Tag: Erin Moriarty

Oh, it is the spring time. Is it time for an inspirational sports movie? Shit, I didn´t know. I wasn´t ready.

The more and more inspirational sports moments they decide to turn into films, they more obscure or recent they have to grab them. When we had Million Dollar Arm a few years ago, it was literally only a couple years after the event. We used to have to wait 10+ years to get a film about the sports event in question. Hell, we finally got a Tonya Harding movie just last year.

I honestly don´t know if The Miracle Season is a current event or something really old. I just know it is a volleyball film, which is not really common at all. So it is an inspirational volleyball film to get people excited about that sport, and winning and stuff.

Want to know the last inspirational volleyball film I remember watching? Phat Beach.

Holy shit, did they find a missing Mara sister for the lead role?

First of all, get ready, this film is set in Iowa. Now, everyone is not white in the movie, but they probably had to add some people of color because reality is too scary and they want to imagine it not so intense.

The main two white girls that this movie is about are Kelly (Erin Moriarty) and Line (Danika Yarosh). She was Caroline, but hated it, so she want by Line or Liner. They were BFFs since 3 years old, and their families have been close. And now they play volleyball together, going into their senior year of high school. Their team won the state championship in volleyball the previous year, and now they are ready to repeat!

Well, the coach (Helen Hunt) is. The rest seem to be cocky and goof off, even after losing their first game. Long story short, Line dies in a scooter accident, and now the team is even more fucked. She was the captain, the center, and the life force of their program. Her dad (William Hurt) is going through the most, because his wife died of cancer a week later, but her condition the knew about.

This is a true story again, so you know most likely how this story is going to end, or else, why would the movie exist?

Also starring Jason Gray-Stanford, Burkely Duffield, and Jillian Fargey. A few other girls on the team that stand out include Lillian Doucet-Roche as the freshman, who isn’t blonde, Tiera Skovbye as the most athletic one, who you can tell from the other blondes by her hair band, and Nesta Cooper, who is someone who isn’t even white like the rest of her team.

There we go. There’s that classic sports ending movie shot.

First of all, let me note that originally I was going to rate this lower, because I was annoyed at how they were “Hollywood-ing” up a real story, which happens very often. Creating a bit of extra drama in order to keep things going, instead of sticking to the truth. Well, then I watched a 14 minute special on the events, and every part I assume was extra was real. My bad.

Secondly, here are some coincidences. This film is about the death of Line of course, and the team coming together to repeat. It is also about Kelly, her best friend, coping with their loss and turning into a leader for the team to rally behind as well. Kelly after the events of the film went on to college at Iowa State from 2011-2015, where she probably played some volleyball too.

Well, I was at Iowa State from 2012-2014 for graduate school. I was a Geophysics graduate student, and she was a microbiology student, and those two sciences shared the same relatively small building on that campus, so there is a really good chance I have walked by or seen this real life person before. Heck, I had even bought things from the Microbiology club for their fundraisers. I find it a bit bizarre that this person who went through these crazy life experiences was near my own personal existance for so long without knowing, and now they have a movie about them.

Well, Kelly went on to graduate school to be a PA, and is currently in Houston, Texas trying to finish that. Hey. I am in in Houston, Texas.

Cough. Okay. Sorry. Moving on. To talk about the actual movie? Well, the acting is really average to below average. Yarosh was insufferable as Line. Way too much, and that may have been Line in real life, but it sort of just irritated me. I was ready for her to die. They loved spending time on their grief, so they didn’t spend as much time as I would have hoped on actual volleyball.

Outside of the occasional montage, the volleyball games were basically described by the first 1-2 serves and the last 1-2 serves, without much in between. Most of the characters don’t have any discernible personality. The freshman player has the next most personality after Kelly, and that is because of her fresh-ness only.

The Miracle Season is an okay film for its accuracy to the story and its ability to make you feel a bit compelled. It is not one where you will be blown away by the acting from any party involved. It has minor issues occasionally like one near the end where the server changes in between points at a time when that totally wouldn’t happen. But again, this is our only volleyball movie for the next 20+ years probably, so it will have to do.

2 out of 4.

I’d argue that there are two really “big” coming of age indie movies competing for top dog status this summer. The bigger of the two is The Way, Way Back, as it was written by the same guys who brought us The Descendants a couple years ago. The lesser known movie is The Kings of Summer, written by Chris Galletta, who is writing his first movie.

If you are surprised that we have a first time movie writer, stop it. They are called indie films for a reason.

Indie films tend to include forest dance scenes and drum solos, right? Being in high school can suck. Why? Well, your life is changing, you feel like an adult, but you still live with your parents. You just might lash out against your parents. Like Joe (Nick Robinson). His mom died a long time ago, and his dad (Nick Offerman) is now dating. He is also a bastard and has become very strict in his single parent raising. His sister (Alison Brie) has already moved on, but he is stuck with him for at least three years more.

Patrick (Gabriel Brasso, from The Big C) has a different problem. His parents (Marc Evan Jackson, Megan Mullally) are over bearing. Not in any mean way, just nice. Way too nice. Really fucking nice. Also they are ridiculous, it is just hard to feel alive under their care.

Eventually, Joe has the idea to build a house in the woods. Not just some lame tree house either. A real house, with two stories, multiple rooms, and they can live there, by their own rules, live like MEN. You know, hunt their own food, boil their own water, the whole nine yards. Biaggio (Moises Arias) is there too, neither of them really know him, but they are afraid to tell him to leave.

We have a few kids, building a house in the woods, and attempting to live on their own. They of course will also discover a bit about themselves, their family, and maybe what it means to be a man. Potentially with the help of Kelly (Erin Moriarty), a fellow high school buddy. We also have Mary Lynn Rajskub (most well known as Heartfire from season 4 of Arrested Development) and Thomas Middleditch as the head cops on the missing kids case.

The race to grow the best pedo-stashe is on. Coming of age films tend to be hit or miss with me. They are popular for both indie and mainstream movies, so to have a great one nowadays, you really have to offer up something new. Not just another misunderstood kid with big dreams.

The Kings of Summer takes the running away story, and well, runs away with it. For the first time movie writer, his dialogue was pretty top notch. Full of memorable quotes, I found myself looking for a piece of paper in the theater just to write some of the absurdly funny things I heard.

Witty comedy doesn’t make a complete film however, so the plot has to also stand on its own. I was afraid I would be dealing with a lot of teens who thought they were god’s gift to suburbia, the standard definition of first world problems. Thankfully, I found myself agreeing with Patrick and Joe, at least a little bit, and thought leaving home made sense for both characters.

It wasn’t perfect though. No, I would have changed the ending a lot. It was a bit too cliche at that point, which made it feel off from the rest of the movie. I am also pissed off by the romance element in the film, although it is more at the naivety of youth, and not for being actually bad. In other words, it hurt me square in the feels.

But despite that, The Kings Of Summer is wickedly funny and unique. For sure, it is worthy of at least one viewing, if not two in your summer line up.

3 out of 4.

The Watch had a lot of negative press surrounding it. Unfortunately its first previews started to appear right before the Trayvon Martin shooting down in Florida. Which was done of course by someone on a Neighborhood Watch patrol. Bad timing indeed!

But really this has very little to do with the plot of the movie. Because this movie is dick jokes and aliens.

Lets count how many dicks and aliens you see in this scene.

Evan (Ben Stiller) is a normal middle aged man living in Suburbia in Ohio. He founds a lot of clubs and cares for his community. But bad things happen. Very bad things. Like the security guard at Cotsco, HIS STORE, was brutally murdered and had his skin shaved off. Pretty damn gross. He realizes the cops in the town are pretty incompetent. There are only eight, and the main two hate him (Will Forte and Mel Rodriguez). Plus they think he is a suspect, since he had the ability to get into the store!

Well damn. So Evan founds the Neighborhood Watch while his wife (Rosemarie DeWitt) is away for a weekend, but interest is limited. He gets Bob (Vince Vaughn) a rich man who loves capitalism, but has to raise his daughter (Erin Moriarty) mostly alone because his wife travels for business, and really just wants some nice man friends. There is also Franklin (Jonah Hill) who now lives with his mom, wanted to be a cop, but failed all the tests, including the mental one. And Jamarcus (Richard Ayoade) who also really wants to just hang out/fit in after a divorce, and has an Asian fetish.

This rag tag group of people are forced to do mundane things, until…Evan hits something with his car. And it has green slime! And there is a weird ball that explodes whatever they point it at, assuming they actually finger all the holes. Turns out it is Alien technology, and they might be dealing with a giant alien invasion in their small town Ohio!

I’m sure the creepy skin talking neighbor (Doug Jones) has nothing to do with it. Also Nicholas Braun is in this movie, as guy trying to get with Bob’s daughter. So you know he is going to get fucked up as well. And why does Evan not want to have sex with his own wife? Damn it, Evan.

Oh, so he lets out his steam another way? Do go on.

DICK JOKES. Dick jokes on dick jokes on dick jokes.

Honestly, I’d say that 85% of the humor in this movie was about the male genetalia. It just kept coming up, and came quite frequently. The other 15% would be spread out between some racial/ethnic humor, bromance, and then miscellaneous. But wow.

I didn’t think the plot was that bad. But a movie needs to penalized if it strikes the same funny chord as its go to mechanic. Thankfully the dick jokes were actually, mostly, well connected. But at the same time, it got quite annoying.

Vaughn played a character he always does, and Stiller basically the same. I would say Ayoade and Hill brought something different, since at least with Ayoade he hasn’t really been in an American film yet, and Hill got to play a pretty psychotic military character.

So sure, a bit disappointing, but thankfully it wasn’t complete trash.

2 out of 4.