Tag: Rosario Dawson

Twenty-eight years ago, Clerks was released into the world, and I would like to think that the world changed a bit. It helped independent films gain some notoriety, right? It certainly helped Harvey Weinstein, but that is a different story. I watched this film years later, somewhere as a teenager, after already seeing Mallrats at the time.

Sixteen years ago, Clerks II was released! I was able to see that movie the day it had came out. We had to drive an hour to see it, my brother and I, and there wasn’t a lot of people in the theaters. It was certainly a good time. The sequel had similarities with the first film, but certainly stood on its own. And plus, they could afford to Rosario Dawson money, who was actually famous!

The release of Clerks III has taken a long time to come. I know at some point, a script was written for a film, but that did not happen. At a different time, it was turned into a screenplay where the goal was to have it performed on stage for some amount of time, and then shown in theaters in some sort of Fathom event. That also did not come to fruition.

It took Kevin Smith almost dying for him to make Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. But using that same influence, he decided to then make Clerks III about his experiences as well. Even though, theoretically, Clerks was about some of his experiences. And well, that means are getting what they call one of them/there Meta films.

Damn, the stoners are back to doing drugs. Ain’t that a shame.

At the end of Clerks II, Dante (Brian O’Halleran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) bought the Quick Stop that had burned down with Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob’s (Kevin Smith) movie money. They hired Elias (Trevor Fehrman) as one of their employees. And of course, Dante finally was able to realize what he wanted in a love life with Becky (Rosario Dawson), whom was pregnant with a child and now engaged.

So where are we at the new movie? Well, the same amount of time has passed and everyone is still at the same store, doing the same job. Except the job is more fun. For example, they can play hockey on the roof without it being a big deal, because they are the owners.

Unfortunately, Randal ends up having a heart attack and almost dies. [Hey, like Kevin Smith!…] Well, Randal doesn’t like that. Sure he might have to change some of his lifestyle, but since he almost died, he wants to make sure he leaves some impact on the world. Instead of just sitting around all day watching movies, he wants to make a movie. He must have learned enough about it now to make a good one right? And why not just make it about what he knows best, working a convenience store as a clerk serving the public.

And Elias worships Satan now.

Also starring Marilyn Ghigliotti and Austin Zajur. 

“This job would be great if it wasn’t for all the goddamn movie critics.” – Kevin Smith, probably.

How did Clerks III do? Did it nail the landing? Was it poignant yet funny? Was it sad and finale? Was it just dick and fart jokes? The Before trilogy is wonderful, telling the story of two people every 9 years in their life. Starring the same two actors, and the same director. Is the Clerks trilogy technically doing the same thing, over a longer time frame? Yes. But each part does not feel worthwhile, I am afraid.

There are two very specific moments that I certainly cannot talk about. One found out early on, and one dealing with the film’s climax. The earlier one annoyed me greatly, and changed the context of the film. The latter one made me cry, and yet at the same time, it felt cheap. It felt like something I have seen before. Heck, part of it feels like it was ripped straight out of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Unlike Clerks II, where I cried due to great love on the screen, this film had me crying from sadness, but sadness that did not feel earned, nor did it feel like it was even well respected by the material. A very odd position to be in, given the creator’s closeness to this franchise.

Outside of those two specific spoilery moments, most of the movie was watching these older characters try to film and create, what is essentially, the clerks movie. Using friends of theirs from the past to do similar roles inspired by their own fictional real events. What that means is that we got to see a LOT of cameos from the first film, reprising their same roles, and doing the same scenes. That is pretty interesting. Sure. But at the same time, the hardships that came with filming, and the specific things that popped up, were all real experiences as well. And they are all well known and well documented experiences. Because if there is anything Kevin Smith likes doing, it is telling stories from his life. So I was seeing scenes I have already heard before and read before, making the whole thing lose its edge really quickly. I didn’t care about seeing an episode of SModcast, I wanted to see a new movie. 

There are other elements of the trilogy that this one doesn’t follow. I am not saying it has to, but it does help stylistically set the Clerks movies apart. This film does not take place over a day, it takes place over many many weeks. A small annoyance, but notable nonetheless.

The Elias plot line with his crypto friend was incredibly wasted. I don’t think either made me laugh at all. 

The problems with Clerks III is that instead of telling a good new story, Smith instead chose to tell an old story. And when a lot of your movie is literally rehashed jokes from the first one, it is hard to care. At least in the Jay and Silent Bob Reboot I got closure for Chasing Amy, so it doesn’t need some bad sequel. For this specific series, I should have stopped after it peaked with the interspecies erotica. 

Here’s the thing. Zombieland is ten years old, and ten year old sequels rarely succeed in terms of the original. My review for the first film is pretty dang old, and honestly, I don’t agree with it anymore. I think the first Zombieland is just okay. It has some humor, but for a movie named Zombieland, it doesn’t have a lot of zombies in it. The ending goes too long, wasn’t exciting, and relies too much on Bill Murray.

That means I was not looking forward to seeing Zombieland: Double Tap. It had everything working against it, except for a return of the main cast, who have all went on to do great films after Zombieland. In movies nominated for Oscars, and some winning them! Well, except for Abigail. She peaked a bit before Zombieland technically.

But despite the lack of interest, I still was somehow more interested in this than checking out the Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. I figured that one could wait for DVD.

Also, let’s be clear, Kevin Smith wants to see this movie too. 

Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), hanging out, growing older. Tallahassee considers himself now a father figure to Little Rock, who just wants to be in a relationship. She is now finished with puberty, older and alone.

And Columbus and Wichita are officially a couple, but they are going complacent. They are all just getting old together, by coincidence, and failing to grow anymore. So time for a shake up.

Speaking of shake ups, Zombies have evolved a bit too, and the regular is going out the window. A newer, stronger zombie is about to be a threat, and they are kind of not on their A-game anymore.

Also featuring newcomers Rosario Dawson, Thomas Middleditch, Avan Jogia, Zoey Deutch, and Luke Wilson.

Pink. 

I hope these words don’t seem terrible again in ten years, but Zombieland: Double Tap really entertained me. It had jokes that hit me in the right spots, fun new characters (versus the lack of characters in the first film), great visuals (which the first film did excel at as well, I will admit), but more importantly, more zombies and zombie related violence.

Now I will admit, the ending to the last film is very similar. Suddenly, large mass of zombies, overly long action that doesn’t make too much sense, and miraculous saves. Nothing on the level of the dumpster from The Walking Dead, but still high up there. At least it is more creatively done than the first film.

I was most entertained by the scenes with Middleditch and Wilson interacting with our crew. There is one zombie fight scene as part of that that uses the camera extremely well, long action shots, using the building, and was led up to with plenty of good jokes to keep me giddy. Hell, they were playing Magic the Gathering as well, go nerd it up.

There is a lot of improvement in this film, and, dare I say, reason for us to have another film in the future with a little bit less down time in between films. Now that we are exploring the world better, and seeing other survivors, it opens up a lot more humor potential and produce easy (if not obvious) plot lines in the future.

Sorry to Bother You is one of those films that sort of snuck up on me with a roar. I heard idle mentions of it earlier in the year, but didn’t go out of my way to do further research.

I knew the star. I guessed the theme. And yet none of that would prepare me for the trailer.

The trailer felt very fresh and told me that this. Would be a movie with a lot going on. A sort of extreme satire, maybe very political, but whatever it is it has a message and will be both subliminal and superliminal with that message.

I was excited and ready for this screening, without really knowing what it might give me.

I am getting a Japan / sumo wrestler headband vibe here.

Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) is your regular, down on his luck, poor, brother. He is living in a garage in the house of his uncle (Terry Crews), with his long term girlfriend artist (Tessa Thompson), and they aren’t having a lot of luck making money.

But Cassius is able to get a job working as a telemarketer, working for commission. It is better than nothing. And he has the promise that if he does good, he can go to the top floors of the company. He can ride in the special elevator. He can be a “power caller,” and make the big bucks. No one really knows what they sell up there, but it ain’t magazines and book sets.

Cassius is told to just stick to the script, don’t get out of line, and make money. Once he makes money, he can make more money and more and be a success for once. Especially if he taps into his white person voice.

Starring David Cross, Patton Oswalt, Lily James, Forest Whitaker, and Rosario Dawson! Or at least their voices. Also starring Jermaine Fowler, Steven Yeun, Omari Hardwick, Armie Hammer, Robert Longstreet, Danny Glover, Kate Berlant. and Michael X. Sommers, that would be their voices and their bodies.

This is how white people drink champagne.

Strangely enough, the trailer for Sorry To Bother You only gave you a slice of the whole story, so I tried to do the same with my plot. There is a whole lot more that goes into this story. Topics of slavery (multiple levels) , class warfare, poverty, selling out, and American indifference to clear wrongs in the world. This movie coming out now is extremely well timed given the border problems that keep getting swept away by other media distractions.

It is not a film to use subtle clues to drive the point home. No, these clues are obvious, with a hammer. Fuck, one of the most uncomfortable scenes was the precursor to a “rap” where the chants, the disparity of the cast, made everything all too real and uncomfortable.

Stanfield is amazing in this film as our lead. His senses will probably always align with the audience on the scale of what is right and wrong and when to finally draw the line. Oh yes, you will know when that line is drawn. It was good seeing Yeun in a role very different than his previous work. Thompson was great. Hardwick was as well, despite more limited time, and Hammer was a blast going full crazy CEO for this film.

Unfortunately, areas do feel a bit clunky and jarring. Especially in the end, time seems to go by strangely and not everything seems to have the same attention to detail as earlier on in the film.

Sorry To Bother You will be looked back as an important work, with extreme topics in order to get the point heard loudly.

Perhaps the hardest part about this job is finding time to get to everything you want to get to, without neglecting other work, family, loved ones, hobbies, etc. An even harder part of this job is getting to the things you also don’t care to get to, because your website made a creed a long time ago and you want to stick to it.

Watching Shitty Movies, So You Don’t Have To.

That means catching up on those January/February releases sometimes really late in the year because in actual January you are watching all the indie/bizarre Oscar nominated films, while also starting on 2018’s new works. It means more articles about the best and the worst.

So yeah, the review for Unforgettable is late, but it is clearly a bad film from a quick glance. If you are going to make a film called Unforgettable, you can’t also make it shitty. That just leads to the easiest jokes ever. For shame.

Look at that bitch. Tucking her kid into bed. What a skank.

Julia Banks (Rosario Dawson) is fucked. She is being interrogated by the police, because her ex (Simon Kassianides) was found dead in her home. She used to have a restraining order on him, but as soon as it expired after two years, she started to send him messages, enticing him to visit, including some sexy pictures and actual lingerie. But is that what really happened?

Flash back to a few months, where Julia is leaving her job, to move away to her fiance´s place. David (Geoff Stults) is living a good life and they are going to get married very soon, so why not move together? He has a daughter, Lily (Isabella Kai Rice) who is relatively young, in dance and other things. Oh, and of course he was once married as well, to Tessa (Katherine Heigl) a seemingly perfect human being who is organized, confident, and loving.

Shit, Tessa has everything down great. Including Lily´s best interests. Tessa doesn´t like that she now only gets weekends with her own daughter, especially if she is losing her to Julia, a new woman, a woman who doesn´t get Lily like she does.

So Tessa really only has one option available to her. Ruin the marriage, ruin Julia, and she can have her husband and daughter back. It makes sense, really.

Also starring Alex Quijano, Sarah Burns, and Cheryl Ladd.

At least we can assume the picture frame is there for a reason.

Has there ever been a sexual thriller that is also a good film? I mean, good from a standpoint that is not a 11 year old male discovering his own genitalia? I say if you are going to make a sexual thriller, at least go hard on those keywords there. These one or two a year films are being bogged down by famous celebrities who may be sexy or thrilling, but are tamed by the normally PG-13 movie rating given to them.

But wait! This one is rated R. Yeah, but for no reason. You get a butt and side boob in one awkwardly long getting ready for a bath scene, while people are being creepy. And most of the rest of it is just really, really, poor thriller. There is no mystery, outside of the opening scene. We are told what is going to happen thanks to starting it before the film takes place in a police department. And they show us Heigl’s character starts to do the bad things.

Literally no actual level of suspense. I guess the only surprise is what happens after the police department, but it goes as you’d expect. These really don’t end differently. They glorify taking matters into your own hands, extreme violence, and saying fuck the police.

The acting is poor, the plot line is really dumb, and I in no way feel sexually thrilled.

If you are new here, I have rallied against animated films so far this year. We just had a summer with Cars 3 and Despicable Me 3, both incredibly bad to super bad films. And these are our tent pole films for the year more or less!

There is very little hope of animated films saving it by the end of the year, but I openly acknowledge that I had not yet seen The LEGO Batman Movie. I know a lot of people enjoyed it, our first LEGO movie since The LEGO Movie.

But I am one of the people who only gave The LEGO Movie a 3 out of 4, it was no where close to being my favorite animated movie of the year, but it was quality and hilarious, I give you that. Despite that, I was never looking forward to this movie. I was disappointed to hear it as a sequel.

I want some new original LEGO content, not relying specifically (mostly?) on pop culture content from a single established franchise. I also acknowledge that the previous LEGO film was FULL of pop culture content, but it wasn’t entirely. This just feels…well, unoriginal.

Now that brightly colored chap, he seems like a great way to take any brooding franchise.

Ah yes, Gotham, city of villains and crime and 1 super rich dude and some vigilantism. Batman (Will Arnett) is the best and everyone loves him! But he lives a life alone, mostly hanging out in his house, sometimes interacting with Alfred (Ralph Fiennes). But you know, just being a lone with all his money, cool gadgets, and lobsters.

He is still really good at fighting crime though, and even when the Joker (Zach Galifianakis) gets a shit ton of villains to work together to blow up the city, Batman still stops them. Even worse, Batman refuses to acknowledge the Joker as his greatest villain, his foil, his reason for Batmanning. So now the Joker feels bad. Batman just shuts the door on everyone!

However, with a new commissioner in Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), they are going to focus less on Batman and more on actually catching these bad guys who still terrorize the streets. And you know, maybe focus on getting them fixed instead of just imprisoned. And shit, it starts to work, so Batman has even less to do and no one to hang out with in his increased downtime. Except for Dick Grayson (Michael Cera), whom he accidentally adopted.

Of course eventually some stuff happens and things get really bad, but Batman has to learn to work with others if he is going to defeat this new threat!

Featuring an incredible slew of famous people doing extremely minor voices, because YOLO. Seriously, most of these people have like, 1-2 lines, or grunts, or one scene.Again most, there are like two people thrown in here who have slightly more lines. Totally pointless for the most part still, so, whatever. We got Adam DeVine, Billy Dee Williams, Channing Tatum, Conan O’Brien, Doug Benson, Eddie Izzard, Ellie Kemper, Hector Elizondo, Jason Mantzoukas, Jemaine Clement, Jenny Slate, Jonah Hill, Kate Micucci, Mariah Carey, Riki Lindhome, Seth Green, and Zoe Kravitz.

And just think, that wall of text is just the famous people you know who did voices.

Right away in the film, we get introduced to the Joker and his plans to take over Gotham once and for all, with a giant team of villains on his side, which are all presumably real Batman villains. Action, fighting extreme. I was shocked it happened so early, but since this film mostly deals with Batman’s loneliness, we needed to just get him doing Batman stuff, so we could see him existing waiting to do more Batman stuff.

And that part was just…okay. It didn’t connect with me on an emotional level or anything, because this is a film focused on comedy, so it went for quick jokes instead. And to contrast the opening, the ending is long and even more action packed. Even more villains, many more than you’d expect in a Batman movie, and explosions, and action and…

Being overwhelmed. That is what this movie felt like. It went to the extremes early on, then it went to the extremes in the end. In the middle, it is mostly lowkey, plot stuff. My body didn’t enjoy the “rollercoaster”. It failed to find a middle ground, and frankly, basically all of the action felt so excessive that it was not enjoyable from my point of view.

The best parts of the film were just Batman interacting with Robin and Barbara, regular dialogue for regular jokes. But the majority of the plot was off, along with my earlier complaint. It was an okay film when it comes to entertainment, but not one I am rushing off to buy and talk about over and over, like The LEGO Movie.

And now, also this year, we have The LEGO Ninjago Movie? This is based on their own IP, so hopefully they stick to their own stories to give a good film and don’t rely so heavily on other franchises pop culture references.

I bet you didn’t know this movie was coming out today. I bet you never heard of it before.

What movie would dare go against Warcraft AND Now You See Me 2? Of course! Puerto Ricans in Paris, an R Rated ethnic comedy starring Luis Guzman!

I don’t want to say that that the demographics for these films are super different. That’d be ridiculous. The demographics for this film would totally want to see Warcraft and Now You See Me 2 before this.

On the title alone, I am surprised that this movie didn’t go straight to DVD or a January release. But hey, low budget films need love to. So I have to give it a chance.

This is the type of film that will play hard into stereotypes.

Our heroes are two cops in NYC, the best city in the world. Luis (Luis Guzman) thinks himself a smart guy who is great at getting counterfeit products off of the street, and Eddie (Edgar Garcia), a regular cop guy. He has a wife (Rosie Perez) and kids, with his wife being Luis’ sister. Yay friendships through marriage.

For whatever reason, they eventually get a case that is specifically for them. Vincent (Frédéric Anscombre) is some fashion or real estate mogul type of guy. One of his main clients is Colette (Alice Taglioni), a huge fashionista in Paris. She designs very expensive and sought after bags. But they have found that one of their bags for the upcoming season has been stolen and being sold to the highest bidder. Vincent needs to fly Luis and Eddie to Paris to figure it out, and if they can do it successfully, they will each get a at $150,000 bonus.

Based on testimony from Colette, there are only a few people who would have access to the bag and might be responsible. So Luis and Eddie get a free trip to Paris (with no loved ones) it should be easy to get paid as well. Then they can fix their relationships at home.

The maybe culprits are played by Julie Ferrier, Lilou Fogli, Charlotte Mangel, and Michaël Cohen, with other roles played by Miriam Shor and Rosario Dawson.

So many tagged names and so few stars.

Puerto Ricans In Paris is a comedy in the way that hanging out with your friends on some couches is a comedy. When you are just hanging out, you are most just chilling and occasional someone makes a joke, you all enjoy the overall experience, but you aren’t just cackling for an hour and a half.

So I am saying that Puerto Ricans in Paris is a very chill film, with some jokes, but one that isn’t going to be remembered as a very funny film at all. Most of the jokes all come from Guzman, who has a larger than life character, as per usual. Garcia plays the straight man, along with the entirety of the cast.

But the story is just average. The plot is basically a slightly longer episode of a generic cop TV show. And by slightly longer, I mean this movie is right under 80 minutes in length. The twists by the end are pretty easy to grasp and the acting from everyone feels very standard.

And that is the issue. Mediocre plot, average acting, and not very funny. That is not a good sign for a film that wants to be considered as a comedy and not an action/drama with the occasional jokes.

This movie is definitely a pass, but you probably weren’t going to see it anyway, since you never would have known it existed.

I wanted to see Top Five when it first came out to theaters, but I was busy that weekend, getting married and taking a vacation and all. Excuses, I know.

And with that, I have nothing left of an intro. I know nothing about this movie outside of who is in it and I am willing to be surprised.

Just a couple people on trains, goin’ places! Nothin’ to see here, move along!

Chris Rock is not playing Chris Rock, but Andre Allen. Totally different guy. This guy used to be a stand up comic, was super funny, then made a successful franchise of films about Hammy the bear, who was also a cop. People loved it. Hilarious.

Then he got off of drugs and alcohol. He didn’t feel as funny. He didn’t want to do those types of films anymore. He wants to make more serious pictures and branch out as an actor. Like his new film, where he is the star, about the Haitian revolution. It is coming out this weekend, and he is also getting married to reality TV star Erica Long (Gabrielle Union). Because of this, their wedding will also totally be live and aired on Bravo!

Yayyyy!…

His agent (Kevin Hart), who didn’t want him to do this movie, also set him up with a full day interview with The Times. The Times hates his movies, and their movie critic has been the meanest. But it isn’t that dude to interview him, it is Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson), who doesn’t want to do a full on fluff piece. She wants to find out real information, new things, she wants him to open up. He just wants people to accept him as a serious actor and person. Hah.

Also featuring Anders Holm, Cedric the Entertainer, Romany Malco and J.B. Smoove.

If I was a voice actor, I would try to imitate Chris Rock’s voice… I’d probably get fired.

As expected, this is a movie Chris Rock wrote and directed to speak from his heart. These are his thoughts and feelings on reality TV, the industry, drugs and alcohol, groupies, journalists and critics, you name it. It isn’t super about him of course, because Chris Rock isn’t known for some ridiculous comedy series where you only hear him and don’t see him. But you can really tell where he is coming from.

The best part of Top Five is the really real-ness of it all. It feels incredibly natural, as if it is actually just a few people or friends talking, depending on the scene. The scene where he went back to his old friend’s house and there was a tiny party is a great example of this.

But even more importantly, the film is also funny at times. I have probably always been a fan of Chris Rock’s work, whether it is his voice or delivery, I don’t know, but I would watch him in basically anything. Because of the realistic feel, Rock obviously fits the character pretty well and it doesn’t take too many leaps and bounds to consider these characters in their role. Shit, it really helps later in the bachelor party scene when we have other famous comedians just playing themselves.

At the same time, I am just a little bit disappointed with the ending. I wanted more. I know why it ended where it did, but I didn’t want my brain to have to do any of the work, I just wanted to be spoon fed.

Which, in a way, is the type of thing this movie was definitely against. Layers!

I don’t know how people reviewed the movie Sin City when it came out, I just know that Sin City: A Dame To Kill For will be pretty hard to review.

Sin City itself was pretty polarizing. I think overall it was on the positive side of the spectrum for most people (including me). The art style was something very different and took awhile for some people to get used to. It was also pseudo copied with The Spirit, which a lot of people hated (and those people also suck).

But a sequel has long been in development and long been clamored for, as the original came out in 2005. Almost took 10 years to get another installment. It has to live up to a lot of pressure, so I hope it can deliver.

Now with more nakedness than ever before.

Sin City is a land where dreams come true. Assuming your dreams involve corruption, drugs, sex, betrayal, murder, lawlessness, crime, death, and other synonyms. Shit is weak. Shit is weak everywhere.

Marv (Mickey Rourke) is still running around, being a badass. If you like him, good news, he is basically in every plot line.

Like when Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) comes to town, looking for secretive revenge and wanting to use his elite poker skills to do it. Or when Nancy the never naked Stripper (Jessica Alba) wants to enact revenge on the death of Hartigan (Bruce Willis) from the first film. Or when Dwight (Josh Brolin) has to go an save Ava (Eva Green) from an abusive relationship, taking out an inhuman body guard Manute (Dennis Haysbert).

So, basically Marv is everywhere. Yay continuity?

Also featuring others, like Rosario Dawson and Powers Boothe bringing back their old characters. Or like Jamie Chung, taking over someone else character. And some people in much smaller roles, like Ray Liotta, Christopher Meloni, Jeremy Piven and Christopher Lloyd who is like 150 at this point.

If only there were angels out there for him to help out?

More action! More death! More sex! Is Sin City: A Dame To Kill For a step in the franchise? Or is it just too late?

Hard to say what the reason is, but this movie felt incredibly lack luster for me. Maybe it is because when Sin City first came up, it was before comic book movies really started to amp up their games. Before The Dark Knight before the Marvel films. Because for the most part, this story / set of stories feels very familiar, yet still distant.

Maybe I am annoyed at just how connected they wanted everything to feel? I liked the disjointedness of the first film, just a few short stories and then another.

Maybe it is just the quality of the stories? For what it is worth, there are basically three plot lines. The middle being the longest and most complete, or at least featuring the most characters, but even it dragged by the end. The “first” plot with JG-L didn’t feel interesting, and Alba’s felt not as epic as it was going for.

Maybe it is that the style feels stale after all this time, with the 3D elements never really enhancing it like I had hoped?

Maybe I don’t know. The only thing I know is this movie felt like a great disappointment. But also, maybe I am just getting older.

Cesar Chavez is one of those indie movies that kind of just never came out near where I lived, so I never really got a chance to watch it. It came out on DVD a few weeks ago (or if I delay this review by a few weeks, a month or more ago!) so at that point it just came down to finding a time to throw it up on my website. Only doing five reviews a week has its perks and its disadvantages. It is good that all of my free time isn’t looking for movies or writing reviews, yes. But those two reviews a week less than I am used to means a lot of indie or weird movies that my website is none for is pushed to the side if a week has a lot of big titles coming out.

Oh well. Cesar Chavez. A biographical movie with some subtitles and a comedic actor playing a serious role. My body is ready.

And I am sure they will do everything in their power to make sure they don’t make him look like Hitler.

Cesar Chavez (Michael Pena) is already a polarizing figure in the US. A farm worker in California, during the 1950s to the 1970s he became political, organizing the farm workers of California into labor groups to fight for better rates and conditions.

At this point, most of the farm workers were braceros, temporary workers from Mexico permitted to live in the US to work on these farms. Should they ever stop, they’d be forced back to Mexico. But the conditions were terrible and wages low, so it felt like a form of slavery.

With the help of others, Cesar organized boycotts, marches, and created a labor union, while also encouraging Mexican Americans to register and vote on elections to help swing results towards their side.

And uh, you know, I guess that is all the movie is really about? America Ferrera plays Mrs. Chavez, and Rosario Dawson and Yancey Arias are also on their side. In terms of white people to get in the way / help, we have John Malkovich, Michael Cudlitz, Wes Bentley, and Gabriel Mann.

You can tell he is an activist based on the number of scarves he is wearing.

After watching this pseudo-biopic, I don’t think I have a lot to say about Cesar or the film itself. From what I remember, he went in a hunger strike that lasted a long time, did some marching, and did a nice boycott.

And well, that was it? The movie was kind of short for bio standards, only dealt with a few events and didn’t seem to show many sides to the character. I am sure Cesar was a complicated individual, since everyone is complicated. I just didn’t get any sense of that.

Besides the potential bias issue, I found the movie kind of…boring. I could never really get into it, despite any parallels that may exist in our own time. It lacked an entertainment quality that I would hope to see in a film about an activist. There were a few tense moments only in dealings with anti-protesters.

On top of that? Acting was only okay. Nothing great. One cool scene sticks out from America Ferrera, and the rest is forgettable.

I just now realized that the title Gimme Shelter is spelled wrong. What the hell, movie makers. I demand another i.

Besides that, this song didn’t use the The Rolling Stones song either. All I knew about this movie is that I heard some good things about it, and that it of course never came to my area when it was out in theaters. Typical, typical lame area.

Oh well, DVD releases wouldn’t be exciting if I always saw the stuff before they came out, right?

Spoiler – The Shelter is a church.

Agnes/Apple (Vanessa Hudgens) is your typical troubled teen girl. Her mom (Rosario Dawson) is a crack whore, they live in the slums, with lots of drugs and gross stuff. And she is pregnant from a boy she met, who wants nothing to do with her now. So she has had it, cuts her hair, and runs away from home.

Where to? Maybe her dad’s house! Who she has never met before, because he was a kid in college when he met the mom for basically a very short relationship. He didn’t find out about her existence until years later, and felt bad, but didn’t come and save her from her life either. Either way, he (Brendan Fraser) is now a rich dude with a family, some wall street shit. She wants to stay with him, but his wife doesn’t appreciate the fact that she is pregnant and doesn’t want to raise the baby for her. She wants Apple to get an abortion!

Well, Apple doesn’t like that either. So she goes back on the streets. Then she gets eventually put into a home for teenage girls who are pregnant. Yay shelter.

Starring also James Earl Jones as a preacher, which may be his first time in a role like that, and Ann Dowd as the troubled teen home owner.

Give it up for the make up department for grossing us out with Dawson’s teeth.

I am pretty sure during this movie I saw a fade to black. One of those things to signal an end of scene or commercial break or whatever. Is this secretly a made for TV movie that instead went to theaters? Because that is what it felt like. It felt like a Hallmark after school special or something. A movie about why abortions are bad and your family might not be your real family.

Here is a positive. I can say this wasn’t an expected role for Vanessa Hudgens. There was no singing, no dancing, she wasn’t sexy, just a teen with a lot of emotions and not many people she could trust.

But the movie felt like a giant lecture. The ending too was kind of odd. That is when I found out it was just based on another fucking true story, that they thought was good enough for a movie, but in reality it wasn’t. Yeah. This review I guess will be shorter than a normal one, because I am already done.