Tag: Comedy

The Bucket List, if anything, did have a lot of people talking about it. Most of which I doubt who saw it. I mean, why would you need to? You know exactly what happens in this movie from the title. Two old guys, living their last months to the fullest (somehow) and then probably dying. Both probably have some sort of family problem.

You know all of that, because the movie isn’t about surprises or the best plot, just one of those heartwarming tales that might make your cry or feel good.

That’s why it has took me til now to watch it. Really no need, but hey, I had to watch it eventually. Not because of a lame joke about needing to watch it before I died, just because I owned it and needed to watch it.

Before I died. >.>

Unrelated Orange picture? Or the rage you feel right now as I babble?

Blah Blah Blah. Morgan Freeman is an old man, mechanic, pretty smart because he reads a lot. Has a wife, Beverly Todd, has faith, and has a big family. But then he gets a terminal illness. Jack Nicholson, uber rich guy gets put in his room, also with cancer. Sharing rooms?! Yes, because he was a mean hospital owner and said each room needs two beds, to maximize efficiency and make more money. So when he finally gets sick and wants his own room, his assistant, Sean Hayes, won’t let him, as it’d be a horrible PR move.

Chemo happens, it sucks. And eventually they bond. Jack see’s Morgan’s bucket list, full of ridiculous items, like being President, and tells him they should both do it. Leave his family, travel the world, money is no option, fuck the metaphors. And eventually he says sure. Skydiving, racing, Great Wall Of China, Pyramids, etc.

But how far will Morgan go to experience life to the fullest? A man who has only been with one woman, who he has left her behind to see the world? Also, will Jack be less of a dick, and visit his family for once in his life? I think you know the answer to both of them.

Chances of green screens being involved? Pretty high.

But was I entertained is the bigger question?

Ehh not really. Morgan Freeman’s character made a good argument why he should get the chance to do whatever he wants before he ends his life, which he seems to have gotten chastised for by everyone for doing it. Bitches, please. Even Freeman’s acting I thought was just okay. But Jack Nicholson had a much more powerful character to me, and thought he did a lot better.

He was also the only character we got to see keeling over in cancer pain. Correlation?

But yeah, this movie did absolutely nothing to me, and despite the fact that people will still make a lot more bucket list references for the next few years, I will never see it again.

Lower Learning is a brand new take on the corrupt and out of control high school where the students and teachers have to fight back in order to not get closed down.

And that just means it takes place in an elementary school instead.

Mad Libs is also instant entertainment.

Jason Biggs is a vice principal at an elementary school, where life sucks every day. He feels like he does nothing with his job, mostly because the principal Rob Corddry doesn’t let him. He just goes to work, has a boring day, and goes home to his boring life. But out of the blue, he sees Eva Longoria, whom he went to school with. He was nerdy back then but always had a crush on her. But she has bad news, at the end of the day the school will be closing down.

Oh noes! Well it makes sense, when you have teachers who are depressed and drinking, Monica Potter, having weird boxing style tournaments, Will Sasso, incredibly good at teaching but inappropriately talking about sex, Nat Fixon, while also going after the nurse, Jill Latiano, it all just makes sense. Others are on drugs, some refuse to teach. No fucks are given at this school, except by Biggs.

It is more weird when he finds out that no one seems to care. Tenure and shit. But something else is off, why is the principal trying so hard to get the school shut down? Secret embezzlement of millions of dollars you say? That’s strange indeed! Also Ed Helms has a small role as a board member who is way too needy.

I mean, he was losing to a GIRL.

As the plot unfolded I thought it was kind of interesting. Some of the jokes given by the teachers were pretty good as well.

But it did not unravel the way I had expected. It got a bit lamer, and lamer, until the ending was a big…ehh whatever. Worst unfurling ever.

That is pretty much the only way I can described it. Kind of interesting, yet getting more and more disappointing. High potential, low follow through. It just felt like train wreck. Assuming I knew what those felt like.

I am proud that I used unfolded unravel, and unfurled though.

Ooh, Noise. That would be either some vague horror movie, or another remake of The Grinch.

Obviously it is neither, but man, wouldn’t some gritty remake of The Grinch be cool? Something rated R, yet also still not a horror movie.

I’d watch it.

Quick googling says there is no such thing as a Gritty Grinch. Yet.

Instead of my bizarre idea, this movie goes one step bizarrier (Level 2 spell?). It stars mild mannered Tim Robbins. He lives and works in New York city, with his wife, Bridget Moynahan, and their young daughter. But every night the same thing happens. The noise never stops. More specifically, the car alarms, but all the excess noises are a big problem in his eyes.

It makes the baby wake up, and makes it so no one can sleep well, and also makes him limp. Err. Well because the cops never seem to do something about it, he decides to do his own punishment. First he starts slow, deflating a tire or whatever. But eventually he is full on rage mode, smashing the window open to pop the trunk, to cut the line to the battery, just to shut it off. 3 minutes is too long for an alarm to go, given that most people ignore alarms anyways and probably do more harm than good.

He becomes known as The Rectifier, a sort of vigilante punishing those who don’t turn off their alarms. He does try to use the courts to his advantage, but each time his case is thrown out. After his wife makes him leave for his obsession, he meets a Russian student, Margarita Levieva, who helps him start a simple petition to change some car alarm laws and make it fine-able which gets huge support. But the Mayor (William Hurt) and his assistant (William Baldwin) don’t like it just because it seems to support vigilantism, so they put a stop to it.

So it becomes up to Tim Robbins to find a way to get his law passed, any means possible.

Look at all that rage. Yeah, he clearly mad.

I will keep this short and sweet. This movie was weird, yes, which I like. The beginning felt pretty good but died down after about twenty or so minutes. The ending was also strong, I liked what he decided to do in order to finally get his ordinance passed. But a whole lot of the middle was kind of boring. I didn’t even like their quick country plantation visit, where he found that the noise problems still exist outside of the city.

It is a bad problem, no one likes it but everyone accepts it and his character cannot fathom why they should accept it any longer. So he decides to spend a long time trying to combat it, and it is kind of awesome in an “unexpected hero” sort of way. I was surprised this wasn’t based on some real life story of a guy who hated the alarms that much.

But man, if it was a bit better in the middle, this movie would be a lot better.

Hey, I bet by the name alone that you will think Eagle vs Shark is a super weird comedy?

Yep.

I don’t usually want people to judge the movie by its cover, but using the cover to help get yourself in the right mood has never been a bad thing.

Yep, it is going to be one of those kind of movies.

This is a movie about socially awkward people, and love. Lily (Loren Horsley) lives with her brother (Joel Tobeck), who is a cartoonist, while she works at a burger joint. They are devoid of good technology apparently, because after she takes an order from the customer, she apparently has to walk back and tell the kitchen. Fast food joints there are weird.

Either way she was picked “randomly” to have her job cut, because corporate demanded it, so she is kind of meh, and decides to try and get that cute customer who always walks in, Jarrod (Jemaine Clement) on his lunch break. After finally talking with him, he asks her to invite another girl to his “Animal” party, where everyone dresses up as their favorite animal. There is also a video game fighting tournament, which she kicks ass at. Then they awkwardly kiss and have some sex.

Hooray, now kind of dating. But Jarrod is a jerk, yet she still likes him. He convinces the brother to drive them to his parents house (pretty far away). He hates his family, but he is there for revenge, to KILL someone! A bully in middle school, who used to beat him and others up all the time. Well now after all his training (Video games) he is ready to take him on once he returns from afar.

But also his family doesn’t seem to be impressed enough by Lily, so he kind of breaks up with her, in the middle of the stay, with no way to leave.

Yep. More asshole than awkward. Either way, the rest of the trip is super weird and the eventual fight and return. And shit, that is about it.

Looks like Business Time to me.

I can’t say I am expert on New Zealand film, as this might be the only one I have seen. Definitely seen NZ tv shows, if we say Flight of the Conchords counts. But it is definitely a lot dryer and maybe sometimes subtler than other forms of humor.

And it is about 100% of this movie. Sure it has its wtf moments as well, but most of it is relied just on the awkwardness of the two individuals, in the situation they are in and trying to be politer at all times. Very proper New Zealand tactics.

This movie wasn’t any where close to amazing, but it wasn’t horrible either. At least it tried something new, where new is just…mostly nothing.

Casino Jack is the second of “movies Kevin Spacey has been in recently that apparently no one has heard of”. Very specific theme. Only two I was doing, this and Shrink.

Oh how mysterious and …weirdly bordered he looks.

This is actually the true-ish story of Jack Abramoff, the most lobbyist lobbyist in the America.

Dude was making bank, and lobbying up a storm. People in Congress were making bank, him and his family were making bank. Evurrybody was living it up. On what? Indian Casinos. More specifically the SunCruz Casinos, that go on a cruise to “nowhere” but mostly to get into international waters.

Him and his partner Michael Scanlon (Barry Pepper) are getting rich and quick. But they make it seem like Abramoff is donating a lot more to charities, and the betterment of his love one and not “wasting it” as much. His wife (Kelly Preston) is worried about their finances, and then eventually on where they come form.

Their bigger problems start when the help of Mattress Kingpin Adam Kidan (Jon Lovitz), who unbeknownst to the rest of them, has ties with the mob and other bad people.

This eventually leads to a series of events that brings down their decline, and prosecutors having a field day with the amount of people who accepted the bribes. It was a pretty serious deal. Wiki that stuff. Yet somehow no one seems to remember it, despite its large implications. Oh and Rachelle Lefevre is in this movie. But I just forgot what her actually role was. Whoops.

Also, yelling!

Kevin Spacey has turned into the king of mediocrity? No, that’s not right. He is decent in this movie as well. But the rest? Damn, thats mediocre. Like a lot of his last few years worth of movies. I guess he just does what ever looks interesting, gives it his all, and not everyone else can be as good as him.

Maybe if he was worse the movie would seem better because everyone is acting as good as Spacey? This is some serious conspiracy Keanu stuff here.

But why do I say that? Well, parts of the movie were interesting. Parts went above my head. But parts were also pretty uninteresting. Overall just okay, again. Like Father of Invention. Oh yeah. Another recent Kevin Spacey movies.

Just saying. His movies tend to be better with a lot more known leads, like Margin Call, or Horrible Bosses, when he doesn’t have to carry the load on his back.

Zombies!

And lawls?

Alright. It has been done before. But by the British, and no one likes the British. So an American version might be more crude, or at the very least, better graphics. I’m talking 3D stuff. Or at least flashy lights. It is a Zombieland after all.

Consider my dreams reached.

How did the zombie outbreak happen? Some bad meat or something, but it spread quickly like all zombie out breaks. And these get to be the weird ass fast zombies. Thankfully our hero, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) has a list of rules to keep him alive. Work out his cardio, be afraid of bathrooms, always wear a seatbelt, double tap to assure death, etc. Definitely don’t be a hero. This is a war! Because he was a nerdy shut in, he missed out a lot on the initial craziness, when his neighbor from 406 (Amber Heard) attacked him. Sucks, because she was hot too.

He meets Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a middle aged man who wasn’t good at much, but turns out is very good at killing zombies. They have code name in order to not get close to each other. Such as where they are from or where they are heading. He is a simple man, who just wants to survive, and really find a twinkie to eat.

They meet Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), who con them out of their vehicle and weapons. Shit is serious. Very rude. The rest of the movie involves them working to get their car back, possibly trusting strangers, and maybe even breaking a rule or two.

Oh, and there is a cameo by Bill Murray, which is great. Especially since I only like Murray when he is in cameo form.

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Home run right there.

Good things tend to happen when you take an already outrageous accepted genre and do outrageous things during it. Most of the jokes don’t come from dialogue, they come from the few actors in this movie behaving to real zombie situations. Turns out it can be amusing to watch a bunch of fat zombies in a grocery store getting their heads knocked off with a bat. Or riding in a roller coaster with a shotgun. Or hitting a zombie by driving by with the door open, for shits and giggles.

The plot of the movie pretty much boils down to “The world has zombie now, it sucks, try to survive”. Really the only plot I could give was just back story that we learn throughout the movie, since I don’t want to actually say the entire story. That’d be bad for the four of you who haven’t seen Zombieland.

Its a very enjoyable movie with a budget big enough to put on some pretty over the top awesome scenes.

The Losers is one of those “Oh this is based on a comic? Why?” type movies. No super heroes involved, just your normal run of the mill elite black ops team, who gets set up/framed, and have to fix it. A story I might have wrote about yesterday, and very popular.

This movie came out around the same time as The A-Team though, which means you were far more likely to not ever see or hear of The Losers, as they are easily compared.

But this one has more than four people. And a woman! Eventually.

Ooh, lets try and do this the team way!
First we have Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) the leader of the group.
Then there is Roque (Idris Elba) the second in command.
Jensen ( Chris Evans) is the communications/tech guy, and a lot of the comic relief.
Pooch (Columbus Short) is the driver, and soon to be family man.
And finally, Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) their ‘long range specialist/sniper’, wears a hat, and doesn’t talk much (At all). So mysterious. So deadly.

Well the missions they take are never officially wrote down, very very covert, don’t technically exist in the government. They are in Bolivia on a search and destroy mission for a drug cartel, but find that the camp has dozens of slave children. They try to call off the attack to their handler, Max (Jason Patric) but he ignores them. So they do the reasonable thing, break into the compound, kill the drug lord, rescue the children and barely escape!

On the helicopter sent to pick them up, they decide to stay behind and save the children instead. And when it gets up to leave. BAM. Missile. It was meant to kill them instead. They know there will be huge back lash here, so they decide to fake their deaths as if they were in the helicopter, and plot their revenge against Max. Which they get four months later, when another mysterious person, Aisha (Zoe Saldana) has a plan. But can she be trusted.

Stealing hard drives, and getting to Max is the rest of the movie, and having to go through his “top notch security” (Holt McCallany). Also filled with betrayal, the Losers try and stop Max before he acquires new age weapon technology, and you know, start a new world war.

The “mind bullets/tech support” scene is one of the better scenes. Of all time. Complete with Journey!

Seriously though, you will probably enjoy that scene even without the rest of the movie. That is what comic relief character gets you. Great scenes.

It is definitely more action than comedy, not everything is laugh out loud heelarious, but the movie is not meant to be taken too seriously. The first picture of the review is just covered in campiness.

Other aspects I found boring. I enjoyed it, but on a rewatch, not as much interests me as it did before. So its definitely a one and done kind of film. Won’t blow your socks off, but can be enjoyed if you are in the right mood.

Confessions Of A Shopaholic looked like a fun romp through fashion and credit debt. Pretty much the funnest things ever, like, omg, am I right?

I don’t expect to find anything profound with this movie (like credit debt is bad? excessive shopping is bad?) but hopefully at least I will laugh a bit and not find every situation entirely avoidable. I mean, if the character is smart at least.

She looks like a fairy tale woman. Somehow in NYC she never gets mugged wearing stuff like this all day.

Anyways, the lesson you are supposed to learn is the difference between price and worth. But they say that a lot, don’t worry.

Isla Fisher likes to shop. She works at a garden magazine, but wants to do fashion! Loves credit cards, but has a problem paying them off. She even lives with her best friend, Krysten Ritter, and her boyfriend, and they all seem to help her avoid the creditors. Her parents (John Goodman, Joan Cusack) tried to teach her to value money and shop at thrift stores and saved up, but their hippie ways failed.

So she tries to work at a fashion magazine, but the only magazine owned by the corporation with an opening is the financing magazine, lead by Hugh Dancy. Despite a bad interview, she gets drunk and sends a letter to the fashion people with a sample article about worth, and hate mail to Hugh, but gets them mixed up. Congrats! She now has a job with a finance magazine, despite knowing close to nothing and being 15k in debt.

When she eventually gets an article published, it sky rockets as the next best thing. The owner of the corporation, John Lithgow, personally loves it, and so does the fashion people. Including some famous fashion person, played by Leslie Bibb. But she is a villain in the movie. So is Robert Stanton, a “mean old” debt collector who she is avoiding throughout the movie.

But will everyone realize she was lying the whole time, like he has been her whole life? What can she do to fuck up her friendships too? Can she bang the main editor, or will Bibb beat her to it?

In the ‘zine world, sleeping with your employees is fine.

Let me be detailed with why I dislike the movie now. Hooray!

1) All of her problems are easily fixable, and by never thinking they escalate. And yet still even after initial escalation, they are still easily fixable. By avoiding her debt collector, she sets up for him to go to drastic measures to catch her attention. By not telling her work, she sets up a big fall. Well, despite being a finance magazine, it didn’t mean she had to be good at paying bills.

2) Her friend got mad at her, because she lost the bridesmaids dress to a thrift store, and a homeless lady was wearing it. How? Because of the shopaholics meeting the friend made her attend, not from unwarranted spending. No reason for them to be mad at each other, as it wasnt Isla’s fault.

3) There was a tape to stop being a shopaholic, and involved throwing out all the excess. Well she didn’t. Guess how she raised her bill money?
By (gasp) selling a lot of her shit back. HOW IS THAT NOT THE MOST OBVIOUS THING EVER. You will be mad because that is clearly the right thing to do, and pays the bills, and good to go. But she keeps trying to throw it out, despite the debt? Dumb as shit.

4) Why the hell is the debt collector a villain? She pretty much stole from these companies for months and continuously lied to them. Yet she “gets him” at the end? That is some bullshit. Accept responsibility and pay your bills with class, please.

And you know, also weird messages about giving up on your dreams, and accepting the simpler things in life. Blah.

Ingenious is described as “A rags-to-riches story of two friends, a small-time inventor and a sharky salesman, who hit rock bottom before coming up with a gizmo that becomes a worldwide phenomenon.”

Now what did they make?

A bottle opener, that says a phrase when you open a bottle.

Yep. A movie about those guys.

These guys.

Dallas Roberts is the small-time invent and Jeremy Renner is the sharky salesman.

At the beginning of the film they are selling novelty watches. Dog based ones that has a different thought in a sleeping dogs head throughout the day (for different dog types) and the same for a golfer. Pet owners love that shit but they have problems getting money to make a whole lot of different dog ones.

But Dallas then invents the “random lotto” number watch, thinking that will be a big seller. But turns out people also don’t care about that. The dog idea is the only potentially successful one they have, but need financing. They go to a “Infomercial King” in Richard Kind to try and get it sold, but don’t reach an agreement and he steals their idea.

Dallas is also into gambling, which Jeremy constantly convinces him to do (jerk friend) and they end up wasting their investments more. This makes his wife leave him, but don’t worry, Jeremy’s wife never leaves him. (By the end they might get back together).

He randomly makes the bottle opener that says a phrase, they get lots of money for it, and live happily ever after. Literally, because this is a “True story” and apparently that novelty item is the 4th most successful one, after the Hula Hoop, Frisbee, and the supersoaker.

Because for whatever reason, people love it when their bottle opener says one line?

By “rags to riches story” this really is a story about two guys who want to get rich quick in what appears to be the lamest way possibles. Novelty watches and a bottle opener? Big dreams guys.

I’m not saying what they didn’t do is remarkable, I mean, I haven’t made billions of dollars doing anything (yet!), but still, seems like a weird idea for a movie. Think about how much more exciting those other three novelty item movies could have been.

My bigger complaint though is the pacing. Out of an 80 minute movie, only the last 30 deal anything at all with the bottle opener. That means we have 50 minutes of movies dealing with them having not enough money to make novelty watches.

They do a lot with these watches, and do lawyer stuff, and everything. But really? 5/8 of the movie is about the other failed item, and 3/8 is about what they actually did that is important? What the fuck movie.

After 30 minutes I assumed they very successful item was a damn watch that had a dog on it, and it was just confusing. This is not something that should be a secret, and so…out of nowhere. Which is what it felt like.

As a real story, maybe its interesting. But as a movie, it is an incredible let down.

I chances of me finding out about Jesus Henry Christ and watching it were probably pretty low. Just looking at a bunch of titles for 2012 movies, knowing I have been not on the new side recently, and saw it and thought. Huh. Why not. Title alone.

Turns out it is based on a short story and produced by Julia Roberts. A star backing an indie movie, watch out!

I also think it has a limited release on theaters starting…well today. Whoops!

This picture actually shows most of the plot.

This is a story about a boy named Henry (Jason Spevack). Henry is an only child raised by his single mom Patricia (Toni Collette), whom he calls by name. Patricia is a feminist and protester throughout most of her life, thanks to weird incidents in her youth. Thanks to a tragic (Drunken) accident, her mom was a killed, and she was raised solely by her dad Stan (Frank Moore) and four older brothers.

What Henry doesn’t know is that he was a “test tube” baby, and has no idea who his biological dad is. But his grandfather might, thanks to protesting. Hell, Patricia was mad that he came out a boy. But at 9 months when he was already able to talk, they figured something was up. Even getting kicked out of kindergarten for being too advanced, and then kicked out of a private catholic school for trying to disprove the bible.

Thanks to crazy genetics, he can remember everything he has seen, making himself pretty advanced.

Either way, thanks to his grandfather, he finds out that his most likely father is a professor at a local university (Michael Sheen), who has recently published a book entitled “Born Gay or Made That Way?”. Which features his daughters face, Audrey (Samantha Weinstein), a he experimented with her upbringing (also a single father), by making her entirely gender neutral to see..well, what happens. Besides the whole, ruining his daughters life with a book about her maybe being a lesbian.

Turns out it isn’t that simple, he could have a different father, but that guy is dead. That dead guy? Also might be Audrey’s real father too. So all four of them get to do fun parental tests to find out just who i related to who.

In a nutshell, a “dysfunctional family comedy” where the family might not be a family at all.

A family that needle pricks together…

Not only is this another indie quirky family comedy thing where every character is a very specific extreme that will never happen…it is also shot, differently.

Weirdly?

Hard to describe. But I loved the cinematography (And the plot and actors/actresses, etc). Just felt unique, and slightly different, but not like “Whoa, get off my screen Hipster!” different. Maybe it was all very subtle. Or maybe they just had to do it to save money, because its an indie film.

I have no idea, but it was definitely a very interesting movie to watch. I will for sure get it once it comes out on DVD/Blu-Ray/whatever new technology disk.