Tag: Luis Guzman

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.

3 out of 4.

I bet you didn’t know this movie was coming out today. I bet you never heard of it before.

What movie would dare go against Warcraft AND Now You See Me 2? Of course! Puerto Ricans in Paris, an R Rated ethnic comedy starring Luis Guzman!

I don’t want to say that that the demographics for these films are super different. That’d be ridiculous. The demographics for this film would totally want to see Warcraft and Now You See Me 2 before this.

On the title alone, I am surprised that this movie didn’t go straight to DVD or a January release. But hey, low budget films need love to. So I have to give it a chance.

This is the type of film that will play hard into stereotypes.

Our heroes are two cops in NYC, the best city in the world. Luis (Luis Guzman) thinks himself a smart guy who is great at getting counterfeit products off of the street, and Eddie (Edgar Garcia), a regular cop guy. He has a wife (Rosie Perez) and kids, with his wife being Luis’ sister. Yay friendships through marriage.

For whatever reason, they eventually get a case that is specifically for them. Vincent (Frédéric Anscombre) is some fashion or real estate mogul type of guy. One of his main clients is Colette (Alice Taglioni), a huge fashionista in Paris. She designs very expensive and sought after bags. But they have found that one of their bags for the upcoming season has been stolen and being sold to the highest bidder. Vincent needs to fly Luis and Eddie to Paris to figure it out, and if they can do it successfully, they will each get a at $150,000 bonus.

Based on testimony from Colette, there are only a few people who would have access to the bag and might be responsible. So Luis and Eddie get a free trip to Paris (with no loved ones) it should be easy to get paid as well. Then they can fix their relationships at home.

The maybe culprits are played by Julie Ferrier, Lilou Fogli, Charlotte Mangel, and Michaël Cohen, with other roles played by Miriam Shor and Rosario Dawson.

So many tagged names and so few stars.

Puerto Ricans In Paris is a comedy in the way that hanging out with your friends on some couches is a comedy. When you are just hanging out, you are most just chilling and occasional someone makes a joke, you all enjoy the overall experience, but you aren’t just cackling for an hour and a half.

So I am saying that Puerto Ricans in Paris is a very chill film, with some jokes, but one that isn’t going to be remembered as a very funny film at all. Most of the jokes all come from Guzman, who has a larger than life character, as per usual. Garcia plays the straight man, along with the entirety of the cast.

But the story is just average. The plot is basically a slightly longer episode of a generic cop TV show. And by slightly longer, I mean this movie is right under 80 minutes in length. The twists by the end are pretty easy to grasp and the acting from everyone feels very standard.

And that is the issue. Mediocre plot, average acting, and not very funny. That is not a good sign for a film that wants to be considered as a comedy and not an action/drama with the occasional jokes.

This movie is definitely a pass, but you probably weren’t going to see it anyway, since you never would have known it existed.

1 out of 4.

In case you haven’t been keeping count, The Do-Over is movie #2 of the Sandler-Netflix collaboration. Netflix has said they don’t care about having the best movies, they just want a very diverse set of films, films that reach many different demographics and personality styles.

So they don’t always care about the critics. Which is why they offered Adam Sandler a four movie deal, because some people really like his brand of comedy, including the overseas market. Go figure.

Movie #1 was The Ridiculous 6, which I found very disappointing. The Do-Over seems to be going in a very different direction, both in terms of style, genre, and size of the cast. So there is a chance that this one ends up much better.

Holy crap, the promo images for this film are crap!

Charlie (David Spade) doesn’t like his life. And no, its not because the actor hasn’t had a hit in a long time. He is at his ten year high school reunion, watching his constantly cheating wife (Natasha Leggero) get down with the old high school prom king (Sean Astin). He is a bank manager, but the bank is inside of a grocery store. There are two step kids who treat him like shit. But then he sees Max (Adam Sandler).

Max has changed and seems really chill and cool now. And when his life goes on a vacation with him, Charlie decides to hang out with Max on a boat and have a great bro weekend. Then the boat explodes, Charlie is drugged, and Max takes him away.

Why? No, not to kill him. Max thinks that Charlie hates his life, so he decided to fake their deaths taking the identity of two people who recently died. They had a lot of money, a sweet vacation home, and they can just get away from it all and get a second chance at life. Or, you know, a do-over.

But there are problems with their plan, especially since the two men were murdered and those who are after them are going to come after them too. But that is a problem for later. Right now it is time to party party party.

Also starring Paula Patton, Kathryn Hahn, Nick Swardson, Catherine Bell, Michael Chiklis, Luis Guzman, and Torsten Voges.

Seriously, what do I do with any of these pictures? So generic.

The Do-Over just may very well be one of the okayiest movies I have ever seen this year. Almost on every front the film just feels average. The acting is as expected, the jokes are average, the twists are too many and the plot a little bit stupid. But some of the action scenes are entertaining, some of the jokes made me smile, and some of the twists were actually decent.

but taking it as a whole, there are a lot of stale moments. The intro goes on for too long. Too many fake identities for Sandler, and just too many twists overall.

It isn’t super strong on comedy or action, making the jokes and shots seem like after thoughts.

But when compared to the last 15 or so films, it is at least better than 12 of them. That is saying a lot about Sandler’s recent film career, but what it really says is that I loved You Don’t Mess With The Zohan and didn’t think Just Go With It, Pixels, or That’s My Boy were that bad. These comparisons still probably don’t sell the movie for you, and honestly, they really shouldn’t.

Would not super recommend.

2 out of 4.

Another day, another Milestone Review.

That’s right, welcome to my 950th review for the website! The only thing really special about this milestone is that it is super close to a real, actual, super duper milestone, at 1000! That review I have been planning for awhile now.

But for now, I am going to talk about Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. I did Journey To The Center Of The Earth as my 850th, because I am a Geologist, and damn it, I wanted to talk a lot about the bad geology and strangeness of that movie. But once a franchise gets suckered into the Milestone review category, it is really hard to get out. Thus a sequel! A third one is coming out eventually, so hopefully that lines up nicely for me.

Speaking of nice, this movie is about an island! Hell yeah. That means it won’t distract me with a bunch of bad geology. I might even be able to enjoy it?!

Oh for fucks sake.

This movie takes place a few years after the first film. Sean (Josh Hutcherson) no longer has to talk about his uncle, because well, he does’t live with his uncle. That was a one time thing. There are zero references to Brendan Fraser in this movie. So he is back to living with his mom, who has finally gotten married, to Hank (Dwayne Johnson). Probably one of the best possible upgrades for adult male star.

The thing is, Sean doesn’t want to hang out with him ever. He is getting into trouble in school, with the local lawmakers, you name it. But why?

Because secrets.

Turns out Sean has been hearing a signal broadcasted by satellite in a code, and he is pretty sure it is from his Grandpa, who hasn’t been seen in two years! He is now a full fledged Vernian, and by golly, Hank was an intelligence person with the Navy. So he helps crack the code, which appears to hint the location/existence of The Mysterious Island. Apparently the same island as Treasure Island and an island in Gulliver’s Travels! Whoa! Collusion between authors! So, fuck it, they somehow convince the mom to let them go and find the dang island, as a way of bring them closer together.

At the island, they find only one man crazy enough to take them. Gabato (Luis Guzman). What? How did Luis Guzman get into this movie?

[This space left intentionally blank]

Turns out he doesn’t have a boat, but a helicopter. Oh well, it will do. He also has a daughter, Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens), who also happens to be around the same age as Sean. How lucky!

Well, they get to the island, but through crash landing. Apparently there is a storm always around it or near it, hooray protection. Too bad they don’t have a way off the island. Looks like the only way they can think of is to first find the grandpa, and use whatever he has to get out. Right? Right?

Well they find him (Michael Caine) pretty easily, it will just be a few weeks before his transportation happens. Shit. Oh well, time to explore then, eh?

Aw yeah, mother fuckin’ ruins and shit.

Through whatever bullshit book source they decide to give us, not only do they determine that this island is home to Atlantis (see above), but it also sinks down to the bottom of the ocean every hundred something years. Of course, plenty of time to do research.

Until Navy Intelligence Speicalist Hank takes the case! No dog, there is salt water in the middle of the island in puddles around Atlantis. For it to get there, the sinking must be early. They probably only have a week or so to get off the island. Well shit. Better hurry on up then.

“No guys seriously, I was in the armed forces for my brains not my brawn!”

So they rush. Oh yeah, what makes this island actually magical or cool? Well, normally big things are small, like a tiny elephant, and normally small things are big, like bees or lizards. In fact, they can ride the bees and the bees are totally like “Oh yeah that’s cool, fuck it, hop on.”

Shit. Luis Guzman and The Rock share a bee. That is some strong bee muscles. Well, turns out after a night of sex appeal and Rock serenading on a ukulele, his calculations were incorrect.

No. They only have mere hours before the island sinks. Oh nooooo!

Not so subtle sex appeal for a PG movie.

So they search for The Nautilus, the submarine from that one book. You know the one. But other bad things happen, like getting split up, and getting greedy. Because shit, that volcano is over a huge gold deposit, and thus gold is all around the base. You will never guess which character makes it his mission to retrieve the gold before the island sinks.

To be fair, they have noble reasons.

Sean and Hank find The Nautilus, but it is off the coast and under water. Shit. Thankfully they can hold their breaths forever, and successfully get down to the submarine. But it won’t start. Oh man, its been inactive so long, it needs power.

If only there was some way for them to get power down there?

Needless to say, things work out, and we are set up for part 3.

So first of all, you can tell this movie really wanted to sell its 3D aspect to the viewers. I didn’t get to see it in 3D, just Blu-Ray, but they have a lot of silly shit fly at your from the screen, and it is really obvious even in the just Blu-Ray version.

Need an example? I found this awesome gif.

To be fair, that was also one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Kid wants to know how to get the ladies. Apparently the correct way is by flexing the pecs back and forth. True. I am falling in love the more and more I watch it, and that shit was hilarious.

I can say without a doubt this movie is better than the last. Now they have an established story line. The first film has the problem of trying to exist in a world where the book…exists. So it isn’t telling the same story, but still does a lot of the same events in that story.

In this one, they don’t worry about telling The Mysterious Island story, they make their own across multiple books. It is just a lot more interesting and less annoying scientifically.

For this one, science wise, it is a bit better, but of course none of the biological implications of the island are explained, the storm, or how it actually can just go up and down every hundred years with no one noticing. Outside of magic.

But it is a lot more amusing and a lot more pretty than the first one.

And again, sorry to Mr. Fraser, but Mr. Johnson is far better suited for this and interesting.

So yeah, this movie isn’t a complete shit storm? Go figure!

2 out of 4.

Turbo is the latest example of a kids movie following a very standard formula. Let’s take some sort of entity and either a) give them an impossible dream (and reach it!), or b) give them some ridiculous flaw (and overcome it!). Like a bird who doesn’t know how to fly. Or a plane that is afraid of heights (and wants to race). Or an overweight comedian who wants to box. Or a snail who wants to race in the Indy 500. Oh wait, that one is Turbo!

Fuck. Let’s get this over with. Turbo (Ryan Reynolds) is a snail! He has big dreams. He wants to go fast, and is the fastest snail he knows. In fact, he just did the yard in 17 minutes, a new personal record. He dreams of entering the Indy 500, thanks to words of advice from his hero Guy Gagne (Bill Hader), who claims that no dream is too big. His brother Chet (Paul Giamatti) thinks his dream is stupid, rightfully so.

Well, eventually Turbo falls into a car engine and gets coated with NOS, transforming his DNA and giving him incredible speed! This also somehow turns him partially into a car, with headlights, radio, rear review lights and stuff. Not sure how that second part happened. Even more eventually, Chet and Turbo find themself caught by Tito (Michael Pena), a down on his luck Taco maker. He works for his older brother (Luis Guzman) and their business is not doing well. Why did Turbo decide to not run away as soon as they were captured? No idea. But he could have.

Luckily, Tito is all into snail racing. Turns out Turbo is stupid fast and he wants to use Turbo to get more business. A very noble cause. So they set off to enter him into the Indy 500, for exposure. Nowadays kids would just make a YouTube video and become famous that way.

Oh yeah, Turbo has his own snail crew to back him up now. There is Whiplash (Samuel L. Jackson), Smoove Move (Snoop Dogg), Burn (Maya Rudolph), Skidmark (Ben Schwartz), and White Shadow (Mike Bell). Of course Ken Jeong voices a tiny Asian nail technician.

This movie is about to get fucked. Seriously. No mercy. Cover your eyes if you don’t like violent imagery.Let’s start with some factual errors. Why? Because they matter to me. I am a Masters Geophysics Student, and the sloppiness bugged me. Basically I am going to be super critical.

Turbo made a big deal about getting a yard in 17 minutes. I know it was a yard, because they showed the measuring stick briefly. However, 36 inches in 17 minutes is really slow. Like, really really slow. That is why I went over to WolframAlpha to convert it. Seriously check the link.

WolframAlpha is so amazing it compared the velocity calculated to the the velocity of a garden snail automatically and it is about 33% the speed of the actual garden snail. Great, we have a snail that is statistically slower than most garden snails. Let’s say that factual error can be ignored, fine. Unfortunately, almost every other point in the movie (pre-genetic manipulation), Turbo and other snails are still shown with greater velocities than his trial. Unless it was important to the plot that is (see: the tomato/lawn mower scene).

Come on now, consistency.

[Editor’s note: Apparently IRL and F1 are different things, but similar vehicles. I just know them as “Not NASCAR”. Point still stands, basically.]
The ending bugged me a lot as well. As it is a car race, it involved a pile up of cars real close to the finish. At this point, Turbo and Guy go into a “foot race” type of situation for the finish like, similar to Talladega Nights.  But according to official Formula 1 racing rules (here and here specifically), none of it would count and the whole thing feels pointless.

Let’s get to the most important part of the movie. This plot is inherently stupid and bad. I didn’t read the full rules for the Formula 1 racing, so I can’t confirm if there is no rule that would disallow a snail. However, the concept behind it can only be described as cheating and a snail would never be allowed to race in such an event. They have very specific standards for the size of the vehicles, type of protection they need, everything you can possibly imagine. The snail’s dimensions do not match a car’s dimensions. For an extreme example, it’d be like using a Ferrari. Or like doping.

At one point during the race, the announcer screams that he can’t believe Turbo is passing a car from below. I am fine with his reaction, because Turbo is basically cheating. But the announcer is surprised instead that he could fit, even though Formula 1 cars have about 4.5 inches of room underneath them, while a garden snail is at most 1.5 inches tall.

If you hadn’t figured out by now, Guy is the villain of this movie, but only because he wants to win the race too. Just like the other 30ish humans in the race, all doing it without cheating.

I laughed I think a total of two times. The laziness of the plot, the laziness of the details, and the laziness of the character development ruined this movie for me. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt. “America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.” Turbo would not have lived up to the former First Lady’s opinions on America or Racing.

 

1 out of 4.

The Arnold is back!

Alright, maybe he hasn’t really gone anywhere. The Govenator was still taking part in The Expendables franchise at least, but with The Last Stand he is officially back in the lead role. Just don’t confuse it with the X-Men movie of the same name.

Although Phoenix could solve this problem in an instant.

Sommerton Junction is a small town in Arizona by the border of Mexico. That border is a giant canyon, so there aren’t too many problems associated with it. The high school has a big road football game, so most of the town has left for the weekend to cheer them on, but not Sheriff Ray Owens (Arnold). He is happy to have a weekend off, but he gets a strange feeling about a trucker (Peter Stormare),who comes up clean when his plates are run.

Oh well, it is not like he is secretly a member of the Mexican Cartel, working on busting out Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) from FBI Custody (Forest Whitaker), and then racing him to Mexico across the canyon. That would be ludicrous!

Ray decides that no Mexican Drug lord is going to come into his town and kill its citizens, not on his watch. Nope. He wants to make a stand. With his crew by his side (Luis Guzman, Jaimie Alexander, Zach Gilford) and the deputized citizens of an alcoholic who wants to redeem himself (Rodrigo Santoro) and a weapons museum owner (Johnny Knoxville), they decide to go all out to show that they are not just stupid farmers and rednecks.

“GET TO THE DINNAH”

Sometimes it can be hard to figure out if you are supposed to take a movie seriously or not. I like to apply the LG test. That is, if the movie includes Luis Guzman, do not take it seriously, and I don’t think it has failed me yet.

I do love that The Last Stand provides an action movie without an overabundance of special effects, and being set in rural Arizona helps add to the grittiness. I liked the resolution to the plot, even if the plot was one of the more ridiculous things I’ve heard of. It also wasn’t just a silly shoot em up movie where the good guys use Home Alone-esque traps to take out the bad guys. I actually feared that any character could die.

But, the acting still is pretty bad, and the dialogue probably over did its “one liner” quota. I think the beginning was also a bit too slow, but it picked up when they discovered the bridge being built. An interesting movie, but not sure if it is one I will ever try to watch again.

2 out of 4.

FIIIIIGHTINNNG!

Another movie where the subject and plot are all summed up with a verb. “What’s the movie about?” Fighting. “Well what happens in it?” Fighting. “Is it any good?” Fighting.

Fighting.

In this movie, Channing Tatum plays a, you guessed it, con-man. He sells some counterfit items on the street for quick bucks, hoping to scam people and quickly leave. He quickly gets in a scrum with some guys, after Zulay Henao realizes that the Harry Potter book is no where close to being legit. Terrence Howard sees this and eventually finds Tatum and gives him a proposition.

Fighting? For money? Sure! In fact he even used to pseudo-box for a college team, meaning he knows his way around a fight. Double win!

This is bare knuckled, illegal fighting stuff going on, where people can bet a lot of money on the outcome. Also means it is very dangerous with little to no rules involved. Shit. Tatum is living the big life, and winning against all odds. This makes Luis Guzman and other investors pleased. They do what anyone would do in that situation.

Set up a fight between him and Brian White, another legitimate boxer from the same college as Tatum. And they want Tatum to lose the fight. If he wins, he gets $100,000, but if he loses, he will get a lot more from the bets of Terrence Howard and his associates. At the same time, Tatum has begun seeing Zulay, the single mother waitress, who might also have a thing going on with Howard.

Is she a cheating ho? Will he lose the fight for the monies, or win and make dangerous people mad at him? Fighting???

Fighting.

For a movie named Fighting, I thought there would be more of it going on. I think overall he is in four street fights, and not a single training/montage sequence. The first is quick, the second is weird, the third is verses an asian man, and the fourth the finale. Just seems like there isn’t enough fighting in Fighting.

Terrence Howard also felt pretty bad to me in this movie. I feel as if his character mumbled the entire time, making it just annoying. He also was bad at being a “fighting pimp”. Just none of it made any sense. Much like Tatum’s relationship with Zulay (who is the character name and actress name. How weird!).

Obviously none of the characters really had any growth or development, so I guess the only saving grace is: Was the fighting decent?

Yeah. It was okay. But okay fighting in a movie called Fighting is probably a fail.

1 out of 4.