Tag: David Zayas

Welcome back to Musical Week!

The realest reason for Musical Week is that this December had two musicals coming out only a week apart, which meant I only had to find 3 more. Into The Woods was yesterday, and Annie is today!

When I first heard there was an Annie remake, I was mostly indifferent. I didn’t know if we needed a new one, but hey okay. But when I heard she wouldn’t be a tap dancing ginger, but a BLACK GIRL? I was still mostly indifferent. At least there was a change for the remake so that it wasn’t just rehashed material. It would allow them to do a more modern version, not one set in the way back early times.

But then I saw the first trailer. I knew something was weird and different and off from it. And it is an unfortunate change. But one I will clickbait tactic and wait to talk about at the end of the review.

And it isn’t just that when I do this dance, I always look like I have to take a pouty poop.

Little Orphan Annie (Quvenshane Wallis). No, wait, fuck that. She is just a foster kid, not an orphan. She has parents, she just doesn’t know who they are or when they will be back for her. She just knows that maybe, one day, she will see them on a Friday night at a local Italian restaurant eating cannolis.

But while being chased one day by some jerks, she falls in the street and almost gets run over! But thankfully, a man is there to pick her up and chastise her. That man is Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx), the owner of a NYC based phone company that is hugely successful, so he is totally rich, and he is also running for mayor! He isn’t doing that great though. He is super behind. Well, footage goes out of him saving Little Foster Girl Annie on the internets, which gives him a bump up. His campaign manager (Bobby Cannavale) convinces him that if he temporarily takes Annie in and make him seem more charitable.

Annie is a free going individual who understands this is just for publicity, and she is cool with that. Getting to live in a rich house for a few weeks? Hells yeah. She doesn’t want him for a dad anyways, she wants her real parents, who will totally come eventually. Maybe tomorrow even. Or the tomorrow after that.

What could go wrong? Also featuring Rose Byrne, Cameron Diaz, David Zayas, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Stephanie Kurtzuba.

No, trust me, I counted them. Definitely 76 trombones.

Let’s talk about…pop music. Some of it is good, a lot can be bad, even more of it is catchy. That is what this version of Annie is, for the most part. Just pop music broadway. And that is my major complaint. The songs don’t feel as natural as musicals usually strive for. It didn’t have that extra bellow or personality behind the notes that made me care about the lyrics and not just nod my head to a tune. Kids in general like all kinds of music, so a different sound to all of the sounds doesn’t feel warranted.

This is the second thing I have seen Wallis in, the first being Beasts Of Southern Wild, which I kind of hated. She is fine as Annie. She really is. She has charisma and she is charming and she carries that strong independent feeling with her the whole movie.

Everyone else? Ehhh. Byrne did decent. Diaz only annoyed me.

And Foxx. Come on, Foxx. I know you can sing. I remember Gold Digger quite vividly. Was your role in that song fake? I am starting to believe it. You had passion in your lines and feeling in your voice. Every song with Jaime Foxx is terrible. His voice is ridiculously soft for most of them, so I felt like I had to strain to hear him and there is just nothing of substance behind any of them. I kind of felt he was just talking his lines. Maybe they accidentally put in the mumble take? They are just down right terrible.

But you know what bugs me the most? The finale, when they re-did Tomorrow? Despite how terrible I thought the music was in the movie and thus how bad the movie was, it still made me tear up. Just a little bit. Great lyrics can do that. Balloons help.

So who is to blame for this? Will Smith and Jay-Z. They are producers, must be their fault.

It has taken me a long time to watch The Expendables, mostly because it and Eat, Pray, Love came out on the same day as Scott Pilgrim vs The World in theaters. Both of which did better in the box office, despite my fanboyism declaring that SP was clearly the best movie. So, in order to make up for it, I had to do the SP review before at least one of those movies. Hooray!

Well, I know ONE cast member who is excited.

The Expendables are a mercenary group for higher, and has quite a few of the names mentioned in them. Lead by Sylvester Stallone, and Jason Statham, it also features Jet Li, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren, and Randy Couture. Each having their own specializations of course, because that’s how elite teams works.

They are sent to (somewhere in South America), to take down a dictator played by David Zayas. Eventually Mickey Rourke joins their team as well. Steve Austin is a hired muscle bad guy too! But where do Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger come in?

Arnold is the leader of a rival group, who already has a mission lined up, so he lets the Expendables take this one. Willis is the man hiring them. So there is one scene with those two and Stallone, and that is all you will get of those two. So, if that is your draw? Well, ignore the movie.

So yeah. Plot is basically that. Lot of action, lot of killing, and the heroes win out at the end of the day. I think what makes a better story is who didn’t make the film!

John-Claude Van Damme was supposed to play a major role, but didn’t want to. But he regrets it now and will be in the sequel. Terry Crews role went through 3 people before him (Wesley Snipes, Forest Whitaker, and 50 Cent). And the role that Willis landed was first given to Arnold, and then offered to Kurt Russell, but I guess he was too cool to do one scene in a movie.

Really, all that does is make me wish original people got their roles. There’d be more bigger famous names, less new guys (who the hell is Randy Couture??).

Some guy who loves puppies?

In terms of plot, its is pretty weak. In terms of tons of action, and throw backs to the “classics” in the 80s and 90s, it does well. This is one of those films where you will know if you will enjoy it before going to see it. Really not much else to say about that.

13 in a few ways reminded me of the movie Mean Guns. Okay. Barely. But lets just say people die, and there is money available in both movies.

Ice-T isn’t in 13. But 50 Cent is.

The beginning of this movie is pretty slow (and arguably the ending). Sam Riley, some no name, is an electrician at some dude’s house. Dude dies though. For some reason or another, he opens his mail and sees a message with a key, telling him to go to a lockbox. He does, finds another message and a train ticket. At this point, he is like, fuck it, lets do this shit. Despite not knowing anything, he keeps going along with the checkpoints, getting frisked, searched for wires, etc. And you know what? He is fucked.

He is now taking part in a weird “tournament” where very little skill is required, just luck. A group of about 20 or so individuals, complete with numbers on their shirts (guess which number is our main guy?) pretty much play russian roulette. They are made to stand in a circle, each with one bullet, spinning chambers and all, and pointing their gun at the person in front of them. When a light goes on, they shoot. If they survive, congrats! If not, well dead.

Why is this? Because of gambling! Lot of people are watching these games, making very high stake bets. I couldn’t really understand most of the betting terminology though passed around. Each shooter has a handler to help them through the rounds, and someone who represents them for bets and what not. 50 Cent had brought in Mickey Rourke to participate. They have an interesting side story themselves.

Jason Statham brought in his brother (for the fourth time) and Alexander Skarsgård ends up helping main guy. At the same time, David Zayas is playing a detective looking for this underground gambling ring (he is good at being a detective I guess). So overall, there are three rounds, each with increasing bullets. At the end, 2 people are randomly selected to stand face to face in a duel, with 3 bullets.

Yes, this is all for gambling. Yes people die. But hey, if you survive until the end you get lots of money too. That makes it okay?

I will admit, I think this poster is pretty cool.

So the acting isn’t the best. But you probably expected that. This is a pretty low budget movie. It is probably too long at 90 minutes. The scenes to get to the gambling arena place took awhile. But the tournament, I just described it, doesn’t take that long either. So the ending after the tournament, if not completely expected, is kinda of slow too. Nothing unpredictable happens after it either. So that kind of sucks. This is one of the times I would have preferred a 75~ minute movie or so. Or, if they wanted, they could have had a lot crazier good acting, in regards to how the different “contestants” were handling the pressure of the game.

But this movie if anything was interesting for the majority chunk of it, and I like that it tried something new, if not horrible to think about.

Science fiction! Aliens! LA getting fucked over, again. These are the thoughts that I had about this movie before I knew what it was about. Which is pretty much true.

One of the many times LA has been fucked over, in recent years.

First off the movie was definitely beautiful on the Blu-Ray. Top notch cameras and CGI work. Technically this is just another alien invasion story, but this time they seem to include no battle ready war vets, no battle ready army people, nothing. Just a few regular people. The actual cast list on this thing must be low, minus random party people, random people on roofs, etc. Never really pay any attention to them anyways.

Skyline is the title, more or less, because I guess the ships are in the sky? It could be better. The main lead is Eric Balfour, but other people are played by some of America’s favorite TV stars. Detective Angel Batista from Dexter, and Dr. Turk Turkleton from Scrubs.

These group of regulars and some ladies find themselves in a big Las Vegas penthouse/hotel thing, when Aleins come down! They have crazy blue lights, and when people stare at them, they tend to kind of ‘lose their mind’ and walk towards the stuff. Bad things. In fact, that was a pun because these bad boys tend to steal brains. Why? I try not to spoil shit, so stop asking.

The ending is kind of ehh though. They could have did what they wanted, without doing all that they did. They did just too much so that they inadvertantly started a new story, and then just stopped it. And by stopped it, I mean the ending credits flashed scenes that happened next too, which was just annoying. Small movements, and that is it. Some bullshit way of setting up a sequel, that may or may not happen. YOU DON’T HAVE TO JUST STOP SUDDENLY TO SET UP SEQUELS GUYS, STOP DOING THAT. But should there be one, it will take on an entirely different tone from the first film. Hopefully less Eric Balfour too, who just has a face that makes it seem like he will rape everyone.

Bet you were expecting a picture of Flynn here, weren’t you?

I think generally I give every movie 1 less rating if the ending made me mad/felt incomplete. So there ya go.