Tag: Ray Wise

I have never seen a DC animated movie before I watched Batman: The Killing Joke. Sure, I have heard a lot of good things about them, but I never really made time for them. They are supposed to be decently animated, well voiced, and of course, tell great plot filled stories, better than the current live action films.

I figured it was the best time to finally get on the train. The hype for The Killing Joke was insane. The graphic novel itself is incredibly well known and respected as one of the best Batman stories ever. This is the first R-rated DC animated film ever made. And of course they decided to release it in theaters for Fathom Events. It sold out. So they made a second showing for the one day only event. Then they added two more the next day. And some theaters had multiple screens each night at the same time.

I. Had. To. See. This.

And I have never been so disappointed to get so dang hyped for something I had little experience for.

King? That’s not the card that is super relevant, damn it!

The Killing Joke is a story about Batman (Kevin Conroy) realizing that one day, either he might end up killing The Joker (Mark Hamill) or vice versa. And Batman doesn’t want to do that. He wants to try to talk with The Joker. But The Joker has escaped again.

And The Joker wants to get revenge, harsh revenge. Mainly on Commissioner Gordon (Ray Wise) and his daughter, Barbara/Batgirl (Tara Strong). He wants to break Gordon and break Batman in the process, just like he was broken a long time ago. Yes, we get Joker backstory.

Oh, and also, there is a 30 minute intro or something completely unrelated, about Batgirl and Batman having a relationship and a sociopath gangster named Paris (Maury Sterling) who abuses Batgirl. John DiMaggio is also here for gangster voice work and Brian George as Alfred.

Life. Life is the real joke. HA HA HA HA!

Let’s ignore the story for a bit. Let’s just talk about the animation, a crucial part of any animated movie. It is hard to describe in any other way other than shit. It feels so cheaply done. When characters walk it feels sometimes rushed, sometimes blocky. It is a buzzkill to watch. If they were going for a comic book feel, I cannot tell. In addition to that, for whatever creative reason, the vehicles in the movie are very different visually and a lot more 3D feeling than the rest of the 2D film. It again just feels lazy, like they had to use a different program just to get the film out in time.

The prologue of this film is a big what the fuck. First, it is almost half the movie. I haven’t seen a prologue that long since Digimon: The Movie. They apparently added in this story, not attached to the comic, in order to build up Batgirl a bit more. In The Killing Joke she is seen as a prop just to get hurt and abused and it has its fair share of controversy. So they give her a bigger role with this aspect. It is meant to draw parallels between her feelings towards Batman and this new villain, with Batman’s own feelings towards her and the Joker.

And it fails. The random gangster objectifies her at every turn and basically always has the upper hand. Batman is seen as a huge dick in the prologue, void of any emotion, and a very out of place love scene. It also comes with a stereotypical gay character out of the 90’s! The prologue is meant to give the Batgirl more material to work with, but in all honesty just turns her into a sex object for a longer period of time. Yeesh.

As for The Killing Joke portion, it is still only okay. The voice acting is decent, the animation is poor, the backstory is interesting. But again, this portion of the film feels rushed. Joker’s plan to drive Gordon insane has only two or so components and clearly not enough to break him. The film has the R rating for subject matter, but so much of it is still implied. Show me animated dong, damn it. It felt censored.

This is not something you should have seen in theaters, but by the time this review is up, it is already out. They made their money, it is a financial success, and now people might buy it for their homes. But it is not worth owning or really watching. In all accounts, your money would be better spent just on the graphic novel itself most likely. Rent this one if you must.

If you are reading this and feel confused, don’t be. Yes, I had the nerve to post a fake review. You can read it here, and should. And I did it before. I did a fake review of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with fake spoilers. Those were good times, before I had the ability to even see movies early.

But no, now I will really review God’s Not Dead 2. I had to pay money to see this one though. I had to go to a Thursday night screening, and thanks to soccer practice, I had to wait for the 10 pm showing. I had to watch previews and spend like $10, it was terrible.

Why? Well, I wanted to have some integrity in my fake review. If I made a fake review with just the trailer, I would have missed side plots and subtleties and you would have seen right through it. So instead I had to give myself just 3 hours of sleep that day and write a silly review for a silly joke holiday. But don’t worry. This is the real one. This one will pull out all the stops.

Yeah, you might want to wipe that grin away from your face.

GND2 takes place not only after the first film, but in the same basic location. Which turns out is Houston? In a made up high school instead of a made up college. The exploits of the first guy were heard large and wide, but Christianity was still being shunned.

Enter happy go lucky Grace (Melissa Joan Hart). Nothing gets her down except for not being able to help her students. Like Brooke (Hayley Orrantia), from an atheist family. She lost her brother six months ago and her parents (Maria Canals-Barrera, Carey Scott) seemed to have already gotten over it and are harassing her to get into a good college. So she goes to Grace outside of school to ask for help and she talks about Jesus. This is fine of course. Brooke also finds a bible in her brother’s room. He was secretly religious!

Later on at school, Grace is teaching about non violent protesters, MLK and Gandhi, and Brooke asks if it is similar to what Jesus spoke about. Non violence stuff. Sure. Why not. Brooke says yes, cites her source, and moves on. Some nameless kid apparently complains because later Grace has to meet with the school board over preaching in class! She refuses to apologize to avoid punishment, and they don’t want to fire her over it, but they decide to let the ACLU take her to court. They apparently really really want this battle.

The ACLU lawyer (Ray Wise) actually goes to Brooke’s parents to get them to be the main plantiff. Brooke is a minor so she has no say. They agree, because it might help her get into college. And now the ACLU can make an example of Grace, take her for everything she has and get a precedent about any Jesus talk in the classroom.

Also in this movie. Paul Kwo returns as a Chinese atheist turned Christian with many questions. David A.R. White is still a pastor who refuses to give his sermons to the government and serves on the jury. Benjamin A. Onyango is back, because fuck it. And Trisha LaFache is back as a reporter, with her cancer gone because she found Jesus. She doesn’t really have a purpose in this film at all.

We also have Robin Givens as the principal, Jesse Metcalfe as Grace’s lawyer who doesn’t believe either, Pat Boone as Grace’s old dad, Ernie Hudson as the judge, and Sadie Robertson as Brooke’s best friend and the niece of Trisha’s character.

Letting God be your witness sounds nice, but doesn’t help you in the court.

Fppppptbtbtbb.

What in the actual fuck. Let me first say that God’s Not Dead is the worse movie. It ends with one character homeless, abandoned by family (/beaten a little bit), but finding Jesus so its okay. A reporter getting Cancer despite finding Jesus, and the teacher losing, accepting everything, and still finding Jesus in time to get killed right away. It was a complete mess.

This film is also a complete mess, but with less death. Now, one obvious problem with this movie is that they take a normal teaching situation that in no way, anywhere, would there ever be an issue with it. That helps drive the point home I guess, because everyone watching it knows she is innocent and the trial becomes extremely ridiculous because of it. Of course we are on her side, the writers suck and are implying that this type of thing happens all the time. It almost makes every argument the movie tries to make invalid because they didn’t even try to present something plausible.

Like the first film.

They made the ACLU guy out to be some huge evil villain. He probably eats babies. He scowls and twirls his imaginary mustache when he tells the parents before the trial that they will “for once and all finally prove that GOD IS DEAD!” I had to imagine some lightning bolts in the background, it really helped.

But literally the trial isn’t about Jesus existing or not. The entire trial is a bad sham that flows in no logical way. First of all, Grace’s main defense is she did nothing wrong and wasn’t preaching in the classroom. They decide (half way through the trial) that their best defense is to prove a historical Jesus, which means she can mention Jesus in a history class. Makes sense. However, all of the uproar outside of the trial is about religion in the classroom and whether Christians can talk about Jesus in a religious way. Grace isn’t arguing she should be able to do that, she knows when it is appropriate and never suggested preaching should be in the classroom. Or mandatory school prayer. Or anything.

So guess what. She wins in the end. Not by proving the historic Jesus. But because of having a break down when her own lawyer verbally attacks her to talk about her faith. He goes super mean, making everyone feel bad and going to her side. That’s right, they don’t even try to win the trial in a good way. They do something that wouldn’t be allowed in a trial (because treating your witness as “hostile” doesn’t mean yelling and screaming a fit) and end it in the worst way. It is so damn stupid.

As a follow up, Brooke couldn’t talk to the teacher the whole time (because reasons?), and when she finally does, it is after the trial. Everyone is gone after the verdict, but she says no, go spread the word. Somehow Brooke gets out of the courthouse first, before eager reporters and everything, to scream out that “GOD’S NOT DEAD!” to hundreds of Christian supporters for a big party. They were there, silently protesting while atheist people yelled and called names the whole time. Of course, the trial didn’t conclude anything about the legitimacy of religion.

And if the religious people say it was a win for religions, then they missed the point of Grace’s defense and the fact that she did nothing wrong. So they are pretty hypocritical. Celebrating in that way seems to imply that Grace did preach in class and it is now allowed. It is all nonsensical.

I need another picture in here. My bad.

I think that is all I needed to rant about the trial. So here are other annoyances.

One side plot is Paul Kwo finding his new religion difficult to grasp. He doesn’t stop going to classes or anything, he just is also Christian. So we have a scene where his dad comes right off the plane from China, still in his business suit, to yell at him and tell him he has disappointed his family and not his son anymore. Because he became Christian without changing any other aspect of his life. It is ridiculous. A few scenes later, his character decides to become a pastor, which changes his future and would then warrant maybe a father coming to yell at his son for throwing his life away. But the events are all out of order here.

Trisha LaFache’s reporter is useless here. She is a bad spiritual guide or something. But what is strange about her involves Duck Dynasty. A show and cast that are real in this film. She interacted with them in the first film. So they decide to make Brooke’s BFF her niece as well, just to fit her in. And that girl is played by Sadie Robertson, a real life member of the Duck Dynasty clan, who is even on the show. That is both awkward given her plot, and bad given it breaks the immersion having a real person in the world as an actress playing someone new.

Finally, the pastor Dave plot line is all over the place. He gets sick, is super busy, has to be on the jury, but also has to give his sermons to the government for reasons. Why? They only really have one quick scene to explain it, and it is gone in the blink of an eye. A line is uttered that “they tried it in Houston!” to explain its relevance. However, we know that this movie also takes place in Houston, so…

Anyways, Dave refuses to turn in his sermons and instead turns in a letter. After that scene, the movie forgets about it and credits roll. It was a bad way to set up a future movie, again, based on a non real issue. However we did get a post credit scene of the pastor getting arrested for not turning in sermons. Ah, there it goes. God’s Not Dead 3, eventually. Setting up their cinematic universe.

This film has a lot of issues. It brings up real historians and lies about what they said about Jesus. It attempts in no way to actually prove anything through the trial, going for cheap entertainment and to make an echo chamber instead of actually producing any meaningful change.

When God’s Not Dead came out in 2014, it was a complete joke. It was a very low budget Christian faith film. It was based on a shitty internet story, not any form of reality. It was supposed to be made and ignored but people flocked to see it so it became a wide release to get some of that sweet sweet money. It was a bad effort.

Needless to say, I and everyone else was extremely skeptical about news of a sequel. What would God’s Not Dead 2 be about? Would it be an unrelated different religious story or it would it be a direct follow up with our old main character destroying more professors? If it is a direct follow up, would it tie up any of the many loose ends of the first film?

Or would it just be a cash grab given the success of the first. The scariest option. More of the same. I shudder at the thought.

So does blank stare Sabrina.

Remember Martin (Paul Kwo), the Chinese student who had the nerve to learn about and believe in Jesus in the first film? Well he is back! So is Amy Ryan (Trisha LaFache) the liberal reporter who got the cancer, and of course Reverend Dave (David A.R. White) and Reverend Jude (Benjamin A. Onyango). But I won’t go into their back stories. Because we have a new hero.

Grace Wesley (Melissa Joan-Hart), an optimistic and great History teacher at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. High School (that’s relevant). In particular, she teachers AP History as well. One of her students, Brooke (Hayley Orrantia), has been having a hard time after her brother died six months ago. She cannot get over it and it is affecting her grades. Her parents (Carey Scott, Maria Canals-Barrera) have gotten over it however and it is because they are atheists. She isn’t Christian, she just doesn’t know. But she talks to Grace outside of school and finds out her brother had a bible. So she starts finding out about Jesus. Which is why during a lesson on MLK and Gandhi, Brooke asks (during class!) if it was the same non-violent approach mentioned by Jesus. And Grace answers. And everyone moves on.

Nope, just kidding. A student brings it up and a complaint is made. The principal (Robin Givens) can’t do anything about it, the school board just wants an apology, but Grace refuses because she does nothing wrong. There is nothing left to do but to go to trial over it then. Where the school board can watch and make decisions from it, because the ACLU has agreed to do this case because they want precedent to make sure God cannot be in schools ever again. Their lawyer (Ray Wise) is a bad bad dude.

So Grace gets a lawyer from her union, Tom (Jesse Metcalfe), a non religious man. And they have to argue that not only was she not preaching, but she was talking about the historical Jesus (and prove he existed) which is why he should be able to be mentioned in AP History. They just have to convince a very good jury who are out for blood.

Also featuring Pat Boone as Grace’s old father, Ernie Hudson as the judge, and Sadie Robertson as Brooke’s BFF.

The face you make when people are mean butts and you just want to not be there.

Harold Cronk, you beautiful genius. You drag us in with the first film by creating a phenomenon out of nowhere, just to build a fan base. Make that sweet sweet cash. He took all that money and wanted to build something bigger out of it. So for the sequel he has better cameras. Someone who knows the word cinematograhy. And better actors. Come on, Ernie Hudson as the judge is brilliant. And having Melissa Joan Hart, a person most well known for explaining things and being a witch, and making her become religious can only be described as genius. No one cared when Kevin Sorbo was an atheist professor, because that makes sense. He used to play a damn demi-god!

Not only are the cameras and cast better, but the script is better as well. The film brings back older characters to tie up the loose ends created in the first film. We now know why the Asian guy was initially afraid of Jesus. We know what happened to the reporter who got the cancer. We know that Duck Dynasty lived on to see another day. We don’t know what happened to the Muslim girl who became homeless due to changing religion, but eh, who cares, she used to be Muslim.

Last but not least, the court room drama. Never have I bit my nails so much. The tension was high as the two lawyers battled over jury dominance. Both sides argued so well, but the Jesus side argued much better. Everything they said was 100% right and factual. Based on the film, I can only hope that a case like this really does open up in the courts, because it would be a landslide victory for religion and its role in government. Fuck, it was so good I am basically a believer now.

Gods Not Dead 2 may be the most important film of the year and will change a lot of people’s minds about faith.

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.