Tag: Robert Patrick

Endless Love is another 1980s movie remake coming out this Valentine’s Day weekend. Unlike About Last Night and RoboCop however, I never saw the original.

This allowed me to come into this movie with a completely open mind! From the trailer, it looks like it is going to go super serious with it all. I actually liked the trailer, using a slower version of Addicted To Love. From the way it is set up, I am almost certain someone is going to die by the end of the movie. Someone has to, right?

My official guess was neither of the main characters too. I guessed The Butler!

The Butterfield family is the cream of the crop in this small town. Their fortune simply came from being in a long line of doctors. Unfortunately, the eldest child, Chris, died of cancer before he could go off to college and carry on the family legacy. Now it is up to Jade (Gabriella Wilde) to kick butt in high school and get into Brown! So she does that, but through the sadness of her brother’s death, and focusing on grades, she never really made any friends, or boyfriends, or lived life at all!

But then there is David (Alex Pettyfer), who has liked her for years but never talked to her, for some reason. Well, now that she is about to leave for an internship, it seems like a good time to talk to her?

After a few romantic gestures, she falls hard for him, maybe just because someone else is finally nice to her.

Unfortunately, he has no college aspirations, and isn’t rich, so the dad (Bruce Greenwood) hates him, despite her mother (Joely Richardson) and other brother (Rhys Wakefield) totally thinking he is awesome.

Blah blah, blah blah, forbidden love, fleeting lust, and maybe someone dies.

Robert Patrick plays David’s father, and Dayo Okeniyi plays his best friend.

Fuck. This film should have just been named Endless Kiss, amirite?

Hmm. Endless Love might have had the chance to be a good story. It could have been kind of great. But it never really elevated out of poorly acted drama, and never in anyway felt believable.

It is a travesty that love is even in the film title, when this is one of the most obvious cases of lust getting out of hand that I have ever seen. Arguably, that could be the point of the movie. The teens feel like it is a great love, when really, they have known each for like, a week. But that “moral” was never really explored at all by the end, so I would have a hard time arguing for it. No, we just got two teenagers overreacting, and then overreacting even more. Like an exponential function.

The melodrama was high with this movie. Maybe even over 9000 units of melodrama.

I might have rated it higher, if the ending wasn’t so cheesy and bad. I felt like nothing was really gained or learned by the characters, outside of the normal “teehee, love!” bullcrap that romance novels try to portray. I’d like to say I am romantic person and generally will rate romance or RomComs pretty high, but this one could never stick.

Just so we are clear, I am saying something like About Time, a romance movie about time travel, is more realistic than Endless Love in basically every aspect. That is how fake everything felt to me.

Pornography!

Sex!

Clitoris in the neck!

No, I am not just doing all that to increase traffic. I am hear to talk about Lovelace, the true story of Linda Lovelace, who starred in Deep Throat and helped changed the porno world forever. Kind of.

I also just realized that Lovelace is also the name of the Guru penguin in Happy Feet. Huh, I hope there is no connection.

This Lovelace doesn’t share the same talent. He can’t with that plastic around his neck!

Linda (Amanda Seyfried) USED to be such a sweet little girl. She used to to dance and go to school, and obey her parents! Her parents (Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick), mind you, are the type who would scold her just for sunbathing in a bikini in her own fenced in back yard.

While Go-Go dancing with her friend, Patsy (Juno Temple), they meet up with Chuck (Peter Sarsgaard), who will change her life forever. See, Chuck sees something special in her. He sees a beauty that can go far, do great things, and maybe even make a lot of money. Mmm, money.

After helping slowly tear away her inhibitions, he is even able to make her go down on him, despite her initial embarrassment. Wouldn’t you know it, it turns out that she doesn’t have a gag reflex, and has a unique talent in the industry. I don’t even know why I am being subtle.

Well, they need money, and she gets put into the lead role of an X-Rated feature, Deep Throat. It has comedy and it has something people haven’t really seen before, so it becomes a huge hit, making millions world wide, and catapulting Linda into a spotlight she could never before imagine. But a life of fame is always not something you want, especially if it comes at such high costs. Such as being married to Chuck, an abusive husband who takes all of your money, beats you, and gives you emotional scarring for years with no place to turn to.

Ah yes, the Linda Lovelace story, one of porn, and one of abuse.

Hank Azaria, Bobby Cannavale, and Chris Noth play “industry” people, and James Franco has a small cameo as a much younger Hugh Hefner.

This is all you are getting out of me, you creepy internet people you.

Linda’s story is definitely a sad one. It is a story that should be heard so that women out there no that dangerous things CAN happen, signs to look for, and how to get out of those situations and find the help you need.

Unfortunately, Lovelace seems to almost downplay the amount of abuse she actually receives. I found that portion of the movie to be far too short. It needed to be longer to really experience how a large portion of her life was, before she was finally able to get police intervention. Her story was a powerful enough one to write a book about and have restocking issues due to its popularity.

I think the movie has its heart in the right place, but fails to deliver the right emotions that one should expect from this picture. There are two important parts to this story. Linda’s transformation into a porn icon, and the abuse she took from someone she thought loved her. This definitely seems to care more about the former, and not the latter, which is a shame.

Identity Thief came out the same day as Side Effects in theaters, yet they went the opposite route when it came to advertisements. Side Effects had barely any, and Identity Thief drowned the market with with TV spots and promos.

That’s right. So many ads, I am surprised I have enough energy to tread water still.

Run as fast as you’d like, but you cannot escape the ad train.

Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) is your normal Colorado living individual with a funny name. He is also a bit naive and a bit of a pushover, which is why no one is surprised when he gets his identity stolen by a “Diana” (Melissa McCarthy) in Winter Park, Florida!

Thanks to all of her shit, he now finds himself with a criminal record, failing to show up to a court date, and several thousands dollars of credit card debt. Hooray! It doesn’t help that he just started a new law firm with his buddy (John Cho) and when people Google his name, they only see pages of bad. The detective on his case (Morris Chestnut) can only help him if he can get Diana on his own to come back to Colorado and admit to her crimes. Clearly not too hard!

Amanda Peet plays his wife, Jon Favreau a jerk boss, T.I. and Genesis Rodriguez are hitmen after Diana, Robert Patrick a bail bondsman, and Eric Stonestreet as a rich Texan.

A rich and sexy Texan, of course.

The problem with a lot of advertisements is that each one is going to be different. The problem with that? I think only two or so scenes really felt surprising or new to me. I’ve seen the jokes, the gags, the violence, and the entire plot in their ads. I feel like that probably lessened the experience.

But lets talk about the plot. Identity theft on its own is relatively simple idea, and I am pretty sure hasn’t been done in this way before as a comedy. But the writers decided to make this movie anything but simple! She is a con artist, who was a foster child, who has made problems worse by bad dealings with local gangs, and being drunk in public. That means they are running from multiple groups while hating each others company and constantly lying about their intentions.

I think there is a fine line between annoying side character and misunderstood side character. What made Planes, Trains, and Automobiles so much better than Due Date is by humanizing the weird character and not just making them an asshole. Although they attempt to humanize Diana, I don’t think it works at all, and just see her as miserable person the whole movie.

The humor itself isn’t too well thought out. I laughed during a few scenes only, but I will note the theater as a whole seemed to laugh throughout.

Overall, I just feel bad for Jason Bateman. He kicked ass in Dodgeball and Arrested Development, but he has been on a slow decline since then.

Not going to lie. When I first saw the trailer for Gangster Squad, I thought it might be interesting. But I was worried based on the dialogue given it might all be cheesy. But I do love vigilantism. Especially real vigilantism. But above all of that, the thing I liked most was just the music featured in it. Made me all sorts of pumped up. But I learned long ago that if I hear a song in a movie trailer, it most definitely won’t be in the movie.

Bitches, yo.

It is amazing that he picked such a diverse group of guys too. I had my money on all white all middle aged!

In the late 1940s, the city of Los Angeles is under siege. Not by the Russians or Germans. Nope, by Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). From New York, he is now the most powerful criminal in LA, having bought cops, judges, you name it. No one can touch him, not even the mobsters in Chicago. Not everyone is corrupt though. Once Chief Parker (Nick Nolte) sees that Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) has brought down an illegal brothel by himself, he enlists him on a secret mission.

There is no way to get Mickey Cohen legally. Killing him wont do anything, someone will just take his place. No, he needs to leave his badge at home, recruit a team (or squad, if you will), take down his entire infrastructure, and sure, maybe kill a bunch of gangsters.

Fuck the law, do what is right!

Well, he gets a team of mostly cops, people who aren’t as worth being bought off who all have special skills. Conway (Giovanni Ribisi), an intelligence expert, Coleman (Anothony Mackie), who grew up on the streets and is one of the few who cares to fix them, Max (Robert Patrick), a fabled cop who has quick hands and can hit anything, and Navidad (Michael Pena), his Mexican partner who is willing to do anything.

Oh, and of course another detective Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) who has a personal vendetta against Cohen, and not just because he is sexing up his current fling (Emma Stone).

Cohen is going to get those coppers, so hard they don’t even know it yet.

Whew. Well, if you watch the trailer, you are going to get exactly as it shows. The lines are unfortunately mostly cheesy. The “No Ma’am, I was just hopin’ to take you to bed.” Imagine a whole film of that.

I think the movie is a bit of a shame. A lot of great actors involved, but it felt a lot like a no emotion cartoon. I didn’t feel sad when they wanted me to, nothing really resonated. The chemistry is really what was missing here. Between everyone, but especially between Stone and Gosling, who had an unbelievable romance going on. We know they can do that too, since they were together in Crazy, Stupid, Love. So I guess it is a director issue?

Another reason it felt cartoony to me was the filter they used to film it. I don’t know what it was, but look at the second picture. It has a yellow/orange tint almost, but something about it just really turned me off from the whole movie.

The fact that this is based off of a true story seems like a farce as well. It might actually be that Mickey Cohen existed only, in which case, fuck your true story tag lines.

Action was okay, acting was mostly forgettable, except a few Sean Penn moments. It was weird seeing Giovanni Ribisi as a good guy finally, so I am glad he can not be type casted (so much) anymore.