Tag: Rose Byrne

The Internship

When you first heard about The Internship, you thought one of three things:

“Oh great, a movie where the jokes are only at the expense of nerds and old people trying to be hip!”

“Oh great, a giant advertisement movie for Google!”

“Oh great, an Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn movie trying to recapture the magic that happened with Wedding Crashers in 2005!”

Well, to be fair, I think all of these ended up being true.

HP
Because why the fuck not, they also play some quidditch.

Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) are a great team and have been for decades. They sell watches and they have personality. Sales have been down this year, and they find out in the middle of a potential big sale that their company has folded. Great, what are two unskilled salesmen to do with the economy like it is?

Well, get a job at Google, of course! Or at least an interview, for an internship, that could lead to a job. While not being extremely qualified candidates, they are able to smooth talk their way into the intern process, because not every applicant should be a perfect nerd 20-something with no actual life experience.

Needless to say, they are not popular amongst the other applicants. Only one team of interns will be guaranteed to receive jobs by the end of the summer and when it comes time to pick teams, they are stuck with the other nerds who weren’t picked (Tiya SicarTobit RaphaelDylan O’Brien) and the newest and most nervous group manager (Josh Brener, who you may remember last summer in this Samsung Galaxy S3 commercial before movies).

As expected, this turns into a group of ragtag individuals, trying to work together to overcome the odds and become the top team by summers end. Along the way, Nick has to try and woo a higher up Google employee (Rose Byrne), Billy has to overcome his inability succeed, and they all have to figure out ways to beat the supergroup made by Graham Hawtrey (Max Minghella), and also convince the head of the interns (Aasif Mandvi) that they aren’t complete losers.

A comedy like this of course has a lot of cameos, including Will FerrellRob Riggle, and Josh Gad.

Noogle
Heh…heh…heh…Noogle.
I know the entire idea of this movie probably is a turn off to a lot of you. It looks formulaic, almost like a 1990s comedy (Another aspect of the film that I cannot defend). But it also has something else that is hard to value that really turns it into a decent movie. It has heart.

Wilson and Vaughn have amazing chemistry together, which is a fact we already knew. But it is amplified so well into this film! The dialogue is just so great, the two are able to make the entire thing still feel real and natural.

The Internship is not the funniest film of the year, no where close, but reports say that I giggled pretty consistently throughout it. The film accurately also showed the pressures that college graduates face today, where they can be perfect their entire life and still have trouble/stress once they hit the real world.

I did hate a few of the “speeches” by the end of the film, when they were announcing the winners. I think they cheapened the results by going about them that way, and could have easily been more clever about it. I’d say The Internship is worth checking out, but only if you are want a feel good story and if it is a matinee.

3 out of 4.

The Place Beyond The Pines

The Place Beyond The Pines by itself is an interesting title. It is actually the literal meaning of Schenectady, a town in New York where this film both takes place and is filmed. Damn these clever directors and writers!

The title is also mysterious enough on its own right to potentially gain viewers by itself. Every time there is a bad movie title, I tend to harp on it, so I felt it was my duty to point out the excellent ones as well.

Gosling
Hey girl, even though I am surrounded by flashy lights and neon signs, all I can see is you.
What would you do to support the ones you love? More importantly, what if you just found out you had loved ones who needed support?

Luke (Ryan Gosling) is a motorcycle rider for a traveling fair, the guy who gets into the tiny steel ball and rides around. It is a lonely life, always traveling, but he can sometimes find love in the random towns that he stays at. Like Romina (Eva Mendes), who he had a nice time with last year, but now lives with a man (Mahershala Ali) and has a son. Well, Luke’s son it turns out.

Luke doesn’t know how to handle this situation, but he doesn’t want to be a scumbag father, like his own, so he quits his job and settles in Schenectady. He finds a job as an auto mechanic with Robin (Ben Mendelsohn), but it still isn’t enough. He needs a large sum, and he needs it now. So why not rob a bank? Who does that really hurt?

This film also tells of Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), a law school student turned cop, who doesn’t want to follow in the footsteps of his own father (Harris Yulin), a member of the state supreme court. Even the small towns may have local corruption, and that corruption may cause conflict in his household with his wife (Rose Byrne) and other cops (Ray Liotta).

Pines also features Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan, but I don’t want to tell the specifics of their parts.

Cooper
Hey girl, I know I am no Ryan Gosling, but check out these cheekbones. Hey, wait, come back!
The “Sins Of Your Father” theme is a popular one for shows, movies, and novels, yet I always feel like it never really resonates with me and always falls flat. The Place Beyond The Pines might have the best showcasing of this theme I have ever witnessed, making me truly understand the full extent of what it means, and how it can be conveyed.

The movie is split up pretty nicely into three parts, with the end of part one coming out of left field. It was well acted up to that point, but it was still missing a major umph to get my full attention, and it was sure to bring it. After that, I was hooked and couldn’t look away from the screen, wondering what other secrets and twists it had in store for me.

Everything about this movie felt amazing to me, especially the acting. Eva Mendes is basically the only woman character in this movie. Lately, she seems to be put in movies more often for her looks than her talents, but she definitely delivers in this film.

I have talked to about five-six people about this movie, and at least from the “guy perspective” everyone loved it. The one woman I talked to thought it was decent, but not the best. The themes presented may be easier to latch on to for men, since it falls so heavily into the son/father relationship category, but despite that I think this movie can be enjoyed by everyone.

It might just be the best drama I have seen so far in 2013. This with Silver Linings Playbook has elevated Bradley Cooper into an elite acting category, and it will take more than a new Hangover to knock him down from it.

4 out of 4.

Knowing

I am starting to think that Nick Cage puts out about thirty movies a year. Dude is in everything. All of which seem to have a lot of CGI elements too. Intersting Cage, Interesting indeed.

Maybe he knows something? Or maybe he just likes money. Either way, I don’t think he cares about the plots anymore. Kinda like Samuel L Jackson. People just give him money to yell and demean other humans, pretty awesome lifestyle. Just not as CGI’d up as Nick Cage movies.


Except for the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, that was all real magic.

Fifty years before the majority of events in Knowing take place, it stats with a school full of young impressionable (white) kids. They are doing a time capsule! Some girl wins the contest to decide what they do, and she says pictures of what the future looks like. But she doesn’t do pictures. She writes a whole bunch of numbers and that is it. Doesn’t get to finish her numbers, just most of the way!

NOW ITS THE FUTURE. Nick Cage’s son, smart Chandler Canterbury, ends up getting that letter and is confused. But he thinks they mean something. Thanks to an accident, Cage also thinks the numbers mean something. He accidentally sees 0911012819, which is a date and number of people killed in 9/11 attacks. He thinks this is odd, but tries some more numbers and they all match up! Sure there are random numbers in between that he doesn’t understand, but this shit is scary.

But after the next thing that it predicted comes true too, and he figures out what the in between numbers are, he flips a shit and tries to stop the next few “disasters”. He also meets Rose Byrne, daughter of the crazy chick, who also has a daughter.

Then you know, other stuff happens. The end of the world. Men in suits. Disasters. People Panicking. The missing numbers. Etc.

The first half of the movie was more interesting than I thought it would be. I was like “Oh man, this shit is crazy!”. And I was having a good time. The last hour, however, took away all of it. After the wicked cool train scene, it went downhill, both in terms of plot and caring. Rose was a pretty bad actress in this movie. Her irrational fears got annoying, and I didn’t believe any of her actions.

I also think for the ending they tried to see how long they could make it last. The last 25-30 minutes would be the slowest ending ever, if NBA games and LOTR3 didn’t already exist.

Frodo Bed
“Okay, hold it in. Can’t pee now. No way this movie has another five minutes in it…” – Doomed watcher.

Besides feeling drawn out, I personally hated the explanations given for all the events, and the results of those explanations. The final “field” picture just didn’t look good to end the film. Once you also find out that this “renown” astrophysicist professor’s dad was a priest, you can also guess where one of the final plot points will go. Blah. If you want to be built up for something awesome, then sorely disappointed, then this movie is for you.

1 out of 4.

Bridesmaids

Why hello there, highly anticipated movie that over the summer all of my friends hyped up as heeeelarious? Well overall I did enjoy it. Not as much of a laugh riot I had hoped or came to expect. But that is what hype does to you.

It was longer than I figured, both just in terms of length of film, and length of story. I figured it would involve just the pre-planning for the wedding, then the wedding, then the after wedding party where everyone gets crunk.

Chunk Goonies
Not to be confused with getting Chunk from The Goonies.

BUT IT IS MORE THAN THAT. This is prengagement to wedding story. This is the whole package from just friends to having Kristen Wiig be your maid of honor. This of course leads to bridesmaids jealousy, where Kristen has to compete with hotty ms. perfect over her the brides affections, played by the weird Maya Rudolph. Through shenanigans and not being perfect, conflict arises between them. Not cat fights, just more like hissy fights. AND CONFLICT. I already said that.

The other Bridesmaids are the shy girl (Ellie Kemper), the MILF (Wendi McLendon-Covey), the rich new best friend who is trying to take over maid of honor duties (Rose Byrne) and the bigger soon to be relative friend who lacks social graces and yet is funny (Melissa McCarthy).

I like that Jon Hamm had a role in this movie, but wasn’t even in the credits. I call sexism on that. How dare they find the bootycall role unimportant. (Cough). Speaking of Booty Call, the other love interest role is played by Chris O’Dowd, who I did find heeeeelarious.

awkward police cop
He plays awkward police cop from Cananananada.

My favorite scenes were probably the scenes in which it seemed it went on way too long. Such as engagement party speeches, plane shenanigans, and what not. you know, awkward hilarity.

3 out of 4