Tag: Part II

Holy shit, they made the movie.

I watched Atlas Shrugged Part I, the first part of a planned trilogy, and got almost nothing out of it. It was weird and confusing, a bunch of business stuff, all of it over my head. It also made about zero dollars.

What I do know about Atlas Shrugged is that its end message is that Capitalism is the best, and the Freer the Marker, the better the world. Right? Well, sticking true to that point, the creator of the film said they would only make Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Strike if Part I made enough money to cover the cost of Part II. Well, the free market said no to that, and that we did not want this trilogy to happen.

But here we are, with Part II out and in our faces. Not only did they make it anyways, they replaced THE ENTIRE ORIGINAL CAST WITH NEW PEOPLE. That is completely unheard of. Everyone character who is in both movies has a new actor or actress. I guess it makes sense. The first one bombed, replace all the people. Still an odd circumstance to happen for a movie.

Something sexist about cleavage and laying down rails.

At the end of the first movie, more laws and taxes were put in place in Colorado, so an oil tycoon decided to set fire to his fields, saying he left it as he found it, and now he is on strike. Oooh, guess where the subtitle came from? Well, he disappeared, but no one cares.

Dagny Taggart (Samantha Mathis) is kicking ass. Her John Galt line was a success, and her knew partnership with Henry Rearden (Jason Beghe) lead to a new metal that is lighter and cheaper than steel. BIG SUCCESS. Despite government interference, every thing is great for them.

Too bad the people aren’t having fun. The 99.97% or whatever are protesting in New York, times never change. Well, famous people keep missing. Nice pianists, for example. Dagny’s brother, James (Patrick Fabian) is running the company now, so he is rolling in the cash. Getting dates with random clerks (Larisa Oleynik, most famous for being Alex Mack from The Secret World Of Alex Mack, woo!) and stuff.

Well, long story short, Dagny finds some weird engine thing, somewhere. Most of the scientists are now disappearing, so she finds the last one available (Diedrich Bader) to figure out how to make it work. It could be even better for the future of energy, since gas is $40 a gallon! Maybe.

Longer story short, government hates everything happening. They make it so corporations can never change ever again. They have to sell to everyone. They cannot sell their business. They cannot change their CEOs. They must remain stagnant, and nothing will change, and no more patents. This is pretty intense. Dagny throws a fit, is losing her scientist, and really wants to find out who the hell John Galt is.

Ray Wise plays the Head of State, Esai Morales is Francisco d’Anconia, and D.B. Sweeney plays John Galt. Ah, that’s who he is!

When Diedrich Bader is your last hope to figuring out science stuff, you are totally going to get fucked over.

Here is one benefit of Part II over Part I. I actually could understand (mostly) what the fuck was going on in Part II. Part I I watched, read the synopsis of, and still found myself pretty dang lost. That’s a problem, and I would say Part II is a better movie because of that reason.

But it is bad. The CGI shows that the movie was made on an extremely low budget.

I also think it was probably too detailed and close to the book, but thats without knowing the book. I am sure this didn’t have to be a trilogy, and because it is split up into parts, it is “okay” to leave you with a cliffhanger ending like they do. Really it just annoys me.

Despite all this, I still want to see the trilogy get finished. First, I wont read the book ever. Or the plot synopsis. Second, I am excited to see the entire cast replaced again, which looks entirely likely. Third, there is a chance part III will be a musical. It is an old source, but fuck it, its the same guy in charge.

Come on. Shit on Ayn Rand’s grave and make her book’s movie (against the will of the free market) into a musical. Do it.

It looks like The Last Exorcism went the route of Blair Witch Project. Let me explain.

Blair Witch Project of course redefined horror, viral marketing, and basically introduced us to the found footage genre of film. The Last Exorcism didn’t do any of that, it was just another documentary based film. However (even if you never realized it), Blair Witch Project had a sequel, the Book Of Shadows and it was a “normal film” without the shaky cam feature.

Basically, this was a long winded way of saying that The Last Exorcism Part II also has switched filming techniques to the more standard technique. Just because “Book Of Shadows” was basically shunned and forgotten about with time, doesn’t mean that TLEp2 will also be shitty.

Oh fuck me. What the hell is this poster?

This takes place hours after the first film, with Nell (Ashley Bell) being pretty dang freaky and possessed, running around other peoples homes. Don’t worry, they fix her up real nice. She gets sent off to a group home for troubled girls, after a nice psychological breakdown and she is fixed into realizing that possessions aren’t real and no one is out to get her.

Just kidding.

In fact, now that she is in the heart of New Orleans, everything is a lot weirder, especially when she starts seeing visions of her dad and other villagers, including nightmares of her past acts. But she wants to be normal! Not the crazy girl from the cult! She wants a boyfriend (Spencer Treat Clark), real friends (Julia Garner), and not a demon trying to seduce her into a killing fire making machine!

Too bad fate is a bitch. David Jensen, who looks far too much like Edward James Olmos, plays the helpful group home caretaker, and tries to keep her on the path away from all this religious mumbo-jumbo.

I guess this is that new alternative massage and exorcism technique.

I apologize for the lack of detail in the plot description. Unfortunately, the first movie ends with a twist, and I don’t want to spoil that movie just to explain this one better! Who am I to give away one twist ending to help you figure out the sequel? This movie gives you a brief recap of the first movie events at the start, but does a pretty poor job of it.

When you compare part II to part I, part II is just a mess. Gone is any sort of subtlety, as from beginning to the end, it is entirely full of jump scares and hallucinations. In fact, a scene in the first film where Nell jumps at the camera and screams (a literal jump scare) is spliced into this film at least four times, thanks to Nell’s nightmares. It is weird that in her dreams she is imagining herself wild from someone else’s point of view, yeah?

This movie was so bad that by the end, I thought they were going to actually forget to include an exorcism. The exorcism in question was extremely different than your average movie exorcism, so there is a unique plus.  Unfortunately, most of the film is based on the plot from the last 10 minutes of the previous film, which in itself was confusing and left you with questions. Did this film answer the questions? Not at all! They basically ignored them and brought up even more confusing plot lines.

While the end of part I was rushed and confusing, the ending of this film is actually laughable and definitely bad. It almost felt Carrie-esque, but with no sense of fear involved. I was shaking my head the entire last few minutes, ready to get out of this mess of a film.