Tag: Edwin Hodge

When do you all wanna go? Tomorrow? Sure. Tomorrow will never be here, so that works, I am a fan of procrastinating war.

Unfortunately, The Tomorrow War has nothing to do with procrastination, although it uses something procrastinators wish they have.

See, this is a war that takes place somewhere in the future, not the present. You know, like the concept of tomorrow! So this is a war with time travel, but it shouldn’t be anything like whatever the fuck was going on in Tenet.

Back to procrastinators. Don’t you wish you had a time machine to go back and slap yourself into doing something before a project got overwhelming? Hells yeah.

I said slap, not shoot, what the fuck dudes. 

It was a day like any other day. People were doing sports watching on the TV, and then…and then…a large portal appeared from nowhere. A human lady came out and so did a lot of soldiers. They had a message. They were in a war in the future, against aliens. And they were definitely losing that war. A war that was going to kill every remaining soldier. So they needed help, recruits from the past, so that they could have more people for fighting. Oh shit.

Dan Forester (Chris Pratt) is just a science teacher during all this, but sure, he was in the military before. But retired now. The war first asked for the actual armies around the war, and then volunteers, and then sure enough, drafts happened. Not everyone was eligible to go to the future. They had to be scanned and matched with the history of the future, to make sure bringing that person to the future (and them potentially dying) wouldn’t alter the future in a way that ruins everything.

Dan has a wife (Betty Gilpin) and little girl (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) but sure enough, draft bells still came to his doorstep, and he was enlisted. Each term is only meant to be a week long, after about a week of training. If they survive, they get automatically sent back to their time line, richer, and won’t be picked again. But in Dan’s group, everything gets messy. They are sent to the future without full training, so it is up to him and one other to keep his team of mostly untrained people slightly together to help out the best they can, and they are thrown right into the fray.

Can they save the future?…By fixing the past? And stuff?

Also starring Yvonne Strahovski, J.K. Simmons, Sam Richardson, Jasmine Matthews, Edwin Hodge, Keith Powers, Mary Lynn Rajskub, and Mike Mitchel.

It is like we are glancing at the strangest Parks and Rec and Chuck crossover ever.

A sci-fi action movie has a lot of easy potential to just turn into a generic action flick with stranger weapons or people being killed. A lot of films have done it. The movie has to say something, or offer some nice twist. Give me something good to eat, a famous children’s rhyme once said.

To break down this film, I would say I did enjoy the beginning, the first arrival, the draft, the logic, the training. And even when they were first sent to the future. But real quick after that first sort of mission, it went real hard into generic pewpews for me. There were some plot scenes that mattered, but for a film that is 140 minutes, a not so insignificant chunk of it it doesn’t do a lot for me. However, the ending? I did enjoy the ending/final act/set piece of the movie. It took it away from the plot of the rest of the film, settings changed, and it gave me a fresh look on the action and the events and by then, it featured mostly just characters I could care about.

The ending saved the whole thing for me, that was trending pretty average in the middle, almost towards bad. But at this point, I think The Tomorrow War is actually a movie I could imagine watching (shock) a second time!

Pratt has perfected his twist of an action star on us, although I still prefer him to be a bit more goofy. I haven’t seen Strahovski in awhile, and I am bit disappointed that Gilpin was just given a generic house wife role. More importantly, with the time travel element, it never became confusing. The rules were pretty straight forward, and I don’t believe they broke any of them in getting to the end of the story.

We haven’t had a big rush of new sci-fi action films lately, or at least ones that were big enough for people to notice (I saw a few indie sci-fi action duds). Is this thing on par with films like The Thing or Starship Troopers? Nah. But it has a straightforward enough message and is entertaining in its own rights, so it is by far a passable entry into this genre.

3 out of 4.

The Purge franchise is a weird one. It was extremely unique in concept and it had the ability to go in so many ways. The Purge received mix reviews and I enjoyed the crap out of it. The Purge: Anarchy received slightly better mixed reviews and I enjoyed the crap out of it.

But I know there is a lot of potential in this as a franchise. Especially if they don’t try to tell a single story over and over again in different films. Give me different characters, different unique settings, and see how this shit went down. Maybe, just maybe, eventually give me that prequel film I know you are just dying to get out. But only one damn it.

The Purge: Election Year apparently wants to try and end it. They say this could be the final purge night due to (plot) reasons which will be noted below. But if anyone imagines this is actually the final Purge movie, they are probably delirious.

Oh well, I just hope they are more subtle about certain aspects than with Anarchy, where they literally had a no-name government character explain it all in the last five minutes of the film.

This one technically spells out the Purge for us as well.

Alright, I had to do a bit of math because they didn’t want to give me the year, but I think this is set in the year 2035. That is a really long time from now. The first Purge was in 2021 and Anarchy was 2022, so recurring characters are 13 years older and the Purge itself has been happening for 18 years. So alright, HUGE jump into the future, a lot of things happened I guess.

This is about Senator Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell), someone who has dedicated the last 18 years of her life to politics and ending The Purge for good. Why? Well, during the first purge (I assume, or else this takes place even more in the future), he family was tied up, tortured, and she was the only one left alive thanks to a sadistic game. Oh okay yeah, that seems like a good reason to hate it. She is an independent Senator, but people love her, and damn it, she is now running for president. She would be the first President that isn’t a member of the New Founding Fathers party since The Purge started.

She is running against a guy (Kyle Secor) who also is an actual Minister, for not so on the nose comparisons. Her head of security though is Leo (Frank Grillo), from that last movie! I mean, sure, this means that it is literally like a decade later or something, but whatever, he is still pretty good at thinking on his feet and killing bad dudes. But security isn’t too bad, what with the low crime rates and all.

Oh shit, guess what! There is a Purge in March, like normal! And the New Founding Fathers have heard the concerns of the citizens and decided to lift the clause saying that government officials Class 10 and Higher are no longer immune to the Purge. Timing is everything of course, because they want to totally just kill Roan and make the election an easy one. Roan of course refuses to go to an underground bunker and instead deck out her house like a normal American.

Oh and there is another plot. Joe (Mykelti Williamson) runs a grocery store and his Purge insurance premium went up thousands of dollars the day before the Purge. So now he can’t just let his store get robbed and get it paid for. He is going to wait up on the roof, joined by his business partner Marcos (Joseph Julian Soria). There is also a girl (Betty Gabriel) who rides around in a specialized ambulance to help out despite no protection. And a girl (Brittany Mirabile) who really wants a candy bar. And Edwin Hodge returns again, this time as the leader of the main resistance movement!

No one has been this obsessed over candy bars since Bill Murray in Little Shop of Horrors.

The Purge: Election Year is arguably the weakest film in the series, despite what people say about the first film. Horror is only sort of an element here, it is replaced even more with just bloody gun fights and action sequences. The horror scares that exist aren’t so much the depravity of human beings, but more just people jumping out of the dark.

I will say that this film does the best “world building” of any in the series. They had smaller elements in Anarchy, but on almost every street we saw glimpses of people purging in grotesque and eerie ways. It added unique moments to the franchise. On the other hand, all of the creepy and disturbing moments that are advertised in the trailers and posters are mainly bit parts in the actual movie. The people dressed like Washington, Lincoln, Liberty? That scene was maybe 2-3 minutes only. No, the real bad guys just came from an actual group of soldier like people just trying to get the Senator.

This film is also anything but subtle. Obviously they haven’t been doing a good job at it before, but it really doesn’t give a fuck this time around. We even get a board room scene of politicians trying to figure out how they will get back at the senator.

Here is a list of random weird things in the film: Election Day is apparently in May now, they show the results and call it somehow early in the morning when people just start voting, the movie seemingly glorifies gun violence while shaming the purge at the same time, an annoying amount of misplaced morality in the final act of the film.

But also, what the hell is this movie being set more than decade after Anarchy? What do they have to gain by forcing this story so much forward? I can only assume future Purge films are going to be awkward filler telling non related stories (which again, I am fine with), or even worse, tell us about a post-Purge America and just make this a slightly scary regular action flick. No idea their end game, but clearly they don’t either.

Election Year introduces some nice concepts. Like foreigners traveling to America just to kill and leave. And random acts of Purging. But it loses a lot of the horror touch and doesn’t know how to be subtle if their life depended on it. The movie is still an okay adventure for maybe a single viewing, but harping on morality without giving good reasons for it just kind of piss me off.

2 out of 4.

Found footage films get a lot of hate. So much that now when any movie is filmed by a character in that movie, that is what it is called regardless of the reason. Most of the time it is a simple style reason. But because The Blair Witch Project was first, that places this silly title on to the genre. Then people get nitpicky, especially if no one finds the footage. I had to note in my review of Into The Storm that just because it was camera, doesn’t mean that it was found footage, but hey, people still raged.

For what it is worth, it looks like As Above, So Below night be a found footage standard horror film too. Found Footage films that are true to the word are annoying, because they usually mean no survivors. Knowing there is no survivors can be annoying. Back in the day, lots of people survived horror films. More and more recently they seem to want to make it one or no survivors.

Oh well. Hopefully based on the setting it is at least full of history?

And hopefully this is the biggest hole in the movie.

I guess it is based on history. History…and magic!

Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) is a young archaeologist and scholar, with several degrees. More than one would expect for someone so young. Her father helped pick out her career path and was big in the field. However, some say he went mad trying to discover the true location of the Philosopher’s Stone. That’s right. They want immortality.

Well, after going to Iran and finding out some Rosetta Stone like artifact that would allow her to decipher a code, she heads back to Paris where the one and only Nicolas Flamel died. Rumor has it that Flamel achieved immortality by being a cool alchemist and discovering the Philosopher’s Stone, which also made him super rich! And since then people have wanted to find him or find the stone to get some of that wealth action.

Scarlett isn’t doing it for money. She is doing it for science. Along with Benji (Edwin Hodge), a man who wants to make a documentary on the search, and her good friend George (Ben Feldman) (who can also translate some stuff for her), they are going to scour Paris looking for it!

But, below Paris? That means the Catacombs! Which have only been partially explored still. It is really easy to get lost down there and lose track of where you are going. Would be scary without a guide to get them to where they need to go. Like Papillon (François Civil) and his two friends (Ali Marhyar, Marion Lambert)! They know those catacombs and the superstitions behind them.

Pro Tip 3: Crawling on bones is probably not bad luck.

For what it is worth, only parts of this movie could be considered found footage. Multiple cameras and people with cameras dying, you are going to have cameras being left behind. So technically someone can find those.

I also thought at times things were pretty scary. Based on the score and framing you can tell when something spooky was about to jump at you, so I might have looked far to the side of the theater, or behind me to make sure no one was about to jump on me in real life. Going to a theater in the slums that is a real fear.

Also, at times the movie felt a bit intelligent. They were doing a lot of smart things, which is good because the two main leads are supposed to be smart characters. So that is nice. A lot of leaps of logic by the end though.

As Above, So Below was a strange movie. It was interesting in that it was unique and felt more like a thriller early on. I had some scares. By the end it was pretty dang crazy and felt harder to follow. Everything they were doing made sense, sure, but as to why it made sense is the bigger question.

Overall, a good use of the “found footage” and an okay movie.

2 out of 4.

Originally, I felt that the ad campaign for The Purge came a bit later than most movies. I didn’t hear about it or see the trailer until Evil Dead, which was in March!

But they really ramped up the ad campaign in the last few weeks, almost to annoyance. Needless to say (because I am a coward), the trailer frightened me, and gave me great hope that this movie would provide scares along with philosophical debates about ethics, morals, and the human spirit.

The year is 2022 and America is a peaceful country! Unemployment is less than 1%, and there is basically no crime. Why? Because we have changed the way America works! Every year, for 12 hours, everything is legal in the United States. Murder, theft, you name it. No police or firefighters will be on duty, everything is fair game. It lets people vent out their frustrations, and become wild animals if they so choose.

A lot of rich people choose to stay inside with fancy security systems. Like James Sandin (Ethan Hawke), a fancy security systems salesman. He has the fanciest securest house on the block, because of his profitable year, so his wife (Lena Headey) and two kids (Max Burkholder, Adelaide Kane) are set!

But once The Purge begins, the son sees a homeless man (Edwin Hodge) running down the street. He noobs it up, opens the door, and lets the homeless man in. This opens an unfortunate can of worms when an unruly mob of masked college students clamor outside of their villa, wanting to get their purge on. The polite leader (Rhys Wakefield) gives them the chance to turn the homeless man in, and they won’t attack the family. But if they wait too long, they will tear down their walls and kill everyone inside. Oh snap.

Looks like we have quite an ethical conundrum on our hands. Can they willingly send out a homeless man to his death? Can James willingly let a man die, if the life of his family is potentially on the line?

I mean, he looks trustworthy, that polite leader. The first thing I noticed about The Purge is that it is almost painfully short. 85 minutes in length! That is usually a warning sign. That means the plot doesn’t last long enough to fill a full movie. Or they realize the idea gets old really quick.

But the length was really appropriate for the plot, and I never felt like it dragged too much. There was some long scenes that were just heavy in suspense, but when you are wandering around your house in the dark, looking for strangers, you aren’t just going to run around every corner.

It was somewhat predictable, with the plotlines, yet equally surprising. I loved watching Ethan Hawke go on a kill streak to save his house. I would have stood up and cheered, if I didn’t respect normal movie watching practices.

It could have delved more into the ethical nature of the entire Purge, but I liked that it used subtle features to tell us the backgrounds of various characters, without outright saying them to our face. I do think they harped on the idea of murder too much, when other laws, like downloading music and stealing a car are just as legal. Time to get the misses some new bling, I say.

The movie is full of jump scares with only a few scenes that made me leave my seat, but I think it still is an interesting addition to the horror genre.

3 out of 4.