Tag: John Krasinski

This review for A Quiet Place has come way later than most of you would expect. But hey, I missed the first screening. And for a movie of this level, I would normally rush off to see it regardless. But I also love my wife.

And this is a movie she wanted to see badly as well. Her wanting to see movies isn’t rare, but she almost never wants to see horror. Her love of the actors involve and the interviews she saw online changed her opinion enough to still want to see it, so I knew my first time seeing it would be with her in our house, once it is on Red Box.

Which was like, a month ago. Vacations yo, they can delay things. And thus even surprising me for when this one finally came out.

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This is how my students have to walk down the hallway sometimes if they don’t listen to the rules.

We first see our family with the world already ravaged. People are gone and dead. Things have been abandoned. Desolation, ruin, all of the normal signs of an Apocalypse.

Our father (John Krasinski), mother (Emily Blunt), and three kids (Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Cade Woodward) are looking for supplies and no one is speaking. Every time a sound is about to be made, it is stopped and fixed before problems occur.

Based on newspaper articles and television recordings it is clear that some sort of Alien has occupied the planet. They have amazing hearing but poor site. For those who choose to run, play, gossip, they will be quickly found and eaten. A pretty shitty time to be alive.

But this family is doing okay. They have sound proofed most of their belongings. They knew sign language because their oldest, the daughter, is deaf. And the father is spending a lot of time trying to get her an earpiece to let her hear the world.

Needless to say, conflict will be coming to their house. An event, an incredibly loud one normally, is to occur, and they have to find a way to survive the attack that will certainly appear at their door step.

WE SAID NO TALKING GOD DAMN IT!

What a tense and wonderful film. Directed, starting, and written a little bit by Krasinski, he shows off a powerful movie on his first full feature attempt. Well, first well known movie. Not many people saw The Hollars, despite some nominations [I totally wanted to, I just forgot]. It is at least his first horror picture directing.

A lot of experiences with this film will talk about how amazing it was to quiet an entire theater from any sound, as a joint experience brought on from the films suspense. That didn’t happen in my house, because it is a house with kids, but I still was on the edge of my seat.

A Quiet Place did a great job of explaining the alien back story without feeling stupid. And better yet, we get to stay in the dark like most of the cast about the aliens. We don’t get all of it explained and we don’t need it. The idea of future sequels worries me as they will likely ruin the suspense.

Overall this is a very tense and upsetting movie. As a father, I obviously identified with several of the elements and they struck a bigger nerve but I can see those complaining about not scary enough. Some of the character decisions are incredibly frustrating, and it is another thing to watch kids be dumb. But kids are dumb.

I hope more horror films start going this route. This is an indie horror movie feel that made it mainstream. The more people accept this film then the more they will begin to accept films like It Comes At Night.

Benghazi. What a political buzz word. A city that no one had any idea even existed before the events in 2012, but it became quite a big deal.

And I couldn’t care less. I am mostly annoyed that it has become such a buzz word without a lot of meaning behind it that shitty internet and news people are referring to controversies as “word”-ghazi, depending on the situation. It is just as ludicrous as adding gate to the end of it, if not more so. And both things need to stop.

Yes, these indeed are my thoughts going into the movie 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. I don’t know shit about it, outside of the fact that controversy exists. I know it is supposed to be a real story, but Michael Bay is directing it so who knows. I know that this movie is based on a book written by someone who was there, so who knows the actual accuracy of the book.

After all, who cares about truth when the outcome is income.

I expect a plethora of pew pew pews on both sides.

Apparently, Benghazi, Libya was named one of the most dangerous places in the world. Despite that, the US still kept a “diplomatic compound” in the city and nearby is a “secret” CIA compound staffed by private military contractors. And the movie begins with Jack Silva (John Krasinski) flying in to join their team. “Rone” Woods (James Badge Dale) an old friend picks them up, tells him to not mess with the locals and you know, helps fill in the new guy so that we can as an audience can learn things.

Despite tension, the US Ambassador to Libya (Matt Letscher) is still there, with a small rental cop security team. He gets worried when he sees people taking pictures of the compound. And worried he should be! Because on September 11, yes that day, some people attack the compound.

Now, our private military CIA people are the only friendlies in the area and they go against orders to try and save the ambassador. They have no support incoming and they are basically going to war with a tiny army, but it is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do, right?

Also starring David Giuntoli, Max Martini, Pablo Schreiber, Dominic Fumusa, David Denman, David Costabile, and Alexia Barlier.

Shit, there are explosions too. Instead of pews, we get boom boom booms.

I know what I am about to say is terrible criticism for a film and I know it is a word I should try to avoid while writing a review, but after pounding my head, I have no idea how to talk about the movie with any other vernacular. 13 Hours was boring. It dragged. It is almost two and a half hours long and it felt like four. It took a whole hour before the assault on any compound began, which is a shit ton of time to spend to try and make us care for the characters (which doesn’t work).

Sometimes when your goal is ultra realistic combat situations (which this is arguable, clearly many liberties would have been taken), it no longer entertaining. I hated Act of Valor, because they wanted realism at the expense of acting and story and it showed. In this case, Bay wanted to drive home an opinion, honor some people, and explode some shit.

I think forcing someone to watch this movie twice in a row would actually be considered torture and so technically it fits the theme of area the movie is set in. Go figure.

It wasn’t completely terrible, it was just boring. It failed to ever grasp my attention and felt like it would never end. Thankfully, this is the final major movie from January of 2016 that I had to watch. Hooray, I caught up only six months into the year! Too bad the months after it also were filled with bad films.

Bay, stick to Robots and Turtles. At least they are occasionally interesting.

It has been awhile since I have seen a film set mostly in Hawaii. Godzilla, Big Eyes, Battleship all had elements in Hawaii. But the last full on Hawaiian film was The Descendants and it was really fucking good. So if I compare all films set in Hawaii, Aloha has to have some pretty big strides to catch up to the top.

And it has to do it with controversy!

What controversy? Well, casting controversy of course. The last films to receive this much internet anger was The Last Airbender and Exodus: Gods and Kings, but to be fair, they received criticism for more than just casting choices. In this film, Emma Stone, a very white woman plays a Hawaiin. Why is that an issue? Because internet people claim white people can’t be Hawaiian of course.

Oh, they mean native Hawaiian. Fair point, sure. But she is also playing someone who is just a quarter Hawaiian, so one of her parents is only half Hawaiian, and fuck everybody she could totally qualify as someone who is a quarter Hawaiian. Saying she doesn’t look it enough is stupid complaint when she is claiming barely any Hawaiian ancestry. Just because she isn’t in real life quarter Hawaiian doesn’t mean she can’t play one on a movie and be believable. It is called mother fucking Acting. Damn it.

This looks like they were photoshopped next to each other, their chemistry is so nonexistent.

Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper) used to be a great military person, and then he left! Turns out the military pays close to jack in pay, so he sold his skills to a private contractor, Carson Welch (Bill Murray) who wants to go to outer space! Brian loves space and wants to go one day. I think. Either way, he heads to Hawaii for a few days, where he used to be a big deal. People told stories about him. Blah blah blah.

He is happy to be back. For whatever reason, Allison Ng (Stone) is being assigned to follow him and help him out on his meetings. She is in in the military and young but full of spunk.

Fuck. I am dying typing out this review. The movie was so boring. Here are the only other important plot points.

Brian and Tracy (Rachel McAdams) used to have a thing like 12 years ago. They make it VERY obvious that her oldest daughter is his kid. But she is married now to Woody (John Krasinski) and they have at least one more kid. So hopefully they don’t rekindle anything, would be dickish. At the same time, Allison starts to like Brian. There is also a big controversy over the native Hawaiians and using their land to send rockets into space, as they are worried it will end badly.

Also featuring Alec Baldwin and Danny McBride is a full fledged military men!

The sexual tension is high when Cooper looks apathetic while coding.

What the hell happened to you Cameron Crowe? Seriously? What in the fuck? He gave us Say Anything…, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous! These are good to great movies right? Because the last thing before this one was We Bought A Zoo which was incredibly average in every single way.

And now? Now we have Aloha. Which sure had controversy which I gave no cares about. What I care about is a good entertaining movie, but Aloha is neither good nor entertaining. While watching, I couldn’t help but wait for the point of the movie to come across. Are the military supposed to be bad? Are private contractors? They sort of answer it by the end, but it almost seems like that was an after thought despite allegedly being the main plot line. What is more annoying is that most of the conflict in the end also seemingly comes out of nowhere. And it is resolved with a couple lines of dialogue, again, as an after thought.

As for the relationship angle, one never really goes anywhere and the other is also extremely forced. It is like all of the actors involved are just uncomfortable the whole movie. No one has a desire to be great in this film, it is probably just a quick paycheck for everyone and a free trip to Hawaii. You know, the Adam Sandler reason for acting. Not even Kenny Fucking Powers can save this movie, because he might be in 3 scenes. Maybe. Everything is wasted in this film that is technically quite full of talent and entertaining people. I’m going to go watch The Descendants again.

Studio Ghibli has made a lot of movies and most people would consider them to be a big deal. More importantly, their main director Hayao Miyazaki has created some of the best, most financially successful and well known anime movies to come out of Japan!

I have only seen a handful of their movies and only reviewed one before (The Secret World of Arrietty), so I am not an expert on the subject. But since it is the internet, expertness is just a click away.

Either way, The Wind Rises is now most known for being Miyazaki’s final film, finally ready to retire. This was released barely last year in 2013 for like a week to make the Academy Awards and then released for real barely in February. Needless to say, this is another one that took forever to see. But I guess they have no rush since it totally didn’t win Best Animated Picture. Sucks to not go out on a high note, Miyazaki.

Which is probably why he made a movie about objects that go so high.

“Wait a minute,” you might be stating quite boringly. “Does that tag on the bottom of the page after the review is over say Biography? This is an animated movie!” Why yes, person who reads the tags before the review. This is a pseudo biography of Jiro Horikoshi (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an airplane engineer for Japan who designed some sweet planes before World War II. Yes, the war where Japan used planes to fuck up parts of America.

It starts with tiny Jiro who wants to one day be a fighter pilot. But with his poor vision, he realizes he would never be allowed to fly one. That is when he does research on plane manufacturers and begins to dream about Giovanni Battista Caproni (Stanley Tucci), an world renowned plane designer who tells him that making the planes is far more exciting than flying them. That planes should be beautiful creations and not war machines. He tells him that and oh so much more.

Well, with hard work and perseverance, Jiro becomes kind of awesome at planes and engineering. He gets accepted into a top program in the field and meets his sarcastic and always joyful friend Honjo (John Krasinski). He eventually gets a job with Mitsubishi where is boss Kurokawa (Martin Short) is a strict tiny man, but one who knows Jiro has what it takes.

Oh, Jiro was also involved in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. That is where he meets young Nahoko (Emily Blunt) who, wouldn’t you guess it, has some effect on him later in life too?

Other famous people are Mae Whitman who voices his younger sister, and William H. Macy, who is surely someone important because it is William H. Macy voicing them.

“Less pew pew pew and more zoom zoom zoom!” – Paraphrased movie quote

Given the majority of Miyazaki’s work dealing with fantasy and the bizarre, it is quite odd to find a movie that is set so firmly in reality. I mean, a biography? Set in Japan? The only strange things that really happen in the movie are when Jiro is dreaming, where anything goes anyways. I can’t tell you how factual the film is, but it seems to paint a realistic picture of society and of Jiro. Even the smaller details I appreciated, such as Jiro and Honjo smoking. A lot. Many smokes were had in designing and school, and they didn’t ignore that just because kids might watch it like Disney did with Saving Mr. Banks. He didn’t whitewash history despite Japan’s tendencies to do that (especially from that time period).

As always, the animation is also absolutely beautiful and showcases how great these types of films can be without CGI. Fucking talent right here.

It tells a story about love and reaching your goals, but I do feel like parts of the film tend to drag. I also decided as an experiment to watch it dubbed with the same English subtitles, because sometimes there are big differences. For the most part it kept with the same theme, but there was one scene where it mentioned someone had a kid in the subtitles and completely ignored it in the English dub version. There might have been more stark differences that I missed, but holy crap, did they get rid of a kid in the dubbed version? That’s like animation murder.

It is a fine movie on its own right, but The Wind Rises was clearly not the best animated movie of last year. It is a fine send off for an established director and I tip my fedora in his honor.

Promised Land, on first glance, looks like your typical Oscar Bait movie at the end of the year. After all, it had a super limited release on December 28, but didn’t get widespread release until January. In addition to that, you can tell right off the back it has a high chance of being a super liberal movie with a clear message. We’re talking George Clooney amounts of liberal here. Oh well, maybe it will be subtle about the whole thing?

Fuck.

Steve Butler (Maaaatt Damonnnn) is a closer for a natural gas company. Along with his partner, Sue (Frances McDormand), his job is to go into a community and buy the mining rights on property from the farm owners. They get a set price per acre, and a fraction of the profit they gain, while getting to keep their land for farming. Pretty sweet deal.

Heck, Steve came from a farming community himself in Iowa (what what). But once a local plant went under, the community died, their town crumbled and all was lost. He is providing these communities a safety net, and he is good at it too. But what happens when shit start to hit the fan?

A lot of negative talk about fracking in the news, and now everyone has google, so it is hard to tell who is telling the truth about the risks and why. Steve accidentally lets the community hold a vote on fracking, thanks to a persistent science teacher (Hal Holbrook). Because of that opening, all of the sudden there is an environmental group in town, trying to persuade voters just the same (John Krasinski).

Will Steve lose his mind trying to help the small town? Can he get the girl (Rosemarie DeWitt)? Why does Rob (Titus Welliver, aka The Man In Black from Lost) sell Guns, Groceries, and Guitars?

Do you really not know how this thing will end?

For a movie about fracking, this film took the strange route of not really ever talking about fracking. Heck, Damon’s character is a self claimed not expert on the science, he just buys property and answers questions. They made his character not perfect, not the best speaker if he is nervous (or hungover) to give it a nice realism, but also to make it a crutch. I guess they wanted to make him look like a puppet to the man in the grand scheme of things.

The anti-fracking side doesn’t do much in the use of actual science to defer the town either, both sides using specific tactics to get people trust them. Does that mean this is a fair and balanced movie on the subject? Heck no, and you shouldn’t expect it either. There was a big surprise near the end, but not the ending itself. Everything I expected to happen, did happen. But the surprise I both loved and hated. It was an interesting way to take the movie as a drama, but I hated it because it felt like a cop out and a grossly inaccurate portrayal of real life, which was great up to that point.

I am almost certain this movie won’t go anywhere in terms of awards, was just a meh movie by the end of it. Come on Matt, I expected better of you!

Big Miracle? Some whale movie?

Originally I wasn’t going to watch Big Miracle, but then I remembered I watch everything. “Oh yeah! Might as well watch it asap then,” I thinks to myself.2

This is the best intro I have wrote for a movie.

Bitches love whales?

Based off of actual events in the 80s (and thus I don’t know about it), this takes place in a very Northern Alaskan village. Yes, that means Eskimos. For whatever reason, Adam Carlson (John Krasinski) is a reporter in their town reporting on random shit, for the main Alaskan news. People love him there, overall nice guy. He finds one extra report before leaving though, thinking people will love it. Turns out three California Gray Whales are trapped under the ice! The vast water froze quicker this winter, and three whales are sharing a small hole, miles away from the ocean to breath from. Damn, that is sad.

This story gets LOTS of attention. Wildfire amounts. The director of Greenpeace Rachel Kramer (Drew Barrymore) is already around protesting the selling of territory for oil, and of course the guy who bought the land for Oil (Ted Danson). Also tons of media shows up, including Jill Jerard (Kristen Bell) who is willing to take any story to get a leg up. The head reporter at their department (John Michael Higgins) thinks it is silly though.

Fuck, even the government gets involved! Cold War is still looming, and the government gets a Russian ship nearby, made for cracking ice to help. Because they have no idea how to help these things. Initial tries are failing. Even bring in some boys from Minnesota with ice melting technology meant for rinks to try and speed up the process. Eventually they get the only idea that might work. To constantly make holes in the ice a few meters apart, big enough for the whales to come up for breath, and lead them to the ocean, hoping that they follow said holes.

Sounds crazy? Well because it is. All the locals and news reporters end up helping, including Tim Blake Nelson playing some guy from Alaska! The main kid in the movie is played by Ahmaogak Sweeney, as they had a lot of real locals play the appropriate parts. But will the Whales follow? Will the Russians save the day? Will anyone die along the way!?

Hopefully none of them decide to jump on the ice. That would suck.

So, in terms of Family movies involving saving animals, this one is actually quite refreshing. True stories can be annoying like in Dolphin Tale, where the just poop on everything that matters and give a random inspirational tale nothing like the real events. But this stuff seems to be a bit more spot on.

First off, the main kid in the movie isn’t even the main character? Everyone seems to play an important role, and it isn’t from a kids point of view, like most “family movies”. That is cool.

Secondly, the oil people arent the bad guys. Literally everyone helps out in this movie. And people don’t even need convincing, all sides actively work together and want to save the whales. Sure, some also enjoy the positive PR, but damn it, there is no one stopping them and reluctantly letting it happen. No, it just happens.

I will note I found it weird that everyone seemed to be against letting the locals kill the whales for meat. Kind of rude. Their logic was sound, and would supply them food for quite awhile. Oh well, we love guilting other cultures into living like us.

But yeah, this touching story actually was a good watch, with mostly believable characters. Had some normal family jokes you would have guessed, but overall was pretty decent.

BONUS TEXT!

I wrote this review in June, 2012, the summer before I moved to Iowa. I lived in North Carolina at the time, and Blockbuster I worked at was already closed. So I had even more free time for films, and watched anything I could.

In Iowa, I met my now wife in the summer of 2013. Days after I met her she had to fly out to Alaska to go to the funeral for her uncle, Randy Roosdett. Why is any of this relevant? Well, he apparently was an extra in this film as an oil man. And that is kind of neat.

Again, a movie with a thousand tags. But I will explain it very simply for you so that is all makes sense. The plot of Away We Go it turns out is pretty damn simple to understand. More time for analysis (if I choose). Hooray!

It’s about love. And finding your love’s vagina.

John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are an unmarried couple, but guess what, they are having a baby. She doesn’t want to get married, but still truly believes they will be together forever. They had moved to be closer to John’s parents (Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) to have some sort of relative in the babies life, since her parents are dead.

But when she is 6 months in, they find out they are moving to Belgium. For two years. Making their living arrangements kind of pointless. Afraid that their lives are fucked up and bad, they agree to go on a mini vacation to different parts of the country to visit their other family memmbers and friends, to see if they would be good places to live.

First to Arizona, to see Maya’s old boss and her husband / family (Allison Janney and Jim Gaffigan) who seem to be drunk a lot, and not too happy with life, and her sister. Then to Madison, for a job interview, where they also meet John’s cousin and husband (Maggie Gyllenhaal and Josh Hamilton), who are way too extreme on the hippy side.

Then to Montreal, to visit their mutual friends (Melanie Lynskey and Chris Messina), who have adopted many children, due to the unfortunate nature of Melanie’s ability to have a child (multiple miscarriages). Finally, a trip to Miami, to visit John’s brother (Paul Schneider) and help him out of a bad situation.

The whole time they are traveling they are dealing with their own problems, and wondering about their own inadequacies. And by both of them, I mean Maya. Because John is way too swell of a person, and optimistic, he is constantly making things better, all while looking like a hipster.

Exhibit A.

Their final destination choice I will let remain a mystery. Because fuck you, that’s why.

I thought the movie was pretty enjoyable. I laughed a lot more than I expected, thinking it would be a lot more heavily drama-nated. But man, there was many great scenes, and it all felt incredibly real. Hopefully their love in this fictional universe of the movie carries on after the birth and throughout their whole life. You are given a nice feeling that they have found true peace and happiness with their decisions, and everything will work out for the best.

Also, a lot of vagina talk.

This movie is a ‘chick flick’ with Kate Hudson, the young wife from Big Love, Some guy in a lot of Soaps, and Jim from the Office.

Holy clickable links, Batman!

I obviously wasn’t expecting much from this film to begin, but all of my laughs ended up being from JohnK, as his character seemed like it was acting identically like Jim, with just a little bit less looking at the camera. The story itself is bad morally. So much cheating and lies and not telling people whats going on (different from lies).

You see, girl likes boy. Boy is getting married to other girl. Boy used to like first girl. They girl 1 and boy decide to hook up anyway. Hahaha. Something Borrowed. It’s that wedding thing, but what is being borrowed is a husband!

All the lies that went back and forth was just awkward. I was frustrated with the people. It doesn’t help that based off of the characters characteristics (what?) the wrong choice seems to have been made at the end which is also just frustrating. But yeah. Everyone is flawed in promiscuity, except one character, who I guess is flawed in his anger (probably just represents how the viewers would be acting).

Also, roughly every other scene it seems like people were drinking and or drunk. Ah yes, Alcohol, the catalyst for shy white people to make bad decisions.

Hmm. This is a movie I really wanted to like. Who doesn’t like Alec Baldwin, I mean, come on!

The story is the one as old as time…a divorced couple of about 10 years want to have an affair with each other. Lots and lots of old people sex. “Old people” being of course kind of a ridiculous concept here. In fact, you may even describe their relationship as…. Complicated! It was an interesting smorgasbord of actors/actresses who played their children (/children in law) including Jim from the Office and the Silas from Weeds.

Steve Martin also being the sort of antagonist was weird as well. He has always been a “jerk” but never in this light.

Only joke here is the pun on name for a soda fountain operator. Get it? Get it? Fuck you.

The best performances are of course from Baldwin and Streep, who are very convincing at their portrayals. They are great at these roles. Unfortunately just having well done acting is not the end all be all of a movie. It also has to be a bit more interesting. It is weird that when Streep is freaking out that she is sexing up Baldwin, she calls it an affair. She isn’t cheating on anyone, but Alec is. I guess she has a higher moral ground than myself.