Tag: Jason Mitchell

Do you want to hear the story about how Zola fell out with this white bitch?

Well, good news, you have multiple options now. The first, is the twitter thread from October, 2015. A whole lot of tweets tells the entire story. 148 of them in fact. All in a row, it went viral, I believe they were deleted, but this is the internet and nothing can leave the internet. Here, go for it. This is a compilation on Imgur, you can read the entire screenplay here.

Just kidding, but also not really. As told here is basically the story we get in the movie, the second way to hear the story about Zola and that bitch fell out. A story of sex work, coercion, and a wild ride to Florida between strangers who became besties and anti-besties in a short amount of time.

Is this the beginning of a new franchise stripper battles?

Depending on who you heard the story from first might cloud your judgement, but lets take it from Zola (Taylour Paige) since she started this whole story off. Zola was a dancer and a waitress at Hooters. She also had a boyfriend (Ari’el Stachel) and was generally okay with life. She knew she looked good, so she made money using her body while she good, just stripping, none of that sex stuff.

Well, while at her waitressing job, she meets Stefani (Riley Keough) and her friend (Colman Domingo). Zola hits it off with Stefani, they do a lot of talking given how they want the waitresses to act at Hooters, and they find out they are both dancers and more and exchange numbers. And then like the next day, Stefani asks if Zola is down to a road trip to Florida to do some dancing. Zola has made good money in Florida dancing in the past, and well, fuck it. Sure let’s go.

Unfortunately, Florida doesn’t feel like a land of sunshine and rainbows on their visit. Zola finds herself in situations where she is expected to sleep with people instead, and with her life and home being threatened by this friend (well, pimp). This is not what she signed up for, and she really doesn’t know who to trust, but Zola is gonna make sure she gets out of this as untouched as possible.

Also starring Nicholas Braun, Nasir Rashim, and Jason Mitchell.

If there was ever a “bitch you crazy” screenshot, here it is.

Have you read the original tweet thread? Why not, it is worth it, it is interesting, and it is full of emotion. I certainly would recommend it and it is pretty obvious why it took off like it did. And did you know, that the other girl in the story, also posted her own account of this same trip? Here it is on Reddit. They are very, very, very, very different stories. Freakishly differently. Almost nothing is similar, so who is lying?!

I guess we will believe Zola, this is her story, and I think some comment sleuthing on that reddit thread is able to find some arrest records in relation to that story, so it makes Zola the more believable person here. Which is good, because her story is more fantastic.

Like I said earlier, the movie itself is very similar to the tweet thread. We have a few less characters in the film, some names are changed, and not all of the events are used, but most of them to tell the same story. And technically, yes, I would say the tweet thread is better. I know, I have fallen into one of those traps that I try to avoid as a reviewer, not comparing something to the “book” it is based on. The story of Zola is fine as a movie, but based on the hype of the thread and the advertising, I did expect a lot more to happen in that weekend.

The leads do a wonderful job with their characters and the predicament they find themselves in, I will give that to Paige and Keough. The cinematography makes some interesting choices throughout it, which is a surprise given the type of story this tells. And, fun fact, you can see a whole lot of penises in this movie. I think at least five unique dicks, and some butts. This is good news for those who are clamoring more for more dicks in movies.

Zola as a film will serve as a good story to get people invested in what is now a six year old twitter thread with very little updates to worry about. It is a little bit of escapism and a strange funny yet dark tale. It is certainly not a film meant for everyone, however, so clearly watch at your own risk.

Mudbound is a Netflix original film that came out, heard good things, then I still didn’t watch it for over a month.

But I did see it before it was nominated for a few Oscars, even if you don’t believe me due to when the review came out. In fact, Mudbound has a bit of Oscar history going behind it.

You see, Mary J. Blige was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for this movie. She is also nominated for Best Song for this same movie. First time a single person has been nominated for an acting and song category.

But that is not all! Rachel Morrison has an even bigger first. She is the cinematographer, and is the first ever female cinematographer to be nominated for this award. Ever. In 90 years. Insane!

Not as insane as those green items.

Mudbound tells the story of two families, living in the south and struggling to survive. Yes, one is white and one is black.

So let’s talk about the Jackson family first. Hap (Rob Morgan) and his wife Florence (Mary J. Blige) are raising their family in a small building as tenant farmers on land. They have dreams of really owning land in the future. Ronsel (Jason Mitchell), their oldest, joins the army during World War II and becomes a tank commander, which is a sexy title on a business card.

The McAllan family moved down to Marietta to buy a farm, featuring Henry (Jason Clarke) and his pregnant wife Laura (Carey Mulligan). They also bring Henry’s dad (Jonathan Banks), who is old, and therefore really racist. They don’t have the best of a time down there, as some plans fell through, but they make it work and develop a working relationship with the Jackson family. Also Henry has a brother, Jamie (Garrett Hedlund), who also went to the war, but to fly a plane, pew pew pew.

Either way, the majority of the movie is about these two families, their connections, and their built tensions. Also featuring Kerry Cahill.

Sure that’s a large wad of cash, but also, he is white and probably evil.

Mudbound ends up being a relatively beautiful movie, set in a really ugly time. I wasn’t a fan of the old timey filters, I never am. Too many browns, greys, washed out feeling on certain scenes. But the camera was still set up excellent, giving some powerful imagery in normally non powerful scenes, so I find the nomination completely warranted.

The biggest issues with Mudbound come from the script. It takes for ever to really feel like what you are watching matters. We have generally two separate family stories that are obviously interacting, along with the two son stories over in the war. But for everyone to get done, for the stories to finally reach the point it was trying to make, it takes too long. The payoff doesn’t just feel good enough for feeling pointless for that much time.

The only characters that really felt enjoyable were the Jackson family. Laura was set up to be a main character, but she just did absolutely nothing for me. I still enjoyed where certain characters ended up at the end, happy for them, despite their struggles. I just wish that it had a bit more that mattered early on to keep my attention the whole film.

I find it very odd to see a lot of hype for the movie Kong: Skull Island. King Kong has happened over and over in film’s history, and given everything I know about the internet, they hate reboots, reimaginings, and remakes of other films, so they shouldn’t care about this one.

But alas, here we are. I don’t have too many fucks to give about it of course, after King Kong 11 years ago. Overly long and it didn’t really do anything different.

I guess this one is bringing in some hardcore CGI and bigger acting names. Maybe that is it. Or people are freaking out over the potential of a Godzilla and Kong showdown in the future. Needless to say, if this film doesn’t do anything different, I will probably be mostly annoyed.

I don’t care about context, these two people are not dirty enough.

Kong: Skull Island makes sure you get to see a giant ape really early in the film, when two crashed World War II pilots land on the island, start to fight, and then he shows up. But this isn’t set during that war, this is actually set in 1973, during the end of the Vietnam war.

Bill Randa (John Goodman) is some sort of scientist, who believes there is a lot to discover on this skull island they have found in the South Pacific. Ancient civilizations have talked about it, there are constant storms that surround it, but he wants a mission to explore what has never been explored. Let’s call it a geologic mapping mission. With a military escort.

He is able to gather a team. He has his own crew, a geologist (Corey Hawkins) and a biologist (Tian Jing), along with some extra scientists from another company (John Ortiz, Marc Evan Jackson). They have a legendary British explorer to help explore the jungles, James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), who is in it for some money. A prize winning photojournalist, Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), who helped show the truth about Vietnam to the public. And of course a helicopter team lead by LTC Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) and Captain Jack Chapman (Toby Kebbell), straight out of ‘Nam.

Most of them assume it is just a real exploratory mission. But really, Randa has an agenda and believes to be giant monsters on this island, and he wants to bring an end to them. They’ve got weapons of many sizes. Unfortunately, when setting off seismic blasts to detect the crust, they wake up these beasts on the island, and they do not like having explosions all over the place. Spread out over the island, the crew has three days to make it to the north side before they can be rescued.

Also featuring John C. Reilly, and a whole lot of soldiers: Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Thomas Mann, and Eugene Cordero.

Turns out this Kong film has a lot of Japanese influence.

At its heart, Kong: Skull Island is an action adventure flick that wants to show us giant animals fighting some dudes with bombs. Which on its own could be enough for most of the people who want to see it. I will say there are some scenes that look a bit awkward based on CGI usage. It doesn’t always mesh well. But the more pure CGI scenes like Kong fighting with the giant lizards look amazing.

The film also doesn’t pussy foot around Kong. We get to see him in the first few minutes. Within 15 more we are on the island and Kong totally fucks up the helicopters putting our characters in a perilous situation. We get a lot of Kong and they don’t tease him out.

You know what we don’t get a lot of? Character development. Basically every character in this movie is weak on that level. There is no gain. They don’t change. Well, some of them die. We have exactly one character who people will care about and does change and that man is played by John C. Reilly. His character is wonderful, an amazing addition to the film, and worthy of praise.

But Kong: Skull Island is just going to be a interesting film that could have been a lot better. With its post credit scene trying its best to imitate The Avengers it leaves some hope for the future. But have to hope they improve the scripts first.

Reviewing films when they come out on DVD isn’t bad, it is expected for at least a third of all releases!

But like usual, the movie I am reviewing way later is a comedy. Keanu. Why did I not see it in theaters? I dunno, probably just lazy at that point. I also have never watched the sketch show Key and Peele, just random scenes on YouTube, so I wasn’t interested in some strange cat movie sketch.

I also didn’t even know if the cat talked. I think it does. Or did I get it confused with Nine Lives? Also, maybe both are talking cats? This one with Keanu Reeves as the voice, right?

Yeah, he has those rascally Reeves eyes, that’s for sure.

Clarence Goobril (Keegan-Michael Key) and Rell Williams (Jordan Peele) are two boring, regular, dudes. Clarence is married, wife (Nia Long) and kids, drives a minivan. Rell is heartbroken, because he was just dumped. But then he finds a kitten. Not just any kitten, the cutest kitten in the world.

Now, later, Rell is back to work, inspired, and Clarence is about to have some days to himself. Tim for some bro time! That means watching a movie! However, when they get back home, Rell’s house was broken into, smashed up, and Keanu the kitten was stolen! They find out from the local drug dealer (Will Forte) that it was most likely Chedder (Method Man) and his gang, looking for his house. Shit.

So it is simple. They have to get the cat back, and they have to infiltrate his club. They just have pretend to be thugs, pretend to be tough and just try and buy the kitten back. That way no one gets hurt, especially them. But then they get confused with some real badass people from Allentown and have to instead help the crew sell some drugs to earn the kitten. Can’t be too hard, non educated people do it all the time!

Starring Tiffany Haddish, Darrel Britt-Gibson, Jason Mitchell, Jamar Malachi Neighbors, Luis Guzman, Rob Huebel, and Anna Faris.

Running and shooting at the same time in plaid is the first skill a gangster learns.

I honestly didn’t care about Keanu when it came out. And yes, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

Peele and Key do awkward right. They wear that uncomfortable atmosphere on their face and run with it. This is full of overacting on their parts, but it also fits their characters just trying not to die, while also believing themselves to be larger than life individuals.

The movie opened up slow, but once they were in the club it really hit its stride. The voices, the backstory, the names, all gold. The obsession with George Michael and his songs filling the soundtrack were a comedic plus. Back flips, gun shots, celebrity deaths and more. I was just surprised all around.

I also wasn’t a giant fan of the ending. After everything had finished, it petered off a bit too long and the twists weren’t worth it. But Keanu is still full of laughs and a really decent time waster. I might watch even more random clips on YouTube, right now.

I started talking about Straight Outta Compton with my review of Dope, because I am super white and ignorant.

Basically, I don’t know jack shit about this album, nor do I know a lot about the artists who made up N.W.A. I do know the phrase before the internet meme sensation came out, but that is probably only due to the fact that Weird Al made a similar joke almost ten years ago. Weird Al continues to give me most of my music knowledge about what is hip and cool in the world.

Despite not being able to name even one song from the album, I would probably consider myself an expert on late 80’s and early 90’s rap music. As you already know, I have seen and reviewed the movie Notorious! Yeah, because rap on the west coast and rap on the east coast were basically the same thing. That sounds like something I heard once.

They find my joke hilarious, because I am so white and don’t know any better.

Lives used to suck for black people back in the day. I can keep that sentence vague, because in America is has basically always been true. Back in the day could be yesterday, technically. But in this case I mean 1980’s, where apparently everyone was free and equal under the law, and the law wanted to put the black youth in their place. Arrested for being black was a common occurrence, but also drugs, gang violence, and more. N.W.A. was a rap super group from Compton, California, composed of five members with various talent.

We had Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), who was just in high school but a great lyricist. He wasn’t a thug, but he sure got harassed by the police. Dr. Dre, or Andre (Corey Hawkins) was hoping to be a DJ and produce music, not sit in a cubicle all day. There was Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), who had money and some clout in the music business and would help set them up if they had a good idea. But then he was forced to rap, and hey, he could do it well. And then there was MC Ren (Aldis Hodge) and Dj Yella (Neil Brown Jr.) were also in the group, but this film was a lot less about them and more about the other three. They wrote some rhymes and DJ’d too, I guess. I don’t know shit about them.

They are the two on the left so they don’t complain to me about under-representation. Now I can ignore them the rest of this review.

Either way, their first single Boyz-N-The-Hood was an instant success. Their whole city and area loved it, and it spread like wildfire. They weren’t being soft with their words and they were telling the street truth about their lives. It was gangster rap. They were quickly signed by Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti) as their manager, because he does sleazy well, and he was able to get them to produce a few more hits to create their first album. Straight Outta Compton! They were signed by the same record company who was getting big off of the California Raisins and wanted to branch out, and next thing you know, they are touring around the United States to sold our concert arenas carrying a strong message. You know, Fuck The Police and all that.

This of course led to the arrest for being black and speaking out, and other shenanigans. The group was now super famous, but thanks to contract disputes and managers screwing people over, they also had to go their separate ways. First Ice Cube left, causing a big rift and song battles, then Dr. Dre founded his own company with Suge Knight (R. Marcos Taylor) (Don’t fuck with Suge Knight. He will secretly give you aids, kill Tupac and Biggie and get away with it all).

And uhh. More stuff happens I guess. Shit. I can’t tell you about everything. I can’t tell you about Rodney King. I should let something be a surprise.

Other artists name dropped in the film include The D.O.C., Tupac, and Snoop Dogg. Actors aren’t even important in there. However, some of the women who would go on to be wives and lovers of the big three are played by Carra Patterson, Alexandra Shipp, and Elena Goode.

You can tell the band members apart by what their favorite teams are: All from California, surprisingly!

Not many people get to play their own dad in a movie about their life. First you need a famous father. Then you have to be the right age at the right time. You also need to look a lot like him. So O’Shea Jackson Jr. got to play his dad, Ice Cube, which is awesome. He is like the kid in Notorious, who played his dad for like one small age group in that film.

In particular, I thought Jackson Jr. and Hawkins did a phenomenal job playing Cube and Dre, which also happen to be the people I know more about thanks to how big they both got. But their stories, and Eazy-E’s story was a fantastic thing for almost anyone to hear and , despite it being over 20 years ago, oddly relevant to today still. Things don’t change that quickly, regardless of the size of computer chips. However, nothing made me cry! There were three scenes where they were going to attempt to bring out the tears, but I was able to resist them all. The last two would have totally gotten me if they just made those scenes a little bit longer, but when your film is already pushing 2.5 hours, it is understandable to make a few cuts.

Seriously, this movie was intense, dramatic, entertaining, a bit funny, extremely informative, and an all around fantastic film for just about everybody. Maybe not your kids, leave them at home for awhile. Honestly, this is now my second favorite music group biographical film, and I don’t even care about most of the music in this one! It will be hard for something to beat The Temptations, honestly, unless we eventually get a gritty Weird Al movie. Two references in one review, solid.