Tag: Max Records

Not surprising, what first drew me to this film was the title.

I Am Not A Serial Killer? What are you, an S-Mart Employee?

Of course this movie was based on a book of the same title, and of course, I have never heard of it either. And now we are all on the same page.

You shouldn’t have to glare to hard. Page one, dick!

John Wayne Cleaver (Max Records), yes, has a good name, but don’t worry he is not a serial killer. No, he is a weird kid, sure. His family owns the small town morgue, sure. He helps preserve corpses with his mom (Laura Fraser), of course. And yeah, he is a psychopath, but he is not a serial killer!

Don’t worry, everyone knows it. He is seeing a therapist (Karl Geary), it is official, we are all working just to keep him in check. He has rules to keep himself from lashing out, ways to force himself to be nice. Despite the fact that sure, yeah, he doesn’t care about anyone in their small town.

Well, old Mr. Crowley (Christopher Lloyd) is a weird guy. Really loves his wife. And he might have killed someone?

There is actually a serial killer in their town! Right now! And John is almost certain that Crowley is the one doing it. But he is all over the place. Sometimes he hides the bodies, sometimes he does not. And he steals organs. Huh. Erm. Okay that is weird.

Maybe Crowley isn’t just another sociopath. Maybe he is something other worldly. John is going to find out, because telling people secrets is lame.

I mean otherworldly like alien, not like Jesus.

A Minnesota Murder spree? Oh, like Fargo! I love Fargo!

Not so fast, assholes. This is nothing like Fargo. The show or the movie. Actually, well, with some supernatural elements, I guess part of it is similar to season 2.

All of it is from the point of view of our teenage psychopath, so there is a lot we don’t get to see. We don’t get to see people talking about him behind closed doors, we don’t have those heartfelt discussions about people trying to fix him. Just a kid on a mystery that is a bit bigger than life.

And it is decent. It is. It has some scares, sure. Lloyd is like, super super old now (since he was old as Doc Brown 30 years ago) but he gave a great and creepy performance.

If anything, one can say the film is unique. The ending gets a bit more crazy and the tone doesn’t match the previous 80 or so minutes, but I did love the build up towards the climax.

I am not a Serial Killer. I am just a movie reviewer. And I would say watch this if it is on Netflix one day in the future, maybe. I don’t care, I won’t kill you over it.

Here is something I won’t do with The Sitter. I won’t complain about it being similar to Adventures In Babysitting. That seems to be a big complaint. After all, there cannot be more than two movies about babysitting in a 20some year span. That would be crazy. Just like there is only one cop show every 20 years.

Can’t even compare their directors, as The Sitter was directed by the guy who did Pineapple Express, so he is already established. The guy who directed Adventures In Babysitting was doing his first movie ever, and only went on to direct some Harry Potters, Home Alone, Rent, and Percy Jackson. Holy shit, that guy is awesome.

I guess it makes sense that his name is Chris Columbus too, given his ground breaking movies.

Jonah Hill is a bum. Well, kind of. He lives with his mom, after kind of taking a break from college, and has no job or anything going on. He’d rather sit around all day than do anything productive. Or you know, hang out with his “girlfriend”, Ari Graynor, who lets him go down on her! And that is about all they do. Shit.

But when his mom’s future love life is in jeopardy because her friends can’t find a sitter, he reluctantly volunteers. Afterall, he just has to sit in the house and get paid. Just three kids too. The oldest, Slater (Max Records), seems to be bad socially, the daughter, Blithe (Landry Bender), who is going through some wanna be celebrity party phase, and their adopted son, Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), who sets off firecrackers and has a bad attitude.

But his girlfriend calls up, asking him to come out and party, and bring her some cocaine (for her friend, not her), and then they can have real sex! Well, time to grab the kids and go! Anything dealing with drugs is probably bad, so when he tries to get the stuff from her friend Karl (Sam Rockwell, who yes, dances in this movie) things go from bad to worse.

Race relations, people with guns, diamond stealing, bathrooms exploding, Bat Mitzvah crashing, and you know, meeting old friends in the form of an old college buddy who just wants to hang out and watch a cool geologic storm with him (hint, true love, played by Kylie Bunbury).

This is also the last movie to feature “Fat Jonah Hill”.

There is a rumor that formerly fat people can’t be funny. That isn’t true, we found that out with 21 Jump Street. But it should be noted that fat people aren’t always funny. This movie being a big example of it.

Was there some funny moments? Sure, but they were few and far between. It was also entirely predictable, and well, just lame. Sequences of the movie didn’t even make sense, one notable part involving a pull over from the police. They didn’t even try to explain that event later in the movie, was just stupid.

Most of the humor derives around Jonah Hill cursing at or around kids, and them possibly doing it back. Hell, even Sam Rockwell’s character wasn’t that funny. I think the best character was the gay roller blading assistant. Name is maybe Julio. Maybe.

Where The Wild Things Are is a “classic children’s book” about nothing at all, really. Just a wild kid, who gets punished, and has a lot of imagination. That is about it. Pretty simple!

And man, his imagination is quite the party.

But theres more. Before he wears the wolf costume, and goes to wild land, Max (played by Max Records) is weird at shit. Starts snowball fights and cries when he loses. Then he bites his mom (Catherine Keener) and gets grounded. Then somehow, WILD LAND.

Lot of weird wild things, mostly looking like the books. And they all seem childish too. The “main one” was voiced by James Gandolfini.

So plot? Eventually Max becomes king, just by saying he is King mostly, and by lying. And he is bad at it. Eventually he is lonely and goes home. The end.

This movie is kind of fucked up. Not at all a kids movie. Kids might like it just because “Ooh, wild people!” in costumes doing stuff. But the kid in the movie is pretty damn near insane. He seemed psychotic to me. He is horrible at home, from what we see, and he is more horrible when he has no one to tell him what not to do. He even seems to laugh at the pain he ends up causing to the wild things.

The wild things are also screwy, they all are just depressed individuals. I am not sure what the movie is going for, but it is not a good feeling, that is for sure. It is very deep, and uncomfortable, and I hated it as it happened.

There is pain in his eyes.

By all means I may have missed the point, but this is definitely not a movie I was hoping to see a giant deeper meaning behind. The only reason I expect a better story from something like Transformers is that they have had series (namely Beast Wars) where about halfway through the first season, the writing in the show kicked it up a huge notch and became a work of art. But this went from kids book to movie, 50~ years later almost.

Just felt odd the whole time, and I did not have a good experience.