Tag: Fucking Finally

Today we are going to flash back to the year 2010. Animal Kingdom was nominated for a shit ton of awards, including an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Not only was it nominated for a shit ton of awards, it also won a shit ton of awards. It is a highly decorated, Australian crime drama film.

Fast forward a years, to the end of 2011. I saw Animal Kingdom in a Blockbuster on Blu-Ray for sale. I bought it, thinking it looked interesting and determined I would watch it shortly. I mean hey, it won awards, it must be good!

About a week later, I was about to make good on my promise, put it in the PS3 and started to watch it. Twenty minutes later, I had to stop the film as I realized I had no idea what I was doing, I was too busy multi tasking, and then I got tired and said I would get back to it eventually.

WELL EVENTUALLY IS FINALLY HERE TODAY, FOLKS! I have owned it on Blu-Ray for almost four whole years and I have wanted to watch it since I bought it. Clearly, there is no better film I could have picked to showcase on the last day of my Fucking Finally week.

Given the title, it should come to no surprise to you that everyone runs around on all fours.

This is a story about a family. A family who all happen to be criminals.

J (James Frencheville) lives with his Mum. Or at least he did until she OD’d. Now he is going to movie into a home with his grandmother, Smurf (Jacki Weaver). Don’t worry, that is just a nickname.

Also in the house are a few of his uncles! There is Baz (Joel Edgerton), good at robbing places. There is Craig (Sullivan Stapleton), who sells drugs and makes quite a living off of them. The oldest uncle, Pope (Ben Mendelsohn) is not in the home, he is in hiding and wanted by the police. And the youngest uncle is Darren (Luke Ford), who kind of just exists and does what he is told.

Somehow, with this noble family of thugs, a bad thing happens. Baz gets shot and killed by the police, for “no reason.” This pissed off the brothers. They wanted to get even and kill a couple cops. And using J to steal a car, they set up a trap and got their revenge.

Well, now J is involved with his family way deeper than he ever planned. Suddenly, a detective (Guy Pearce) is investigating them. They have a family lawyer (Dan Wyllie) telling him to not say a thing, everyone assuming he will be the weak link that gets them nailed.

J just wants to hang out with his girlfriend, Cole (Laura Wheelwright). And more importantly, he doesn’t want to die from crooked cops, angry family, or AIDS. He didn’t mention the last one, I am just assuming.

She has the grandma sweet guilt look down pat.

[Editor’s note: The ending of this review was lost hours after I originally wrote it. The ending of this review might be shit as I try to badly recreate it. It just sucks ya know?]

First and obvious question, was the film worth the wait? Yes, thank goodness, it was still an enjoyable film. Now I will admit, one of the main reasons I still wanted to watch it was because of Edgerton. I didn’t know who Edgerton was when I first tried to watch this movie because I hadn’t yet seen Warrior. But now that I know him, I want to see more of his movies. Little did I know his character would die in the first 15 minutes. Oh well.

Acting wise, everyone did a pretty good job. I am happy it focused a lot more on the drama aspects instead of an action movie. The first 45 minutes were a bit slower than I’d like, but the last hour was still captivating despite the lack of “pew pews.”

I am happy to report that I don’t regret buying the Blu-Ray. It adds some prestige to my shelf, as I don’t have many Australian films anyways.

Man on Wire is another documentary I have inexplicably just avoided. I blame the year it came out, 2008. Right now I am only watching things from 2010 and on! A five year window is very important for my website to feel modern and fresh. If you ever google recommended good documentaries, Man on Wire will be a relatively recent one always recommended, along with Grizzly Man.

Needless to say, it has almost always been on Netflix as well. A very easy documentary to get access to. There is also the ticking clock element here, with The Walk coming out in a couple weeks. You know, the movie version of this same old story that was probably only made because of how allegedly good the documentary was. I have to watch this, because a film based on a film is totally something I should do as a reviewer. Nothing like reading a book before the movie. And that is why I chose Man on Wire for my 4th day of Fucking Finally week.

The documentary is about Philippe Petit, an eccentric French man, who is really confident in his balance.

And he had dreams. He had dreams of showing the world how good he could balance. He was just a guy who had a type rope and would walk it in the park, getting better over time. But he wanted to reach for the stars. He wanted to tight rope walk on national land marks.

Kind of like my own goal to take a poop in every National park in America. It is just something that can drive someone to do weird things.

Hey look. A dude on a string!

How weird? Well, homeboy went and tight roped on top of the Notre Dame chapel thing. Kind of cool. But not that impressive. Then he went to Australia and did it on top of the Sydney Opera House. Boring. Gravity works differently in Australia because they are all upside down. We all know that.

Those things were all for the kids though. His real life long goal was the Twin Towers in NYC. He knew it when he first saw a picture of them in a magazine before they were finishing being built. That would be his greatest life moment. One day.

So he did it! Before they were even finished. With many months of planning, sneaking, with a group of friends and acquaintances to help him pull of the best art crime of the century. Man on Wire is his story, told by him and his friends (yes, still alive!), through reenactments and real footage.

And despite knowing the outcome (success, good job!), it is still somehow unbelievably tense. The music department does a fantastic job, along with the reenactments of keeping away from the guards in their many trips to make their plan work.

But the reason this documentary works is Philippe Petit himself. This man has a huge ego and is clearly in love with himself. But he is also giddy and excited in the telling of his own story (I would be too if it made me world famous and helped me not have to really work much again). His enthusiasm is contagious. He doesn’t even sit still for the interview, getting up several times to make a point more clear by acting things out.

Petit is the kind of guy you invite to a party, assuming you don’t care if it becomes all about him.

Petit is the kind of guy who can make a really good sandwich, and will share it with you, but only one type of sandwich.

Petit is the reason this documentary is so well loved and a fantastic thing to view and listen to. I hope Joseph Gordon-Levitt can pull him off!

Movies in 2014 brought us some incredibly new and wonderful experiences. Boyhood took 12 years to film, doing a little bit each year to watch the actors grow old. Birdman was edited in a fine way to make it seem like just one long continuous shot. Both fantastic films, my 1 and 2 from the year.

But there was another movie that was unique last year that interested me. The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby. On its own, it doesn’t seem like that innovative of a film. However, it is collectively three films in one.

On the surface it is just about a relationship. Specifically, the three versions are called Him, Her, and Them. Him is the plot from mainly the guy’s point of view and Her is the girl’s point of view. Them is a more typically told story, telling bits and pieces of their sides and is a much more standard film.

And I wanted to see it all of 2014. I wanted to watch it as soon as it hit Blu-Ray. It has been on Netflix for months, all three parts! Welcome to Day 3 of my Fucking Finally week.

First comes love…

Conor (James McAvoy) and Eleanor (Jessica Chastain) have had a long relationship. They even married! Serious stuff. But no one would describe their lives as remarkable. Eleanor came from an academic family, but left her PhD program in Anthropology, when she got pregnant. Conor is the son of a restaurant God in NYC, who also has bad relationships, and is now attempting to run his own restaurant without his dad’s help.

But then one of the worst things happen. They lost their baby boy, really young. Their grief came in different ways, driving a wedge between them. After a few months, Eleanor wants to take a brake from their relationship, frustrated where things are going, and that is really where our story begins.

In Him, we mostly get to see Conor flailing about trying to deal with his emotions by repressing them like a motherfucker. They still come out in bursts, like when he has attacked unruly customers. His best friend and chef (Bill Hader) is even getting sick of his shit.

Conor sort of starts to stalk Eleanor a little bit as well, following her around but never having the courage to talk to her until he resorts back to a kid in middle school and passes her a note, quite creepily. His story also features Ciaran Hinds as his father, and Nina Arianda as an employee who has feelings for him.

Then comes stalking after heartbreak and sadness…

In Her, we don’t even see Conor for the until the awkward scene above. James McAvoy is barely in this film and it is definitely all about Eleanor.

It starts with her injury and then her going on her own to the hospital. Eleanor decides to go home with her parents and sister. The mom (Isabelle Huppert) is French through and through, always seen with a glass of wine. Her dad (William Hurt) is still a psychologist at the local university, and her younger sister (Jess Weixler) has a little boy of her own, but no man or boyfriend in her life. She was already living with the parents still. Her family tries to get her help, but can’t seem to provide enough help on their own, the awkwardness of the whole situation. Some psychology degree, am I right?

So she does go to the local college to take a few classes. There she develops a nice bond with another psychology professor (Viola Davis), who is able to talk to her like a real person about normal things, since she knows nothing about Eleanor’s last few months. Her time alone allows Eleanor an attempt to find herself, and interact with Conor on her own terms in her own ways. Slowly, surely, and eventually full of hope.

In Them, it is the longest of the films at just over 2 hours. However, it is literally just everything you seen before. You still get the scenes between them, but this time you also get some of their individual scenes.

Them is packaged in a way so that it can be their complete story in a regular time frame for a regular movie. A movie about sadness and grief and how two different people cope. Technically, some of the scenes between them we see from a few different angles, but it is just a cram packed version with less individual detail on each character. Although, when watching it, it still felt like it featured a lot more of Her than Him.

Then comes alcohol to end all of the sadness!

Five hours, twelve minutes. That is how long watching these three movies took overall. That is if you want the full experience. The good news? You don’t have to see all three for the full experience!

In fact, you shouldn’t watch all three, and definitely not in the same week. You should only watch Him and Her, or Them, not all three. If you just watch the first two, you will get a very unique experience and you will get it in three hours, nine minutes. A much more reasonable amount of time. If you are feeling lazy or want a very regular saddish drama, then just go for Them. Its like a not very effective cliff notes.

Now, I watched them in Him, Her, and Them order because it just seemed to make sense. I knew the films were about the woman leaving, so it makes since to keep some mystery and watch Him before Her. Doing so allowed the film to answer questions are different times and felt like the best experience.

This only matters if you care about my recommendation of course. The best experience would just be Him and Her, no Them, because it is mostly repetitive. It sucks that I cannot wipe Him/Her from my memory before Them to give an unbiased review of it. But Them on its own didn’t feel like a great movie. Obviously I had the issues of it being full of scenes I had already seen (does that sound weird?), but it also cut out a lot of other scenes that I felt were necessary.

That’s right. Watching the condensed two hour version felt lacking. Shocking discovery, I know.

Them is Shit. Him and Her combined are a good experience. If you were going to watch just one of Him and Her, it won’t be good. It would just be odd and you don’t want to be odd.

Oh yeah, for whatever reason, the movies end differently. I have no idea why this happens, but Her has the best ending, in my ever so humble movie reviewer opinion.

Joe Dirt: Cult Classic, Classically Bad, or just a shit movie?

Hard to say, depends on who you ask. I would argue that it had a few redeeming jokes, could have been good, but overall, just a shit movie. Which is sad, because I tend to just feel sorry for David Spade more than anything. I liked Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. Or at least a few redeeming jokes/scenes. Fuck. So I guess I just feel bad overall. He probably just misses Chris Farley.

And then we got Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser. Was it wanted? Hard to say.

But it exists and it was released exclusively on Crackle, because Sony went and financed the film. So you can watch it in all 480p glory with commercials, right now. Which is why this is day 2 of my “Fucking Finally” review week.

480p, because if any higher, you could tell that the hair is not actually a wig, but his real hair!

This sequel takes place not at all directly after the first film, and not just because I don’t remember how the first film ended. But Joe (Spade) and Brandy (Brittany Daniel) are still together and they even got married. Yay! You knew that from the picture above.

Things were going well, technically. He even got Brandy pregnant to make a little Dirt. Turns out Brandi was actually popping out triplets though, all girls. Oh well, life is still fine. Even if Dirt just gets farted on at work and his family thinks he is a loser. To prove he is not a loser, he runs back to the trailer during a tornado to get something for one of his daughters. This makes him Wizard Of Oz it up and get transported to another place, where it lands on the leader of a gang!

Hey, that makes Joe the new gang leader, according to the second in command, Foggie (Patrick Warburton). Also, it is now 1965. Time travel, just because.

The rest of the movie is literally Joe Dirt existing in the past, doing past stuff, like meeting Lynyrd Skynyrd, before they are famous, doing a Cast Away parody, and other stuff. Heck, the whole thing is really a bigger Forrest Gump parody.

Also you can find Mark McGrath, Dennis Miller, Tracy Weisert, Christopher Walken, Rhonda Dents, and Kevin P. Farley stomping around at various points in this movie.

Feast your eyes upon this image and know pain itself!

Look at that image above. Look at it hard. Does it make you feel bad inside? Does it make you hate yourself? Does it make you wonder how could an image like that appear in a movie that doesn’t have “Movie” in the title?

That’s it! Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser does what no one thought possible. It created something on par with Scary Movie 5, The Starving Games, and Meet the Spartans. Shitty parody movies with barely a theme that have one unrelated scene after another to make terrible pop culture references and call them jokes.

However, Joe Dirt 2 doesn’t even have a theme. It just makes terrible references, not jokes, just references, and moves on. The picture above is trying to make it seem hip and cool, by putting a gif meme directly in the film to appeal to the youth of today and just seeming terrible. It literally came out of nowhere and didn’t even make sense in the scene it was in!

Honestly, I found maybe two scenes slightly amusing. The Skynard scene and the nickname scene. However, like every “joke” in this movie, they both still go on too long and make me sick of it before it is through. In a way, that describes the films as a whole. Joe Dirt could be considered an amusing movie. Joe Dirt 2 elongates the joke too far, making me hate 1 and 2 collectively more than I did before.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {DVD}.

Fucking finally. Those are the words I said when I sat down to watch The Interview. I mean…fuck! What month is it? September? 2015?

The Interview was supposed to come out on Christmas of 2014 (after being pushed back from October to re-edit a little bit to make it better for NK), and I first saw a trailer for it way before all this North Korea bombing controversy happened. I was stoked to see it. I was sad when my screener was cancelled. I cheered on the good fight from Alamo Drafthouse saying that they would still show the film. And then it was on VOD like, right away and Netflix probably within a month of that. So it has been easy for me to consume and watch an review for over 9 months.

And I am just now reviewing it. What the hell happened? Why did it keep leaving my point of view and get pushed back? As a real answer, January I specifically put a lot of effort into finishing my best/worst of 2014 year lists, then I had to worry about watching all the rest of the Oscar nominees. Then I just forgot.

So without to much more delay, I am presenting you with a review of The Interview to kick off my “Fucking Finally” review week! Not just a bunch of movies I should have watched a long time ago, but movies that have been super available to watch and I somehow just didn’t do it.

I just couldn’t handle the fake smiles and forced friendships

Dave Skylark (James Franco) is the host of Skylark Tonight. He is very outspoken, in your face and not much of a professional. The good news is that he doesn’t have to be professional, because all he does is interview celebrities and talk gossip. He is an entertainment journalist, the lowest of the lows. Kind of like being a movie reviewer!

Aaron Rapaport (Seth Rogen) is his very good producer who has recently reached 100 episodes with the show. Wow, 1000 episodes of making technically shit TV, but it used to be even bigger shit before he came along. He never thought he would be doing this. He thought he would be a serious producer for serious news programs that actually made a difference in the world.

That is when they find out that North Korean leader, Kim Jung Un (Randall Park), is a big fan of Skylark Tonight! He also recently secured nuclear warheads and is waving them around like a metaphorical dick to the rest of the world. By just making a few phone calls, they are able to set up an interview with the Supreme Leader and a free trip to North Korea! Sure, they have to ask pre-approved questions and are limited what they can talk about, but it might elevate Skylark Tonight to be an important news program! Sure this interview will suck, but other political people will have to accept their invites if they interviewed friggan Kim Jung Un!

Enter the FBI (Lizzy Caplan, Reese Alexander). They want them to kill Kim Jung Un, using advanced poison technology that will in no way bring it back to them or the USA. Oh what a fun trip this will now be!

Also featuring Diana Bang as the NK Chief Propagandist, and Timothy Simons as a worker on the show who is just a super yes man.

Radio communication devices are always 100% effective next to each other.

If there is one thing The Interview had going against it, it could in no way ever live up to the hype that began to surround it. North Korea allegedly threatening to bomb movie theaters if they showed the film? (This of course, unconfirmed, as it was a message from the Sony Hackers, who probably weren’t actually North Koreans and just fucking with people). I mean, we had the POTUS speak out about free speech and wanting the movie to be shown! If a movie threatens the security of America, it better be the funniest, most crass piece of work ever done!

And guess what? It wasn’t. When boiled down to the essentials, it is only mildly offensive (barely) and average in humor. People judge comedy films much harsher if they aren’t full on spectacles, so an average comedy is generally seen as bad or a waste of time. Remember The Guilt Trip? Of course you don’t. That was an average comedy forgotten by time. The Interview won’t be quickly forgotten thanks to the months of free press the film got. But it definitely wasn’t a huge Sony conspiracy either. They lost millions upon millions over the hack and probably didn’t make all the money they had hoped for The Interview either. Although, it is their biggest movie in terms of money made through online distribution, so it has that going for it.

Ahem. Where were we? Oh yeah. The acting in the movie is fine, Franco was a completely different person (or a more exaggerated Franco, hard to say). Rogen was his normal self. Park did an interesting Un (is that the last name? I have no idea how it works in North Korea). Bang was pretty good in her role and the FBI was more or less irrelevant.

There are a lot of long scenes, a double edged sword. If you don’t find the current joke funny, it will stand out and be awkward. I don’t have to finish the second half of that statement I think. You get it by now.

Either way, I think the main reason I avoided it for so long is because I knew it couldn’t live up to the hype and knew I might not like as much as I had hoped.