Tag: Lil Rel Howery

Did John Lasseter fuck around with employees and sexually harass people while working for Disney/Pixar?

Well, most assuredly yes. He even admitted to it and called them missteps. That is pretty poorly worded. What a fuck. So he got booted out of Disney/Pixar, which makes sense. But damn it, he has /talent/ so he can’t not have a job. How will he live off of his previous riches?

So Skydance Animation was made! Okay, it was made before that controversy. But they hired Lasseter to run it, because they wanted a big name I guess. And that is the intro you get to have for their first animated film, Luck! Which is premiering straight to Apple+.

Oh, but this movie has dragons. Why isn’t it on HBO?

Luck is a story about Sam (Eva Noblezada), whom you might have already guessed, is unlucky. She is clumsy, she is late, her stuff stops working, she falls, she gets pains, but damn it she is 18 now, and about to live life on her own. Her own apartment, her own basic job. Why is that? Oh yeah, because she was also in a foster home. Yep, her unluckiness meant she was also there for years and never got taken in by a “forever family”, and just had to live a sad life alone. Yep, we are going depressing with this real quick.

But leaving the home meant that that Hazel (Adelynn Spoon) is now alone. A newer foster kid in the home. Sam makes sure she should still visit so often, so she won’t be alone, and hopes she has better luck.

Sure enough, she runs into a black cat, who drops a coin (ah, must be a lucky penny), and then Sam has good luck! She blames it on the coin of course, and wants to give it to Hazel so she can be adopted (fuuuck, that’s too depressing for me). But, once again, she is unlucky and loses it after intentionally setting it down.

That is when she runs into the cat again and….well, the rest is history. You know, after she follows it to a secret Luck world where Good Luck is created and fostered, with a polar opposite Bad Luck side that brings bad luck into the world, with a smorgasbord of diverse characters.

Also starring Colin O’Donoghue, Flula Borg, Jane Fonda, Lil Rel Howery, Maurice J. Irvin, Simon Pegg (as the cat!), John Ratzenberger, and Whoopi Goldberg.

Oh shit, emotions rising. Characters are hugging!

Honestly, this movie made me cry. But it is seriously hard not to. The first ten minutes are extremely sad. I feel so bad, that the took something kind of whimsical like having good or bad luck and equating it to something so serious like having someone fucking adopt you. Normally the stakes for this type of thing are missing a shot in a big sports game, or question in a competition. But sorry, your unusual unluckiness prevented parents from wanting to have you in their life? And often not show up at all for visits? Goddamn, calm down movie people.

Honestly, writing that makes me a bit more annoyed as it all comes together.

For the film itself, it is pretty damn basic. It feels like a lot of other generic kid fantasy films. Go to a magical realm. Have a diverse cast of different characters and magical beasts to look at. Have to go from point to point to collect things, to get closer and closer to a goal. And learn a lesson, that is really obvious from us the viewer. Just a standard, unimaginative story line. Even if it is in a new world we haven’t been before, it doesn’t do anything particular shocking with that world.

Overall, Luck is really lazy. For a child, it might be nicely distracting. But its tone is off, and honestly leaving a bad taste in my mouth to cheapen foster kids and adoption into good and bad luck. Sure the film made me cry, like twice, but it did so by being very manipulative with some real tragedies that didn’t actually matter for a lot of the story.

1 out of 4.

College Athletes should be paid for their game times and their practice times.

That is it. People who do work should get benefits and protections from said work. That shouldn’t be controversial.

But every time this conversation comes up, people will talk about how they get a scholarship at a nice college during that time, and that is their payment. Bullshit. Plenty of people get scholarships to college. But they don’t have to give up most of their time to do it. They can still accept gifts from people. They can still get a job to earn money. Athletes get fucked over, and bring in money for their schools, all so they can just exist there for free? It is nice when the slave master provides a place to sleep, I guess.

Ahem. I am passionate about this subject. I have seen a few documentaries on it. And still very little changes. It really sucks for those involved. Most of them don’t become elite players in their sport to make money. Most get used up and spit out and hopefully can get a job somewhere, assuming their body hasn’t betrayed them by then.

All of this to say, I am excited to see National Champions. A film that is going to tackle that very subject, in a fictional manner.

Pictured: Me glaring at the “BuT tHeIr ScHoLaRsHiP” crowd.

Here we are, the NCAA College Football championship game. The best two college football teams playing for all the marbles. None of those silly Bowls, this is the top spot, where anyone would want to be. This is the biggest stage a lot of these students will reach, given how few people actually make it into the NFL. But who knows, a great show here might mean getting drafted, or even, the highest draft position.

So let’s talk about LeMarcus James (Stephan James). He is the elite quarterback who helped lead his team to an undefeated season. He has a great enough relationship with his coach (J.K. Simmons) and people seem to like him. And now he is planning on boycotting the final game in just three days. He refuses to play, until his demands are met. What demands? Honestly, he wants important ones. He wants all NCAA athletes to be considered employees, so they can earn money from their schools. He wants them to get cuts of pay from their ticket sales and things with their image or name attached. He wants insurance protection for players during college, that ensure their scholarship won’t go away and they will have the best care even after the season is over.

You know, he doesn’t want student athletes to be treated as slaves as the conference owners and coaches get richer and richer. And James is likely going number 1 overall in the draft, he already has a big day coming his way. He is trying to protect all the other athletes.

This causes quite a hubbub. A lot of people pick sides. A lot of drama will happen. And a lot of secrets will come out, or maybe come out.

Also starring Alexander Ludwig, Andrew Bachelor, David Koechner, Jeffrey Donovan, Kristin Chenoweth, Lil Rel Howery, Tim Blake Nelson, Timothy Olyphant, and Uzo Aduba.

I think we can all make inferences about what this looks like. 

Hey! A movie about a topic I am invested in! And honestly, my main points of detraction are that it didn’t stay as invested in that story as I would like, and filled it with fictional stuff. Which makes sense, because it is fictional…

Obviously if these people are playing these characters they have things in their past, and that makes the escalation of events by the end build up due to all of the secrets. But like…what if there wasn’t a big build up of secrets? What if there was nothing worth blackmailing, like I assume a majority of people out there would have? That is the fictional film I would like to see technically. But yeah, we need drama or whatever in these movies. And the secrets, some of them are quite juicy. In terms of entertainment and the stakes, they do get really high, so we have some good tense boardroom level scenes with high power dealers.

But damn, my interest in this topic just wishes it played it straight. But then it would be a documentary, and fuck, we already have like 50 of them on this topic.

Okay, so aside from that, I did like the movie. It had a little confusion early on though. It took me a bit of time to really understand what the hell was going on with Ludwig’s character, as in, his characters role in the movie and with the star quarterback. Was he a player? Was he some buff political person controlling him? It was a bit odd. I thought James and Simmons gave exceptional performances in their roles, although the finish for both of them with the plot was a bit of a unexceptional ending.

Clearly I wanted just a movie where the players on both sides agreed, and everyone got what they wanted from the strike, and we all moved on as a country, but that is less believable than magic. It is important to recognize my own biases in where I wanted the plot to go, versus what happened. In terms of escalation, it was nice, and tense. It had some wonderful speeches. It still got important information out there. And I think it can be a nice fictional sports movie not about sports. Like Draft Day. A tense movie about a fake draft so sure, it can be made really damn tense.

3 out of 4.

And now for the movie everyone has been clamoring for…Tom & Jerry!

But you know, animated versions interacting with real people! Yeah! That is what we want for sure!

Okay, but for real. Space Jam was a hit. No way this has to mean an auto flop. I guess if there is a good reason behind it, it should be fine. What better way to fill your film with A-listers to help sell the product than by letting them interact with CGI technology?

If the angst is fake, we must dispose of the cartoons. Kayla (Chloe Grace Moretz) is a down on her luck, but smart woman, just needing a break and an income in New York City. She ends up conning her way into a sweet hotel gig, and honestly, she is probably qualified if she can convince enough people she is knowledgeable in my eyes.

But this luxurious hotel is hosting the biggest wedding of the year this weekend. Two really big social media influences (Colin Jost / Pallavi Sharda) and they are rich and it will be the tits. Can I use that term in a kids movie review?

Anyways, another hotel liaison, Terence (Michael Pena) doesn’t trust her at all, and thinks she is up to something. So he will watch out for her and hope she doesn’t ruin things. Oh also there is a cat named Tom and a mouse named Jerry I guess, they are involved in all of this for some reason.

Also starring Rob Delaney, Patsy Ferran, Jordan Bolger, Ken Jeong, Daniel Adegboyega, Nicky Jam, Lil Rel Howery, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Bobby Cannavale.

“I am shocked, shocked! To find you two causing problems.” – Chloe, probablyWhat is the normal plot of Tom & Jerry? Tom is a house cat, Jerry is a home invader who starts to live in their owners house and Tom is supposed to kill him for the owner I assume. Jerry is clearly not a pet. And mice can live a lot of places and aren’t entitled to human houses or anything like that. But I think the cartoons ignore a lot of that and just make the back and forth seem natural and fine.

So what about the movie? Well, we know that Jerry isn’t a rich mouse so can’t get a sexy apartment and eventually sneaks into a fancy hotel and is seen by guests and they want him out. That makes sense. This is a fine establishment with a no pets policy already. We also see Tom making money in the park as a piano playing cat. He also pretends to be blind for more sympathy tips maybe. Kind of bad. He should be able to rely on just his cat piano self, its already impressive. Then Jerry comes up and puts his own jar out as a dancing mouse and tips go to him.

Why are the tips going to Jerry? What’s more impressive, a dancing mouse or even a non-blind cat playing piano? One is just straight up reactions. So Tom gets notably angry at him for this, but Jerry keeps winning.

Alright, so like, I don’t know what they are doing to make us on Jerry’s side? Because the one constant is of course that Tom tries to get Jerry and Jerry wins and survives and Tom gets hurt. But in the cartoon Tom is just doing his job assigned to him? In this movie, Tom gets hired by the hotel to help get Jerry out of there before the wedding and guests find out about a mouse problem. Again, a job.

Sure, the animals in this world are all animated, but they also are animals. People eat meat. Jerry isn’t inherently a special mouse. He is someone who broke into a business as a trespasser and won’t leave. And everyone is fine with the fact that cats eat mice. There are zero problems here from Tom.

And yet, that is what we get repeatedly. The same shenanigans. Tom continually losing and getting hurt in terrible ways.

The fact that this is set in the real world makes things a bit worse. The wanton destruction of their surroundings, in the park, in NYC, in the hotel lobby. It is ridiculous as he humans just stand by and have continual WTF looks on their faces. My own kids laughed early on at some of the shenanigans, but once the real world implications continued to occur and compound, they didn’t. It is hard to laugh over seeing things get destroyed and violence even on the cartoon scale.

So we have a majority conflict where the bigger jerk continues to win (and obviously this is not a story where the bad guy eventually loses). We get violence after violence. And a plot that kind of includes them.

Sure, the movie eventually tries to give us a message of togetherness and harmony. But it doesn’t feel earned at all. And it all just feels like a mistake.

0 out of 4.

With this review, I think I am mostly set for the Oscars. Those nominations don’t get even announced until mid March this year, with a ceremony in April. But because of their dumb rules we got the confusion of what is 2020 and what is 2021 in movies. I know there are still things that I haven’t seen that will probably get nominations, but, Judas and the Black Messiah is the last one I was looking forward to for the last couple of months.

Known star talent, plus, a real story, and a fantastic name for a film, means a lot of hype for me.

So although this might get nominations for Oscars, and I ended up loving it, so you might not hear me talk about it again until the next best of the year list. Or hell, forgotten about and never heard from again by the end of the year. Who knows!

I will remember this one all year for its acting, and its hats.Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) is the charismatic leader of the Illinois Black Panther party in the 1960’s. Charismatic, because he is damn good at speaking, in a decade with quite a few good black activist speakers. But he was in Chicago, a large city, and focused on his community, and uplifting the community. And people had problems with that.

Quite famously, the FBI had a problem with him. Just like they had a problem with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. They needed eyes and ears on these activists, worried about uprising, or worse, a demand for equal rights and treatment. The horror.

So they did what any manipulative and sneaky government group would do. They put a mole on the inside. Enter Bill O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), who is not some trained FBI agent. He was caught doing crime! He isn’t tainted by the FBI cops. And that means if they blackmail him, he can go into the Black Panther group and let them know what is going on. Yeah!

Good job FBI. Going to war with Americans, one group at a time. Anyways, Fred Hampton was a pretty righteous dude. And the FBI wronged him, and this is his story and the aftermath of it.

Also starring Jesse Plemons, Dominque Fishback, Algee Smith, Ashton Sanders, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Lil Rel Howery, and Martin Sheen.

Although cropped out, you can probably imagine what is happening with his hand. Alright! Kaluuya! Phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. Damn man. I have never seen him go this much into a role before, with obviously a limited pool for me to pick from so far. I just found out as I wrote this that he is going for a supporting actor role and not lead, and, uh, okay, fine. Although him and Stanfield are basically equally present in this film, fine. I hope Kaluuya wins that.

(Technically, if that happens, and Chadwick Boseman wins for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, then that would be the first time that both male acting categories went to black men and that has a good chance of happening this year. If not Kaluuya, then probably Odom Jr. for One Night in Miami).

The story is told in an easy to follow and strong way. A lot of the side actors give their moments to shine, it is not juts the Kaluuya/Stanfield show. The FBI is not seen as a misunderstood entity that was doing its best, they are shown to be the bad guys in this situation which better reflects reality. The FBI always knows exactly what they are doing.

Judas and the Black Messiah is one of those very important films that tell an important part of American history that is pretty fucked up. And it sucks, that it is fucked up. But we have to know about the fucked up things America did if we hope to ever embrace it. This movie gives us the details of the events that were talked about midway through The Trial of the Chicago 7, which was happening at the same time. It is a good companion piece to this movie.

4 out of 4.

Two movies were hailed as being the next Superbad for 2019 (12 years after Superbad came out. I don’t think movies were really compared to it before?). The first was Booksmart, or Superbad for a modern age with ladies! And it was amazing.

The next was Good Boys, or Superbad for middle school (and for a modern age)!

And Booksmart was great, one of my favorites of the year. And I am disappointed with myself in missing Good Boys in theaters, as it would have probably been even better surrounded by other assholes like me laughing my asshole off.

Is this some sort of middle school fantasy film? The Bean Bag Boys have been best buds since the early years, and now they are in middle school, ready to kick butt. However, they interests are no longer all lined up the same way, and now it is considered uncool to have passions. Like singing, or niceness, or smarts.

Max (Jacob Tremblay), Lucas (Keith L. Williams), and Thor (Brady Noon) are trying to navigate the new waters, and dealing with bullies, dealing with drugs, alcohol, nicknames, and pursuing their passions.

And like every plot line in middle and high school, a lot of this revolves around a party. Max was invited to a kissing party, with his friends able to come to, but first they need to figure out how to kiss. This leads them on a wild adventure in town, skipping school, getting chased by high schoolers (Molly Gordon, Midori Francis), dealing with perverts, cops, and more.

Also starring a lot of adults, like, Sam Richardson, Enid-Raye Adams, Retta, Lil Rel Howery, Mariessa Portelance, Stephen Merchant, and Will Forte. Also some kids, like Izaac Wang and Millie Davis.

It’s also great to see puberty effect people differently. 

Good Boys was first and foremost hilarious. I was worried going into it that this would be about middle schoolers who curse a lot and that is the amusement factor. But since they were good kids, they weren’t doing bad things, they were trying to do the right thing and getting into bad situations. It provided a much better humor type.

It is funny to be in these extreme circumstances, since they don’t know what is going on and aren’t familiar with all the words/terminology that are being used. The banter between the kids feels realistic and they feel like real best buds, even if it is trying times between them.

The real stand out to me was Williams, who much best embraced the ideals of being a good kid. He was given the best lines and situations, and I hope to see him in a lot of things in the future.

I laughed like a kid and I watched it on my own, and that is a weird thing for a person to do. It was a good simple comedy, and a nice bright surprise in this year of film.

3 out of 4.

When The Angry Birds Movie came out a few years ago, I expected to hate it and to trash it and talk more about how many animated movies were crap.

And then I liked it surprisingly enough. Yeah, I don’t get it either. My current theater is that I just like things with Jason Sudeikis attached far more than other people.

So now it is time for a sequel! A great title of The Angry Birds Movie 2, and technically I am not dreading watching it? I now have higher hopes for the sequel instead of zero hopes the first time around, and that will probably change my entire outlook. I still don’t play the game anymore, and thought the sequel game series was terrible.

Ah look, a cast and crew of ragamuffins ready to overcome the odds.

At the end of the first film, Red (Jason Sudeikis), Chuck (Josh Gad), Bomb (Danny McBride) and friends helped lead an assault on Piggy Island. The pigs, led by Leonard (Bill Hader) had stolen all of their eggs and were gonna eat them. Despite being flightless birds, they were able to use slingshots to fling themselves to the island and destroy the hell out of that place.

This led to modern day. Red is now a hero! He is loved finally and not hated. There is a big prank war going between the two islands but Red is always on the lookout keeping things safe. Until Leonard wants…a truce?

It turns out they are now sacred over a third island, an Icy cold island further away named Eagle island. There, a strange purple bird named Zeta (Leslie Jones) is somehow able to send giant ice balls to their island, with the intent of destroying them so they can move in an rebuild. Once they realize this threat is real, both sides do have to come together and expand their teams in order to infiltrate the base and stop that cannon.

But they need someone smarter, and Chuck has an engineering sister named Silver (Rachel Bloom), who is super smart. Smart enough to be the leader. And being a leader is the only thing that is keeping Red in the limelight, so that will lead to conflict.

Can they save the day before every little piggy and birdy is wiped out by ice fire balls?

Ahem, also starring the wonderful voice work of Awkwafina, Sterling K. Brown, Eugenio Derbez, Tiffany Haddish, Peter Dinklage, Pete Davidson, Zach Woods, Maya Rudolph, Dove Cameron, JoJo Siwa, Tony Hale, Nicki Minaj, Brooklynn Prince, Lil Rel Howery, Beck Bennett, and Gaten Matarazzo,

Fish. Fish is sad.

Again, I fully know that I liked the first film more than others, but this sequel drops so far in quality. If you hate the first film, this one is likely to be one of the worst films of the year for you. Easy. And as someone who liked the first film, I am incredibly disappointed with the sequel.

A large portion of the jokes are just based on current pop culture, which is not a good indicator of comedy. It will date the movie, firmly place it weirdly in 2019, and not age well. A really good joke actually occurred in the movie with Bomb about “taking out the guards” for their mission. It was clever and unexpected. And then the scene went on too long and they added Baby Shark to the mix, completely making it cringey.

Ferdinand was a bad animated movie and the worst part was an extended dance scene in that movie between the heroes and others, and that almost happened in this film as well. A dance off occurred, it just wasn’t as long, and still completely pointless.

The jokes aren’t as funny. The plot doesn’t naturally follow the first film. The entire point of the ice/eagle island is strange. I could ask 20 questions they didn’t explain, and its all just…pointless. The villain is not good, and the mission is not good, and they way the day is saved in the day is really weak. It sure does try to bring back women characters to the 1960’s.

But let’s make one really big irritation clear. At the end of the first film we got to see three tiny blue birds hatch. Those birds are in the game, and are used to help destroy ice structures. Oh hey, this movie involves an island full of ice structures. Clearly they would…NOPE. Those birds aren’t in this movie at all.

THEY TEASED US WITH THE ICE DESTROYING BIRDS, GAVE US A SEQUEL WITH ICE, AND THEY NEVER APPEARED IN THE SEQUEL. What is wrong with the creators? Are they Satan? How could they fall so low??

1 out of 4.