Tag: Halle Berry

There are a lot of quick disaster films out there. Big ass earthquakes. Polar vortexes. Tornadoes. A lot of them are straight to DVD nonsense.

But the famous ones, that have a big budget, and aren’t necessarily great, just have big names in it? Well, apparently they just have to keep getting bigger and bigger.

“What if…what if…what if the moon…fell, on Earth? That would suck right?”

I mean, I assume that is how we got Moonfall. I am ready to be surprised going in to it, but it would need a lot of work. Need to see more big budget science fiction disaster films where black holes open and stars explode, personally.

If the moon was that close, people would still doubt we have ever been.

Back in 2011, on a SPACE mission, Astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) was working on a tether with a crew mate, when the power went out, and a huge swarm of black, small metal things flew by their ship and made things very rotational. Not good. He was able to make it back in, where Astronaut Jocinda Fowl (Halle Berry) was unconscious, their third member gone. He was able to land the shuttle back on earth with no power, and was a hero, until he said what he saw, and then was disgraced.

Well, ten years later, turns out he was telling the truth and people were warned. Because the moon has been knocked off of its orbit, which shouldn’t happen. Megastructurist/conspiracy theorist KC Houseman (John Bradley) was “doing research” and found out that the moon was coming closer, and leaked that information to the public because no one would believe him. NASA at the time was finding this out as well, and then? Panic.

Looks like the moon is going to be spiraling closer and closer to Earth. Causing tide changes, gravity awkwardness, and parts of it will for sure be breaking off to crash into the world. How can they fix the issue? What is that mysterious black swarm? How many aliens are there? Should we just nuke everything?

Also starring Carolina Bartczak, Charlie Plummer, Chris Sandiford, Donald Sutherland, Eme Ikwuakor, Jonathan Maxwell Silver, Kathleen Fee, Kelly Yu, Michael Peña, and Stephen Bogaert.

Spoilers: This phrase written on the spaceship is different in the movie.

I definitely went in to Moonfall thinking it would easily be one of the worst movies of 2022. And that is fair. The trailer was super dumb.

But I also want to at least point out things that worked well. I appreciate that this movie went as weird as it did. It could have played it safe. But it went into some out there, science fiction theories and science, and it went out there hard. In general, big budget Hollywood films try not to make the audience think too much, so they will often dumb things down and go for simple theories. It still explained things in a more dumbed down way, which is fair, but I just think it get points for trying. Especially because of how ridiculous things get, it is easy for claims for it to be very dumb are, when it involves a lot of theory and potential in terms of futuristic technology.

I did enjoy John Bradley’s character immensely, and I am so happy that Josh Gad had to drop out for him to come in, because I don’t think Gad would have been good for this. His scenes with his mom were his worst scenes, but they were minor.

Now in terms of things that are pretty bad for this film? Well, the entire Earth plot of family members while our leads are in space is pretty bad. The CGI gets terrible, especially in the unnecessary car chase/shoot out scene. One character dies very dumbly, when it was unnecessary, and it still made me cry despite that. And honestly just all of the thief characters. I don’t care about people stealing cars and being a recurring antagonist when the moon is about to wipe everyone out, you know?

The film was also rushed throughout it. It finally slows down near the end. Once a character gets the knowledge dump in space, I expected it to end pretty quickly, but we instead got a long drawn out space chase scene, just so we could splice it with the bad earth drama.

I will also point out that early on, I feel like it is heavily implied that Berry’s character, after divorcing her husband, seems to be in a relationship with a Chinese women. And I was thinking, damn, that’s progressive, you go you. And nah. It is just a foreign exchange student she is hosting. How old? Is she meant to be high school? She seems like an adult in the movie (and the actress is my age). It feels like she is in the house purely to watch the kid while Berry’s character can work, and honestly the whole set up is just uncomfortable for me.

Moonfall is going to be shit on, likely, by a lot of people, and be an easy punching bag. That is fair. But if I had to compare it to Roland Emmerich‘s other films, I would say it is easily better than 10,000 B.C., Independence Day: Resurgence, and Godzilla. But I don’t think this one will enter the pop culture stratosphere that a lot of his other disaster films have reached.

2 out of 4.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum? Oh fuck that. That title is awful. Is this a book? For a movie, your subtitle should be the words, or Chapter 3, but not both. And yes, it is different if the word chapter wasn’t there. But this title uses a colon and a dash? Who has got time for this?

This movie is now called John Wick 3, as everyone will end up calling it anyways.

Recap! John Wick was amazing! John Wick 2 expanded the universe and was weird and had extremely long fights in some tunnel. I don’t remember a lot about that movie, besides so much universe building, but it ended with Mr. Wick going on the run with everyone going to come after him with no help. I don’t remember how many dogs were involved.

Two times the dogs, two times the revenge…?John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is in New York City. Is that where the last one ended? I guess, it must have. Okay.

He has an hour to deal with his shit before he is excommunicated and can no longer use any of the services this band of guns for hire offer. Medical, dental, vision, banks, safe spots, gun places. Nothing. And a $14 million price tag on his head means every miscreant will risk it all to take him down.

Even his old friends (Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Laurence Fishburne) cannot really assist him. Sucks to suck.

Instead he has to call in old favors, that are super serious and above the excommunication. He wants to get to the top of the organization and reason with them so he can just live out his life and be normal. And along the way hundreds must die.

Also starring Halle Berry, Mark Dacascos, Asia Kate Dillon, and Jason Mantzoukas.

A horse is really just a big doggo.

John Wick 3 is a roller coaster. There are highs, and lows, and frankly, by the end of this review I might change this rating based on how I feel. And unless I explicitly state it, you wouldn’t know it was changed, because this is a static writing page and not a video.

First of all, I liked the action more than John Wick 2. Early on a fight scene occurred in an antique weapon shop and was amazing. It was a bit egregious, but amusing, awesome, and painful to watch. The sound guy won’t win any awards for using the same breaking class sound over and over. It set the pace early on and I expected it would then become a non stop action movie that just had Wick going through waves of henchmen and bad guys until no one in the world remained.

But it did not do that. It was slower. There were several scenes of Wick having to convince people to help him, despite repercussions. Then we got an extended shootout that was only interesting because of dogs, because everything else was long takes and head shots and it wasn’t too creative in the long run. Then more slow, then more long fight scenes with boring battles. And finally, finally, the last last set of fights was so painful to watch, because apparently Wick lost all sorts of fighting ability and went through at least 10 walls of glass. These things would explode at a touch when the plot mattered, but other times barely crack if punched/kicked/hit with a weapon.

I understand that paragraph is uncomfortable to read, but looking back at the film, that is what I feel. It was visually pretty to look like, but the beginning was far better than the end, with the movie having no reason to be over two hours long.

The biggest problem I have with the movie though is that There is virtually no difference between the Wick at the beginning and the end of the film. This movie spent over two hours failing to tell a complete story. It decided to tease another film instead, leaving this one just…filler? The only problems solved are ones that were introduced in the film itself, not ones that the whole story has been working towards.

And that is messed up, given the makers of this franchise claiming before the second movie that it was “always a planned trilogy” despite the first being a completely fine stand alone movie and this one also ignoring that statement.

1 out of 4.

Kingsman: The Secret Service was a strange breath of fresh air in 2014. A strange mix of Bond parody while maintaining its own serious qualities of a film. It wasn’t outright joke-y, but it did have plenty of jokes and extremes when comparing itself to Bond films.

I mean, outside of its very stupid ending (Which again, was just going to extremes), it almost felt like a perfect film. So many people were excited about Kingsman: The Golden Circle, heck, I was too. I just…didn’t see it.

So again, we find ourselves with a perfect film for “Things I should have watched and reviewed last year,” a theme title too long to tag, especially since I keep changing the wording. All of that is part of the theme title. It came out during a stronger time for movies, so the makers were certainly confident in their own work, that’s a good thing.

Just like they are confident enough to feature a lot of people wearing glasses.

A lot has changed for The Kingsman group since Galahad (Colin Firth) died and the whole world ending stuff from the first film. For example, Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is now in a committed relationship with the Princess Tilde (Hanna Alström). Merlin (Mark Strong) is getting in more of the action now too, and we learn he loves John Denver, how quaint! John Denver was featured heavily in Free Fire and Logan Lucky as well, so 2017 was like a love song to him, but you know, with movies.

Either way, they are going to have to deal with The Golden Circle, the world’s biggest drug organization. Why do they have to deal with them? Because they are planning something big soon to take out most of the world’s inhabitants. You know, like the last movie had a similar thing going on. But also because the organization took out basically all of the Kingsmen, except for Eggsy and Merlin, including their headquarters. That is totally not cool.

Following some clues, they head to America, to find The Statesmen, the American version of their organization. They are disguised as a brewing company in Kentucky. Well, disguised, and also do make the alcohol. In fact they have cute code names that are alcohol based. We get Tequila (Channing Tatum), Ginger Ale (Halle Berry), Champ/Champagne (Jeff Bridges), and Whiskey (Pedro Pascal). The two sides agree to work together, after some shenanigans and reveals to help bring The Golden Circle down, before calamity and stuff.

Also starring Julianne Moore and Elton John.

America has more cowboys and cowboy accessories.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is 141 minutes long. 141 minutes long. The last one cracked two hours as well, but at no point did it crack 2 hours like this film. Sure, both run times include the credits, so we can subtract about 8 from each and still wonder what the hell was so important in this film for it to be so goddamn long.

And one of the biggest issues with this film is that it certainly drags and just has too much extra information that really doesn’t add a lot extra to the plot. It is in desperate need of some editing.

The characters still maintain some of their charm. I think too much of the film is spent trying to bring back some memories of a character. The action is okay, the overall plot isn’t. It feels way too similar to the plot of the first film, given the goals associated with it.

Overall, this is an average movie and not really worth the time it was given. Outside of Merlin, the other characters really don’t have much growth that you would expect in a sequel. It didn’t feel as funny or unique as the first film either. Basically, it is a lamer and longer version of the first film, pure and simple.

2 out of 4.

A few years ago, we got a movie starring Halle Berry where she played a 9-1-1 call operator. It was called The Call. You may remember it? It was bad. In it, she was haunted by a past mistake and vowed to not make anymore again. And eventually, we got a kidnapped girl, where she was on the line, and she was going to help her anyway way possible.

Even if it meant leaving her post, tracking her herself, and killing the guy who took her, because holy shit what?

That came out in 2013. In early 2015, this film Kidnap was supposed to come out. It was already finished, but the company had financial troubles, then bankruptcy, as it kept getting pushed and pushed. Some will say its for money reasons, others will naturally assume it is because it looked so much like The Call 2 that they wanted to distance themselves. But alas, here it is now, over two years after the original date, and we won’t even be able to tell the movie is dated.

A third movie will come out probably where Berry herself is the kidnapper.

When a parent loses a child, it is very sad. No matter the circumstances, it is sad and I would cry over a lot of movies on that subject. For the movie Kidnap, you know that her child is going to get grabbed, and that is the whole dang plot of the movie. A kid gone, a mom angry and a race against time and apparently traffic to save that kid.

Karla Dyson (Halle Berry) is a single mom, divorced, and living a job as a waitress. Not a rich existence. Speaking of rich existence, her ex and his new wife are pretty dang rich, so life with them would be swell. But her young son at six years old, Frankie (Sage Correa), seems to love being with her too.

And they go to a park, a fair, and sure enough, Karla gets distracted. Her divorce lawyer on the phone letting her know that the dad is actually going to go for full custody, and will have the money to probably get it. Oh no, but she is so poor! And yes, this leads to someone grabbing her kid while on the phone about this, and of course, running off with him.

Thankfully she sees him in the parking lot, so she can run and chase after them, and in her car! She loses her cell phone almost immediately, so she just has to barrel down the highway after this vehicle, where her son his being held. And then a lot of things happen in this chase down. Destruction, death, injuries, and more! All because a lady won’t just give up hope.

Featuring Chris McGinn and Lew Temple as the bad people.

Good to know we get at least some seat switching in this car fest of a film.

I don’t really know what the target audience is for Kidnap. Parents who are afraid of the worst? People who think Berry is an action star of some sort? Or people who just have bad taste in films.

Just like The Call, this one is just bad from start to finish. Regular person goes on a justified (maybe) vigilante chase taht lasts over an hour. Along the way, tons of car damage to regular innocent people. Also some people get killed, like at least one cop and friendly helper person, along side regular people just living their life. So many people get hurt.

And literally. Literally. I cannot imagine a situation where the kidnapper wouldn’t have just threw the child out of their car within the first five or so minutes. For whatever reason, our bad guys were soooooo determined to get and keep this kid, you’d think there was some giant special prize behind the whole thing. Like a reason that the kid was special. Like something involving the dad, hiring some people for a million dollars to make her look bad. That is what I could only maybe hope and assume. Except it was just random.

A random kidnapping. And an extremely determined couple for no reason. And a lady who just makes a lot of spur of the moment, crazy decisions, no matter who gets hurt along the way.

It isn’t an entertaining movie at all. I was just staring at it, wondering what the hell were they all thinking. And the ending? They decide to sweep all of the problems magically under a rug, because fuck good movies.

0 out of 4.

1350 may be the least significant number in human history that is divisible by 50. Maybe. But it is my number and that’s why I like it.

Because today is my 1350th movie review, meaning it is time for another Milestone Review! I have now switched to the format of “Well known bad/awkward movies” from the past 10-15 years. And hey, maybe they aren’t actually that bad! Maybe they weren’t given a fair shake.

Maybe. And this is double exciting, because it is Yay Women Week, so I am able to showcase something like, Catwoman, and have it fit a theme and be a milestone at the same time. Literally the best.

But also, I am doing this because of regrets. This should have been my last Milestone Review. I ended up reviewing Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow last time, on a week full of movies that only had 1 word titles, all beginning with C. Jeez. I dropped the ball on that one.

“If I was a cat, I would never drop a ball ever again…”

The movie begins with our “hero”, Patience Phillips (Halle Berry) dying and drowning. This is alledgedly also the day she finally started to live. You know, one of those movies that spoils some shit.

So instead leads go back to before and man, Patience really really sucks. She is a graphic artist for a make up firm. Really good it, but a beta bitch so she doesn’t try for much. She has a friend, Sally (Alex Borstein), and I am honestly already done talking about her.

She is a Meek little woman. For instance, she will mumble at people across the big ally to turn off their music. Mumble at them to stop and then get all sad when they don’t.

She works for some place called Hedare Beauty (yawn), and they are going to release some new skin cream, Beau-Line (bigger yawn), which can reverse the effects of aging. Allegedly. That’s right. This movie is about fucking skin cream.

AND CATS TOO. Jeez. We will get there guys. Calm down.

Needless to say, there is something weird with this skin cream. Apparently if someone stops using it, they will start to eventually develop huge rashes on their face. Clearly the solution is to never ever stop using this skin cream. Problem solved. Dr. Ivan Slavicky (Peter Wingfield) wants to pull the plug on it, BUT NO. THE HIGHER UPS NEED IT TO HAPPEN.

Somehow, Patience gets lost trying to turn in a presentation update and finds herself in the factory with the scientist and overhears the negative effects of it. Great, now they have to kill her. Not really seeing her, they rush to kill her anyways. She escapes down some big tubes, which they “flush” out. And of course this involves filling them completely with water and going over a cliff HUNDREDS of feet into the air into the ocean. If anything, this company should be brought to justice for their clear inability to not pollute the ocean at extreme levels.

Either way, she washes up onto the shore and the cats start surrounding her and meowing at her with extreme prejudice. And you know. she comes back to life.

Extreme. Prejudice.

You may be wondering why the cats did this. Well, it turns out they tested her earlier on in the movie, and it took twenty minutes to get to this scene. But I wanted to hurry and get there. The cat in the picture, went to her apartment and went on a dangerous part of railing. For whatever reason, Patience went out to try and save her. In reality, it looked like she just wanted to jump. Which is how she met the cop, Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt), who a character I won’t talk about anymore calls a “Man Sandwich”. saves her instead. Aw, true love maybe.

But also, we all should realize there is no way that man should be considered the most attractive man ever.

Either way, back to the cats. They gave her cat powers. You know, a love of milk and fish. Jewels and shiny thigns. Apparently the ability to climb really well and some dexterity. Magical cat shit.

She even follows one and finds out they belong to our resident crazy cat lady (Frances Conroy). They thought she was worthy of their cat powers, and have been doing it for thousands of years. So hey, she can be the next Catwoman. Or something.

The cats also convince her to cut her hair and be more daring!

Either way, Patience loses her job for reasons, so starts doing whatever she wants. That is apparently stealing jewels and stealing hearts. You know, she goes into a jewelry store to steal stuff, all cat like in her new leather outfit, and OTHER CRIMINALS ARE ALREADY STEALING. She is all “What a PURRRRRFect idea!” because she hates the viewers of this movie.

She also wants to get her dating on. You know, with the cop. So they do fun date things, like volunteering at youth areas. And the kids might demand things of them, like watching them play one on one.

ONE ON ONE BASKETBALL. LET’S ALL WATCH.

Did you watch? You better have. Only two minutes. It is probably the worst scene of the movie, which is full of these. They basically have awkward feel up moments on there. And the scene is full of bad music and quick cuts, but the music only gets worse and the cuts get even quicker the rest of the movie.

Hell, now she has confidence to break up the party across her ally! And she is wearing leather, well, even LESS leather than before. And motorcycles!

Sickest basketball moves I have ever seen.

Now that Patience has found out that less is more with her outfit, she goes night clubbing to find the first guy who tried to kill her in the factory to get some revenge. And she discovers a whip, and she is good at using the whip to beat his butt! Hooray!

But let’s get back to romance. They go to the carnival. And hey, the ferris wheel starts to break while they are on it. Good thing hunky cop can climb down to try and stop things, and Patience can sneak down and save a kid with her cat-abilities.

Their romance works out fantastically. So that is good news.

But hey back to the other plot. Evil corporation owner George Hedare (Lambert Wilson) and his wife, Laurel (Sharon Stone) are having marriage problems. She used to be the face of the line but she is getting old, so there are new younger girls. And he is probably cheating. Catwoman thinks she can trust Laurel because she is mad and has helped her get details on the bad people. Turns out, Laurel was just framing Catwoman. How so? Well, Laurel decided to kill her husband because she wants to own the company, wants to get rich and get back at him and also, fuck Catwoman. Amirite?

Oh yeah, not only does the framing pretty much work for putting a bad spin on Catwoman, but her cop man figures out the connections so Patience totally goes to jail.

I am sure at some point she is breaking some public indecency laws tto.

Needless to say, everything is about to hit the fan. She is jailed, the company is about to release bad skin cream, and she is in jail. Somehow she is able to convince the cops to let her go and investigate the company. Well, that is good news.

So Catwoman goes back to the factory, wanting to find evidence to shut it down before silly women everywhere get rashes on their face, or worse. You know, they actually get the benefits of the product and Laurel gets filthy rich on them. Before I talk about the ending, let’s look at another Catwoman pose.

The pose makes it so she can pounce, bite, and bat at yarn.

Guess what, it turns out Laurel has been using the project almost forever. Well, longer than any test subject. So her skin has actually kept the youth but also is as hard as marble. Yeah. Bet you didn’t see that one coming. Now Laurel and Catwoman can fight without it just being an awkward gun fest. No, the cop can handle the gun fest. Instead we get our Catwoman scratching and clawing Laurel and not really leaving a mark. Because you know, Marble.

Seriously. The main villain gets to just be a rich woman who has hard skin and is kind of mean.

Guess who dies during the fight? Yeah, of course, Laurel. She gets a bit scratched up, and almost falls to her death, but Catwoman tries to grab her hand and save her. Too bad Laurel sees the scratch marks in a reflection, is so disgusted by her outer looks, that she shrieks and falls to death. Not a normal fall, but into a neon light thing, allowing her to fry up after the fall as well.

So Catwoman gets cleared of all charges and decides to become a good guy super hero! Just kidding, fuck the cops, she just wants to do what she wants to do. So yah. End of movie. Catwoman will now no longer roam the streets until she appears in The Dark Knight Rises, completely unconnected to this movie.

In case you missed it, the film ends with a cat fight.

This review gave this film way more courtesy to the plot than the actual screen writers must have done. It took only four minutes or so into the movie before I had already hated it, and I still had 100 minutes to go. Things were not looking great.

I couldn’t even get through the basketball scene without pausing and taking a nice break. Even if it is the worse scene, the other scenes were not much better. The last time I have seen that many quick and headache annoying cuts, it was thanks to the film Getaway (which honestly might have been worse in that department, but I don’t want to throw up again just to find out if it is true). The puns weren’t even enjoyable puns.

The ending was atrocious (Word of the day, sorry), and of course the CGI was bad. The movie came out in 2004. Almost nothing good came out in 2004 in terms of CGI. Outside of Harry Potter 3. Spider-Man 2. The Incredibles. Oh okay, no, it was just bad shit thanks to whoever made this movie.

This film single-handedly ruined Halle Berry’s future. She had the occasional spark after it, but nothing that would get her into any award territory. Let that be a lesson for everyone. Catwoman is terrible, and can kill your job.

0 out of 4.

X-Men, oh X-Men, where art thou X-Men?

This is the seventh film of the franchise. SEVENTH. X-Men: Days Of Future Past. When I first heard about this, I was excited. It was a very ambitions plot and storyline to go for, time travel tends to do that. Couple that with the fact that X-Men: First Class was actually decent meant the series might be headed off in a certain way.

But you know what was terrible? The advertisements for this movie. By having two time lines of cast, we have a shit ton of characters, and Fox decided the best way to advertise it was to give every character its own…thing, whatever. So, magazines would have 30 unique covers, or 30 individual character posters, or whatever. No giant cast pictures, no, just an overabundance of individual character shit.

Here is one of the real reasons this bugs me. Anna Paquin. It was stated a long time ago, in the year of 2013, that she was basically cut from the movie. Then it became a rumor. Then it became true and then changed to say that she would just be a cameo. Just a cameo? And still getting full ad treatment? Boo. That is almost worst than the 47 Ronin ad issues, because she is supposed to be a bigger character.

Finally, in the credits, her name was higher than many other people in the film. Because she is more famous? Than Ellen Page? Fuck that. She was in the original X-Men movies then a shitty TV show, while Page has had a big lucrative film career. It is just nonsensical, and most of this doesn’t matter for the actual movie.

No, but these robots matter. AW YEAH SENTINELS!

In the near future, everything is bad, lots are dead. Mutants. Humans who would give birth to future mutants. The sentinels have destroyed it all. Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) has an unexplained ability to also let people go back in time with their consciousness to their body and like, change the future. But only for a few days, maybe a week. This is long enough to help their band of mutants survive and run, but not long enough to fix it.

No, they’d have to go back to the 1970’s, before Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) (who’s actual mutant power seems to be very limber leg maneuvers) kills the creator of the Sentinels (Peter Dinklage). But the process to send back a consciousness would tear apart a brain. Unless of course, the brain can heal itself. Hmm.

Enter Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) ready to travel back in time, convince past Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and past Xavier (James McAvoy) to work together, change the future, and fix their stupidity.

Here is where I talk about everyone in the film, but in one giant paragraph. Maybe the new people first? Like, Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Toad (Evan Jonigkeit), Bishop (Omar Sy), Blink (Bingbing Fan), Sunspot (Adan Canto) and Warpath (Booboo Stewart).

Of course we have Old Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Old Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Colossus (Daniel Cudmore), Storm (Halle Berry), Beast (Nicholas Hoult), and of course ROGUE. Just kidding. Bullshit cameo.

Do we get Jean Gray (Famke Janssen), Cyclops (James Marsden), or Old Beast (Kelsey Grammar)? Well, maybe.

I will only advertise one character per picture, as per movie tradition.

Yay Sentinels! Like a lot a folks in my age bracket, the Sentinels were one of the first X-Men plots I was exposed to, thanks to the first two episodes of the X-Men Animated TV Series on Fox. Shit, that is where I learned most of my basic plot lines, and why to fear the motherfucking Juggernaut. They were fascinating to see and I love the changes made to them. They were TERRIFYING and kept the viewers on the edge of the seat.

What else rocked? Most of the movie. Sure, some plot elements could have been explained better. But the Xavier/Magneto back story was great, a good continuation from First Class. Speaking of dickheads, Fassbender as Magneto is a huge one, and it was awesome to see. The best part is, you can easily relate to where he is coming from and he isn’t just a mindless villain.

Speaking of even more awesome, Fox’s adaption of Quicksilver was so entertaining. He didn’t have the bigger role in the movie, but whenever he was on screen, you paid attention to him and no one else. They really went all out to make him stand out, kind of a big middle finger to Marvel, daring them to raise the bar in Avengers: Age of Ultron.

To make this long review a bit shorter, here is the quicker analysis: So many characters, but outside of tiny cameos, they all were great and wonderful. Special effects and action was good. Story and plot was good. Holy shit, give me Apocalypse.

Did this 100% fit the continuity issues between a few of the movies? Heck no, but at least it gave it a good try and an entertaining one to boot.

4 out of 4.

The Call, The Call. What can I really say about this movie that the 2.5 minute trailer didn’t already say for me? Shit. I have talked about bad trailers before, but this one is high on the totem pole. Listen people. If a trailer tells everything that happens in your movie, there is no need to watch the movie. Why have 118 more minutes of filler?

Fuck you The Call trailer. It is why I put off watching it for so long, just because I felt like I already watched it.

Well, maybe The Call will be bigger than the trailer itself, and more exciting?

The hair is certainly bigger.

Jordan Turner (Halle Berry) works at an LA Call Center, and it is one of the busiest. Which is why everyone there gets futuristic looking desks and command centers I guess. Either way, it can be stressful, and she gets a call from a scared teenage girl. Someone is breaking into the house! But thanks to her information, she is able to successfully hide the girl before authorities can arrive and the guy leaves. But the phone gets disconnected, she mistakenly redials, and the girl answers. Oh surprise, she is still there. Way to give away her position Jordan!

Needless to say, abduction happens, and Jordan feels like shit.

Six months later, she is teaching now, afraid of her job. But hey look, another girl got kidnapped. Casey Welson (Abigail Breslin). She is in the back of a car going somewhere. I wonder if its the same dude (Michael Eklund). No that couldn’t be.

Well surely her communication powers and street smarts are going to save this girl this time, even if it involves going off on her own to find him herself. Great strategy. Also featuring Morris Chestnut as her cop boyfriend, and David Otunga as other cop.

I think of this scene as a rebirthing.

It turns out the suspense in the film wasn’t half bad. In fact, maybe even enjoyable. If any of it would have surprised me in the slightest. Good old trailer, even spoiling the gasoline seen. Heck, the only thing that the trailer made me wonder is why the hell is Michael Imperioli in this film? You may remember him from the one season of Detroit 1-8-7 or six seasons of The Sopranos. He has one scene flashed in the trailer, despite being a relatively major character to the story. Fuck these trailer makers so hard.

Unfortunately, the ending of this movie absolutely ruins it for me. Here we have this guy, who clearly has some deep seeded mental illness and psychological issues about his past. He needs help. He has done some bad things. But when the good guys have the chance to do the right thing, they of course don’t. They go for revenge. Not a normal revenge, a super bad torture revenge. Fuck that. You are the good guys. Their idea is horrible in that A) it isn’t guaranteed to work, and B) their alibi is completely bat shit stupid. I thought it would be okay if the ending wasn’t so dumb.

But really, the thrills are okay. It might be a lot better if you don’t know more than I told you going in. Just. Fuck that ending.

1 out of 4.

The thing I love most about Movie 43 is how easy it will be to review.

I mean, part of the point is not knowing much about the movie ahead of time before you see it. So I don’t have describe all the skits, just the main plot that tries to hold it all together.

Shit yeah! Oh, and so many tags. I am gonna tag the shit out of this movie.

I don’t have any obligation to tell you what Halle Berry is going to do with that Turkey Baster!

So here is the basic story, which is a piece of shit excuse to give you this movie. Sorry, that sounds negative. The point of this movie is a series of short skits all put together, that is all. Trying to put a plot behind them all? Probably won’t work well, but it technically gets to be the movie plot.

A crazy asshole (Dennis Quaid) is having a meeting with some big movie executive (Greg Kinnear). Why? You know fucking why, to sell a movie of course. Greg doesn’t like it, the movie is vulgar and bad, but when a gun is brought into the equation, maybe he will listen. Also featuring Will Sasso and Common.

What vulgar skits? We got Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet on a blind date, where Hugh is basically perfect. Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts are homeschooling their kid, Jeremy Allen White, and trying to give him the realest depressing experience ever.

Anna Faris wants Chris Pratt to poop on her. Kieran Culkin and Emma Stone are awkward.

Richard Gere doesn’t understand why people are sticking their dicks in the iBabe, nor does Jack McBrayer the scientist. Only person who gets it is Kate Bosworth.

There is a speed dating convention in the DC universe, with Justin Long, Jason Sudeikis, Uma Thurman, Bobby Cannavale, Kristen Bell, and Leslie Bibb all playing parts.

Jimmy Bennett is on a “Date” with Chloe Grace Moretz, who gets her period, and the older brother Christopher Mintz-Plasse freaks out. Seann Williams Scott is mad at his best friend Johnny Knoxville, but to make it up for him, he found a leprechaun (Gerard Butler).

Am I almost done? Fuck no!

Halle Berry and Stephen Merchant are on a blind date playing truth or dare! Terrence Howard says the same joke about black people and basketball over and over!

BUT JUST YOU WAIT. THERE IS ONE MORE SCENE. AFTER THE CREDITS.

I was surprised too. Because this scene didn’t have any previews in the trailers. So I will just say Elizabeth Banks and Josh Duhamel.

Just seeing all those links man. It makes me dizzy.

Maybe I talked about the skits too much, maybe I didn’t. But basically all I mentioned was information you can learn in the trailer, which is unfortunately a lot of it. Problem is, some of the better jokes I already knew were coming and it ruined it a bit for me. I knew about most of the Home School scene, but I still thought it was one of the better ones. Poop quest ended up being better than advertised as well. My favorite scene, however, was the Batman based speed dating, but that could just be because I am a comic nerd. Either way, Jason Sudeikis made that scene his bitch, and I want more of that.

The movie started pretty uncomfortably too, with the blind date scene. No one really laughed right away at the sight gag, but eventually they just threw it in our face enough that it became funny.

I understand the movies only purpose is to do outrageous things, without a plot, but I am upset about the main story line. I hated how it ended. Pretty much a cop out. Even more strange is that only the American version features Quaid and company. Apparently international versions star three unknown kids searching the internet for a fabled movie and finding these clips. Pretty dang weird.

Yeah, most of it is dumb ass jokes, but eventually you just have to give in or else you will have a bad time. Easier to accept the laughs than to ignore them.

Unfortunately, it is still a pretty shit film, in the grand scheme of things. So there you go! Maybe watch with the buds eventually, while drinking, when it is rentable. That would be a better idea.

1 out of 4.

Haha! Ha ha ha! See what I did there? [Future readers will note the posting date].

Because of the really fucking large cast of New Year’s Eve, I decided that all of my tags will not list the actor name in parenthesis like normal, just tag the character. You can see the name if you hover your mouse though. That will make it at least a small mystery, if you don’t care. Maybe fuck with you a bit. After all, something needs to make it more interesting.

Except for Ryan Seacrest. He only plays himself, always and forever. Just like Bloomberg.

YEAH ITS NEW YEAR’S EVE IN NEW YORK CITY. Time to party! Well, maybe. People gotta work, shit is still going down.

Like hospitals! Turns out people still are giving birth. But did you know at this specific NYC hospital, they have decided to give away a $10,000 prize to the couple who birthed the first baby of the new year. One Man/woman couple has been planning this out for months. The other man/woman just found out about it today. Who can push out a baby first? Also, doctors. They are a thing.

The opposite of babies is happening, people are getting old and dying. Like that one old guy. His doctor doesn’t know if he will make it to the new year. He might though, hopefully the daughter will make it in time. But until then, a nurse shall keep him company, despite her own “Date” that night to worry about.

One woman is fed up with the holiday mess. She has a boss who sucks, and wont give her time off despite already promising it. So she quits, and really wants to complete all the resolutions she made last year before the new year. Well, its impossible. But she gets a courier to help her anyways.

The courier’s sister is having problems with her daughter, who really wants to go out to times square for new years. The courier’s friend is jaded about new years, after a bad break up the previous year. He gets stuck on an elevator with an uppity girl, who really needs to get to times square for her job. What job? Back up singer to Jensen, huge celebrity who is performing on the main stage!

Turns out he only agreed to do this job, to get closer to an ex girlfriend of his. She runs a catering business, and demanded that she cater the very fancy party. Pretty sneaky sis. Too bad he also has to deal with very busty fan girls.

One man just watched his last single friend get married. He is the last one! But no worries, he has to go to NYC tonight anyways to do a speech for his work. Good year or something. But last year he met the woman of his dreams, just didn’t get her name. Will she be at the location that she promised to be at a year later? Just who is she?

But lastly, when you think of NYC NYE, you think of the ball drop. Someone has to run that thing, damn it. The woman in charge is on her first year, and is good friends with the head of police too. But there is an issue. The only way to fix it is to call back a fabled old mechanic, who they fired earlier in the year. Whoops. Awkward.

Nothing says a new year, like Ashton Kutcher, right?

I can honestly say that I found basically none of these plot lines that interesting. That seems like a big problem. Unlike Valentine’s Day, which had some storylines that I enjoyed (and still need to review!), this one had nothing for me. Shit, I also have to review New York, I Love You, another similar movie (Except rated R).

The best part of the movie for me is that I got paid $18 to have it. My first copy didn’t work, got it exchanged at Wal-Mart, they messed up the return (Which I pointed out), but laziness occurred, an I profited. Hey, that’d be reason enough to give a 4 out of 4 in my book. More people should give me money to own a movie.

1 out of 4.

And then there is Cloud Atlas.

What? Don’t like that I kind of just started this review mid thought? Well get used to it, if you want to watch Cloud Atlas. Featuring an all star cast, this movie takes place over time and space, to tell a simple message.

And by simple message, I mean you might have to see this movie multiple times.

Just like they might have to give actors multiple roles. For symbolism!

You might be wondering, “Hey, Gorgon Reviews. What the fuck is going on in this movie? It looks confusing! Do I have to think during my movie time? Is it really 3 hours if you include previews? Fuck that noise.”

Well first off, I don’t know what that last part means.

But hey, I can explain the structure. There are six different settings that the story takes place in. South Pacific, 1869, a lawyer goes to settle a transaction (slavery!), but finds himself extremely sick on the way back home. He befriends a stowaway slave, and must fight the poison.

England, 1936, a young gay musician travels to work for an old and dying composer, becoming an apprentice and making his own work entitled Cloud Atlas.

San Francisco, 1973, a crime story involving a young reporter getting a big scoop that things may not be on the up and up at a new nuclear power plant.

London, 2012, no Olympics. The story of an older publisher who gets into some crime trouble, then forced to live in a retirement home where there is no escape. Yes, this is the more comedic storyline.

Neo Seoul, 2144, a story of a clone who escaped her job and learned to develop feelings, knowledge, and become a god.

Hawaii, 106 years after “The Fall”, a goat herder, haunted by his past, has to work with a technologically superior human to figure out where they all came from.

Get all that? Those are rough descriptions of the eras, that have their stories interweaved throughout the movie, sometime simultaneously. If for some reason you didn’t know yet, all of the characters play multiple roles, some of the bigger ones being Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Broadbent, Jim Stugess, Ben Whishaw, and Doona Bae.

Hell, just to confuse you more, some actors play the same character, just in different times of their life. I’m looking at you James D’Arcy. There are other big names as well, with lesser roles, such as Keith David, David Gyasi, Susan Sarandon, Xun Zhou, and Hugh Grant. I was personally confused by Mr. Grant, as I only noticed one of his roles when I first saw it, and had my brain convince me that Hugo Weaving was doing a REALLY GOOD Hugh Grant impersonation.

Dude. Bro. The Future Bro. Dude.

Like all crazy movies, this one is not without controversy. Namely the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, because yes, some of the white actors were asian characters in Seoul. They complained of eye make up, and that they should have just found some nice asian actors for the role. You know, making one part of the movie completely different from the others because of people playing one role. But because they didn’t care about Doona Bae wearing white ginger make up, or Halle Berry as a white woman, I am calling their complaints racist and turning the table on them. Get out of her guys.

I actually did make a flow chart on my board, mostly as a joke. I’d suggest only looking at it, here, if you have seen it to avoid any spoilers.

The best way to describe this movie is Intense. There is so much going on, so much kind of connected, and so much feeling. When you are done with it, you are left only with feelings. Unfortunately the plot isn’t perfect, there were things I am still confused on today. I could read the book, but ehhh. There are a lot of themes, most of them relatable, but mostly I think it is about the emotions.

Cloud Atlas is going to be a movie that requires multiple viewings to get the full effect out of it, and I am glad The Wachowski Siblings made it, if only for the large mammal sized balls they must possess.

3 out of 4.