Tag: Britt Robertson

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.

1 out of 4.

Dog films are all the rage now. Just look at the last two reviews on my website. But in reality, despite this mini awkward dog theme, actual dog movies are NOT popular like they were in the 1990’s and 2000’s. They pop up every once in awhile and usually try to kill a dog by the end of it in order to get all pet owners to cry and feel nostalgic about past pets and current pets.

It is easy money. A Dog’s Purpose is based on a book that a lot of people liked and read, so it should have made money. Then it had a silly controversy a whole week before it came out, people decided not to see it, and here I am today, hoping it is terrible because it came out in January.

But really, I want to note that the idea behind the movie is brilliant. If dying pets makes people love the movie, buy it on DVD and give the movie money, then why not have the main dog more than once? Why not a whole handful of times?

There is tear jerking, and there is tear sucking out of you with an industrial vacuum.

I think an alternative title for this movie might have been Doghood.

The movie has dogs, people, and a lot of both. If you are the type of person who gets sad over the death of pets, you are goign to get really fucking sad in this movie.

Because our main dog (Josh Gad) who goes by many names, so I will just call him Dog, is going to die over and over again. This Dog is wondering what his purpose in life is. He likes to play and have fun he guesses, and there are humans that tell him to do things, but what is he here for?

So he hangs out with a kid who grows up into an adult. He hangs out with a lady in school. He is in an abusive home. He is a dog for a cop! He does so much more, but really, he just wants that stomach scratched.

Featuring a hot mess of people though, so here we go: Britt Robertson, Bryce Gheisar, Dennis Quaid, John Ortiz, Juliet Rylance, K.J. Apa, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Logan Miller, Luke Kirby, and Peggy Lipton.

I wonder how many humans die in this movie? More than dogs?

A Dog’s Purpose is a waste of time. For dog lovers, cat lovers, and human lovers alike. Now, I have never made a movie before, but I have to imagine that making the audience care about a pet has got to be pretty easy. I imagine it is one of the easiest tasks ever to make someone cry in a theater by having the pet go bye bye, second only to a relative.

And yet, after watching A Dog’s Purpose, which had at least five dogs, I think, I found myself unable to make a connection with most of them. In fact, some of them, the deaths came sort of out of nowhere. And not in a “Oh no, tragedy, death!” shocking sort of way. Just a “Oh, this is the end of this plot line I guess, let’s move on” sort of way. They just did a poor job of making me care.

Maybe a big element to get someone to care about the pet is time with the pet, but a common narrator sound just isn’t good enough. I wasn’t feeling the stories, I wasn’t feeling the other humans, I just didn’t care.

And a dog movie, where the dog dies so many ties, that fails to make me cry? Just feels a bit shallow and rushed. No emotional connection, means not a good drama film.

0 out of 4.

Garry Marshall is a man with a plan. He directs a lot of films, a lot of them women centric as well. From Beaches to Pretty Women to The Princess Diaries (and its sequel), he makes films about women for women.

But lately he has changed his mind. He has had holidays on his mind. Holidays with a lot of people and interconnecting plot lines. Yes, he is that guy. So he gave us Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve and now, Mother’s Day. There was a lot of hope that he would get super into this and give us weirder shit like Flag Day and Cinco De Mayo, but unfortunately he passed away this year and we only will get these three films.

I also could have reviewed this a long time ago. Like, end of 2016. I wanted to watch it and Bad Moms back to back, and so I watched them both to see if they would qualify for my Worst Films of 2016 list. And as you can tell, this one did not make it, it wasn’t that terrible, so instead, I just saved it for the next Mother’s Day instead.

That’s right. I am writing this in 2016. So if my site still exists in May? That would be nice. To date this review further, Obama is still president, I am 27 years old, and I have not seen The Belko Experiment yet.

All of these actresses are currently alive at the time of my writing this as well.

Alright, big cast of characters here we go. And don’t worry, I already decided to not tag any of the kid actors.

Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) is divorced, with two kids, but she is still friends with her ex, Henry (Timothy Olyphant), and maybe curious about getting back together. Who knows. Oh wait! He is married now, to Tina (Shay Mitchell), a much younger woman. And the kids love her. And he wants them on Mother’s Day for a little bit too coming up, because hey step mom. Yayyy.

Bradley (Jason Sudeikis), is not a mother, but his wife (Jennifer Garner) is! Or was. She died, in the war, because she was a soldier. [NOTE: Garry Marshall loves having female soldiers in his movies]. He has two daughters, one of them in the mature age, but he just wants to wallow at home. He does still work, he runs a gym, and he has a large group of ladies (Loni Love, Lucy Walsh, Beth Kennedy, amongst others) who want to set him up with friends.

Jesse (Kate Hudson) and Gabi (Sarah Chalke) are sisters and sharing a house together, both working on families. Jesse is married to Russell (Aasif Mandvi) and they had a boy. Gabi is a lesbian, with her partner Max (Cameron Esposito). And their parents (Margo Martindale, Robert Pine) know nothing about the kid or the sexual preferences and show up to surprise them.

Let’s see, we also have Kristin (Britt Roberson), who was adopted and wants to learn about her mother. She is long term dating a guy (Jack Whitehall) and doesn’t want to get married despite having a kid with him. He is a stand up comic trying to win a local club event run by Wally Burn (Jon Lovitz).

And a famous lady who sells jewelry on TV? That is who Julia Roberts plays.

She is worried her boys might see too much of their new step-mom.

Mother’s Day is exactly as one would expect it. Four or five plot lines, all briefly interconnecting in a big city, all around the holiday of Mother’s Day.

And unfortunately for me, my favorite character was played by Sudeikis. The only of the leads to be a man. And yes, it is because I could relate to him most of all. But also Sudeikis makes me happy in most of larger films, so it is just more him and less me being lame and not relating to women.

Aniston’s plot line was a bit more annoying, as it made Olyphant out to be such a bad guy because it was from her point of view, when it is obvious she is overreacting and getting on our nerves. The “old fashioned parents” being anti-everything also felt awkward in this movie. Character Actress Margo Martindale was such a bad person in the film and she technically never really got better. It ends with her happily telling racist jokes to Russell’s mom basically.

Mother’s Day isn’t bad. It is just emotional drama porn. Julia Roberts is in here because she is in most of Marshall’s films, and it is a very wasted plot line.

But the good news is? It is still way better than Moms’ Night Out.

1 out of 4.

(Insert introduction about meaning to watch this film sooner).*

I mean, shit, Mr. Church is supposed to be Eddie Murphy‘s comeback! Or at least that is what I heard one guy said. He can only voice the donkey so many times. And A Thousand Words was really, really bad.

What he really needs to do is to get into some good old fashioned NOT FAMILY comedy films again. They made him great, and he can still do it. This drama rut is slowing him down. But oh well, maybe Mr. Church will change my mind.

And let me drift off into the wind as I ponder this question.

Marie (Natascha McElhone) has cancer and is going to die in about six months. That is what the doctor told her. She has a young daughter, Charlie (Natalie Coughlin) who got randomly selected to be in a better school for rich kids, but their family is poor, and dying won’t help. But then, Mr. Church (Eddie Murphy) shows up in their kitchen.

Turns out he was hired by her ex, who is also now dead. He set aside money for Church to pay for groceries and small expenses. He just has to work there until she dies, and he gets money for the rest of his life. Apparently that dude was loaded. So Church spends a lot of time there cooking, reading, and making life enjoyable.

But that damn Marie just doesn’t die. She doesn’t die until senior year of high school, many years later. Now Charlie (Britt Robertson) is all grown up, still hanging out with Mr. Church and still okay with life.

Well, eventually she does die. And Charlie goes to college. But things go weird, and hey, at least she knows the secretive Mr. Church who is finally ready to live his life the way he wants. Oh man, these two are inseparable.

Also starring Xavier Samuel, Madison Wolfe, Lucy Fry, and Mckenna Grace.

Surprised that Mr. Church just didn’t put a pillow over her head after the first year.

Mr. Church is a very strange film. It is one that feels like it came a few decades too late.

It is also strange in that it feels like it was made to be emotional and perhaps bait some Oscars, but it forgot to tell an actual good story. If you watch it, sure, you might feel sad at some points. You might connect to the main girl character. But it lacks a lot of motivation and purpose for the story.

The story is about a mysterious colored gentlemen showing up at a poor white person’s house, to be their practical servant, who teaches them about goodness and great housekeeping. The mystery man is a savior and helps raise the potential of a little girl. And it just feels…I am not sure, but maybe insulting?

A story that has been told in dozens of ways before, and most of them better. But this film drags on, until Mr. Church will eventually die and in the third stage of Charlie’s life that we get to see. But thank goodness her character had Mr. Church to make all of her hardships go away, because now she knows how to cook like a pro.

1 out of 4.

* – Intentional bad joke.

Welcome to the world of Tomorrow!…land!

Today!

Or whenever this movie comes out in relation to when you read this review. If you are reading this right away, you have to wait two days until Tomorrowland, which sounds silly. The best thing about any of this is that I have absolutely no friggan idea what this is about.

I know Disney. I know the main star. I know that the director has done a lot of good movies. And that is all I have going into it.

By the looks of things, this movie takes place in Nebraska.

The future is scary. Global Warming, terrorism, protests, oil spills, all of that. But what if the future could be better?

Your dreamers and inventors and all of those wonderful people? What if they formed their own society free from the masses and government influence? Why, then we’d probably get a repeat of Bioshock. But this is Disney, so it instead was a wonderful place where young Frank Walker (Thomas Richardson) got to live in awe and wonder. Until he was kicked out, for reasons.

Now, many years later, our star obsessed Casey (Britt Robertson) has seen glimpses of this wonderful place, Tomorrowland. And it was exciting. And she wants to go to there! Everyone else just thinks she is crazy. But with the help of a mysterious young girl Athena (Raffey Cassidy) and older Frank Walker (George Clooney), she might finally get her wish.

The rest of the people, in order of importance with no details at all include: Hugh Lauire, Tim McGraw, Keegan-Michael Key, Kathryn Hahn, and Matthew MacCaull.

When did Hugh Laurie get such a young boy face?

The premise behind Tomorrowland I was purposefully vague about, I hope, because it just happens to be one of those movies that is hard to describe without describing EVERYTHING. So I won’t.

However, I can say that the beginning of this movie was wonderful. We had playful banter, wonderful imagery, and a decent story going. Heck, we even had robots. Clooney and Robertson were a delight! But as the plot took a more doomsday turn, something else started to turn as well. My ability to understand the movie.

Once they got to the part of the story where the Eureka! moment occurs, it all goes down hill from there. Mostly because they rush so quickly through the explanation, it is hard to make sure you understand before they start doing something about it. But that was the most common tactic in the movie. Explain quickly and move on, so you won’t think about it and won’t realize it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But it happened and the ending was kind of terrible and very anything goes by the end.

Which is a real shame, because I was enjoying it a lot before it got to that point. I am kind of SUPER disappointed that it didn’t end spectacularly. I don’t want to be hand held, I just want things to make sense. The movie was long and allowed for a lot to happen before they even made it to Tomorrowland. So it is a shame the end had to feel so rushed. Personally, I was left trying to discuss why certain things occurred with other movie viewers, and frankly, we kind of just gave up.

So, Tomorrowland. You were so close. If I had to compare, you were almost a Friday, but you fell flat and turned into Tuesday.

2 out of 4.

Sparky spark sparks.

Nicholas Sparks. Famed romance novelist who writes a book and then immediately turns it around to also make a movie. A genius. Basically gets a movie a year!

Even better, these films don’t usually have crazy budget requirements. He really just needs two young fresh faces, maybe middle aged, depends on his story. Just needs some attractive people, a couple of flash backs, and a romance.

So now we have The Longest Ride. And don’t worry, I saw The Best of Me the day before, I just wanted this review to come out first because it was more relevant.

I went in seeing no trailer or a plot description. Just a hope that it was about a rodeo and not a road trip.

Rodeo confirmed! Excitement technically more than zero!

This isn’t just about the rodeo, this is about Luke Collins (Scott Eastwood), who is one of THE best bull riders out there, from a little old state called North Carolina. Well, Luke had a big fall, he couldn’t conquer the biggest baddest bull Rango [I have found out this bull is a real bull for bullriding competitions and actually was one of the best. I say was, because he passed away before the premiere of this film after 7 years]. Now, a year later, Luke is back in North Carolina and ready for his come back. He had to take quite a bit of time off, but he wants to get into that big championship tournament again, so he needs to get back to riding.

And while riding, this North Carolina boy meets this New Jersey girl, Sophia (Britt Robertson), who is about to finish up her degree at Wake Forest University. She falls for him, despite the fact that in 2 months she is moving up to NYC to start an internship as an art curator or something. Well, Luke, being a country boy from North Carolina trying to save his families farm, he wouldn’t get that art stuff. He is a farmer! Not an art-er!

Unrelated, they find a car crash one rainy night. In it is some old dude, Ira (Alan Alda) who has a special box, which unfortunately isn’t a surprise dildo collection, but instead, letters and shit. They were all to this Ruth (Oona Chaplin) chick. So we get a side story of his love with her during World War II, she an escapee from Italy, both of them Jewish. Super sweet I guess.

But yeah. North Carolina Rodeo boy! New Jersey art girl! How could they live and love? And what can they learn from that old dying man???

Also with Melissa Benoist randomly in another movie as sorority girl, Jack Huston as Ira in the past, and Lolita Davidovich as Luke’s momma.

I can never get over how much Scott Eastwood looks like his daddy.

Did I mention that Luke was a local boy, from North Carolina doing all this? Because the movie made sure you knew. Basically every time an announcer was talking about Luke, often multiple times in the same event, they would bring up his North Carolina-ness. I mean. It is a southern state. They have rodeos there too. They make it seem like he is the lone person to ever rodeo out of the place. As if it was a Hockey player from Kenya.

Lately, Sparks’ movies have tried to have more layers in them. I blame Dear John. Maybe it has always been a thing and I didn’t realize. But I guess he can’t write a simple romance anymore and just let it be a romance story. This one is plagued with flashbacks, in the form of the old guy/WW2 story. And it feels incredibly long and doesn’t add a lot to the story. Are parts of that plot line necessary? Sure. But to include so much and take us out of the romance promised to us, it felt annoying. This is the longest movie this guy has done too, so it really weighs on that parts feel cuttable. Especially when the side story seems to have its own side story included.

Parts of it are sloppy too. Some of these flashbacks are shown to us when character is reading a letter. However, thematically, these parts make little sense. If he is writing a letter to his lover, would its contents actually be a full on description of what they just did? Hell no. One letter he prefaces with the fact that the night was a great one. It was about their first kiss and dating. Yay. That same flashback letter also apparently included a long love montage and eventual engagement. Jeez. Some day indeed.

I just hate bad flashbacks. Later on they made sense because it was the old guy just telling a story to them. But fuck the early ones.

My other biggest issue is the actor who played young Ira. He looked nothing like Old Ira, he was painfully awkward on the screen, and sucked up the place. The lead lady had moments of weakness too. But flashback Ruth and modern Luke? They were pretty decent for the most part. I gotta stop talking about this, because I have almost hit 900 words. But overall it was okay, and its biggest weakness is Sparks’ trying to get too many layers in his stories. Sometimes simplicity can work.

2 out of 4.

I have failed the movie going public tonight.

Tonight I have seen Delivery Man, but I did not watch Starbuck, the foreign movie that this one is based on. It isn’t super foreign, because it is set in Canada, but it is the French part of Canada. Plus, the director and writer of Starbuck made this version too! Really, it is just some strange re-imaging with a star in the US that people might want to go see.

Well, they might have wanted to see five years ago. David (Vince Vaughn) is a piece of shit. It sounds harsh, but he really is. The movie makes sure you know that early on, by showing him rack up parking tickets, fail at his job delivering meat, disappoint his family, disappoint his girlfriend, and get turned down for loan applications. He owes some thugs about 80,000, and no way to pay it back.

And there was a screw up a fertility clinic about 20ish years ago. David donated sperm over 600 times in a few years, under the name of Starbuck, and because of its high quality, it was given to and successfully birthed 533 children. Over 100 of them are suing the company and David to determine his identity, believing their right to know their biological father is far more important to his right to privacy. Huh.

Who wants to be known as the guy with 500 kids? Especially when his girlfriend (Cobie Smulders) is pregnant and can’t imagine him ever being a father.

Basically his life is falling apart and he has no idea how to fix it. Maybe he can fix the lives of others? Despite his best interests, and the wishes of his lawyer (Chris Pratt), he decides to check out the profiles of a child, just one at a time, and see if he can help out their life in any way while remaining anonymous.

Clearly a plan that won’t backfire.

His immediate family includes his father (Andrzej Blumenfeld), and two brothers (Simon Delaney, Bobby Moynihan) and some of his children are played by Jack Reynor, Dave Patten, and Britt Robertson.

Really, if all you want is Chris Pratt in bath robes, then this is the movie for you. From what the internet tells me, this is actually a scene for scene remake of Starbuck, so I don’t feel too bad not getting to watch the original before this one. The last time I attempted to do something like that was when I watched both Death At A Funerals back to back, and that was just awkward.

Speaking of awkward, that is this movie in a nutshell. It touches on a lot of personal and serious topics, but generally in a strange way given the circumstances of this film. I find it hard to categorize it as a comedy, because although the idea is silly, the jokes are really few and far in between and it gets really dramatic. If you go in expecting a laugh a minute, you will be disappointed.

Vince Vaughn plays a screw up who has his heart in the right place. The reason that sounds familiar is that he always plays those roles, because he is somewhat believable at them. I am not sure how to describe the emotions I felt during this movie, but I can tell you they were there.

I think the movie did far too much disservice early on by making me hate the main character. It was vague on a few important details, like just who was after him for money and why they were surprisingly passive over 7-9 months. The passage of time was very hard to follow, when months would pass for his character without letting the viewer know. Certain problems ended up getting solved too easily and David had a surprising amount of money to give to use for his kids, and gas, and shopping when he owed so much cash in the first place.

I can’t say for certain if this film will stick with me in the long run, but for now it is a decent attempt at trying something new (well, a remake of something new), and I can applaud it for that. It also does a good job of teaching about the potential horrors of sperm bank.

2 out of 4.