Tag: Michael Sheen

A lot of hopefuls out there were hoping that Passengers would be our next great Sci-Fi film. There seems to be one every year. Last year we had The Martian, year before that was Interstellar, and before that was Gravity. We’ve consistantly had one amazing one a year that blew the rest behind.

Passengers was certainly the most advertised coming out this year, including a sweet near Christmas release. But it was too slow.

Not only did we have Arrival already this year, which clearly took the title, but we also had Midnight Special, which I think needs to be on its own pedestal as well. That’s right. Two groundbreaking, well done, science fiction films this year. And neither one of them is named Passengers.

“But we are the only one to actually be set in space! Come on, space suits!”

There is a big ship out there, named Avalon, and it is going to Homestead II. And Earth like planet that they are going to start building colonies on, because Earth is super damn crowded. The trip takes 120 years, so everyone aboard the ship is in a hibernation sleep. Five months before they get there, the crew will wake up, and four months before they get there, the 5,000 passengers will wake up. There they can start to mingle, party, hang out, start thinking of ideas, before they land. Good times.

Until it goes through an asteroid field 30 years into the trip, hitting a few big things. And one of the pods stops working, waking up the passenger inside. Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), engineer/mechanic guy, finds himself alone on a giant space station. He has computers to talk to, and a robot bartender named Arthur (Michael Sheen), but that is it. He cannot go back to sleep in the pod, and there is still 90 years left on the voyage. That’s right. He will die on that ship, old and alone, with no one to help hi.

Jim lasts a whole year almost before thinking about killing himself. But then he sees a girl in a pod, Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence). He falls in love with her, learns everything about her in her profile, and she gives him a reason to go on with his life. And then he does something else. He wakes her up. Sure, he basically condemns her to die also on this ship, but now he has a buddy who will hopefully love him back! Hooray!

Also, problems on the ship still keep happening, Laurence Fisburne is eventually in it, and action, adventure, explosions.

The finest drink in the entire galaxy.

I think inside of Passengers is an extremely solid film. It could have been a more serious drama, really deal with the ethics of his decision and how it will affect them for the rest of their lives. But Passengers didn’t want to keep it really serious. It wanted to be more romantic and more…action-y.

And the last act really does kill it. If it had none of the explosions, the deftly engineering skills, the potential of self sacrifice, the crying and screaming, it could have been a better film. It instead went a more Summer Blockbuster route and gave us a weaker story. The problem with the more action scenes is that they seemingly came out of nowhere. Oh yes, there were hints, but it jumped from a 2 or 3 to an 11 out of nowhere, just because the plot demanded it. The build up was bizarre, especially because the cause was something that started over two years ago.

You know what though? That still didn’t kill it for me. The ending after all of the action could have still had some really beautiful moments. They even hinted at it. (POTENTIAL SPOILERS). But instead of seeing any of these great growing old scenes, we are instead just transported to when the crew wakes up five months before landing, to see all the changes done to the ship, with a Lawrence voice over explaining it to them. And it just falls so flat.

So the rating here is partially for potential. Pratt and Lawrence aren’t bad, they aren’t just given enough to really work with. There are times when the emotions run real (After the reveal of what Pratt did), but they don’t fully go where they should to make it a very emotionally investing film.

Passengers could have been a crazy third amazing Sci-Fi film of the year, but instead, it just wanted that blockbuster money.

Let’s take a time machine back six years ago. The world was different, because not everything was in 3D. Only a few films tried out 3D, thanks to Avatar being the cash cow and visually stunning film that it was. This is when people still thought 3D was actually kind of cool if done right.

Then Alice in Wonderland came out, and it made a shit ton of money. Why did everyone rush to see it? Well, I guess Johnny Depp was a bigger deal six years ago, sure. But because it was released in 3D, so everyone went to see it thinking it would be as pretty as Avatar. It wasn’t.

And say what you will about the plot of Avatar, its story was miles better than the pile of refuse that they gave us with Alice in Wonderland. You would think making it into a bad story would be impossible, given the book. But no, instead they made a sequel to the original Alice in Wonderland, setting this one many years later, with Alice returning to Wonderland with a whole mess of new and awkwardly similar problems. It gave me problems, most of all calling the movie Alice in Wonderland, when it was a sequel to Alice in Wonderland. That is confusing.

But hey, Disney is on a live action kick. So they figured, let’s do a sequel. Alice Through The Looking Glass. This one will probably no be based on the book either, since it is a sequel to the surprise sequel. So who knows what they will fill it with hoping to be edgy. Let’s just say I am going in assuming the worst here, and that is based on a lot of precedent.

Clay? Rust? Red lava? Earthy minerals? Who cares, I am barely a geologist anyways.

The sequel takes place years after the original, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is now a free girl, roaming the seas the captain of her own sailing vessel like her dad. She is exploring the new world and making trade agreements! It is actually quite fun. Unfortunately, when she gets back she is in a pickle. Hamish (Leo Bill), the man she turned down now runs the company. Her mom (Lindsay Duncan) has traded away the bill of her house for money, and the only way to get it back is for Alice to give up her boat and take a respectable job for a woman.

So, in the chaos, she runs through a mirror, following Absolem the butterfly (Alan Rickman) and returns to Wonderland! But things have changed. The entire gang is still friends, but the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) is now the Sad Hatter. He believes his family, killed by the Jabberwocky a long time ago. It is obvious what Alice must do. If you thought look for his family, you were wrong. No, she clearly should go back in time, save them from the Jabberwocky, and bring them to the present to make him feel better. Yeah. That.

But time is a person (Sacha Baron Cohen). And grabbing the Chronosphere can cause a lot of issues. But she does it anyways, because friendship and sets off on a journey to the past to fuck shit up.

The Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and White Queen (Anne Hathaway) return, Leilah de Meza with and Amelia Crouch playing their past selves. Rhys Ifans plays the Mad Hatter’s dad and Ed Speleers are regular unimportant dude.

Also returning, the voices of Tweedledee / Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), Bayard (Timothy Spall), Thackery (Paul Whitehouse), Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), Mallymkun (Barbara Windsor), McTwisp (Michael Sheen), and introducing Wilkins (Matt Vogel), a robot.

Time is a lot of things, and you will hear every last time pun I do decree!

First of all, Eye in the Sky is Alan Rickman’s real last film. This one is just voice work, and I swear, he maybe had three lines and no close ups. This does not get to count as his final film, I won’t allow it.

As for the actual movie, if you missed it this one deals with TIME TRAVEL. Time Travel is a scary subject matter. It is powerful and can make or break a movie depending on how it is adapted. I am not going to argue one theory of time travel is better than any other, because that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that a film is consistent with their version of time travel. Alice Through The Looking Glass cares not at all, changing the rules on a whim, and makes an incredible hard to follow film without a satisfying reason for making it overly complicated.

This line might be a slight spoiler, because I just want to explain their time travel. Alice finds out that no matter what she does, she can not change the past, the events still occur. That is the time travel they have set up. Until later on in the film, a character is totally able to change the past. Fuck.

Alice goes back in time to three different locations. Why? Because the oceans of time are chaotic and once she learns information, she tries to go to a different time line to change different things. The plot is moved forward by consistently bad decisions from Alice, whom is supposed to be a strong smart female lead. Not only that, because Alice seems to make the same bad decisions, her actions feel repetitive and the films seems to drag when there are easy solutions everywhere.

The ending is an incredible mess. Wonderland is falling apart because of two separate events that somehow produce the same results. But it doesn’t make sense for them to do the same thing. I will try and explain it out without spoilers.

I hope you passed algebra.

For most of the film, Problem A is happening thanks to Alice and the world is slowly falling apart. Much later in the film, Problem B, a completely different problem occurs and actually sets about the end of the world. Problem A is seemingly forgotten about. However, once Problem A is “solved”, thanks to our protagonist remembering it, it somehow undoes all of the damage of Problem B. The issue with that is there is no justification whatsoever that it should work like that. There are no mentions earlier on that if Problem B happens, it can be fixed by X. On top of that, there was no reason for Problem A to even continue late in the film, except for the fact that Alice becomes incompetent.

Finally, Alice is seen as a strong, independent woman, which is mostly true in the real world scenes where she is chased by pirates, but they reduce her to a bumbling fool in Wonderland. All of her positive traits seemingly vanish just to move the plot forward. On its own, I guess it is okay for a character to be stupid, sure.

The real issue here is that her character does stupid things, but she is still being lauded as a smart and capable heroine the entire film. To me, that seems almost more dangerous than just having a weak lead. What we need in films are actual strong female characters, not weak ones that they tell us are strong with us supposed to them at their word.

This is a bad movie and one I cannot believe was green-light by Disney. The 3D is pointless, the visuals are only great in a few places, the acting is so-so. The plot is a mess, breaks its rules (which breaks story telling rules and shouldn’t be seen as a compliment to the Madness of Wonderland), and most of the events happen thanks to stupidity and not for good plot reasons. The only thing I enjoyed was the excessive time puns and Cohen as Time.

Something must be in the water, because this is my second “made for TV” movie in a few weeks. Not to spoil the surprise, but I have a third one next week as well.

To give 7 Days In Hell some credit, it is at least an HBO movie, so it won’t be restricted by what stay at home moms want to call the network to complain about if it gets too violent, sexy, grotesque, or angry. They can do what they want!

The release of the film of course is due to Wimbledon about to finish, so why not have a quick mockumentary about a game that never happened. This film is of course inspired by the Isner-Mahut Wimbledon match up in 2010, that went for over 11 hours over 3 days, and was the real game that would never end. It is not based on the Wimbledon romantic comedy from 2004, which (screw you haters!) is actually one of my favorites of the year.

Paul Bettany just needed better hair, like these folks.

This historic match took place in the early 2000s, but before one can find out why they battled hard enough to play tennis for 7 days straight, one has to see where the men involved came from.

Aaron Williams (Andy Samberg) had a reverse Blind Side situation, where he was a white kid on the streets and he got adopted into a black family. Note the last name, yes, he was the adopted brother of the Williams sisters. So it is no wonder he too became great at tennis. Never great enough unfortunately. Because after a huge accident one serve away from winning Wimbledon in the 90’s, Aaron has never been the same. His game was off, he had to turn to other careers and eventually wound up in prison. His hot head personality is missed on the court for many years until he gets out of jail.

On the other side, we have Charles Poole (Kit Harington), a child prodigy, starting to play tennis at the age of three. Some say his maybe abusive mom (Mary Steenburgen) forced him to be the star he is, but it worked and he became the youngest pro ever. He is also the best chance of a British person actually winning Wimbledon in a long time, coming into the tournament at the 2nd overall seed. He is also close to retarded, having no real schooling outside of tennis and graduating from a truck driving school.

Needless to say, due to (plot), these two gentlemen find themselves playing each other in the first round, Aaron to get back to the top, and Charles for his country and to be the very best.

But then rain delays were just the beginning of the issue, in this back and forth match where a player could rarely hold an upper hand, until, you know, it finally ends and stuff.

Any documentary of course has people to tell the story, so we got a few of those! Including a few tennis historians (Will Forte, Fred Armisen), a Jordache Executive (Lena Dunham), the girlfriend of Charles’ at the time (Karen Gillan), and a creepy TV interview host (Michael Sheen). But that isn’t it, the story is also told by David Copperfield, John McEnroe, and Serena Williams!

This is bullshit, they should be playing overnight as well. Who gave them breaks?

I tend to try and have some sort of time criteria for a review. If a movie isn’t an hour long, is it really a movie? Or is it a strange television episode? This in particular has made documentary watching harder, because there are a lot of made for TV documentaries that include commercials leaving the viewer with 40-45 minutes of material. Most notably in this group would be the ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries, which this mockumentary is actually styled after. So it makes sense for the movie to only be about 43 minutes in length, and hey, I will let it pass, because the teaser for it made me giggle. Damn it.

I was surprised at how many jokes it could cram into one tiny documentary. A lot goes on with their lives and with the game, and it feels good not really spoiling any of it. In particular, after Samberg, Forte and Armisen provide the most laughs as the historians.

This is a tiny project and it definitely works for what it is. If anything, Harington is actually the most disappointing aspect. I don’t think it is him, but they gave him a lame character to play. Either way, I hope they do more movies in this style in the future, as they can provide easy entertainment probably relatively cheaply for the channel.

Damn it. I had a long into planned for Admission, about Tina Fey being a comedy writer, and how hopefully this movie would deliver. But Tina Fey did not write Admission, she actually just stars in it. Seems a bit rare, I feel like she normally would write it as well.

Just knowing that fact gives me lower hopes for the movie. I won’t judge it on that, it is just, disappointing is all.

That is actually how I talk on the phone too, sprawled out and exasperated.

Portia (Fey) is an admissions rep at Princeton University, who has been pushed back to number 2 in the US Rankings! Oh no! That means they have to be as strict as ever this year, turning down more people, getting better students. Her boss (Wallace Shawn) is going to retire, and he wants to retire on top. So his job will be filled by either her or her rival, Corinne (Gloria Reuben), so it is important that they both get the best students possible.

That is why she decides to jump at the opportunity to add new high schools to her area. The Quest School is a learning community about to have its first graduating class, and the current owner John Pressman (Paul Rudd) wants her to come and visit. But really he just wants her to meet Jeremiah (Nat Wolff), who he believes to be her son that she adopted 18 years ago. Weird.

Hopefully he also doesn’t want to go to Princeton, that might be a big conflict of interest. Maybe.

Oh yeah, and her long term (10 year) professor boyfriend (Michael Sheen) just dumped her for another English Scholar (Sonya Walger) who is having his kids. Whoops.

Also featuring Lily Tomlin as Portia’s very independent mother and Travaris Spears as John’s adopted son.

Her son is like a little rain man. Except not as smart, and less special.

Whew. Well, if anything about the movie, I can say the last third I didn’t actually see going the way that it went. There were surprise in the script, that seemed to be following a pretty straight forward path.

Heck it even had some amusing moments. But most of the film just felt a bit cringeworthy. The constant scenes of Portia running into her ex weren’t really too clever. The things she did to try and make things right were unethical and bad. But more importantly, the film didn’t really feel too resolved by the end. One major dramatic moment (The reveal of being his mother) had a lot of things go wrong with it, but those problems got swept under the rug. I was hoping for some real human emotion there, dang it.

It is okay in humor, and an okay movie. Nothing to special. Technically not terrible, just a bit disappointing overall. Oh well. Maybe next time Fey.

Holy shit. There have been 300 movie reviews on my website since I last did a Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn Part 1. I might as well link Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse too, even though they are tagged as Milestone Reviews now. In case you need to catch up, that is! Obviously this review and the others are chock full of spoilers, I am going to say everything. If you care about that shit, don’t read.

That is right, I had to time my movie watching the last month and a half to make sure I got to see Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 at the midnight release, and review it right away for the big 650. This is the only Twilight movie I have seen in theaters, the others I saw alone in the solace of my room, where no one can judge me. But nope. Today was Twilight day, complete with collectors cup.

Proof, least someone call me out on mendacity.

Since you all automatically care about what I care about when reading my reviews, I can give you the unfortunate news. They have been slowly squeezing Anna Kendrick out of these movies, and I can tell you now she does not have a single scene in the finale. However, in the credits, they do a “whole series” credits, and a scene with her at the wedding from part 1 was shown when they showed her name. That is all. If you need to see Anna Kendrick, march on over to the fabulous movies End Of Watch or Pitch Perfect, you will get a lot of her.

“Why aren’t you talking about me? I’m actually in this movie. Do you SEE these hands?”

Bella (Kristen Stewart)! She opened her eyes! Bitch is a vampire now! She was only dead for two days, so it wasn’t entirely weird. However she is super strong now, and craves blood. Like all newbies, she will find that shit insatiable, and if there is a bleeding human nearby she will bleed them dry. So Edward (Robert Pattinson) takes her far from civilization and her kid to hunt a deer.

Too bad she finds a human anyways. And well, on her first try? Totally stops the urge. Oh okay, well, that was one problem dealt with, kind of instantly.

What gave her the even more super strength? Well, fuck you, that’s what.

Anyways, she wants to see her kid damn it. With the entirely ridiculous name of Renesmee. But something is different. In two days she has grown a bit (and looks incredibly CGI fake for some reason. But she doesn’t noticed that). Not to mention Jacob (Taylor Lautner) is STILL hanging around despite the death thing. What the fuck Jacob, go home? Wait Bella, you wanted him around when you were dying, why you so mad?

Oh, because your daughter in fetus form wanted Jacob around? And now that he FUCKING IMPRINTED ON HER, bonding them together forever, he doesn’t want to leave either. DUDE, she is a baby! They make sure we know it doesn’t mean like, sex, but still, what? Come on Jacob. She is like, 3. Three days.

“And your next gift is wrapped up in my trousers.”

Turns out Bella is really good at Vampiring. Natural, pretty convenient for the plot movement, I do say. But what about her dad? They have to pretend she died and THEN move again, or else he might stop by and see her. All very sketch, but it has to be done, or else you know, their secret could be let lose.

Well, pouty Jacob face doesn’t like that. So he does what any good godfather (maybe? Let’s say sure, it is less creepy) would do. Give us our gratuitous shirt taking off scene and transform into a (Were)wolf in front of the dad (Billy Burke) to bring him into the fold. Aww, how sweet.

I mean, clearly that was the best option. No, he doesn’t explain vampires. Just kind of transforms and tells him to deal with it.

But then there is another problem. Remember that baby? That was formed and birthed in like four weeks? Turns out she is still growing at a fast rate. Really fast. After a few months she looks like she is six. She can also pass on memories to other people that she sees, pretty cool, kind of weird, but hey, we don’t judge shitty powers here. Speaking of shitty powers, Bella gets one too (other than self control over eating humans). She can block mental powers and other powers. Only on her self, and always, but hey, if she tries hard enough she might be able to give it to others.

Either way, while frolicking in the winter time, Irina (Maggie Grace), still upset over the wolves eating her mean lover from that first or second movie, hard to tell, sees the child and immediately thing it is an immortal child. A vampire, bitten at a young age, before they can control their shit, which can cause all the pain in the world. Take down cities in a tantrum. She would know, her mom made her sister an immortal child, and lots of heads were cut off and babies burned as a result. Serious shit. So she tells on them to the Italian vampires, and they don’t like the sound of that!

The caption two pictures ago was referring to Jacob’s penis.

Well fuck. They are serious, and hate that shit. So they plan on killing the child and those who made it. You know, eventually. The next time it snows or something, because snow fights are sexy.

But that isn’t a problem. They just have to prove that she isn’t immortal, and they will go away. Well, apparently these people are jerks and will find another excuse to kill a vampire once they make up their mind. Oh okay, well the next best solution is for them to travel the world and visit all of that one guys old friends. If they come see the child, see her grow, they will have witnesses that she is alive and growing. Kind of weird, but definitely not an immortal child. Then there can be happiness!

Happiness and potential racism.

Sure, it also looks like they have a mini army too, especially with the wolves on their side now (always down to kill the vamps, yo). But they lost some numbers, Alice (Ashley Greene), their future sight person has left and no one knows why. Oh well, if for some reason the Italians still don’t care, they are now willing to fight back. If that shit hits the fan, Jacob will just take Renesmee and run far away forever, and everyone else will die. Peachy!

Well, snow falls, so it is time for a standoff. Literally. They then talk for a long ass time. The main guy (Michael Sheen) can touch people and see their memories. So he does that, and well, seriously, they are all telling the truth. Oh well, so he kills the bitch for lying. Now he is just trying to egg on the good guys. Nothing is working though, and he really wants to kill a kid today. Dang it.

So he gives a speech on why the unknown is bad, because humans have bombs, so they should kill anyways. But wait, Alice returns (and she was only gone for two paragraphs in my retelling!). Now he can look into her memories, to see the future and prove that she won’t later be a threat.

Well. Uhh. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about the truth, he just really wants to kill a kid. So you know what that means.

Fight time, yeahhhhhhhhhhhh!

Heads. Fucking. Roll. This overtly ridiculous fight scene happens, and Jacob runs away with the child. The best way to kill a vampire seems to be beheading and burning, and boy do we see some decapitations. It’s like Oprah was giving them away. You will be shocked at who dies. So many good guys, and bad guys. Remember Dakota Fanning? She was evil or something, didn’t speak much. She got defaced hard.

Hell, the Earth ended up getting ripped open, so we could see the Magma! So many vampires were burning. With the power of teamwork and tossing a girl mid kick, they were able to beat the Italians and behead them all.

Or did they? Seriously. Big spoiler about to happen. Calm your tits and get out of here if you don’t want to know.

None of that happens. Fuck you. It was all part of Alice’s future vision. Well shit, that guy doesn’t want to die. If he can see the future and know he is going to die, certain retreat seems like a good idea, even if he can’t explain why.

“LOLOLOL JK GUYS, lets leave. For seriously.”

Yep. Not only that, but Alice found another half immortal person. Luckily enough, he only aged for about 7 years, making him look middle aged, and then he has been immortal ever since. Been alive for 150 years, and isn’t a child. Well that is super convenient. If only Jacob could live forever, because then he’d get to have a lot of weird ass wolfman, half vampire, pedophile like fucking in his future.

Annnd movie. Yes, they didn’t actually solve their biggest problems, just delayed it. But no worries, Alice saw the future. They are good to go.

They also fixed the sparkle in the sun thing. Well, they didn’t say that in the movie. But I mean, they aren’t sparkling here in the final scene of the movie. I doubt they’d forget that aspect of the vampires at the last moment. Right? Right?

And there you have it! The twilight franchise is now done, until they reboot it in a few years. Pretty exciting right?

I think I already made this twice as long as my normal big reviews, which is strange, because the stuff in this movie was only half of the book, yet had so much material. My biggest complaints in the first movies was not the bad acting, but the lack of content. I would have ended the first movie like, halfway through book two. Would have made a more logical stopping point, and I think two would have ended at the end of three. Hard to remember anymore. Especially since Eclipse felt like a filler in between them saying “Hey lets get married” and them finally getting married.

But holy fuck, I think I actually found myself interested in the actions of this movie. First off, it was funnier. Jacob provided more humor relief, and not just because of all the pedophile tendencies. The fight scenes were a lot more entertaining and graphic. Even though most of them turned out to be fake in the end, which made me SO FUCKING PISSED OFF.

WHAT, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT COP OUT? Also not to mention fixing the “Oh no, our daughter is aging super quickly, but no worries, she will stop at the great age and be amazing” part in like 2 seconds at the end. Cookie cutter that ending yo.

Despite that rage. I still overall found it more enjoyable. Maybe I am just a rambling lunatic at this point. But it was nice that they included their romance, with out 40 minutes of wedding and honeymoon awkwardness. Including more werewolf personalities. Making me actually learn more vampire names. Having stereotype characters. I was fine with most of that.

So all in all, I would say that the movie (which I am told matched the book pretty well) was actually a good ending to the series. The problem with the series is that there are still four movies before this one before you find something kind of entertaining enough to pay attention too.

I chances of me finding out about Jesus Henry Christ and watching it were probably pretty low. Just looking at a bunch of titles for 2012 movies, knowing I have been not on the new side recently, and saw it and thought. Huh. Why not. Title alone.

Turns out it is based on a short story and produced by Julia Roberts. A star backing an indie movie, watch out!

I also think it has a limited release on theaters starting…well today. Whoops!

This picture actually shows most of the plot.

This is a story about a boy named Henry (Jason Spevack). Henry is an only child raised by his single mom Patricia (Toni Collette), whom he calls by name. Patricia is a feminist and protester throughout most of her life, thanks to weird incidents in her youth. Thanks to a tragic (Drunken) accident, her mom was a killed, and she was raised solely by her dad Stan (Frank Moore) and four older brothers.

What Henry doesn’t know is that he was a “test tube” baby, and has no idea who his biological dad is. But his grandfather might, thanks to protesting. Hell, Patricia was mad that he came out a boy. But at 9 months when he was already able to talk, they figured something was up. Even getting kicked out of kindergarten for being too advanced, and then kicked out of a private catholic school for trying to disprove the bible.

Thanks to crazy genetics, he can remember everything he has seen, making himself pretty advanced.

Either way, thanks to his grandfather, he finds out that his most likely father is a professor at a local university (Michael Sheen), who has recently published a book entitled “Born Gay or Made That Way?”. Which features his daughters face, Audrey (Samantha Weinstein), a he experimented with her upbringing (also a single father), by making her entirely gender neutral to see..well, what happens. Besides the whole, ruining his daughters life with a book about her maybe being a lesbian.

Turns out it isn’t that simple, he could have a different father, but that guy is dead. That dead guy? Also might be Audrey’s real father too. So all four of them get to do fun parental tests to find out just who i related to who.

In a nutshell, a “dysfunctional family comedy” where the family might not be a family at all.

A family that needle pricks together…

Not only is this another indie quirky family comedy thing where every character is a very specific extreme that will never happen…it is also shot, differently.

Weirdly?

Hard to describe. But I loved the cinematography (And the plot and actors/actresses, etc). Just felt unique, and slightly different, but not like “Whoa, get off my screen Hipster!” different. Maybe it was all very subtle. Or maybe they just had to do it to save money, because its an indie film.

I have no idea, but it was definitely a very interesting movie to watch. I will for sure get it once it comes out on DVD/Blu-Ray/whatever new technology disk.

I could say a lot about this movie, but it is one of the more simpler movies to understand.

Sure some history might help, but Frost/Nixon is about two people. David Frost, and Richard Nixon.

The entire movie is just their floating heads, talking.

But seriously. Frank Langella plays Richard Nixon, who just had the Watergate scandal and has since resigned from being president. Michael Sheen plays David Frost, a British TV reporter who likes to interview people. At the time of the movie I don’t think he was as famous as he is right now. A lot of the fame came from his interview with Nixon, as he was the first reporter to really get a crack at it after the resignation.

Do you want your movie reviews to be a history lesson? Didn’t think so. That is what watching the movie is for.

Eventually the interview happens over a few parts. After the first part, Nixon is walking all over Frost. He is a big time guy, carries a lot of power behind his voice, and can steer the topics his way. But it is up to Frost to man up, so to speak, take control of the interview, and get Nixon to talk about the scandals!

Sam Rockwell and Kevin Bacon are also in this movie, but you shouldn’t be watching it for them.

Here is a picture of the real interviews. Everyone is uglier in real life.

“But Gorgon Reviews, why would I want to watch a movie about two people just talkin’? Not only just that, but two people talkin’ about stuff almost 40 years ago. Fuck the past!”

Well, foul-mouthed reader, they talk pretty good like.

I mean, that might be my whole argument. I was captivated some how by all of it. The sense of history being made (or at least the possibility) and the mental chess match between Frost and Nixon for the debate. Had a lot more than those two, producers, agents, bodyguards, PR people, etc getting in the way too. And money. But just watching the conversations was good enough for me.

Beautiful Boy? Alright, title alone, that sounds shitty. That is worse than judging a book by its cover. That’s not even getting an opinion on the cover.

I still decided to watch it, but when I read the description I thought it would be fantasmic.

Disney tells me this is a word. Autocheck does not. But autocheck isn’t a word. So what is really going on here?

A married couple on the verge of separation are leveled by the news their 18-year-old son committed a mass shooting at his college, then took his own life.

Whoa! That sounds awesome! I have always been interested in the lives affected by school shootings and the like. Not of those who were injured/killed/their families, but the families of the shooters. How does THAT feel? That guilt? That awkwardness? That attention?

My favorite episode of Six Feet Under had a workplace shooting, where the shooter got three people and himself, and showed the family of the shooter who attempted to have a private ceremony for him still (plus everyone’s opinions on the subject). It is WAY too interesting of a topic to never be talked about. Should people not be able to be grieved and honored if they do one bad thing out of a more or less normal life time? It is hard to say.

But this is a movie site. Carry on, self.

The parents are played by Michael Sheen and Maria Bello, and they were fantastic. One particular fight scene they had over the incident, involving a disk he sent home the night before the task was just so intense, I was scared. In the disk he would have explained to him why he did it, but it was never shown to the viewer. Probably to represent how these things are impossible to tell, in real life.

The shooting is never shown, but the attention it receives is just very real. Alan Tudyk also ninja’s his way into the film, so you know it has to be good.

Just ask Steve The Pirate

So yeah, obviously this is a serious drama, and the main two people in it did a great job. It could have been a bit better, but definitely a solid movie.