Tag: Demian Bichir

I have never been one of those geeks super into the Alien franchise. After all, that shit is scary, and I didn’t watch horror for the longest time.

I can understand the appeal, but after Alien and Aliens, the only other film in that series I have seen was Prometheus, so there is that. Allusions and references will mean nothing to me.

So I am not excited to go into this film, but I am a bit excited it isn’t just “Prometheus 2” or anything. Because I want my scientists to be smart and not watch the opposite of that. I do want nice scares as well. But mostly, I want a shit ton of Danny McBride.

I hope this isn’t Danny McBride.

Alien: Covenant is set about ten years after the events of Prometheus, aboard the ship named Covenant. It is a colony ship, with a ship ton of bodies on board while asleep. There are also hundreds of embryos frozen and about 15 or so crew members to run the thing if problems arise or when they get close to the new planet. Lastly, they have a lovely robot helper to run their ship while they sleep in Walter (Michael Fassbender), who is totally different than David from Prometheus!

Sure enough, some bad stuff happens, their voyage gets stopped, they have to make repairs, and their captain dies! Oh no! Now Oram (Billy Crudup) is in charge, and he wants them to get back on schedule asap before more bad stuff happens. Daniels (Katherine Waterston) is the new second in command, and she was also in a relationship with the captain so she is pretty upset. Tennessee (Danny McBride) is their pilot/tech guy or something and Lope (Demián Bichir) is some sort of head of security, maybe.

While doing repairs, they received a faded distress beacon from a place not too far away, and according to scanners it is ALSO a perfect planet for them to live at. They decide it is their duty to check it out, saving them 7 years on a different awesome planet would be sweet. Once they get there though, spores, aliens, a lot of problems. But hey, they also meet David, so we get to find out what happened after Prometheus. Ain’t that swell?

And here is a bunch of the crew actors! Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, Uli Latukefu, Tess Haubrich, Carmen Ejogo, Jussie Smollett, Callie Hernandez, Amy Seimetz, and Nathaniel Dean. With maybe, MAYBE, about 2 minutes of screen time for James Franco.

Front chest bursting is so 30 years ago.

Alien: Covenant is a film that wants to explore some pretty deep questions in a hypothetical setting. It wants to talk about Rogue AI. It wants to talk about where we came from (like Prometheus before it). It wants to talk about the next stages of evolution for beings. It wants to talk about what it means to be a creator of life, a mother, without necessarily giving birth in the traditional sense. It wants to play on human emotions at the loss of a loved one (because straight up every crew member is apparently in a relationship with another crew member). A lot of good discussions and themes can arise from this film, some of which is subtle and some of which is blasted across the screen into your faceholes.

But you know what Alien: Covenant does not feel like? An Alien movie. Oh, we get a least one Xenomorph in this film, but it kind of sucks. It is defeated easily, with the smaller aliens seemingly posing a bigger challenge. And this movie isn’t scary. We got some gross scenes? Yeah, a bit, but I have seen a lot worse. We have some people flipping their shit of course. And we have a lot of crew members make terrible decisions over and over again, a big problem with Prometheus. But I never really felt scared. I never really felt the tension.

The best elements from Covenant would fall under the Drama Genre, which would be fine if that was the goal of this film, to make it a drama. This is a franchise known for changing its genre between films, and it could have really fucking worked (although, admittedly, people would probably still be disappointed). But it still tries to hype up its action and horror moments which for the most part just fall flat.

The best part of the movie is Fassbender and Fassbender, including the best scenes where he has to act with himself. I probably said something similar in the last movie about the “best parts”. But the twists feel obvious, McBride isn’t even used as a comic relief, it is setting up for a future movie (which I will note I have no idea where it really wants go with), and above all, just not as good as most people would have hoped.

But hey, Ridley Scott wants to make like, six more of these, and he is super old, so I guess that is what will happen.

Quentin Tarantino is a crazy sunuvabitch.

He has passion, you gotta agree with that. He loves movies and wants movies to be real. Christopher Nolan and him are some of the only reasons film is even relevant anymore.

Tarantino had a lot of problems leading up to The Hateful Eight. Like when his script was leaked before they even began filming, causing him to cancel it completely. After awhile, he apparently changed some things and did it eventually.

He also wanted to film the whole thing on 70mm film, but barely anyone had a projector that could play it. So he decided to just provide free cameras to almost a hundred movie theaters across America, just so people everywhere could see his film in the vision he had in his mind. I can respect that, but I also think he is a single man on a mission to move a mounain. So we will see if his lunacy gets us anywhere. Until then. H8FULL8.

“Replace more parts of words with numbers, I dare you.”

Set a few years after the end of the Civil War, and thus, after Lincoln’s assassination, The Hateful Eight is about a group of would be killers, maybe killing each other.

Namely, John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell), rocking the same facial hair he had in Bone Tomahawk, is bringing a bounty to Red Rock to get executed. Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is a very bad murderer and she has a $10,000 bounty on her head, dead or alive. Well, Ruth brings them in alive, because they deserve to have justice done to them. By hanging. Hanging justice. He is nicknamed The Hangman.

Unfortunately, they are currently racing against a mighty big blizzard and his driver, O.B. (James Park) is hoping to get him to Minnie’s Haberdashery before it hits so they can have a place to stay until it all melts. Along the way though, he runs into Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a bounty hunter with his own set of bodies heading to the same place. He is able to get a ride. But they also run into Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), son a Rebel leader who claims he is going to be the new Sheriff of Red Rock!

But when they got to Minnie’s, Minnie wasn’t there. She apparently was away to visit relatives and left Señor Bob (Demir Bichir) was left in charge. Other patrons included Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), a British literal Hangman, Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a cow puncher visiting his mom, and General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), from the Rebel side looking to bury his son.

Ruth thinks someone is lying. He thinks someone here is not who they say they are and looking to free Daisy and kill all the witnesses. People are lying, and now everyone might die because of it.

Also featuring some less hateful people, Dana Gourrier, Gene Jones, Zoë Bell, and Channing Tatum.

Tim Roth is actually just playing the real life Christoph Waltz.

The Hateful Eight feels like a play, and I love plays. It is definitely the best part of the film and it is why I might want to watch it over and over. The action is of course another big part, graphic and very violent once it gets going. Not as violent or crazy as his previous films, but it is still pretty up there.

The 70 mm version of the film, which is what this is based off of, did not feel too long at over 3 hours. It went quickly because there was rarely a dull moment. And hell, an intermission meant I could buy a drink and not torture myself for two hours refusing to leave my seat. The overture was a nice touch and of course the music throughout.

The film is tonally different over its two halves and I wasn’t as excited during the second half. The whole thing is set up as a mystery as to who is a liar and a cheat. Without spoiling, let’s just say the whole thing let me down. It was unexpected surely, but not in a good way. There were still some great acting moments in it, and some of the scenes were very tense, but damn, it just wasn’t that sexy of a reveal.

I cannot say for certain of the 70 mm actually added a lot to the film, it’d be hard to without seeing both versions. I believe the digital version is about 20 minutes shorter including the intermission, but I have no idea what they’d cut out of it.

Not Tarantino’s best work, and worst of his most recent films, but still quite memorable and worthy of multiple viewings.

The first and only time I heard about the movie Dom Hemingway was as a trailer before The Grand Budapest Hotel. The latter movie was fantastic, so that felt like a good sign for Dom Hemingway.

But the trailer? The trailer made me want to see Dom Hemingway right after I watched my Wes Anderson picture. You should watch the trailer right now. t

So, a few months and a move later, I can watch hopefully a very interesting character driven movie.

With characters who drink in the public with no regards to laws or facial hair restrictions!

Dom (Jude Law) has been in prison a long time, twelve years in fact. He hasn’t said a word about his former boss after the gig went south, but he is still kind of pissed over it all. Dom used to be the best safe cracker in the biz, now he is stuck in prison, missing his wife who died of cancer and daughter who was just a teenager when he left.

But then the call came through. Dom is free to go. So he reconnects with his old buddy Dickie (Richard E. Grant) and demands that he go see his old boss Mr. Fontaine (Demian Bichir) to get the money he is owed, plus interest, and maybe a little bit something extra for keeping quiet for so long.

But Dom? He is a drinker and a drug user. He has a lot of sex and rock and roll to catch up on thanks to the last twelve years, and his mouth and filthy habits might get the best of him. Like when he sees Paolina (Madalina Diana Ghenea), Mr. Fontaine’s girlfriend. Smoking. He wants that. He also wants to re-kindle the relationship with his daughter, Evelyn (Emilia Clarke). He also wants a shit ton of money and to never stop partying.

Good gosh, what will become of this sad little man? Also starring Kerry Condon as a very strange extra role and Jumayne Hunter as a new gang leader who might need a safe cracker.

Whatever it takes. That safe is getting opened. Maybe.

Dom Hemingway started out as everything I had hoped it would. A 1-3 minute conversation from Dom to what appeared to be the camera about his penis and how hard it was. Yes. That is exactly what I need.

But seriously, the beginning of the movie was fantastic. Dom living life up large, all the way to getting to Mr. Fontaine’s house. I thought I was on a wild ride that wouldn’t stop. Then a small twist happened, and the rest of the movie began to change as a result. Dom was left a broken shell of a man who had lost his way, with nothing going right. That part, although still acted really well, just kind of felt off from the first half. The second half definitely had some exciting moments, but it felt a bit slower and less exciting than the first half.

So that is where I am at. Jude Law? Fan-fucking-tastic. Really great. He killed this character and it was great. I want more Dom Hemmingway. I want a movie where he is just hanging out in prison for twelve years. I don’t want any character development, I just want the black comedy that I knew this thing could be.

The movie delivers on some aspects, but the ending just…loses so much interest for me. Hard to describe. But I think it failed to maintain the high bars it set early on.

Machete started out as a fake trailer in front of the Grindhouse movies, Death Proof and Planet Terror. Robert Rodriguez decided that the fake trailer needed to be made into a real movie and Machete was born! A movie that was made on purpose to be bad, it had plenty of potential, but to me just felt boring. I wasn’t impressed.

I basically forgot about the franchise until they announced both a sequel and a third film coming down the pipelines. The sequel, Machete Kills just hit theaters, but the third film really caught my eye thanks to its title of  Machete Kills Again…In Space. With a name like that, this franchise can’t be that bad!

Yeah, it looks like he is about to kill it here.

After the death of his partner (Jessica Alba), Machete (Danny Trejo) finds himself at the wrong end of the law, blamed again for a murder he did not commit. To get out of the jam, the President of the United States (Charlie Sheen / Carlos Estivez) has asked him to go on a suicide mission into Mexico. His mission? To stop revolutionary/mad man Mendez (Academy Award Nominated Demian Bichir) from sending a nuke straight to Washington DC.

Sure, a simple enough mission, but there are a lot of factors that stand in his way. Million dollar bounties, crazed heart monitors, multiple personality disorders, priests seeking redemption, a hitman called El Camaleon, brothels, space scientists that know the future, a madam with a grudge, former friends, and clones stand between him and his goal.

There are so many celebrities, trying to list them all would be insane, but I will do it anyways. Telling you their role in the film almost seems like a disservice, and plus, you probably wouldn’t believe me. The movie includes Mel Gibson, Amber Heard, Michelle Rodriguez, Sofia Vergara, Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Walton Goggins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Alexa Vega, and Vanessa Hudgens!

One of the best “jokes” in this movie is having Alexa Vega in close to nothing. Since he worked with her on Spy Kids 12 years ago.

As I mentioned before, Machete was trying to make a good/entertaining “bad movie,” in honor of all the poor quality B-movies of the 70s/80s. It is pretty hard film type to make correctly, the last one I really enjoyed being Black Dynamite. The first film had a lot of appropriate jokes for genre, but the overall plot and tone bored the crap out of me.

Machete Kills corrects these mistakes and more. First off, it was actually entertaining. Over the top action from start to finish and nonsensical plot lines that will cause you to stare at the screen in confusion. Normally that would sound terrible, unless terrible was the goal, in which case it sounds great! Machete Kills put a lot more detail into purposefully editing the film in a sloppy way to increase its humor potential. The film has a rampant disrespect for obeying the natural laws of our reality: where a broken car can drift 500 miles in mere hours, and where several days can pass in only 20 minutes.

Most of the jokes are smaller references or in the background, outside of the absurd characters themselves. Despite how outrageous everything is, the characters themselves for the most part are incredibly serious. After all, their lives are on the line. The movie sports a lot of death and violence, which is all packaged in creative ways.

Machete Kills improved a lot from the first film, but I think it still has a lot of untapped potential that it just hasn’t reached yet. Assuming the third film actually gets made, it might finally cross into the “So Bad, It’s Amazing!” territory that the series is striving for. As for now, it is not a must watch, but more of a watch eventually (maybe) type of movie.

The Miami Heat recently won their second consecutive NBA championship. A lot of people don’t like them, but that has nothing to do with this movie.

The Heat (Trailer) is a female buddy cop movie, following the style of most buddy cop movies before it. Two completely different people, having to work together for some bureaucratic reason. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.

Oh yeah, they also definitely won’t get along for most of the film.

FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) has closed more cases than any other agent in the last few years. So when news comes out that her boss (Demian Bichir) is getting promoted, she realizes that his spot is now up for grabs. Too bad she is arrogant and selfish, so much that no one else wants to work on her. Being a boss is more than being smart.

So she is sent up to Boston, to find out the secret identity of this really big drug dealer dude. In Boston, Detective Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthy) had just apprehended a small time drug dealer (Spoken Reasons), but she doesn’t realize that he is just a pawn in the chain. She also doesn’t care, because Ashburn is a [not nice woman]. Chain of command is stupid if people are going to be mean about it.

Eventually the two realize they have to work together if they are going to get anywhere, or else the bad guys win. Marlon Wayans has a small role as another FBI agent, Michael McDonald as a bad guy, and Michael Rapaport as a brother of Mullins. Basically only “M-named” actors.

Bullock is packed with guns in this movie. I don’t mean those things that fire bullets either.

Surprisingly, Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy had pretty good chemistry together even though one is a veteran actress, the other a relative newcomer to the scene. Melissa McCarthy has actually had roles in movies since 1999 (the cult hit Go), she just didn’t get really noticed until her roles in Bridesmaids and Mike & Molly. I recognize her comedy talent, I just personally think her improv isn’t as good as others might.

For example, watch the trailer. Roughly 1 minute in, she has a tiny rant to a guard in a prison, something clearly improvised and it is supposed to sound menacing/threatening, but it actually makes no sense. There is nothing humorous about it once you actually analyze it. I have only had the time to analyze it, because The Heat has only had one trailer since they started showing it roughly in November.

Thankfully the version that was in the movie was a bit better, but there were a few more examples of improv from her that just missed the mark completely.

On its own it was a decent buddy cop movie. Each successive new one just tries to outdo the last one with a new gimmick. Unfortunately this one’s “gimmick” is that they are women, which is a terrible thing to say out loud but it is true. The Heat at least earns its R-rating thanks to the words that come out of McCarthy’s mouth. The good news for those who absolutely loved the movie is that the sequel has already been announced. While it has its funny moments, I think it doesn’t stand out on its own to really differentiate it from any other buddy cop movie.

Savages!

There is a bunch of them in this town, and they are barely even human.

That is all the pop culture I can pick up from that word. Two is a fair amount, hopefully this movie gives me another.

Look at those BRUTES, those SAVAGES, sitting in California and looking fantastic. Sickens me, every time.

O (Blake Lively), short for Ophelia, is the narrator of this tale, and born rich local of Laguna Beach, California. She meets Chon and Ben, working for their pot empire. POT EMPIRE? This movie is about drugs oh no!

Chon (Taylor Kitsch) is a former marine, serving in Iran and Afghanistan, and when asked by Ben, he assured him that Afghanistan had the world’s best pot. Ben (Aaron Johnson) is a free thinker, okay hippie, with big world visions involving giving water to Africa and stuff. But also hey drugs. He has a degree in Business and Botany, and he gets Chon to get some of those seeds back to the states. They are able to grow them with great attention, giving them ridiculously high THC percentages, and make an empire in California where they are rich and can donate a lot to the world charities. Chon is also the muscle, he has a few Iraq buddies to help them out in dire situations.

They’ve been giving cutbacks to a local DEA higher up (John Travolta) for years to keep their business sailing, but when a Mexican Cartel from Tijuana wants to hire them for three years, to use their pot, resources, and people, they get a little bit worried. Especally when the offer presented by one of their lawyers (Demian Bichir) turns out to be more of a demand, and them saying no can get them in a lot of shit.

More or less, it results in the kidnapping of O from both of them. Oh who is O? Their mutual girlfriend. She sexes up everyone. And she loves them both for different reasons, but it leads to nothing bad between the guys so it should be fine. So now Chon and Ben have to try and save her, not die, avoid their really bad ass hit man Lado (Benicio Del Toro) and convince Elena (Salma Hayek), the head of the organization to let them go freely with O, at any cost.

What a fucking great character. No jokes for you, just that fact bomb.

Turns out this movie has a lot of unlikable characters in it. Pretty much no one is the type of person you’d want to root for. So it was hard to really watch the movie on that aspect, as it was a lot of gray area. Unfortunately, the character I liked the least, O, was also the narrator. The dialogue for the narration was bad, and the character was like a spoiled rich kid who has no problems, until the movie. And I don’t think really anyone would care about her, or her kidnapping and constant danger. It sucks, but its true. Let her die, I say. Solves most of the movies problems.

The other big issue I felt was the ending. It didn’t really seem to fit the rest of the movie, almost felt lame. It was different, for sure. But not what I would have wanted. If you see it, you will understand.

But other than that, great performance from Benicio Del Toro, who looked completely different in this movie. Also, Aaron Johnson? He looks ten years older at least than he did from Kick-Ass, and not at all the same. I was shocked when I realized it was the same guy.

When I first saw A Better Life I figured it would be pretty stereotypical. So I was guessing it would be the same as the others, and I’d probably just give it a 2 out of 4. You know, “well done but I have heard this all before”. Same reason why I don’t read any new Holocaust books. All the same stuff, over and over again.

The story is of an illegal immigrant (with a killer moustache) trying to make his way in LA with his younger son. He finally has the opportunity to have a secure paycheck, by buying a truck and equipment and starting his own business, instead of relying on labor corners, or whatever.

Not that killer though.

Eventually, some bad things happened, which while watching you will recognize and hope it wont. But it does. And it SUCKS. It feels bad, and you can’t fix it.

But thankfully these problems aren’t generally based on immigration policy in the US. Instead the overall focus of this movie is on the relationship between a father and a son. At this point in life, the son is getting to the age where he may quit school, join gangs, and ignores his fathers advice. It is a story of the father who just wants to reconnect with the boy he once knew.

I didn’t realize it while watching, but the dad is played by Demián Bichir, who played the Tijuana Mayor in a few seasons of Weeds. Wow!

This was originally to show the dude’s stache, and the kid, but man, I think that guy in the background is making a face at the camera.