Tag: Rhys Ifans

Ready for that new movie, Spider-Man: All the Hype in the World?

Oh, it is called No Way Home. Fine, that is fine. It could have also just been called “Print Money for us Please” because a lot of people are going to see this movie and they are going to see it fast. This is arguably the most excited people have been for a movie since Avengers: Endgame. After all, in our last Spider-Man movie, we were given a very strong credits scene. [Note: I hated that this was a credit scene. That scene was really important for the film. It made the ending really work. The fact that it was “credits” scene and arguably less important really bugs me]. It helped build up the hype.

I personally am hoping that this movie does…something to help establish what the actual fuck Marvel (even if Sony is helming this film like always) is doing with their time. If I see one more “Present Day” tag line in the MCU this year I will lose it. No one has any clue when any of these movies are taking place, because they all are in the future based on the Thanos Snap.

Is this one in 2024? 2025? Who knows. Will the movie know? Doubtfully.

Is she enjoying this ride? Spider-Man: No Way Home takes place basically right after the end of Long Way Home. Mysterio’s last trick. Telling everyone Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) identity and blaming the bad stuff on Parker.

Now everyone knows! Now everyone knows about his friends and his girlfriend (Zendaya) and that causes issues. Some still love him, some now hate him. Some just want to make his life miserable. Hell, it is even affecting his ability to get into college. Because they know his name, and they aren’t sure if they want that publicity or trouble. Is he a MURDERER?

Needless to say, Peter feels like shit about this. And he hates it more that it is affecting those who love him and he loves in returns. So he wants things to change. Maybe time travel? Maybe people can just forget the whole thing happened? Maybe magic can be involved?

Well, once magic gets involved, and potentially unstable magic at that, it seems like the reality Peter knows is not going to be the same forever. Time to face old villains for the first time.

Also starring some other people you know from these movies. Tony Revolori, Jacob Batalon, Angourie Rice, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei, Martin Starr, J.B. Smoove, J.K. Simmons, Benedict Wong, and Hannibal Buress. Also (checks trailers to see what is and isn’t a spoiler) Alfred Molina, Willem Dafoe, Thomas Haden Church, Rhys Ifans, and Jamie Foxx!

Anyone else? Maybe! Maybe we also get other villains played by Paul Giamatti, Dane DeHaan/James Franco, or Topher Grace? Maybe we get villains in the last two movies showing up, like Michael Keaton and Jake Gyllenhaal. Will we have past Spider-Men like Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire? Will DONALD GLOVER appear as old Miles Morales?

This isn’t a spoiler, this is the main advertisement! 

Spider-Man: Oops! All Villains! edition. Frankly, I wondered if this would feel crowded. Crowded is what they were going for after all. And arguably, crowded villains helped kill the last two Spider-Man franchises. “But no! This time we will do it better!” And how is that? By giving us previously established villains so we don’t need an eight hour movie. Sure, it requires a five film commitment, but they figure if you are watching these new ones, you probably already committed to the over 20 that is the MCU at this point.  So why not five more, assuming you didn’t already have them?

It works though. For those without the previous films, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I can’t get myself in that headspace. It is a risky move, and a ridiculous move, but damn it, trying new stuff is one of the reasons I watch movies. To see those that make risks, and this film is so risky. I don’t care what the past has told us, MCU printing their name on it doesn’t always guarantee success. Having a likable cast can help a lot.

This is the most emotional we have seen Holland as our web crawler before, and that includes the time when he didn’t feel so good in outer space. From the villains, Molina brings the same despair and anger he had before. Foxx felt better and more confident than the shit they gave him in his original. Ifans/Church were very underutilized, in more ways than one. I just assume the actors couldn’t really be involved that much with the film.

But Dafoe? Holy shit Dafoe. He has had like, twenty years to forget how to be the Green Goblin, and I was honestly worried about him the most. I know he is a fantastic actor, but even early on into his scenes in this one, I was skeptical, but that dude NAILED IT so hard. That is some real good review writing right there. What an absolute madlad he is. Why did they kill him off in that first film? So sad.

Honestly, people will get mad at me if I say much more. So in order to keep things vague and mysterious, I will. Let’s just say, I cried once, and it is not likely a moment you would fully expect. There is obviously an early credits scene, and an end credits scene. Feel free to leave early after the first one, in my opinion. The post credits scene is trash.

4 out of 4.

Hey, you hear about that Edward Snowden guy? He leaked a lot of USA secrets, namely what they were doing to the American people. Spying on everyone as part of the NSA.

Yeah! Big crazy stuff. And this patriot is now still living overseas in Russia, granted a temporary asylum. He is willing to come back to the USA if he would get a fair trial, but he knows he won’t and thus, a giant stalemate.

And if you watch the documentary Citizenfour, you will get the inside scoop of how he leaked the data to a few press markets and their plan for getting him out to safety. It is thrilling and great, which is why it was nominated for so many awards. Hell, it won best Documentary.

So this Snowden movie, off of its success, is meant to tell his story before the leak and a little bit after it. A regular biopic. But also, Oliver Stone directing, so you know a lot of shenanigans.

Computer shenanigans are some of my least favorite shenanigans.

Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a smart dude, worked for the USA, stole from the USA, and is about to be on the run. The USA didn’t know he stole from them until the leaks began to happen, but he was a paranoid sun of a gun who knew how to keep his tracks hidden and knew how to keep his profile low.

He tried to join the military in his youth, he really did. But he broke something during a drill and got booted out, with knowledge that his foot was frail and had a big potential for more ouchies. So he instead found himself getting a job with the intelligence agencies. Sure, he doesn’t even have a college degree, but he was self taught and really fucking good at computers.

So Corbin O’Brian (Rhys Ifans) gave him a shot. They knew the next wars would be fought with computers, not nukes, and they had to make sure the USA had the biggest and best computers for when it all started.

But what drove Snowden to eventually stealing and spreading out the secrets? Did he get a moral code? Did he get beat up at school? Or was it his very liberal girlfriend (Shailene Woodley)?

Also starring Nicolas Cage, Scott Eastwood, Tom WIlkinson, Timothy Olyphant, Melissa Leo, and Zachary Quinto.

Her color choices make her look like a cartoon compared to Snowden.

Snowden is the most important thing to leave Elizabeth City, NC since the Wright Brothers left it to go to Kitty Hawk and learned to fly. And in a way, Snowden sort of taught us all to fly, didn’t he?

The problem with a biopic after a really good documentary is that it has to be really fucking good or else it won’t stand up to its predecessor. If they really want a biopic, they gotta come out before the documentary if they want a time in the sun. Just ask the movie Nina.

And in this case, this movie goes over so much the documentary does not, but still, it feels shallow in comparison. Honestly, who cares about them before? Unless Snowden also is the reason the spying happens, his life and story before the point are insignificant. The only part that’s that matter is how he got access and why he decided to tell the world.

So don’t see Snowden. Watch Citizenfour, get active in politics, do something. Don’t just continue to watch Oliver Stone movies and move on with your life.

1 out of 4.

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.

0 out of 4.

After American Hustle, I just assumed every Christmas we would get a movie with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. They did it two years a row, and that means they have to do it forever?

Sure enough, looking at their IMDBs early in 2014, you would have seen Serena, coming out sometime end of 2014. Three for three, they were going for the Turkey!

But then something happened. It never came out. It got pushed to MARCH of 2015, basically the middle of nowhere. And it had an instant VOD release. Thinks weren’t looking good for this period drama set in North Carolina based on a book…

Real lumberjacks wear pink. Just ask Monty Python!

This movie, Serena, is a period drama (early 1930’s), set in North Carolina (Mountains) based on a book (also called Serena!).

George Pemberton (Cooper) is there, trying to start (or already has?) a big timber business. He is a lumberjack, okay? He is working on expanding his business to overseas, Brazil, get some of that rain forest money.

And then there is Serena (Lawrence). You may have heard about her. She is a blonde stand out, living amongst all the mountain folk. She doesn’t need no man to get her way, but she does, in George. Speaking of George, he has a child actually, with Rachel (Ana Ularu). Kind of awkward, but boys will be boys.

That is, until it is found out that Serena can NOT have kids. So the only person to carry on George’s legacy is some bastard kid. That’s not okay. When people get in Serena’s way, people get hurt. She is conniving and maybe even a little bit mad.

But what else is there to do in the North Carolina mountains?

Also featuring David Dencik, Rhys Ifans, Sean Harris, and Toby Jones.

And of course it ends with a big dance sequence like in Silver Linings Playbook. Right? Right?!

This has taken me about 10 hours of research after watching the movie, but I think I figured out why it was delayed and eventually only a limited release and VOD.

Serena is not very good.

The book might be fine, great, grand, wonderful. I don’t care. The movie is a bore and it is awkward. First off, Cooper and Lawrence, despite their presumably best efforts, do not look like they fit at all with the rest of the actors in this film. Maybe they are too pretty, maybe just too famous, but it doesn’t work. I would also say they don’t act that great here, which is a shame, since we know what they can do.

The side characters all above were pretty good though! Which is a shame. Their collective good was not great enough to overshadow the lumps of coal that Cooper and Lawrence delivered on a platter, however.

Aside from that, the story is pretty much a bore. Some excitement happens. Maybe two exciting things. And a couple more moments that were meant to be exciting, but instead were met with yawns. By the end when I should care more about the fate of certain characters, I instead found myself checking how much time was left and when it would finally end.

This isn’t All About Steve bad, no, but at least All About Steve had some entertainment value.

1 out of 4.

I do not know how to write this review, so expect a lot of rambling. I first heard about Mr. Nobody from one of my students. A girl from China said it was her favorite movie, and when I tried to find it, couldn’t. Apparently it was made in 2009 but didn’t come out on DVD until 2014? That’s all sorts of fucked up.

In fact, I just assumed it was a foreign movie because of the circumstances, and this one was a remake. Nope, just one movie. One very intense movie.

Also, you get a really really old dude. Check out those wrinkles!

A movie about choices. That is what we get with Mr. Nobody.

The main character is named Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto), and trying to figure out what is going on with his mind will be a bit of a struggle.

He was always special, as a kid, and he kind of got to pick his parents before he was born. He can see the 4th dimension, time, basically. Let’s say that. In it, he knows that every big decision he makes could have dire consequences on his life. Like, his parents (Rhys Ifans, Natasha Little), when they eventually get divorced. Who should he live with? They let him make that decision at a quite young age. A lot of responsibility comes with it too, way too much for a kid.

Also, Sarah Polley, Diane Kruger, and Linh Dan Pham play his potential love interests.

White rooms, for your enjoyment.

See, I already feel like I gave too much away.

This movie deals with string theory. In the directors cut, we are given a 2.5 hour movie with a LOT going on. I mean it, a LOT. If you don’t pay attention, you will miss out on information. And paying attention is actually really hard, because again, a lot is going on. But if you give it a go, I assure you, it won’t fly by either. It was a mentally taxing movie. But if you pay attention, watch all that you can, and get to the end, I think you will find yourself rewarded.

In fact, this is the type of movie that once you understand what is really going on, you will probably find a more rewarding 2nd and 3rd watch of the movie. I definitely feel like it would get better.

I mean, I feel completely overwhelmed, having watching it, but I remember thinking how much of it was cool. How different it all was. I guess it is sort of Sci-Fi based. Definitely not a comedy and not a lot of action.

There isn’t a lot here, to let you delved your own experience. I can guarantee there is no other movie out that is like this one. Give it a go. Do it.

4 out of 4.

Thinking back on it, I don’t know how much press The Five-Year Engagement ended up getting. I really only heard about it a few times, and actually never a preview. I think I heard it mentioned in the same sentence as Jeff, Who Lives at Home, just because of the actor share, and that is about it. So hey, why not just buy a movie I know nothing about, because who really wants to wait for Redbox?

Only three people in this picture are willing to wait for Redbox.

Tom (Jason Segel) and Violet (Emily Blunt) met like most couples, wearing costumes drunk on New Years Eve. But boy, did they hit it off! Tom being a sous chef at a San Francisco fancy seafood shop, and she is a PhD in Psychology student! Clearly meant to be. But after their engagement party, they put off planning their wedding for a bit, when some of their good friends get pregnant and married first (Chris Pratt, Alison Brie).

That’s not too bad. But when Violet gets accepted as a postdoc at the University of Michigan for a two year awesome program, it puts a weird spin on the relationship. Oh well, Tom can probably find a new restaurant job easily in Michigan! Right? Eh..

The movie at this point becomes a series of incidents that continue to delay the planning of the wedding, with a few role reversals going on. Tom has a hard time fitting in in Michigan, way colder than he is ever used to. He doesn’t have many friends, just his sandwich shop boss (Brian Posehn) and Bill (Chris Parnell) who teaches him how to hunt and be a real woodsman. Violet immediately loves her new job, her boss (Rhys Ifans), and most of her workmates (including Mindy Kaling and Kevin Hart).

Sex, cheating, distrust, psychological experiments, and baby frights. Will the two even survive waiting five years to get married?

Not with that beard, holy crap Jason.

The first thing to notice in this film is that there is a lot of “TV Actors” making up most of the cast. Three of the four people on the cover are known for their shows more than anything else!

I decided that I needed to watch the unrated version of the movie, which is about 2 hours and 15 minutes, roughly 10 more minutes of movie, and I am not sure if that made all the difference. I think the movie definitely had its moments, I just didn’t think it needed to be as long as it was. I was losing interest by the end. I hope the theatrical one wasn’t superior, because overall I’d guesstimate my version was about twenty minutes too long. Five years is a long time, but if it takes too long, I found myself not even caring about whether or not they get married.

I will say that their romance felt a bit realer than movies normally show. They fought, they made up, they weren’t perfect for each other, but they tried to make it work. That was definitely an enjoyable aspect.

2 out of 4.

Reboots are a tricky thing. Especially if they happen within half of a decade of the last previous movie of that type.

Most people will agree Spider-Man 3 is a disaster, especially when comparing itself to its previous two movies. Why did it fail? Seems like studio intervention. Forcing the director to include villains that they didn’t plan for, made a mess. There was a script for Spider-Man 4 in the works, still with Sam Raimi, who claimed he wouldn’t let the studio mess up the movie again. And then before filming, after the script, they fired him and screamed reboot!

So with that, a few years later, we got The Amazing Spider-Man, hopefully it doesn’t suck!

Ah, he is trying to seduce the nerds with books. I see it now.

A lot of the plot you guys already know. Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) used to have parents (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz), his dad a scientist, but without warning, they get scared and run off. He is left with his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field), as they swear to return. Well many years later, guess who never came back and had a plane crash? Sucks.

Peter is all angsty now. Lives a weird life, has an old film camera, in a modern technology world. Smart, doesn’t apply himself, etc. But when he finds his fathers old notes in the basement, he gets curious. Turns out he used to work for Oscorp, and big on genetic therapy involving swapping genes with an animals to make a better human. He dealt with spiders mostly, but his partner, Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) was interested in lizards and their ability to grow back limbs. Because he was missing an arm! Oh noes.

Well their company is running out of time, Norman Osborn (Not yet cast!) is dying of something and needs this research, so his lackey (Irrfan Khan) harasses Curt to make science work faster. Human trials damn it, or get fired! Things happen, the latter, and he takes the formula in desperation and tries it on himself. Well, and you know where that probably goes.

There is other stuff going on of course. Like Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), the smart science girl at school who Peter has a crush on, who also works for Oscorp. And her dad, (Denis Leary), captain of the NYC police force trying to stop that masked menace. Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka) is in the film, just for some amount of normalcy. Love stuff, flying around without a mask, and more spoilers that I didn’t think would be spoilers.

Will Peter accept his greater power responsibility ratio? Could Uncle Ben have been more bad ass? Will a scene like this appear in the movie? Is this the best Stan Lee cameo yet? Do bitches know about the Lizard’s green gas?

Bitches don’t know ’bout my green gas.

Woo, Spider-Man. There is a lot of things to like about this movie. First off, just by including Gwen Stacy as the main love interest, you already know this film might be a bit darker than the last trilogy. I had legitimate fear for multiple characters throughout the movie during Lizard scenes. Before when it was Mary Jane I never thought “Oh man, is she about to die?” Nope. I always figured out Spider-Man would just save her.

The fights were well done and I could pretty much tell what was going on the whole time. Not too blurry. Spider-Man fighting was generally epic, and the Lizard was generally stronger than him. I wish the Lizard reminded me a bit less of a Killer Croc / Toad from Super Mario Bros. hybrid, but hey, not perfect.

Speaking of not perfect, more than once I rolled my eyes at some poor dialogue. The serious and epic ending I didn’t get to fully experience, only because I knew it was coming. If a comic fan knows the characters in the movie, they are sure to know certain events that will transpire, so I thought the ending wasn’t as good as it could have been. Even laughed in the theater to a line I thought was a joke, that apparently everyone else was way more serious about. Whoops.

Overall, movie definitely does the character justice.

3 out of 4.

When you hear about Greenberg, you will notice a few things. One is that Ben Stiller is involved. Ben Stiller seems to be a very polarizing actor, in that some people think he is okay, yet some people hate him with ever fiber of their being. I don’t know why those are the two options, but there you go. Definitely never seen a Ben Stiller fan boy though.

Second thing you will notice is that it looks serious, and Ben Stiller + Serious is scary.

Yeah, Stiller’s face is all up in this movie.

Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller, but you knew that) is a 40ish year old male carpenter, who was living in NYC and had a nervous breakdown. Sure he was in a mental hospital for awhile, but hey, no one is perfect. He is invited to come down to LA to stay for a few weeks, where he used to live, to take care of his brother Phil’s (Chris Messina) dog for him while he is away. Simple enough! The dog does have some problems though, so his brother’s assistant, Florence (Greta Gerwig) also helps.

Both of them are kind of awkward, and going through some rough times, so a relationship starts to build. Kind of. Through Greenberg’s mental disorders, he seems incredibly narcissistic and mean, and blunt. So hey, not many friends. He used to be in a band but quit when they were about to sign to a label, being super cynical. He still has one old friend at least, Ivan (Rhys Ifans), who helps him with Florence, but other friends doesn’t forgive him for killing their dreams (Mark Duplass). Oh, and Florence is a main character too, and has her own friends for weird support (Merritt Wever).

Whoa, yeah that was easy to describe. Mentally unstable guy goes to LA, maybe starts a relationship, wants to fit in.

And maybe a clearly amazing birthday party too.

When the Greenberg character first appeared, I imagined him like an older version of a lot of Jesse Eisenberg characters. He acted very similar to a few of them, which was surprising, until I found out the director who did this also did The Squid and the Whale, starring Eisenberg as a character similar to this. So yeah, guess that wasn’t hard to figure out.

I then noticed that Greta Gerwig was in it, and she was just in a review I did for Baghead. And holy crap, she apparently gets naked in lots of movies.

After those two not at all related to the movie thoughts, I watched the movie, and well, it was okay. Stiller did a good job acting I thought, and was a big ass too. Disorders are big problems, especially when those don’t realize that you can’t filter your own information before yelling it, or just speaking your mind. Stiller shows the frustration greatly, and it builds up and leads him to more destructive habits.

But I also thought it was a bit slow, and lacked any real character development. I think more things should have happened than everyonce in awhile his character yelling at another. But that was just me.

2 out of 4.

A historical drama and political thriller about the works of Shakespeare? Alright. Why the hell not.

That shit was like a rock show back then.

In case you didn’t know, Anonymous is a movie saying that William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall in the movie) did not write the works accredited to him. No, he was from a family of illiterates, and just an actor who was in the right place at the right time. No, instead it was Edward de Vere, an Earl of Oxford at the time who might have wrote them all! And he is played by Rhys Ifans.

Oh okay. Well why does it say that? Pretty much explains it over the whole movie.

According to the movie, play writes who got out of line back in the day got imprisoned. Nothing too raunchy, nothing against the crown, etc. Some guy named Ben Johnson (Sebastian Armesto) get arrested early on for being such a crude guy, I guess.

But the movie has an Earl doing all the writing, and in secret at that. Writing is also frowned upon for some reason. But he gives his plays to others to publish, under ‘Anonymous’, until Shakespeare takes credit after (Henry the VIII maybe?). Which he is fine with. Good, someone to “direct” all his works. Great.

Theres also the major plot about Queen Elizabeth 1 (Vanessa Redgrave) having sex with EVURRYBODYYY. And having secret children, even if its with people she was related to. Eventually this stuff leads to heir questions, possible revolts and mobs, and some war stuff. Beheadings too.

The movie also begins as if it was a play in front of a live theater, and ends that way too. But don’t worry, it turns into a real movie after the intro, and before the outtro.

“Your mother is an outtro.”

I can tell you I know very little about Shakespeare’s work. Never really cared. Also historically, I like ancient, but that means older than Renaissance. So any of that stuff wasn’t as interesting to me.

With all the sleeping around and fake babies, it just felt like a modern drama set in the past. I don’t even know how the movie explained that no one would be able to notice the Queen was pregnant all those times.

Also, a lot of the characters looked alike in my head. Kind of like the six fingered man in The Princess Bride. At least half of them. That made it harder for me to just follow along with the plot, which was important, given all the characters. The play also took place over 4 different years, over about 35 or 45 years though. It was more confusing, because I didn’t know when it went super far in the past. The other years at least showed “Five Year prior!”. Maybe the super far in the past one did too. But I missed it.

Shouldn’t be hiding time cues like that!

But anyways. The movie looked pretty, but the plot seemed kind of silly.

1 out of 4.

Pirate Radio! The “feel-great new comedy from the creator of Love Actually and Notting Hill“. Aka, those British movies that people love. (Okay, I do love Love Actually. Haven’t seen the other.)

This movie has a ton of big names in here, and a ton of names I will qualify as big for the sake of making the former argument correct. Pirate Radio tells the story of the 1966 UK. Despite the large presence of famous British rockers, no British station play them. Its the devils music still.

So for British people to get their rock on, they have to tune into pirate radio stations, which are not illegal in the UK at this time. In fact, the most famous pirate radio station is actually on a boat off the coast. If you know anything of your coming of age movies, this means this is a pretty killer boat.

Not that killer.

The boat has Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rhys Ifans playing American DJs (Yes, Rhys plays an American). Lesser DJs (because they are British) are Nick Frost, Chris O’Dowd, and Rhys Darby (TWO people named Rhys in one movie). The ship/radio owner is Bill Nighy. Also there is a small cameo role played by January Jones.

Even Kenneth Branagh is in this movie, as British government bureaucrat who wants to stop the radio at all costs. Of course more people are in the movie, just who cares about them?

This is a very enjoyable movie. I definitely didn’t see the ending coming (like, the last 30 minutes). Obviously the movie is filled with some pretty good music. Now, I’d say most of the plot may actually be kind of ridiculous, but the suspension of belief is worth it. The ending is super great, despite the unbelievability of it all.

Not to mention you can check out some ridiculous facial hair.

4 out of 4.