Tag: Kate Bosworth

Final day of Blackweek which also means I can pick almost anything I want! After all, since Black Mass isn’t out yet, I don’t have any other super new 2015 movies to review.

And I really had no idea what I wanted to watch. So as I often do in this situation, I went to Netflix and just searched around. This time was a bit easier, as I also got to search for the word “Black” and narrow down my results pretty significantly.

The reason I settled on Black Rock is for a few reasons. One, I didn’t have any horror-esque movies this week, just a thriller. And honestly a lot of horror movies have “Black” in the title. Secondly, out of all five or so movies I could have actually picked from that fit all my requirements, this is the only one I had heard of. With people I knew in it. And it wasn’t made for TV!

And familiarity leads to happy reviews because I can name drop facts or past reviews the actors have been in! We call that movie synergy.

We call this boat workingy.

Girls just wanna have fu-un. That’s what they really waaa-a-aa-aannnt. And to not die. But back up a bit.

Sarah (Kate Bosworth), Lou (Lake Bell), and Abby (Katie Aselton) have been friends since they were kids. And when they were kids, they used to go to a local island to play games, build forts, do outdoorsy things, probably experiment sexually. I don’t know, I don’t know what kids do on islands. The only book I read about it was pretty fucked up though.

They have some issues now, but they want to put the past behind and enjoy each others company. Well, while out gallivanting and arguing, they run into three hunters (Will Bouvier, Jay Paulson, Anslem Richardson), and hang out with them. They party with them! These guys all fought in the war too, but they are back. And then they DRINK with them. Well, one of our ladies gets flirty and starts to make out with one of our dudes. But he goes farther than she wants, and won’t stop when she wants him to stop. So she flails and hits him on the head with a rock.

Fatally. A black rock, maybe. Who can tell, it was night time. Other two hunters don’t like this and beat up the ladies and don’t know what to do. Well, they end up escaping, so now dudes with guns are looking for them on an island and they don’t have anything to help them. Ruh roh. Fucking hunters.

This is how you all must feel, having received zero movie synergy after my tease up.

Wait wait wait wait wait let me check something. The rating. “Rated R for some strong violence, pervasive language, sexual references and brief graphic nudity”.

BRIEF GRAPHIC NUDITY MY ASS (heh). That means a flash of a body. There was about ten minutes of naked women in the last 30 minutes of the movie. Nothing was brief about that. Did the MPAA not watch that? It was a very surprising scene, needless to say. It was a scene that you’d imagine as being very quick but you know. Ten fucking minutes. It is an eighty minute movie. A huge percentage of it is just nakedness.

Speaking of how long this movie is, I honestly feel the biggest issue is that it should be even shorter. There was not enough story to make it last. The first part of the movie, the set up, the trip to the island, the chick bonding. I don’t remember how long that lasted, but it just seemed to drag. It obviously started to speed up once we introduced the dudes, but the intro was slow.

Overall, I was surprised by how brutal the whole movie felt. It wasn’t a normal thriller/horror, as it was going for a realistic vibe. And it showed. You see the ladies up there? Beat up, cut up, black eyes. It only gets worse. Simple things seem to take people down and nothing is super movie like.

It was so real, I definitely wouldn’t want to watch it again, let’s say that. But also, not fantastic enough to warrant a second viewing either.

Still Alice is another one of those movies that got leaked from Sony ahead of time. But no one cared about Still Alice. They only cared about Fury and Annie.

Personally, I hadn’t heard of the movie at all. It sounds creepy I guess.

But then I heard about buzz for best actress and maybe supporting actress, so I figured I’d watch it earlier than planned. I need all the help I can get in the potential Best Actress category. For whatever reason (sexism?), the movies that get nominated for Best Actress don’t often get nominated for a lot of other rewards. Last year is a poor example, and I might be talking out of my ass, but I think it is true.

At the very least, when I look back on the nominations for Best Actress in the past, I notice that I have seen significantly less of them than others. That sucks. Maybe I am just not as interested in super great female acting performances? Hard to say.

Either way, I am ready to be wowed, way more than I was ready for Mr. Turner.

And more than I am ready for a walk on a beach. I am never ready for a walk on the beach.

This is a story about Alzheimer’s Disease. Some people argue it is the saddest of the diseases. It is sadder than Cancer, AIDS, and definitely sadder than Alcoholism. It definitely worked for Barney’s Version, which was a lot better than the cover gave it credit for.

Dr. Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) is some sort of Psychologist at some sort of university. She is big in career. She is married to Dr. John (Alec Baldwin), also a smart person, who also has some sort of university/scientist based job. They have a nice family too.

Three whole kids! None of them are half. A daughter (Kate Bosworth) who is infertile, sure, but married and going to get one of those science babies with her husband (Shane McRae). A boy (Hunter Parrish) who also is successful with college and all. And a third child. Ugh. A younger daughter (Kristen Stewart), who doesn’t want to do college and wants to be an actress. Gross gross gross.

Either way. Alice starts to forget shit. Sometimes blurry vision. She talks to a neurologist (Stephen Kunken), and yep. She has an early form of Alzheimer’s, rare genetic version. Which has its own complications.

And you know. Other sad things!

Like Vests, the saddest articles of clothing I could imagine.

Ah shit. Sadness. Like man. I cried a couple times. Damn empathy. I used to not feel sad over getting older type stories. But here we go. Getting older. Having a family. Genetics. Diseases. Losing and forgetting memories.

I already mentioned that I liked Barney’s Version, for whatever reason the only Alzheimer’s based movie I could thing of. It was great for Paul Giamatti in the titular role, but it is not something I have ever tried to watch over the last three years. Maybe in another five I will watch it again. But man, Still Alice was really really damn good. The story itself shows the decay in a natural and fantastic way. Also a bit scary. Not a thriller, but man, losing the memories that you are trying so hard to maintain. Being such a smart individual and losing what made you feel unique and special? That is scary. I don’t want to get old and have that happen to me. I don’t want my parents to forget I exist.

Also, Julianne Fucking Moore. Before this movie, I could only guess that maybe Rosamund Pike might win it from Gone Girl. Despite how great she is in that role, Moore is so much better. I haven’t seen Wild. I haven’t seen Cake. But I can’t imagine any performance as good as hers (and I was equally vocal about Cate Blanchette eventually winning last year).

Kristen Stewart was in this movie, and I didn’t think she will win any awards, but she wasn’t terrible or anything. Some of you might be thinking that you are surprised she was in a 4 out of 4 movie before Robert Pattinson. But you’d be wrong, because I really really enjoyed Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

I can’t believe I almost forgot about Homefront! Maybe because it doesn’t feel like a holiday movie? No idea. But this was the last movie I had on my mind when I went to go see movies coming out before Thanksgiving.

I guess what I am really saying is that a Red Dawn remake made a bit more sense than Homefront for the holidays.

Don’t stare too long. You will start assuming the smoke is some sort of strange facial hair.

Phil Broker (Jason Statham) is a former DEA agent. He is an excellently skilled fighter, in hand to hand combat and in gun shooting, sure, but really he was terrible at his job. The movie opens with him undercover in a Biker gang, four years of work. They are doing a drug bust finally, and from what I can tell as a movie viewer, he does everything wrong. Like reveal that he is undercover to the people he is bringing down, instead of pretending to get arrested too. He goes on a full on chase, and it ends with the death of the leader’s son, and the leader locked away.

So of course Phil goes into retirement and hiding. It is actually unclear if it was necessary, I guess. Because it isn’t witness protection, he just moves to a middle of no where place in Louisiana (which is somehow still in that same biker gang’s turf). So I don’t think he is hiding too hard.

Well, he lost his wife, and is now a single dad, with his daughter Maddy (Izabela Vidovic). He just wants to live a peaceful life, but there are rednecks here who hold grudges over the smallest things. Like when Maddy beats up a Bully, after warning him. So his parents (Kate Bosworth, Marcus Hester) hate Phil now.

So the brother in law, Gator (James Franco) gets involved, a local meth dealer boss here. So of course he knows people, has connections, blah blah blah. The tiny event turns big, and now the biker gang knows where he is, and people might die.

Annnd that’s about it. Winona Ryder plays a former crack whore (that’s the movie term, not mine), Omar Benson Miller a friend of Phil, and Clancy Brown the local sheriff.

Believe it or not, his character is not high right now.

So, right from the beginning, this movie began to disappoint. The undercover bust was one of the worst attempts at catching a criminal base that I ever saw. First, somehow their tactic included kill, not apprehend, as many of the gang members as possible. They took out the lights way before they were in position. The only prisoner they got was the leader, which is almost pointless. And of course Phil gave himself away at the first opportunity and didn’t even try to stay undercover.

I guess they had to find a bad way to get the movie started.

But after that, this was mostly a bad drama/action movie without a lot of the thriller moments implied from the trailer. With the trailer and the title being Homefront, they showed a lot of Statham in his house, preparing to defend it from a huge amount of attackers. A nice home invasion story, which would be the conclusion. Well, it wasn’t the conclusion, and he didn’t stay in the house. Right when they got there, he left the house, and then they did a bunch of shooting in the woods. The shooting itself went super quickly, and was in the dark, so we couldn’t see a lot of how it went down, depriving me of the action I deserve.

The drama components were bad. Too many scenes were tense for no reason. Statham was a huge dick to the local sheriff, who just wanted to know what was going on. Absolutely no reason.

He was a dick. And he wasn’t entertaining for me. That is all. Waste of potential of a movie. Franco was decent though.

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.

Entirely my fault, but as soon as I started to watch this movie, I was immediately disappointed.

I saw L!fe Happens in the RedBox, and was like, “HOLY SHIT THE GOOCH IS STARRING IN A MOVIE GO GO GO GO GOGOGOGOGOGOGO!”

Well it’s not The Gooch. It is just Krysten Ritter, who always reminds me of The Gooch. Except for when I started to watch Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23. I started that show because I thought it was Christina Ricci.

Basically, I have no idea who this fucking woman is.

The story begins with Deena (Kate Bosworth) and Kim (Ritter) really wanting to have sex. They are roomies, you see, and actually both brought a guy home! But they can’t find any damn condoms. Well, one, and Deena claims it. A year later, Kim has a child. Max, aww.

They also have a third roommate, Laura (Rachel Bilson) but she is a virgin and that’s all she brings to the table in the movie. I guess as a sort of opposite to the main two?

Anyways, the baby daddy (Rhys Coiro) doesn’t want to be a dad, so she is basically on her own. She pushes her baby on other people, like her dad, and roommates, because she still feels the need to party and feels like she deserves it. She also ends up falling for some Nicholas dude (Geoff Stults) and tells him the baby belongs to her roommate. That’s a good start to a relationship.

So now she is all lying it up, and constantly trying to make her friends help her out. They don’t like that, or the lies. Hey, Jason Biggs and Justin Kirk are also in this. Hooray~.

Um. Uhhh. Just hanging out ladies? That’s cool. Stop staring at me.

Turns out there is not much to say about this film. It was just terrible. Characters aren’t really likable, story is boring, there aren’t really any funny moments. It literally has nothing going on for it. So little that I can’t even make a good joke about it.

I mean. Fuck. Why would you do this to me, movie people? Such a boring lame movie? I trusted you, and you just poked me in the eye. Twice. The same eye. I mean, it is nice of them to not do one poke per eye, or else I’d be blind, but the second poke on an already poked eye is basically pointless.

Nevermind, if an eye poke was pointless, it probably wouldn’t actually be a poke, would it?

Obviously I have a wide arrange of movies readily available to me, and this is one of the first I had the chance to see. I passed it up though, at the time, because I wasn’t yet set in the “Watch everything always, damn it!” mind set. It just looked like it would be dumb, and cheesy. The Warrior’s Way is a nice title, but for a movie like this? Yuck!

Actual scene from movie.

Dong-gun Jang (who will be Yang, from here on out) comes to a small town in the west, pretty empty, pretty much just a circus. He is a member of an assassin group, and wants to be the best swordsman in the entire world. But in doing so, he must defeat every member of an opposing clan, and when he gets to the last member, a baby, he cannot do it. He is outcasted from his own clan, and goes on the run.

At the carnie-town, he meats the mayor (Tony Cox), the local drunk (Geoffrey Rush), and a ill tempered woman (Kate Bosworth). After some time, (and training of some townspeople), The “Colonel” (Danny Huston) comes back to torture the town. He frequently raids them, and kills as he pleases.

Blah blah blah, he helps them fight back, gain the courage they once had. Eventually the assassins also attack, which makes the fight more fair for the town (as the two groups fight), while Yang tries to kill evurrybuddy up in this joint (minus the carnies). Redemption is eventually had. If you want a stupidly long plot summary, for some reason they wrote a book about this movie on Wikipedia.

Awww, look at the baby.

Alright, so the plot is pretty bad. The acting, not the best either. I am pretty sure the entire movie was filmed in front of a green screen too, similar to 300. Nothing seems real, and I think that takes away from the experience of really getting into the movie.

But the fighting. OH MAN THE FIGHTING. The action scenes in this movie are the only thing saving it. Yes, a lot of it becomes “CGI fighting scenes”, but they spent a lot of work on them. Probably all of their work on them. Even the small skirmishes were visually entertaining in the movie.

I am not saying this makes it a great movie, by all means no. But usually a “2 out of 4” means it is okay, or worthy of only one watch (as you probably wont want to see it again). This is more so the “one and done” method, not the decent method. I’d say watch it cheaply if you can for the fight scenes, with a bunch of people. You will go “ooh” and “aah” like trained seals.

Hold your horses everyone. ANOTHER Hollywood remake!? For shame. After all, the first Straw Dogs is only 40 years old. It should still be fresh and in everyone’s minds. Clearly Hollywood is running out of ideas, if it has to remake something only 40 years old. The NEW Straw Dogs will automatically suck, by comparison. It has things like credit cards in it!

It is also full of thievery and shame.

The other option is to ignore all of that.

Done! James Marsden and Kate Bosworth are traveling down south to the town where Kate used to live. It is a smaller community, not all hustlin’ and bustlin’ like the big cities up north. Which is good! She has an old place there, and he needs a quiet place to write a screenplay. They also want the roof of the shed/barn thing repaired, for some reason (even if they are there temporarily). A friend of Kates, played by Alexander Skarsgård, and his posse, agree to fix the roof.

Then crazy shit happens. And by crazy, I mean subtle annoyances between the two groups. Coming too early to start work. Leaving too early. Coming too late. Drinking their beers. Playing loud music.

This also makes Kate and James argue. Because James is a pussy who hates confrontation, and Kate is running around braless and “asking for it”. Which just leads her to flash seductively the crew (and oh yeah, that guy is her former ex). As expected, this leads to further elevation of conflict. A dead cat, bizarre hunting antics, and a rape or two.

“Or two?! Let’s calm down here. I am a one and done kind of guy.” – Flynn

There is also a side story involving James Woods (a high school football coach), his cheerleading daughter, and Dominic Purcell who plays “local retarded boy”. She has taken a fancy to him, which Woods is sourly against. The two plot lines accumulate by the end, to create a standoff where James Marsden finally breaks, and protects his family at all costs.

So, a lot of this film had me cringing in my seat. The violence at the end, rape in the middle, a scene where bone was shown coming out of the arm. When the final final scene happened, which also happened in the original, I half expected to hear someone yell “FATALITY!”, it was that crazy.

Personally, the reason I can’t rate this higher is because I know I probably won’t ever watch this again. Although an enjoyable experience, I wouldn’t want to see it more than once, which is a weird feeling.

From what I can tell, the differences between the two movies are: Going down South instead of North, less boobs in the rape scene (despite the fact that her boobs are pretty much visible throughout with her clothing choices), the guy is a writer not a mathematician, the violence was upped a bit, and it ends sooner. The first is based on a book though (And this one is based off the movie). That should have been done, because changing medias is fine.

But remakes never. After all, The Wizard of Oz and Scarface were both remakes, and they failed horribly because of it.

Maybe the problem is that it is too similar to the original still, and thus doesn’t warrant being made. But, if it had a lot different, people would bitch about it not being Straw Dogs. Lose lose.