Tag: David Koechner

National Champions

College Athletes should be paid for their game times and their practice times.

That is it. People who do work should get benefits and protections from said work. That shouldn’t be controversial.

But every time this conversation comes up, people will talk about how they get a scholarship at a nice college during that time, and that is their payment. Bullshit. Plenty of people get scholarships to college. But they don’t have to give up most of their time to do it. They can still accept gifts from people. They can still get a job to earn money. Athletes get fucked over, and bring in money for their schools, all so they can just exist there for free? It is nice when the slave master provides a place to sleep, I guess.

Ahem. I am passionate about this subject. I have seen a few documentaries on it. And still very little changes. It really sucks for those involved. Most of them don’t become elite players in their sport to make money. Most get used up and spit out and hopefully can get a job somewhere, assuming their body hasn’t betrayed them by then.

All of this to say, I am excited to see National Champions. A film that is going to tackle that very subject, in a fictional manner.

qb
Pictured: Me glaring at the “BuT tHeIr ScHoLaRsHiP” crowd.

Here we are, the NCAA College Football championship game. The best two college football teams playing for all the marbles. None of those silly Bowls, this is the top spot, where anyone would want to be. This is the biggest stage a lot of these students will reach, given how few people actually make it into the NFL. But who knows, a great show here might mean getting drafted, or even, the highest draft position.

So let’s talk about LeMarcus James (Stephan James). He is the elite quarterback who helped lead his team to an undefeated season. He has a great enough relationship with his coach (J.K. Simmons) and people seem to like him. And now he is planning on boycotting the final game in just three days. He refuses to play, until his demands are met. What demands? Honestly, he wants important ones. He wants all NCAA athletes to be considered employees, so they can earn money from their schools. He wants them to get cuts of pay from their ticket sales and things with their image or name attached. He wants insurance protection for players during college, that ensure their scholarship won’t go away and they will have the best care even after the season is over.

You know, he doesn’t want student athletes to be treated as slaves as the conference owners and coaches get richer and richer. And James is likely going number 1 overall in the draft, he already has a big day coming his way. He is trying to protect all the other athletes.

This causes quite a hubbub. A lot of people pick sides. A lot of drama will happen. And a lot of secrets will come out, or maybe come out.

Also starring Alexander Ludwig, Andrew Bachelor, David Koechner, Jeffrey Donovan, Kristin Chenoweth, Lil Rel Howery, Tim Blake Nelson, Timothy Olyphant, and Uzo Aduba.

coach
I think we can all make inferences about what this looks like. 

Hey! A movie about a topic I am invested in! And honestly, my main points of detraction are that it didn’t stay as invested in that story as I would like, and filled it with fictional stuff. Which makes sense, because it is fictional…

Obviously if these people are playing these characters they have things in their past, and that makes the escalation of events by the end build up due to all of the secrets. But like…what if there wasn’t a big build up of secrets? What if there was nothing worth blackmailing, like I assume a majority of people out there would have? That is the fictional film I would like to see technically. But yeah, we need drama or whatever in these movies. And the secrets, some of them are quite juicy. In terms of entertainment and the stakes, they do get really high, so we have some good tense boardroom level scenes with high power dealers.

But damn, my interest in this topic just wishes it played it straight. But then it would be a documentary, and fuck, we already have like 50 of them on this topic.

Okay, so aside from that, I did like the movie. It had a little confusion early on though. It took me a bit of time to really understand what the hell was going on with Ludwig’s character, as in, his characters role in the movie and with the star quarterback. Was he a player? Was he some buff political person controlling him? It was a bit odd. I thought James and Simmons gave exceptional performances in their roles, although the finish for both of them with the plot was a bit of a unexceptional ending.

Clearly I wanted just a movie where the players on both sides agreed, and everyone got what they wanted from the strike, and we all moved on as a country, but that is less believable than magic. It is important to recognize my own biases in where I wanted the plot to go, versus what happened. In terms of escalation, it was nice, and tense. It had some wonderful speeches. It still got important information out there. And I think it can be a nice fictional sports movie not about sports. Like Draft Day. A tense movie about a fake draft so sure, it can be made really damn tense.

3 out of 4.

A Week Away

You know what is exactly one week away from today? Whatever day it is today again! Hooray never changing cyclical weeks of 7 days!

The only thing I knew about A Week Away going into it was that it was about a troubled teen and maybe a musical. A musical I never heard about? You certainly have my attention, random movie drop on Netflix. In fact, its musicalness is why I decided to not watch it on my phone but instead at a better place/time when I could give it my full attention.

With musicals I need to pay attention to the dances, the plot, the lyric choices, how they filmed various fun scenes, all of that. I can’t just give it a listen and a half watch.

It turns out, A Week Away is exactly worth an eighth of a watch.

fists
At least they are all fans of black power. 

Will (Kevin Quinn) is some troubled kid. He is in the foster system, both parents dead, and he is just completely rambunctious. We are talking something ridiculous like, 80 schools in 2 years. That is an exaggeration on my part, but whatever they said in the movie was larger than what should be likely as well. He is about to go back to juvenile detention because no one else will take him in. Oh noooo. “Please I can change despite my arrests and saying I can change before!”

So he gets a shot. A mother (Sherri Shepherd) and a similar aged boy, George (Jahbril Cook). They aren’t taking him in, but they are going to take him to a week long camp. Will thinks that is quite dumb, but its better than Juvie, so fine. And when he gets there, he sees all the happy teenage kids his age, also wearing no branded clothing, and they sing a song together and mention…God?

“Wait, this is a Jesus camp” both Will and the audience will say together at some point. Did I misshear a lyric? Did they say God was a glorious leader? That sounds like North Korea stuff. Anyways. Not only is this a church camp that Will got sucked into. This is also a religious film that you got sucked into, and you had no idea! Me neither! At least the second song hints at the theme and the third song makes it quite damn obvious.

Anyways. Will has to do camp things, which is great, because he likes a girl Avery (Bailee Madison), and he will lie about his past, to help his team win the camp stuff against the other teams, and also help other romances.

Also starring Iain Tucker, Kat Conner Sterling, and David Koechner. Wait, Koechner? Todd Packer from The Office? And all of those crude and crass roles? Why is he in a religious film? Is he part of the trickery to swindle people into watching it?

guitar
Is there anything more dangerous than a white boy with a guitar?

I feel duped, I really do. I was excited to watch a musical about who knows what, that came in under the radar and no prior hype from me. I was ready for it. Musicals are a rare commodity. But faith films are not that rare, and generally most of the time, they are pretty darn bad. I do actively avoid most of them it turns out for that reason. Every once in awhile you can get a big movie that is faith based and not terrible, but they are huge exceptions, for many reasons. 

A Week Away is not a bad movie because it is a faith film, however, it is just a regular bad movie. I am not sure if it is going for the High School Musical crowd, if so, they are like a decade too late. That is definitely how I can describe this one, with better camera work (like from HSM3). But it turns out half of this movie is a Jukebox musical, as they take already existing songs. Did I know any of these songs before hand? No. but I know how to research and I know how many of the songs felt very shoehorned in.

Darn it. To make a good musical, the songs need to give the characters growth. It needs to express things that words cannot do on their own. It cannot just be generic music, which a lot of the songs in this film end up feeling generic. Oh we want to do a remake of a song named Dive? That mentions rivers? Let’s just have the characters sing it on the beach of the lake, because water references. Boom. Musical song made.

Jukebox musicals are easy because hey, music is already written. Jukebox musicals are hard, because you need to take something already written and it has to adapt super hard to your work in a unique way so that it isn’t just a song being sung that kind of sort of deals with the topics. What would happen in RENT if instead of La Vie Boheme, they just sang some pop song about never giving up or whatever? It would have no emotion or feeling behind it. And that is true for most of the songs in this movie. They feel like they just want to do pop (slightly elevated Kidz Bop) religious songs that don’t help the story. 

The story itself is weak. I don’t know why it is a religious camp with so little religious stuff going on. It seems to be just an activity camp focused entirely on sports and games between three teams. And I guess that is church camp now? They go out of there way to even call a day Sunday, and no church happens that day. There is one scene around a bonfire that is Church-y, and who knows when that is supposed to take place. It can’t even commit to its theme.

I will say, the point system doesn’t make a lot of sense for the camp. The final talent show is crap. Having every single event center on our main people, in their boring sort of romances, including every game and activity is bizarre. Why did they have moment to even have sign up for events at the beginning if ever team already did every event? Come on now.

Heed my warning. Do not be fueled into the musical that is bad, but also a faith film that even tackles the subject of faith poorly. 

0 out of 4.

Krampus

Happy Holidays from the end of March!

I wanted to see Krampus when it came out early in December, but unfortunately there weren’t any prescreenings for the film. Guess they assumed critics would hate it, or not get the point, man.

Either way, I was disappointed, but not disappointed enough to spend money on going to the film. December is busy for awards movies, not comedy horror films!

But the idea of a Krampus movie was very exciting. I haven’t even seen a Christmas horror film since Rare Exports years ago, which was wonderful and you should consider adding it to your Christmas collection.

Clown
But this one has scary clowns, so you know it might be more horror than comedy.

It’s Christmas time, yay! We are going to celebrate at the Engel household with their family coming over. Tom (Adam Scott) and Sarah (Toni Collette) have to make sure their house is clean, food cooked and everything decorated for Santa. After all, their kid Max (Emjay Anthony) still believes despite being like 10 or something. Also living in the house is their older daughter Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen) and Omi (Krista Stadler), Tom’s mom. She speaks German!

Anyways, the family eventually comes over. Rednecks. Howard (David Koechner), Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell), and Linda (Allison Tolman) with some dick kids (Queenie Samuel, Lolo Owen) and a baby.

Needless to say, the other boy kids tease poor Max for believing in Santa. They find his letter to Santa and read it outloud, making fun of his wishes for things like his parents to love each other more, and so on. He gets mad and rips up his letter throwing it into the wind! And with that, the power in the whole city goes out. And the winter storm gets a little bit more wintry.

Strange things are afoot. But let’s just cut to the chase. People have ruined Christmas. Krampus is here to punish them.

Gma
Damn grandma, you are brave enough to take on the Krampus alone?

When you go into a comedy horror film, you can never really expect a whole lot. They rarely have large budgets and are never really too funny or too scary. Krampus seems to fit the bill like the other ones, with a slightly more impressive budget.

I feel bad for Adam Scott, who often is put into these sort of roles (see Piranha) and lower budget comedies (see Hot Tub Time Machine 2). He is a funny guy who keeps getting stuck in bad to mediocre films.

Krampus at times is a little scary. Toys come to life in a very The Nightmare Before Christmas way. The Krampus itself felt downplayed with most of the work being done by creepy helper demon things. But knowing that even the kids weren’t safe was a nice surprise that a lot of films seem to avoid.

As for the comedy, well, there really wasn’t any. The comedy came from strange things happening, like CGI gingerbread men attacking them. No other real jokes outside of the weird factor, which is the most disappointing aspect of the film.

It did an okay job at the scary parts, but failed when it came to making me chuckle.

2 out of 4.

Road Hard

I would consider myself a fan of Adam Carolla. He is a man’s man, and not just because of his role on The Man Show.

But in general, he is like a old man’s Nick Offerman. He knows a lot about cars, building stuff, and…being an adult? I guess.

Either way, I was very upset when he was kicked off from Celebrity Apprentice, because he probably should have won it after Penn Jillette.

Damn it, I keep getting side tracked. Carolla made a movie, starring himself, funded by a shit ton of people. Whatever site he raised the funds on let him reach past his goal to fund the film. It even broke a record for whatever that site is. And now that I will see Road Hard, I will have seen and reviewed all two movies he has ever been the main star. Big numbers there.

Table
He might even be able to afford his own Waffle House franchise.

Adam plays Bruce Madsen, a man with a manly name, who has gone through a lot. Well, most recently it feels like, he has gone through a divorce. That is a shame, but it is what it is. Sure, he isn’t living in his amazing house anymore that his TV career paid for, but at least his kids are happy. And fuck. They are smart too and wanting to go to college? What is up with that?

You see, Bruce used to be famous. He got super well known for The Bro Show on television. This lead to a lot of money and other TV show opportunities. It ended up being better for his co-host, Jack (Jay Mohr), whose career skyrocketed and is now hosting one of those late night television shows. Damn, that sucks for Bruce! Needless to say, the jobs aren’t coming as easy for Bruce as they used to be. People are starting to only remember him being really good on that Celebrity Barn Raising show.

So Bruce has to go back into stand up comedy, his roots. He has to travel around doing small time shows, that don’t sell out, but do okay because he is that “guy who used to be on the TV!” And college is expensive. He needs a big break to get his career off the ground. He needs to get back into TV, getting a steady pay check to enhance his resume. He needs something to get him back out of the comedy clubs to land back on his feet.

Featuring Diane Farr, David Alan Grier, Philip Rosenthal, David Koechner, Cynthy Wu, Larry Miller, and Howie Mandel as himself.

Dead
In this picture: Literally not landing on his own feet.

I think I can speak for all Adam Carolla fans when I say this movie is him at his finest. Hell, if you couldn’t tell, this is literally him playing himself. I tried to drop off enough hints in the intro, but he made a fictionalized version of himself, dumped a few more shitty moments on it, and called it a movie. Regardless of one’s skill, you probably know how to play yourself in most situations so the acting should just come natural.

I hope there is no bad blood between him and Kimmel in real life. That will make me sad.

Back to to film! Not surprisingly, I enjoyed this tale. It is a simple one, but it has some good comedic moments, features jokes in the form of stand up comic acts, and has good supporting characters who also make me laugh.

Sure, because it is a simple story, it doesn’t really end up too surprising by the end. It just tells a simple story solidly, and I can respect that. Like a well crafted stool. Or a…movie that isn’t shit.

Yeah. Much like that.

3 out of 4.

Cheap Thrills

I am still atoning for my year and a half of never really doing horror films, but Cheap Thrills is a new one. If you take a quick look at the cast list, you would probably assume it was bad. Most likely you haven’t heard of three of the cast members, and the fourth you will recognize but not for his talent.

I was definitely intrigued by the title and plot line, so I gave this lower budget film a whirl. It is a very simple concept but it can go a lot of places. Kind of like The Purge, I guess.

Blood
Cheap Thrills on a cheap set? Checks out.

The story is mostly about one man, Craig (Pat Healy). He has a wife, a kid, and now he is getting kicked out of his home. Evictions suck. But they both lost their job and are having lots of trouble making cash. Not looking too good for their house. So Craig goes out to get a quick drink. There at the bar he meets Vince (Ethan Embry. The main character from Can’t Hardly Wait with a beard), an old high school friend who dropped out and he hasn’t seen in years.

They drink a bit, both of their lives kind of suck for different reasons, but at least there is alcohol right?

But then they meet two strangers: The ever texting and silent Violet (Sara Paxton) and her talkative husband Colin (David Koechner). They are celebrating her birthday and they have wads of cash!

They are looking to have a little fun, so they invite the two “friends” along for the ride. They also start giving out cash like its nothing. In fact, they pay Vince and Craig for them to do some outlandish behavior.

But happens when it starts to escalate? What then? What would Craig do to help protect his family?

Knife
This Ethan Embry doesn’t believe in destiny so much.

Living up to its name, Cheap Thrills provides cheap thrills to the characters in the movie and to the viewers watching. Just kidding. The thrills in the movie are anything but cheap, with about 250 thousand dollars overall being up for grabs based on the extremity of the stunt.

With only four characters, three of which are vocal, they actually have to act. The three males all have personalities and we learn about our two friends more and more as the story progresses. Some of the moments were actually quite powerful. They both have needs, and if only one person can win, it can get quite serious.

Not much else I can think to say about this movie, but it took a simple concept and made it really work. Nice job, movie.

3 out of 4.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

The boys are back in town.

The legend of Ron Burgundy continues, with Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy came out in 2004, and from what I can tell, the first draft was horrible. So horrible that they had to rewrite and shoot the entire movie. The leftover original footage and other B rolls created another movie, Wake Up Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie, but people wanted a real sequel, because it quickly became a cult success after its initial success.

The sequel came quite easily! Just kidding, it took a lot of work, and lots of convincing. But eventually the money numbers worked, so they did it because people like money.

Jump
Money can literally elevate any person.

At the beginning of the film, Ron (Will Ferrell) and Veronica (Christina Applegate) are married and cohosting a news program in New York. Living the life! That is, until Ron gets fired and Veronica gets upgraded to hosting the prime time show on her own, a first of her kind in New York! This upsets Ron a lot, so they separate, and he starts living a shitty life again.

That is until he gets an offer he can’t refuse. Someone wants to invent a 24 hour news network channel, and they want Ron to fill in a time slot. What? How ridiculous. However, it pays well, so sure. He just has to reassemble the news team (Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner) and he is good to go. And win back his woman from the psychologist (Greg Kinnear). And get excellent ratings at the 2am spot to make Jack Lime (James Marsden) look bad. And survive his incredibly aggressive boss (Meagan Good).

And in the search for ratings, will he accidentally change the face of national new forever, for the worse?

Dylan Baker and Kristen Wiig and Josh Lawson are also in this movie. BUT SO ARE SO MANY OTHER PEOPLE. Oh my goodness, the cameos! I didn’t tag the cameos, but if you want to not know who to expect, skip the next part.

We have cameos from: John C. Reilly, Marion Cotillard, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Sacha Baron Cohen, Harrison Ford, Kanye West, Kirsten Dunst, Liam Neeson, Jim Carrey, and Will fucking Smith.

Sharks
And lets not forget this Shark based cameo.

I am a big fan of ridiculous comedies, and this one had me laughing a lot from start to finish. There was a part after the halfway point where I did find it a bit dull, one joke going to the extremes and lasting a lot longer than I would have liked. But overall, many jokes, much laughs, and a good continuation of the characters.

So here is my one real complaint. I am worried that this movie won’t be as hilarious for a long tim after watching, like the first movie. I was worried the sequel would be nothing more than a carbon copy of the first film, rehashing the same jokes but in different ways, playing off that nostalgia humor. I hate nostalgia/reference humor. To a certain extent, as expected, there was a lot of that. The film ended very similarly to the first one. There was a gang news fight. There was a singing scene. A sex panther joke. And there are more examples. Although I laughed during the watch, I would have preferred probably less references, and more original material.

But outside of that, this movie will make all of its production back and then some. Will hasn’t had the best movies lately, so hopefully this puts him back on the right track.

I don’t accept this as an end to the Mediocre Man Trilogy. Anchorman and Talladega Nights were the first two, with the third one rumored to be about a guy who works on porn, named Rusty Butte or something. The title themes should give it away, and the RB characters. I want that movie, damn it. Get to work, Will.

3 out of 4.

A Haunted House

“What the fuck is this shit?”

That might be you, if you had a vulgar filthy mouth. But I heard someone say that when I first saw a trailer for A Haunted House. “Did they forget to name it Scary Movie 5?!”

Of course not, it isn’t the same franchise. Especially since Scary Movie 5 is coming out in April. I am sure you know that after Scary Movie 2, the Wayans brothers left the franchise (As the major writers/producers) and went on to do their own thing. That explains how bad the rest of them were, and five will probably be.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t do horror spoofs, even though this one is jut Marlon Wayans, damn it. Sucks to be Scary Movie though, since both of these are parodying Paranormal Activity.

Ahhhhhhh
“All of these parodies make me so angry!”

Malcolm (Wayans) is pumped. The woman of his dreams, Kisha (Essence Atkins) is about to move into his house. Life couldn’t be better. Until it immediately suck. Living with a woman isn’t as sexy as he hoped. Plus, she hates his maid, poor old Rosa (Marlene Forte).

But then weird things start to happen. Meaning her keys weren’t where she left them. OH NOESSSSSS. So they install nice cameras, from Dan the Security Man (David Koechner) and his assistant Bob (Dave Sheridan). They also happen to be ghost hunters.

Why the fuck am I still describing this? We know the plot, its a parody. Who is what though may matter. Nick Swardson plays a psychic, Cedric the Entertainer a priest, and Andrew Daly / Alanna Ubach play a couple who might be into some extra curriculars.

Ahhhh
I labeled both pictures as Ahh Ahhhh. AHH is the movie acronym, and ahhhh describes each one. Hooray!

A Haunted House was exactly what I expected. As a bonus, it was also rated R. The first two Scary Movies were also rated R, and I didn’t hate them. But when the Wayans left and it went PG-13, I thought it was pointless drivel.

Does AHH have a lot of that too? Yeah maybe. But also a few amusing scenes. Sure, there are some art jokes, ome thug jokes, some joke about a gay man hitting on a straight man. But hey, these can be guilt pleasures. I generally did laugh out loud at certain scenes, and thought there was at least a couple of unexpected scenes. If you are going to watch this movie, you know exactly what you are going to get.

So yeah, fuck it, have an average rating. Welcome back Marlon!

2 out of 4.

Piranha 3DD

Despite its flaws, Piranha had its moments. One of those moments being a geologist who kicked some sort of ass.

But the end of it did leave us with a cliffhanger. Turns out that the big Piranha’s attacking the lake from way back when were actually babies. The adults were much bigger, (as we saw in the last scene a character getting killed by this many meter long fish). Alright, reason for sequel! Piranha 3DD, because of boob jokes.

Water Slide
That’s what you get for going to a water park and expecting to have a good time. Right in the face.

“Fuck your continuity”. That is what the makers of this film said. Despite the knowledge gained in the last film, the only Piranha in this film are the same size as the last film. And smaller, if they want to be. Whatever.

Maddy (Danielle Panabaker, yes from Sky High, because I apparently want to mention that movie as often as I can on this website) is a 49% owner of a water park, yay. The 51% belongs to her step dad, Chet (David Koechner), after her mom died. And well, he is turning the park into a joke of itself.

In its grand re opening, he is trying to sell sex. He fired all the former life guards, and replaced them with strippers (who are technically certified) just to look hot. Has deals to get more women to come to the park, and an adult only pool, where clothing is optional. Oh yeahhh.

Either way, turns out the Piranha’s that fucked the world up last Spring (and apparently no one has noticed moving) have migrated to the local lake, where the water park dumps its water out. According to the mad scientist (Christopher Lloyd) they may be getting confused and start to go through pipes and drains to more populated areas. Uh oh. Like the water park!?

Maddy tries to stop the opening of the park, just in case, but to no avail. And then Piranhas happen. Worst opening day ever. With the help of her best friend who is definitely not gay Barry (Matt Bush) she tries to save the day! Too bad he can’t swim. There is also asshole local cop Josh (Jean-Luc Bilodeau), best friend Shelby (Katrina Bowden) (who we will get to later…) and even David Hasselhoff, playing himself as a “lifeguard”.

Heck, even Ving Rhames returns to reprise his Oscar worth role as a deputy, now without legs after the tragic events of the first film.

Bath
There’s no way a Piranha would be in her bath tub. Right?
That’d just be silly. …Right?

Here are some spoilers. The movie ends by setting up for a third movie, like the last one. This time saying the Piranhas are evolving to maybe grow legs and grow on land. But like with this movie, I expect if there is a third, them to say “fuck you” and lie about that as well. (Despite showing one on land, like the big one last time. Bah). Also, I am disappointed with some deaths. The step dad was just stupid. Most of the others were expected. Hated the lake scene before hand too, just because the woman was just incredible dumb.

Speaking of incredible, how bout incredibly painful. The biggest WTF moment in the show happens when you realize that Katrina Bowden’s character has a Piranha inside of her (small one I guess) that chooses to not eat anything. Skinny dipping was the cause, and I will let you figure out what happened there. This doesn’t lead to anything until she has sex where…well you can figure it out.

There was some nice self parodying in there. Hasselhoff put it the best, when someone was yelling for him to help and he refused to leave his chair. Pretty much said he won’t help, they are in a dang pool, once everyone just leaves the pool they will be fine. Not his fault they are all morons. Well put Hasselhoff, clearly the best part of this movie.

The movie did had some nice moments going with it, but by ignoring the first one’s big discovery (seriously?), and other factors, it was just not as good as its predecessor. Also the credits were like 11 minutes long, with extended scenes, bloopers, and more Hasselhoff. Was bizarre.

1 out of 4.

Extract

I forgot Extract had so many people in it. Oh man.

I had never heard of this movie before randomly walking by it. But hey, a giant picture of Jason Bateman‘s head on the cover, you take notice.

But then you see that it is a movie by Mike Judge and you watch that shit as soon as you can.

Jason Bateman
Especially when you find out a major character has some crazy facial hair.

Jason Bateman plays the owner and and founder of a flavor extract company. Clearly the amount of jobs left to have for movies is running dry. Either way, he is kind of successful and living it up. But he isn’t having sex with his wife, Kristen Wiig anymore. Which overall sucks I guess.

But not as much as losing a testicle! Which happens to a worker Clifton Collins Jr., who always felt underappreciated, and well, lost a nut on the job. He doesn’t even want to sue because he likes the company too much. But. He. Lost. A. Nut. Enter Mila Kunis, a con-artist, who doesn’t mind using her body to get that monies (not like a prostitute, but kind of). She gets a job in the factory, steals some stuff, and convinces him to sue for damages using the ambulance chasing lawyer, Gene Simmons.

She also tries to get it on with Bateman, but he doesn’t want to cheat on his wife. His bartending friend, Ben Affleck, tries to convince him to hire a prostitute to seduce his wife, so if she cheats on him, he can cheat on her. He also gets a bit drugged, so agrees and they hire Dustin Milligan.

Pretty fucked up yeah. But Mila is a good con artist in this movie. Eventually everything is found out, and appropriate actions are taken. Just kidding. David Koechner is also in thi movie as a rather annoying and talkative neighbor.

And by the end, someone may die, like all good movies.

Affleck
Affleck gets to play a hipster Jesus as well.

I think this movie is very polarizing. Either you love it or hate it. So of course I say fuck that, and give it a 2. But I totally get it.

I liked the originality of it. I liked some aspects.

But at the same time there was very disappointing parts. Seemed to be missing something that I am used to having from Mike Judge. And it is hard to put a finger on it.

Usually that would be a 1 rating, but I somehow also enjoyed the ending. But still. Not the quality I’d expect overall? Very weird feelings with this movie.

So give it a shot, or not. Whatever

2 out of 4.

Final Destination 5

Final Destination 5? The Final Final Destination? (No, not really. Apparently if this did well, there’d be two filmed at the same time? Not sure if that has been decided yet.) As far as I know though, it doesn’t really matter. You can always make a new movie about a group of people who escape death, and end up dying in gruesome ways. Pretty much writes itself!

Shocked destination 5
Don’t look too shocked. Your role could have been done by anyone!

What is the big event this time? A bridge collapse. The main group of people all work for or are related to people at some company going on an outing. A nice bus and all. The main character is Nicholas D’Agosto. He has a vision of most everyone die, except for his girlfriend Emma Bell, who he manages to save. Needless to say, after he sees all this, he freaks out and saves some people from the bus (the others are like, what?). This includes his good friend, Miles Fisher, his lady friend, Ellen Wroe, and the guy at the office no one likes, P.J. Byrne. We also have hot office mate, Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, new guy who runs the factory despite age, Arlen Escarpeta, and everyone’s boss, David Koechner! Eight in all.

Eight? That’s a pretty good number of people who are going to probably die then. There is also the detective assigned to the case, Courtney B. Vance, who I only remember from being in that one season of FlashForward.

As you all know, I am not a usual horror watcher. But nothing else is really coming out this week, so I said screw it. The only other FD I have seen was the second one, and parts of the third. General knowledge of the first. I was told that this one relates to the others, and it is good to see them. But I don’t want to see them!

So I did the next best thing, read the plot outlines on Wikipedia! Do not do this. The plot outlines, in an attempt to relate all the movies, kind of spoil the ending of this movie. I didn’t know I had it spoiled, until the ending happened. And went “Oh! That was the twist! Well shit.”

For shame Wiki. For shame.

Massage
Who dies while getting a massage? Seriously?

So, I was sufficiently scared during this movie, I think. I definitely found everything to be pretty gruesome, which makes me mad that I watched this during lunch time. Filmmakers did a good job of throwing a lot of red herrings at our faces, trying to figure out just how they would die. Usually you’d be wrong.

That gymnastics scene in particular was the biggest tease. I also disliked that during the credits, they showed footage of the other movie deaths all back to back and crazy, probably just to give the 3D viewers and extra whoa! I didn’t need it all at once though, myself.

I think fans of the series would enjoy this one. The acting wasn’t the best, but I cared enough about some of the characters to make me hope they’d survive. Damn death.

2 out of 4.