Tag: Oona Laurence

Bad Moms thankfully came out the week before or during my vacation in the summer. A glorious time where I missed, frankly, a lot of terrible movies.

I am judging Bad Moms not just by its cover, but by the actresses picked, the trailer, and the marketing they went through. I read it was originally going to involve Judd Apatow and star Leslie Mann instead, and that made the previews make a lot more sense. It looks like a movie he would make about this subject, if it was more dramatic and had an additional 45 minutes or so.

But to come out with this film, with the lame title, the same year Dirty Grandpa [Editor’s Note: This made more sense when I said Bad Grandpa, but that was years ago. I am too lazy to change this joke]? As Bad Santa 2? Come on, we all know 2016 sucked, but was it really necessary to make so many bad films?

The worst thing a mom can do is drink when her children are 12 years past breastfeeding, don’t cha know.

Amy (Mila Kunis) is a hard working mother. She makes breakfast, she works extra hours at her part time job, she comes home and makes dinner, she volunteers with the PTA, she takes her kids (Oona Laurence, Emjay Anthony) to after school activities and helps with all of their projects. Her husband (David Walton) has a relatively easy job, but it brings in the money. Except he doesn’t help with all of the extra stuff, leaving it all on her.

And then she finds him jerking it to a cam model, live, and he has been doing it for 10 months now. So she wants a break. She kicks him out and goes out drinking. She meets Carla (Kathryn Hahn), another single mom (with a much older kid) and they have a blast. They eventually gain Kiki (Kristen Bell) as well after Amy defies the PTA president (Christina Applegate) in front of the entire PTA. Kiki is even more overstressed and needs to have fun.

So you know, they go and have more fun. They make their kids make breakfast, do their own work and start focusing on themselves more. I know, very bad moms indeed. And when the PTA president gets angry at Amy’s kids for defying her, Amy decides she is going to run against her and promise a whole lot less work.

Also featuring Jay Hernandez as a single dad who Amy likes. And J.J. Watt as a soccer coach. And Wanda Sykes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Wendell Pierce, and Clark Duke.

Bad moms apparently are real big jerks in grocery stores.

Damn it, here I am, spending my time, trying to watch what might be the worst of the worst in 2016, and then I find myself wasting time with Bad Moms. Because Bad Moms isn’t the worst of the worst. Is it great? Hell no. But it isn’t downright terrible either.

Yes, I am disappointed that I didn’t hate it more, but it had a handful of amusing moments. Sure, Hahn’s character was just terrible. Bell has done better way before. And Kunis never feels believable in this role. Technically the best person in their role might be Applegate as the stuck up, stereotypical, PTA President. Which is a weird place to see her career at the moment.

Bad Moms is full of wish fulfillment, and of course the message that moms matter too, so they should have fun more and let their kids grow up without them always holding their hands. And that dads should be involved. A fine message, but something that feels like it doesn’t need to be said at this point in human history. Maybe 30-40 years ago.

It is jam packed with the latest party tunes, to date this movie further in a few years. There are several party montage scenes, at the bar, at the grocery store, and a much longer one of mostly average looking middle aged women partying like a college party. And that almost seems to be the entire point of the film.

Bad Moms isn’t terrible, it just is far from a great or even a good or okay movie. Better casting and better jokes would have went a long way with this film.

Oh no, a remake!

Wait, this is a Disney movie being remade by Disney? Oh, those are fine. Carry on.

One might wonder why Pete’s Dragon needed a remake. Well, nothing needs a remake, the director just really wanted to do it, so Disney said yeah, sure, why not. Do I care about the original film? No, not at all, no one really does anymore. It makes since to reimagine it.

It should be noted that I have lapses in pop culture knowledge occasionally. Like when I recently realized that Pete’s Dragon and Puff the Magic Dragon were completely different entities and forms of media. Shit, I felt stupid.

Not as stupid as this family when they realize that a dragon will kill you, regardless of its Puff or Pete status.

Pete (Oakes Fegley) is a chipper five year old kid, going on an adventure with his parents in the middle of nowhere Pacific Northwest woods! And yeah, a car accident occurs, leaving Pete with some dead parents and himself completely alone, possibly for hundreds of miles! Well, not completely alone, there are some friendly hungry wolves nearby. Uh oh! Thankfully something big, green, furry and with wings shows up to help him out.

Now, six years later, Pete is still successfully living in the woods with this magical creature that can turn invisible, that he has named Elliot. But it has been long enough. Time to accidentally have Pete meet some other strangers.

Namely, a bunch of loggers have been in the area and are about to hit their turf. It is run by Jack (Wes Bentley) and his brother Gavin (Karl Urban). Jack is also married to or dating Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), a park ranger. Grace’s dad (Robert Redford) claims to have seen a dragon in his youth and the only one to have seen it in the area, despite the many stories. Together, Jack and Grace also have a child, Natalie (Oona Laurence). I can’t tell if it is from both of them though. I will conclude that it is Jack’s child and Grace is the step-mom or soon to be step-mom.

And that is all the important characters! Once Pete gets discovered, it is only a matter of time before they find Elliot as well. Greed and more put his life on danger. Oh hamburgers, why couldn’t they just leave the poor kid in the alone, without a family? Also starring Isiah Whitlock Jr. as the sheriff of the small town.

Part dog, part dragon, part cuddly heaven dream.

The movie began like a lot of films, with some sweet parental death. Always good to get sad really early on into a movie. Grace’s mom is also dead before this film, and if she isn’t actually the mother of Natalie, then shit, that might be four dead parents in a single movie. Disney films have always loved killing moms or dads in films, but rarely for so many individuals. (Except for The Lion King. Because you know when Mufasa died, he was the dad of every cub in that pack).

Overall, huge swaths of the film are pretty void of dialogue. Letting music and atmosphere fill the screen instead to really turn this film into an adventure. In one way, that raises the film up into an adventure for the audience as well. On the other hand, the beginning third of the film will begin to drag for the younger viewers. The older film had cutting edge animation for the dragon and songs to keep everyone happy. This one has a much more serious tone and anyone under 8 might find themselves getting distracted and bored.

When examining the plot, it is actually incredibly basic and nothing we haven’t seen before. It hits a lot of cliches that happen in wild child meets stable family films. And throughout the film, a few humans feel a bit too cartoony as well. Urban’s character is straight up 2-dimensional until his very last scene, but it comes off as too little too late. Howard’s character is trying to hard to give off this earnest caring individual that she almost feels so passive of a person throughout. I almost feel like she could have been missing completely and the movie would still make sense. Like her character exists purely as a link between the children and Redford’s character.

Laurence did a great job, continuing her successful streak from Southpaw, and I was equally impressed with Fegley. Both the young stars had so much imagination and wonder in their eyes, it is contagious.

Finally, the animation for the dragon was spectacular. He looked and felt believable. A little dog like, but that was intentional. He is a wonderful design made by a lot of spectacular people. Completely, fantastic, dragon.

Overall, Pete’s Dragon is only an okay movie because there isn’t really a lot going on plot wise. A basic story, with an obvious conclusion. But it is full of whimsy at points and a wonderful dragon design. It is worth a watch, but maybe not a day one buy.

Hold up your hands. Now bend your hands back a little bit and curl your fingers. Then use this hand position to hit someone in the face, with the bottom part of your palm. That is what I thought Southpaw was before this movie.

Southpaw didn’t actually teach me what a Southpaw was, I had to find out after the fact. Apparently it is just a mainly left handed boxer though, instead of the normal right handed boxer. Oh well.

Either way, the main reason I was interested in this film was to see a buff Jake Gyllenhaal. We had glimpses of it in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, but no one wanted to see that movie for some reason. The best part about the muscles put on by Gyllenhaal is that he did it right after starring in Nightcrawler, where he famously lost a lot of weight and has scrawny body.

Look out everyone. Gyllenhaal is now willing to do potential future harm to his health to give it his all in these roles.

And he is excited to do it!

Billy Hope (Gyllenhaal) has got it all. He is undefeated, over 40 wins to his name! He is the lightweight champion of the world! He has friends, a loving wife, Maureen (Rachel McAdams), a daughter, Leila (Oona Laurence), a mansion, a lifelong manager friend/promoter (50 Cent), and fat filthy stacks of cash.

But he wasn’t given these things. He had to work hard. He was an orphan, raised in the foster care system. So was his wife! So were all his friends. From nothing they created something great, and now with all the hits to the head, there is a chance he could lose it all if he keeps taking a beating. His wife wants him to live to see their daughter grow up, a fair request. So sure, maybe he should retire.

Not everyone is down with his retirement though. Miguel Escobar (Miguel Gomez) claims he is the best at the sport, but Billy won’t give him a chance. Miguel needs to beat the best to claim he is the best, so he starts a public taunting event to get Billy to commit. But when the taunting gets too personal, events quickly escalate and a pretty bad thing happens. I honestly don’t know if the bad thing was said in the spoiler, so I will avoid saying it.

Needless to say, post “bad thing”, Billy won’t get to live out the rest of his life as planned. Depression, loss of wealth, drugs, all of these things bring Billy down. After he loses everything, then, maybe then, he can turn his life around with an old gym owner (Forest Whitaker) and living on the streets.

Also featuring Naomie Harris, Skylan Brooks, and Beau Knapp.

Billy was eventually defeated by a KO from his daughter, quite embarrassingly.

Southpaw left me an emotional wreck. Notably important, I have a wife and I have a daughter, so despite not growing up on the streets or being athletic in any way, I found myself relating really heavily with the main character. All the bad things that happened to him I could imagine happening to me, so I was on the same wavelength from minute 1 and on.

Southpaw isn’t a revolutionary story. It has some normal boxing movie moments, maybe even cliches if you will. It wasn’t going for Warrior (shut up, I know it wasn’t boxing, close enough). But what elevates Southpaw is in the incredible acting.

Everyone was on point in this film. Gyllenhaal gave a complete performance, transforming himself into a new person. The film was originally going to star Eminem as the titular role, as a spiritual sequel to 8 Mile. Obviously Eminem wasn’t a champion boxer, but the whole film would be a metaphor for what was going on in his life and his own struggles. It was actually easy to imagine him playing the role early on, but I don’t think he could have pulled off the more emotional and intense parts of the film in the middle and end.

McAdams is in a lot of movies that make me cry, but she is never the reason for the tears. This time McAdams made me cry, who gave one of her best performances. It took awhile to get used to it, but it worked. Whitaker also gives his best performance in years, doing well on the drunk ramblings. It was nice to see after a few pretty bad and cheap movies in a row. And of course, Laurence as the daughter did an amazing job. She conveyed emotions through her eyes like a seasoned pro, with only one of her scenes feeling a bit cheesy.

Southpaw is a movie about a family and boxing. Broken down it is awkward: Boxer’s life turned upside down due to boxing, only way to fix it is more boxing. But the acting and characters make it an incredible film experience.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {DVD}.