable characters because they are to the side. The psychiatrist is interesting, but not the best. The flashbacks serve a purpose, but don’t end too shockingly. But McAvoy playing the many different roles pulls it off flawlessly. He saw what Tom Hardy did in Legend and thought he would try and 22 up it.

I have now seen Taylor-Joy in only two films, The Witch being the other one, and it amazes me how well she plays a struggling but capable female victim lead. Her roles have not been screaming girl who somehow survives, they have depth to them, fears, and presence.

Split delivered something I hope to see in every movie I watch. It gave me something unique. It gave me a film full of its own mythos. It gave me performances I want to see again and again. And it gave me hope. Not hope for mankind or anything. But just hope in films, because when the credits rolled, I found myself even giddier than when I originally walked to my seat.

Not growing up in the 1980’s, I didn’t have a lot of exposure to the Pee-Wee Herman character.

Heck, all I knew about him was the 1985 movie Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, which I had seen once, and Pee-wee’s Playhouse, a kid show I never saw. I just now learned the character had been in a Cheech and Chong film and used to be a stage act that was very adult oriented. He was toned down a bit for the movie and especially the kids show.

So I was pretty indifferent going into Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, a made for Netflix follow up almost twenty years later. And since it was rated PG, I let the kids watch it with me. I knew there might be some crude jokes hiding in the background, but as long as Reuben didn’t bust out his Pee-wee to pleasure himself during the movie, I figured nothing would really be a big deal.

Although I like where this is going.

Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens) is still up to his old hijinks. He loves Fairville, but he is afraid to leave it. Everything he needs is in this small town anyways. But then he meets Joe Manganiello (Joe Manganiello). Pee-wee and Joe hit it off right away. They agree on the best candy. They like the same things. They were BFF soul mates. And plus, Pee-wee had never heard of Joe before. He never saw Magic Mike!

So Joe invites Pee-wee to his birthday party, except it is in NYC on the other side of the country. And he tells him to not fly by plane, because he cannot discover himself that way. He has to road trip it up and he has five days to get there. And if they were really friends, he would want to go to his birthday party.

Pee-wee has never taken a holiday before from work. But after receiving a sign, he takes his car and crosses the rail road tracks.

And along the way bad things happen! He runs into three lady bank robbers (Jessica Pohly, Stephanie Beatriz, Alia Shawkat), a novelty item salesman (Patrick Egan), a farmer (Hal Landon Jr.) with nine daughters, Grizzly Bear Daniels (Brad William Henke), some extreme hair stylists (Sonya Eddy, Anthony Alabi, Dionne Gipson, Darryl Stephens), and a crazy rich lady (Diane Salinger).

Also Richard Riehle and David Arquette are in this one too.

One shake can change a man forever.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect for this film, outside of zany antics and maybe some celebrity cameos. I was definitely disappointed on the cameo front, because there was…one I guess. But I was not disappointed in Joe Manganiello, the super cameo.

Generally, when actors play parodied versions of themselves, I laugh. Like most of the cameos in Entourage. Or Matt LeBlanc in Episodes. Manganiello knocked it out of the park.

The bromance between him and Reubens, sure it is artificial, but it was a joy to see. Every time Pee-wee went to sleep he had visions of the party, but in slow motion and (spoilers) and they were hilarious. This film made me like Manganiello more than it made me care about Pee-wee.

As for the rest of the film, it had its moments. Most of the people are just extreme charicatures, like Pee-wee himself, so it is generally always moving. I enjoyed the Amish scene and the bank robbers added an element I didn’t expect in a PG movie (male strippers)!

A fine enough movie to distract you while you play on your phones, but not something you’d every really want to just sit down and watch again and again.

Fury. Finally. I have said a few times I wanted more TV shows and movies based around basic human emotions. We had Glee, and we had Rage? What about Fear? What about Sorrow? And so now we get Fury.

In all honesty, I feel like it has been a good while since I have seen a really good war movie. Too many things focused on Iraq and Afghanistan that are all over the place in terms of quality. I guess I enjoyed Lone Survivor, but that wasn’t a super long epic war movie, a la Saving Private Ryan.

I mean, the last thing we got was The Monuments Men, and everyone know how great that ended up being. Just saying, a lot of pressure on Fury, and they have to start with an uphill battle, because they put Shia LaBeouf in it.

There he is, hiding in the back, behind that mustache.

War is hard. Just ask the former assistant driver of the Fury tank. Well, you’d be able to if his face wasn’t blown off. That sucks. They liked him. He has been with them for years. Sergeant Don ‘Wardaddy’ Collier (Brad Pitt) promised his team that he would always keep them safe and he has finally broken his word. It was only a matter of time. Sure, it is now April fucking 1945, the war almost over. But the Germans keep fighting back, despite the allied forces on their doorstep in their country.

So now they are a man down, but only temporarily. Their replacement is the young Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman). Eight weeks into the army, hardly a man, he is going to have to learn to grow up and quick. Especially with a bunch of Germans surrounding them, and four pissed off Americans sharing a cramped space with him. Like other assistant driver/gunner Gordo (Michael Pena), main gun shooter guy Bible (LaBeouf), and big missile loader crazy man Coon-Ass (Jon Bernthal).

Oh and hey. The Germans have better tanks. Better defended, better missiles. And they aren’t as spread out. And their equipment isn’t outdated. So yeah. The tank, Fury, has a lot going against it. And now they got a kid who hasn’t even killed a man. Basically a death wish keeping him around.

But war is hard and surviving it is even harder.

And don’t worry, there are other tanks. And other soldiers. Some of which are acted by Jim Parrack, Kevin Vance, and Brad William Henke. For diversity sake.

But Americans have some lasers on their tanks, so it should all even out in the long run.

Not many war films glorify war, and this one is not an exception. In fact, so few war films glorify war that it seems silly that I even have to mention that. Should only mention it when a film actually does glorify war at this point.

But this one has exceptional acting talent behind it as well. From the bottom up. LaBeouf? Eh. He is better at pieces set in the past. I didn’t hate him by the end. Bernthal? Probably his best work. Pena? It is surprising how well of an actor he has been over the last few years, given his start. No difference here. Lerman? Not just a Percy Jackson looking kid anymore. He conveyed a huge range of emotions. Pitt? I’d watch Pitt watch paint dry for 2 hours and probably give that film 2 thumbs up. I’d watch him make tea and then refuse to drink it for five hours. Does he make bad movies? I mean, even Mr. and Mrs. Smith has some redeeming qualities.

This is an extremely violent film, as you would imagine based on title and plot. I personally only thought “Boom! Headshot!” once or twice throughout the whole film, despite the large number of them. They were just so shocking and gross.

The film isn’t just war torn countryside and fighting. There are periods of downtime, including one extremely long scene in a conquered German city. The type of scene that reminded me of something Quentin Tarantino would do. That could just be because of Pitt/Inglourious Basterds though.

I honestly went in expecting a movie that might have gotten a bit too anti-war preachy. One that didn’t give me the best acting. I don’t know what I was smoking. Fury is now one of my new homeboys.