Tag: Maria Bello

Turns out I actually missed quite a few horror films in 2016. And for that, I am sorry.

But if I am being truly honest, do I really need to see any of those ones after already seeing The Witch and The Conjuring 2? Yeah, probably not.

Lights Out is the last movie I missed thanks to going on vacation over the summer for a bit and one I only slightly even wanted to see. I had Don’t Breathe coming up and wasn’t sure if I would need any other sort of horror film around that time. (And of course I basically skipped all of the October ones).

But hey, I had 80 minutes to spare. A short film so even if it was terrible, at least I wouldn’t waste my whole day on it.

The worst films sometimes do feel like they take all day though.

The beginning of the film takes place in a theater or movie studio. I don’t know. But Paul (Billy Burke) is working there late, and next thing he knows, there is some shadowy figure in the dark trying to kill him, and it successfully does!

Paul left behind a wife, Sophie (Maria Bello), and a young son, Martin (Gabriel Bateman). After Martin is having problems at school, mostly staying awake, his older half sister is called, Rebecca (Teresa Palmer). Paul was not her dad, her own dad was killed when she was younger and she used to have problems as well.

And honestly, really quickly do we find out that this entity has a name. Diana (Alicia Vela-Bailey), something that Rebecca saw for some time as a kid and now it appears to be haunting Martin AND her again. There is a story behind all of this, and how Diana came to be, but it is too dumb to even want to spoil it.

Also featuring Alexander DiPersia as Rebecca’s serious boy friend.

Look into my eye dots and learn to fall in love.

From its onset, Lights Out isn’t a bad idea. But in the way they told the story, it definitely seems like something that would have been much better as a short, and not a full length film. Despite its small run time, it seems to go on too long. They put a lot of effort into it to tell us why it is all happening, backstory and all, but the plot points there are just so unexciting.

The other main issue with this film is that it ends up not being scary. Maybe by making Diana an entity named Diana? A real thing? Yeah, that is probably it. Although none of Diana’s powers really make too much sense either, despite the elaborate time spent on her backstory.

This film surprisingly features a couple of well known women in the roles and given the quality of the film, it isn’t too surprising to find them not giving their best performances. All of the men are almost laughable in their acting skills, but I find myself practically disappointed in the women because I know they have been in better.

Lights Out is a forgettable horror film that will thankfully have no sequels. IT WILL HAVE NO SEQUELS, I SAY! It didn’t even end with some shitty teaser that the Diana is still alive, it just ended like a normal film, thankfully.

1 out of 4.

Max Steel is a movie I figured I saw before, or heard about, but everything I knew was wrong.

I was thinking it must have been some modern kids show, but I was wrong. Maybe a kids cartoon that I saw once a long time ago? Oh yeah kind of! I never saw the show at all, but existed a decade and a half ago, for about two years. And then apparently a lot of direct to DVD movies and toys.

So this is a franchise that some people, somewhere, care about? It just seems like a weird very niche thing to resurrect, literally hoping children who watched the show at the time will go and see the movie. The movie that had no advertising that came and went and is sneaking out to DVD like it probably should have done first.

Regardless of how it goes, this screen grab is unintentionally hilarious.

Don’t worry, the main character’s name isn’t Max Steel, it is Max McGrath (Ben Winchell)! And he is a high school student, living with his mother (Maria Bello), and for whatever reason they move around a lot. This is the 8th or 9th time they have moved, because of issues. They might have said more details, but my mind has blanked out big portions of the film.

He goes to school, flirts with Sofia Martinez (Ana Villafañe), they do some things, and then a mysterious man shows up at their door. This man is Dr. Miles Edwards (Andy Garcia), who knows the mom and has been sending presents occasionally. He knew Max’s dad, but his mom doesn’t talk about the dad a lot, nor how he dies.

Max’s Dad worked for some place called N-Tek, that does tech stuff and wants to protect to the world, and that is where Miles works as well. And this place is close to where they live now, oh man!

This is a lot of dumb set up. Max gets these weird powers to control electronics kind of. An alien named Steel (Josh Brener) shows up, talks a lot like an ADHD kid, and wants Max to help them stop bad things. They can even merge together to make a fighting suit thing. Ah, superhero time!

You know, like people cheating on their taxes. Take em down Max Steel!

About five minutes into the film, my brain checked out. Something about the movie just immediately turns me off. They are using nice cameras, and that somehow seems to add to the woes. Everything is so crisp like a commercial, but then we have moody cloud backgrounds. It is trying to show angst early on through visuals and it just looks gross.

The characters are not people to root for or care about. Winchell is not charismatic nor is he strong to carry the lead in a film like that.

Everything just feels drab and it becomes a surprise when they finally introduce Steel, who is way too upbeat and talkative given the tone for the rest of the film.

The plot may be confusing, it might not, I am not sure because it was just so hard to care about. The final fight with the bad guy, Garcia’s character, completely forgettable.

It is just Max Steel has absolutely nothing going for it. What is worse about it is that it had so little going for it, I don’t remember enough about it to even complain.

0 out of 4.

The 5th Wave, title alone, already pisses me off. I really wish it was spelled out as Fifth, and not the number. That is a minor complaint.

The title itself just comes with so much weight to it though. We are already on the 5th wave? Man, we just started though. That means four other waves happened and we need to catch the fuck up so we can be prepared for the next one.

I have been told it is decent book. It is a planned trilogy with the last one coming out this year. The producers liked it, one of them being Tobey Maguire, and signed it to a trilogy of films!

And you know what else? This is a quote from a critic. This is what the series should do. It “should do for aliens what Twilight did for vampires.” Oh god. Oh god no.

Love at first scope sight.

Let’s get this done with. Aliens appeared. Circled the globe in a big ship. Then after awhile, all electricity stopped. Anything with a motor, all of it. That was wave #1. The 2nd wave was massive flooding caused by earthquakes. Took out most coastal cities and lakes also boiled over. The 3rd wave was a modified avian flu that took out tons of people. Most people who caught it died. The 4th wave involved the aliens taking over human bodies like parasites. Apparently they still look and act human but you don’t know who is out to get you!

Our hero is Casey (Chloe Grace Moretz) who used to be a normal high school girl. She had her crush on Ben (Nick Robinson), a BFF Liz (Gabriela Lopez, who I will say is barely in this movie, but I can’t imagine her not coming back eventually and I want to say I called it by tagging her in this review), loving parents (Ron Livingston, Maggie Siff) and little brother Sam (Zackary Arthur).

Eventually, shit goes bad, and Casey is alone. Her brother Sam was saved by the army, thankfully. That Colonel Vosch (Liev Schreiber) sure is a swell guy. Of course he is taking the kids to train them into soldiers to battle the Others (aliens!), where the 5th Wave is allegedly a full on attack. Oh boy.

Thankfully Casey runs into Evan Walker (Alex Roe) Mr. Farm Boy dream man, who saves her from dying alone on the highway. Turns out she is allergic to bullets. He has a thing for her, so he wants to help her get to the army base and reconvene with her brother. They just have to make it 60 miles on foot with alien snipers everywhere.

Also starring Maria Bello as an army person, and Maika Monroe as a fellow child soldier who would have bad ass tattooed on her actual ass if it wasn’t sexist.

Is it? Can it be? Can it be a…LOVE TRIANGLE!?

The 5th Wave wasn’t very good. It could have been good. It had an interesting premise. I won’t say it was ruined only by teenage angst. No, there were a lot of issues, and teenage angst on its own is not an issue.

Plot wise, so many things occurred in the film due to poor decisions or badly explained reasons. How did Casey get separated from her parent and brother? Because of shit plot. Specifically when she was separated from Sam, it was one of the most badly done things I have ever seen. So much that it didn’t even make sense for her to get left behind. Aliens involved or not, the way they filmed it couldn’t have been more ridiculous.

After the introduction, we have two main plots. Casey on her own, and the training facility for kids. That is where we get to see high school crush Ben and her brother. Almost everything involved with the army base is cringe worthy. I think part of it is supposed to be, because they aren’t real soldiers, just kids. But it comes off as just awkward and stays that way. Only half the scenes with Casey are cringey, and unfortunately it is all of romantic interactions between her and Evan. Now, as a straight adult male, I can definitely see why Alex Roe was picked for Evan. He is dreamy and has facial hair and a somewhat slightly athletic build. But the chemistry between them is just awful.

A lot of the plot happens off screen it feels like. Like the 60 miles of traveling that the two apparently hiked through the woods relatively quickly. Or even worse, one aspect of the finale involving bombs. One of our characters apparently puts on a God Mode cheat and they become an invincible plot changing character, doing all these amazing things with ease, just to end the current conflict. The bad guys don’t even act bad in this film. Everyone is all talk and nothing terrible seems to happen, outside of the one “shocking” moment early on. All the twists are obvious and the film ends at an okay point, but not with a whole lot resolved.

They did have tsunamis in this film though. You remember the 2nd wave. They looked pretty realistic though, it was appropriately scary and cool, so I liked that. Bello’s random character had a lot of intensity to it, so she also surprised me. But everything else about this new teenager sci-fi/fantasy romance film series is forgettable. We all make mistakes sometimes, Moretz.

1 out of 4.

I have avoided it long enough. I can tell you I didn’t want to see McFarland, USA, at all. Cross country is not an inherently exciting sports. It is a bunch of people running long distance. It is just another inspirational Disney sports movie. So the company that brought us Remember The Titans, which was and still is amazing. But they also brought us Invincible (meh), Miracle (meh, as a hockey fan), and Million Dollar Arm (big meh).

What have they done for me lately? That is what I want to know. Not a whole lot. So the prospect of another inspirational true sports story doesn’t exactly get me excited. Couple that with the sports choice, and the fact that Kevin Costner is at the lead, there is just a lot of apathy around this project. Check out my Black or White review about Costner and his recent movies, I don’t need to bring them back up here, but overall he has been on a mostly disappointing trek of films.

As for my final complaint, McFarland, USA. What? Why the second part? What state is this city really in? Did you try at first just “McFarland”? Because that sounds a bit more bold to me. Adding the USA makes it seem like some fake town on a TV show because the writers were feeling lazy.

If you expected pictures of anything but running from this movie, you are surely a dumbass.

Jim White (Costner) is your average white dude football coach. Then he got mad at his players playing like shitty players and threw a cleat at a kid.

Next thing you know, his wife (Maria Bello) and kids are moving! Guess who got fired! (It was Jim). The only job he could find was as an assistant coach in the middle of nowhere, a place called McFarland. Well, he doesn’t last long there either. No, he doesn’t get fired, but after he doesn’t let a kid who was pretty beat up get back on the field during a game, the coach has a hissy fit. So he can keep teaching his random classes, but not be on the team. Gee, well that blows.

Until Jim gets bored and decides to start up a cross country team. Why? Because he is bored and doesn’t like hanging out with his kids. He also notices a lot of these kids can run pretty fast and run home and well, let’s put dos and dos together.

Eventually he gets his team of 7 kids! Ramiro Rodriguez, Carlos Pratts, Johnny Ortiz, Rafael Martinez, Hector Duran, Sergio Avelar and Michael Aguero.

So Jim White, with his white-ness, takes a group of Hispanic boys and turns them into winners! Running winners! And college winners too! (spoiler?)

Also, I feel obligated to include Valente Rodriguez as the principal, because he made me laugh once.

Ah yes, the classic “yep, this is still a picture of people running!” follow up!

I don’t even know why they make movies about people running long distances anymore. Did everyone else not watch Forrest Gump? That dude ran forever and literally cross country. Sure, this was a true story of a coach who ended up winning a lot of cross country meets over a 14 year period and at least all the kids in the movie were real. But it still lacks the wow factor that a movie needs to have.

Inspiration is one thing. If it doesn’t entertain while it inspires, what will a viewer actually get out of it? It doesn’t help that this movie is OVER two hours long with not a whole lot going on. It is mostly a lot of “how do I reach these keeeds” type moments, which at this point is one of the most boring subsets of the genre.

Here is how you teach kids to run good. Are you ready? Well, first they already for the most part have to be good runners before you get them. Buy them some new shoes. And make them practice. A lot. All the time. Make them practice running up and down tiny man made hills and get them used to that. And then? Then you win the things.

It didn’t really feel like the coach in question was great in the film version, again, just a guy who didn’t like where he was and kept his time busy with coaching athletes which is all he really liked to do.

This film features average to okay (at least consistent) from everyone involved and stories you heard many times before in better contexts.

1 out of 4.

Honestly, when I first saw the trailer for Prisoners, I wasn’t really impressed. It didn’t look like it was going to offer anything new. Sure, a torture scene. But despite the high star count, it just looked like it would be a lot of people yelling at each other, and then eventually somehow a crime gets solved.

Yeah. I was wrong. It is wonderful and unique. Fuck trailers, seriously.

He probably deserves everything that happens to him. He wears GLASSES, the nerd.

Ah, Thanksgiving. A time for eating food and watching the Lions lose a football game. A whole week of buying electronics cheaply on Amazon.

Well, the Dover family (Hugh Jackman, Maria Bello) and their two kids have decided to eat at their neighbors house down the street. The Birches (Terrence Howard, Viola Davis) also have two kids, of similar ages to the other kids.

Well, due to some confusion, the two youngest daughters are able to go back to the Dover home on their own…and then not seen again hours later. Shit. Fuck. Missing kids. That is never good. In fact, they think the kids were abducted. They were seen playing around an RV earlier, and the brother is pretty sure someone was inside. But when they find the RV later, the driver is Alex (Paul Dano), an IQ of a ten year old with no physical evidence of the kids in his vehicle.

Well, Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) is on the case, and he has never left a case unsolved. He just doesn’t have a lot to work with, with Alex being clean, and his mother (Melissa Leo) explaining his circumstances. No, there is a lot more at work than what we know. It just takes piecing a lot of different puzzle pieces together.

But time is of the essence, and when your daughter’s life is at stake, what would you be willing to do to save her?

“Hey you should just show pictures of people being rough with Paul Dano.” Okay!

Well, here is something I realized. Unfortunately, it is only for the male stars. I really love these guys. For three of the four male stars, their last movie on my website was given a 4/4. The only one who doesn’t match this criteria is Hugh Jackman, because I had to sit through The Wolverine and Movie 43, but he still had Les Miserables right before that. My last movie for Jake was End of Watch, for Howard it was The Butler and Dead Man Down, and Paul Dano it was Ruby Sparks.

Looks like these men get another highly rated movie to their resumes. No offense to the ladies, but they have been in a lot more crap recently. Oh well.

So yeah, this movie was incredible. I thought it would be a joke from the trailer, honestly. It looked overly melodramatic. When I found out it was 2.5 hours long, I groaned. How could they fill it with 2.5 hours of content?

Apparently it was really easy, because the time flew by and I was captivated the entire time. They don’t waste time either. The girls get kidnapped within the first ten minutes of the film. The torture scene alluded to in the trailer happens within the first hour as well. Yet somehow, there is more to it than those few events.

The director does NOT hold your hand throughout the film. There are some plot lines you have to figure out on your own, through flashes of story and connecting the dots. It is a great film to go with others just to make sure you can figure out all of the looser ends. The ending itself is a bit controversial. I will admit initially I was kind of pissed off, but it has grown on me, and now I like it a lot.

The acting is fantastic in this film. Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal carry it on their backs with exceptional performances, but even though Terrence Howard had a smaller role, he worked it well. One scene in particular, the fists and hammer torture scene just was so powerful, it will stay with you for some time. Howard was in the background of that scene, but his face says it all. Paul Dano also was pretty great in a role where he wasn’t given a lot to work with dialogue wise.

The women were for sure underused, so I am just not sure if the writer knew what to do with them. Viola Davis had one pretty intense scene, but then wasn’t really talked about much. Maria Bello’s character was pathetic and on drugs, so she wasn’t given much to work with either.

Oh well. Go see Prisoners. Probably the best movie to come out this month for sure.

4 out of 4.

Here are some facts about Adam Sandler!

Adam Sandler has never made a sequel to any of his movies before Grown Ups 2. He has been in one sequel before, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, but he wasn’t in the first film, and he obviously didn’t make, direct, or star in it.

Who would have thought that Adam Sandler secretly had some standards? He only works with new(ish) ideas. That is unless his film makes a lot of money, like Grown Ups did.

Okay, that is really just one long fact about Adam Sandler. Sorry if you expected more.

The scene from the trailer where he says “Your car is filthy” is cut out. Disappointment. The movie takes place soon after Grown Ups, except now in a small town! Lenny (Sandler) has moved his family away from Los Angeles for a quieter and simpler life. Long story short, Grown Ups 2 is a day in his and his friends life.

Lenny’s wife (Salma Hayek) wants to discuss having a fourth kid. Marcus (David Spade) just realized he has a son who is visiting him today. Kurt (Chris Rock) wants to celebrate his 20th wedding anniversary, but his wife (Maya Rudolph) forgot. And uhh, Eric (Kevin James) really loves his mother and hides that fact from his wife (Maria Bello)? One of his kids might be dumb? His part doesn’t really have a plot.

There are other characters too. Like Nick Swardson, playing some sort of extremely drugged out bus rider. Or Taylor Lautner, leader of the frat boys, with assistance from Milo Ventimiglia.

Sorry agian, but I think that is the best plot description I can give of this film. Honestly, it feels like it is a skit movie. The plot is basically childish adults hanging out, so most of the scenes are really unrelated. It isn’t set up like a traditional skit movie, like the recent Movie 43, but it feels like it could be a long strange episode of Saturday Night Live. Or a live action Family Guy.

The amount of cameos in this movie only helps that stigma. Here is a big list! There is Colin Quinn, Tim Meadows, Steve Buscemi, Jon Lovitz, Shaquille O’Neal, Steve Austin, Dan Patrick, Aly Michalka, Andy Samberg, Will Forte, and even Paulina Gretzky, daughter of (of course) Wayne Gretzky.

Yet no Rob Schneider. Where the heck did he go from the first movie?

I say some shocking things in this review about Mr. Lautner. Read on to find out! D: D:There is a lot wrong from this movie. All the jokes are extremely low-brow, almost 100% poop and sex jokes. In fact, there were so many sex related jokes that I was surprised this movie was rated PG-13 still.

It just felt bad overall. Yes, I still found some of the scenes humorous, but because it was put together so badly and without any context, it just left a rank taste in my mouth. There might have been ten minutes worth of plot. Maybe.

The CGI was out of place in this movie too. The Moose didn’t look real, nor did the “tire rolling down the hill” scene. It almost felt like a cartoon, in that people were doing things that should have killed them, but they were completely fine afterwards.

The ending itself is lazy humor. I am describing it as slap stick to the extreme, as it ends with all the adults in a literal fist fight with a group of frat boys, and kicking there butt. I do mean all the adults, as in everyone linked to above. The ending of the movie is just a long brawl.

Speaking of the frat boys, Taylor Lautner was literally the best part of this movie, and he had a huge role as the main villain, with tons of dialogue. Yet he wasn’t even listed in the credits? What? Six different frat boys were credited, only two of which had real names, but not the main frat guy.

Just an example why this whole film was a mess. That and the unexplained disappearance of Rob Schneider.

 

1 out of 4.

Taylor Lautner! Woo!

Finally what everyone has been hoping for. A movie where Lautner gets to try and carry the movie himself, and not be tied down with two other leads who are attempting to have babies and stuff. The Abduction trailer seemed to pop up in every movie I went to this summer, and every time I saw it I asked myself the same thing. “Why does he sound like he is whining the whole time?”

I think this is him whining at a basketball game too? Have you no shame Lautner?

I just found out that Lautner is only 19. That makes more sense. He looks like some 25 year old guy who would be playing high school roles. Because he is supposed to be 16 I think in the movie. So the whining is probably intentional and he is a fantastic actor for doing that. Also, early in the movie when he is boxing or something with his “dad” and he does a super cool spin kick movie. But you know, not with a stunt double, it is clearly him doing it the whole time. Apparently he was good at martial arts, and as a child voted best in his category, at some point, in some version. So that is how he became a werewolf!

Plot? Oh my bad.

He is on a (high school) sociology project with his neighbor, Lily Collins, about missing people. They find a site about what these kids may look like now, and he finds out that one of them looks like him, and he has a similar shirt from when he was a kid. So they call it up, and oddly enough they track his location. Ruh roh.

Well, some people come to their house and kill his parents! Thankfully they don’t appear to be his real parents? Who would want to be related to Maria Bello anyways. So the CIA gets involved, or at least Alfred Molina does. But he cannot be trusted! Why? Because Sigourney Weaver, his therapist, intercepts him and tells him the truth. His dad was a CIA operative, and has a list of names of corrupt people, which includes that guy above.

Also, Serbian terrorists, lead by Michael Nyqvist, want that list so they can probably protect their spies / find new ones to abuse.

So they decide to try and find that list, to hand over to the CIA members who are not trying to get it to erase their name. But Nyqvist wants the list, meet in a public place (A Pirates baseball game, aka anything but public), and Lautner wants to try to kill him. CIA, CIA dad, lots of running are involved, until the day is over, and no one important got hurt! You know, except for the parents he had for most of his life. Thankfully Weaver will let him live with her. What a nice therapist.

I guess what I am really trying to say with the plot is that this movie has zero to do with Abduction.

If anything, I will give this movie credit for actually ending the story line. They didn’t leave hints of a possible sequel, or leave a plot unturned, or anything. Just made it seem like a one off story, and now he can go back to being a “normal” “kid”. But the acting was blah, and it seemed like they wanted to go for a Bourne like thing, but no where near the same, making it even more blah. I found the story / plot to be mostly boring. Like they tried to make that one moment of his life super crazy, instead of just slightly elevated crazy.

I will give you a do-over Lautner. Make your next movie better, or else.

1 out of 4.

The cover of this movie looks like a normal action thriller hostage like thing, where a lot of abuse happens to the main characters until they beat the bad guy by the end and somehow are better off.

I mean, that’s just by the cover.

This would have been a better cover. Seriously, all I did was look up the title and got this. Main characters and all.

But on the back description, I like it even more. It must be a lower budget thing that didn’t do well anywhere, so to make it seem better they tried to make it seem modern and cool. After all, it stars Maria Bello from Prime Suspect (a now canceled in its first season television show) and Stephen Dorff, from Immortals (a minor character, and a movie you know I didn’t like).

Okay, I am just making fun of celebrities now. Either way, those are the stars. And those are the shows/movies they want you to think about to get this movie.

I have been stalling on the plot. Carjacked has a mom and her kid get carjacked from a bank robber. They are poor too. He forces her to drive him to a meet up in Mexico, and after that? Who knows.

So she has to figure out how to save her child, without like, you know, dying.

Unfortunately there is MANY options that she had available to her, and she never took in the movie. Had to make it last after all. The ending is ridiculous, based on the choices she made. The cops seem to be just as ridiculous.

Also, the jabs at her ex husband come from nowhere. All we are told is they are divorced, so I guess we have to assume he is a bad guy and shouldn’t be raising children. So she has a happy ending. Yay!

Now she just needs to stop making bad decisions in terms of shows and movies.

To give it some credit, the Dorff as robber / fear monger was decent.

1 out of 4.

You know what would make Grown Ups better? More SNL cast members. I don’t think they got enough of them.

Just kidding. That was the opposite of the truth. With at least 8 people who are (or used to be) SNL cast members (could be more? I am not an SNL addict), it helped the movie seem like a “old friends get back together” type event anyways.

Some people weren’t invited to the reunion though.

Alright, the movie is about a group of old friends from a smaller town. When they were younger, they won a basketball championship. Now? Their old coach is dead, so they are celebrating his life with a reunion for the weekend.

We have Adam Sandler, now rich, married to Salma Hayek. Kevin James, now fat, married to Maria Bello. Chris Rock, now a housedad, married to Maya Rudolph. All three of them have two kids each. Rob Schneider is on his third (or fourth?) marriage, and has 3 kids (two of which are babes). And last, David Spade, all alone and a bachelor.

OKAY GOT IT ALL? GOOD.

Anyways. Throughout the weekend they try and relive their childhood. They try and get their kids used to the outdoors. They try and fix each others problems, as they haven’t seen each other for a long time.

By the end, the kids are outside more. Their lives are fixed by each other. They are bigger friends. And their wives still don’t hate them. That is more or less the plot. Mostly just a bunch of random events and activities, where these now grown ups get to try and relive their childhood memories, and joke on each other the whole time.

I mean. Parts were okay? I thought it had a couple decent moments. But they obviously tried to make it too family friendly and just felt muzzled. I think Schnieder was badly cast as “weird spiritual vegan dude”, and Spade as a bachelor felt very child predatorish. He is the creepiest single man alive, and I would even compare that to myself.

No one else (outside of Bello and Schnieder)) probably had to do much acting. I think most of it was them just acting like they probably normally would act. So I thought that was kind of lame. Just everything seeming more or less normal. Oh well! I think we can all agree though that Rob should try going back to red hair, am I right?

Badly pixelated for your protection.

So yeah. Nothing really special about this movie. Just a subpar comedy.

1 out of 4

For some reason when I first saw this movie, I thought Yellow Wallpaper. Not sure why, since clearly those titles are far apart from each other. But this movie did seem familiar. Oh, Kristen Stewart is in it? Maybe that’s why. Given her incredibly talented acting resume, I should have immediately recognized it as one of her movies!

What? Hating on Kristen Stewart for the quick laugh? I wouldn’t do something like that.

The Yellow Handkerchief is more or less a story about weridos. William Hurt plays a man who has just been released from prison, and for “some reason” wants to travel to a different part of Louisiana. Kristin Stewart is a girl who feels like no one cares for her, and wants to get out of the town. Eddie Redmayne is actually a weird guy, with some weird social disorders I have to assume. Very forward, talks funny, and guess what? He has a car!

For various reasons they go on a small road trip through Louisiana, so that William can get to see his lost lover, Maria Bello, before he was in prison.

This movie has some good themes. Like acceptance! And uhh. Growing up. And uhh. Second chances. Yeah!

I was about to say three difference sentences about how each actor/actress did good in their role, but this one sentence should do that well enough.

I was also confused a few times during the movie. I couldn’t tell when it was set (the last five years), but it also made it seem like it was decades ago with the small and empty towns. Just didn’t know there was small town life like that anymore. Also, three different occasions it seemed like a woman got all upset over sex, and were about to claim rape. Despite you know, trying to have sex with the dude already. Very weird. Okay, two and a half times.

“Half a rape attempt? I can dig that.”

Pretty interesting movie, but also kinda slow. Good endings and lessons learned though. Wasn’t watered down with a lot of excessive violence or anything. Very simple.

2 out of 4.