Tag: Yes Boobs

Horror anthologies are all of the rage. I probably said that in my last review of a horror anthology, V/H/S: Viral, in October of 2014. Since then there hasn’t really been any horror anthologies. They died really quick.

There was another film called Southbound, but I missed it, so I will just have to wait for the DVD release or around Halloween. Whenever I remember it exists. Other than Southbound, the latest film to match this category is of course Holidays.

Holidays!? Yes, Holidays. A horror anthology with a common theme of several different holidays. Eight to be exact, with a bunch of random directors. That is a low enough number for me to talk about each one quickly!

So many holidays, you probably can’t even guess what this one is about!

For Valentine’s day, we have a little girl (Madeleine Coghlan), who gets teased by a different girl (Savannah Kennick) because she is a bitch. Our first girl also has a crush on her swimming coach (Rick Peters), who just wants her to be happy and not get picked on.

In St. Patrick’s Day, our Irish teacher (Ruth Bradley), wants to make a new girl (Isolt McCaffrey) smile, so that girl puts a curse on her to give birth to a snake.

For Easter, a little girl (Ava Acres) confuses the Bunny with Jesus, but is also told that no one has ever seen the Easter Bunny before for a pretty scary reason.

In Mother’s Day, we learn about a woman (Sophie Traub) who always gets pregnant after sex, regardless of birth control or condom usage. She is 100% fertile and it is ruining her life, so she goes to a middle of nowhere to people who claim that they can help her, when in reality, they want to just force her to stay.

On the other side for Father’s Day, we have a girl (Jocelin Donahue) who thought her dad (Michael Gross) was dead and gone since she was 11, but when she finds a voice recorder with a message on it, she has to go and investigate.

For Halloween (directed by Kevin Smith), we see a dude (Harley Morenstein) operating a small time cam girl operation, where the girls (Ashley Greene, Olivia Roush, Harley Quinn Smith) decide to get even and put him through the same abuse. You know, just worse.

On Christmas, a guy (Seth Green) goes to great lengths to get the latest VR tech for his son, but when the virtual reality starts to show his inner secrets, he and his wife (Clare Grant) have to cope with them.

Finally, on New Year’s Eve, a man (Andrew Bowen) has been killing a woman on each holiday that he has met while online dating, and now he will complete his collection (Lorenza Izzo). He hopes.

What is love? Baby don’t hurt me.

I spent most of my alloted time just going over 1-2 sentence synopsis’ of each short. I figured I could do that with only eight segments, but I may have been wrong.

Like almost every single horror anthology before it, Holidays is definitely hit or miss. The entire thing is less than two hours so overall it is probably worth a late night viewing.

In particular, I liked the Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day and Halloween shorts the most. New Year’s Eve told a decent story as well.

Christmas felt too short, St. Patrick’s Day was mostly weird, and Easter was also incredibly weird (but mostly just short).

Mother’s Day might have been the longest short story, I didn’t really keep track. It had an interesting premise, but I thought it dulled too much in the middle, despite the also pretty good ending.

Now I am ready for the Horror Anthologies to die. I think they are running out of ideas on how to package them together.

Another Thursday, another foreign film. Or documentary. Really it is whatever is convenient on a Thursday and/or how hard it is to find a documentary I want to watch. And this week, a documentary to watch was too difficult!

So I picked My Big Night, as I saw the trailer recently at the theater and it looked funny. And it had dancing! I like to dance and party, every night is my big night. In the comfort of my own home. Clubs are scary.

My Big Night is directed by Álex de la Iglesia, who more recently directed The Last Circus and Witching and Bitching. The former I never heard of before, but it looks intense. The later I actually had recommended to me at least twice and I never saw. Whoops. Maybe I will get around to that one if My Big Night maintains my interest, at least a little bit.

And the first musical number reminded me awkwardly of Prisencolinensinainciusol.

Hooray the new year! Sure, it is like, August or September of 2015 when this movie takes place, but we need to celebrate this bad boy now.

Namely, the television company has serious issues, including a corrupt owner (Santiago Segura) about to lay off hundreds of people. So they have had massive protests outside of their studios. Regardless, they are filming this special months in advance to make sure it goes off without a hitch. That means retakes, reshoots, crowd shots, over and over again.

Speaking of the crowd, they are full of extras who have had to dress up in the same clothes, pretend to party with fake food and drinks, day after day. And then someone gets seriously injured and they need a new extra. That is where Jose (Pepón Nieto) comes in. He has been waiting for a temp job for months and this is the first one to bite. He will do anything, even if his ex-wife and kids are leaving the country to vacation and he has to leave his senile mother (Terele Pávez) at home alone. He also has to deal with Paloma (Blanca Suárez) a very attractive woman who is sitting next to him who is apparently a jinx but super into him.

Other plot lines include! Aging singer Alphonso (Raphael, who I’ve been told is a real singer doing a parody of himself?) battling for the “midnight” spot with a young pop star Adanne (Mario Casas). A stalker (Jaime Ordóñez) who loves Alphonso enough to want to kill him during his performance. And a few women trying to steal Adanne’s sperm to have a blackmail baby. And the two cohosts (Hugo Silva, Carolina Bang) constantly bickering over their lines while auditioning to host a future show.

And shit, even more weird side plots.

Also starring Carmen Ruiz, Carmen Machi, Carlos Areces, Luis Callejo, Enrique Villén, Tomás Pozzi, Luis Fernández, and Ana Polvorosa.

When you’re this fly, you don’t even need color.

My Big Night is an insane ride, with intersecting plot lines and characters, all woven around an absurd idea. The whole movie is absurd, so many little things working together to make this the craziest night of pre-recorded television ever. I like crazy, I like absurd, I would have just liked a little bit more details.

Honestly, the only reason I was able to understand the protesters outside, the time frame of this taping, and how crazy the taping process has been, is thanks to re-reading the plot summary after the fact online. There is so much going on during this film, that they forget to mention all the finer details.

Now, My Big Night is definitely entertaining. I had characters I was rooting for and enjoyed a lot of the music. Some of it could be lost on me culturally, especially not knowing anything about Raphael in real life. It just felt like it should have been a lot more. The ending was also pretty week, comparatively. It was like they had no idea how to end it.

The movie has a ton of promise and I would be excited to see more from this director. You’ve earned yourself a viewing of Witching and Bitching.

Heh. Hardcore Henry. It isn’t necessarily a bad title, but it is slightly suggestive. Still, it is a better title than its previous iteration, just Hardcore. And I could be wrong, but I think before that it might have just been called POV.

Either way, it isn’t the safest film to google image search.

Ahem, but in case you didn’t know, this film is shot entirely from the first person point of view. It is 100% GoPro camera, specially mounted on a face mask, not awkwardly on top of the head. This movie promises to be very similar to many modern shooting games, except with realistic arm placement on the camera.

It’s a new experience, so let’s just jump on in feet first and get wet.

Hello Henry! I guess, you are Henry. No one actor played Henry, mostly a bunch of stuntman and the director. And since it is your point of view, and since Henry doesn’t remember his past, then sure, you can be Henry. Congrats!

Henry/You wake up in a science laboratory, where Estelle (Haley Bennett) is there to add some robot limbs to your body and let you know that you were husband and wife. Don’t worry, you will remember eventually. Just before they can reinstall his voice software, some very European guy named Akan (Danila Kozlovsky) breaks in and starts killing people. And he has telekinesis, cool.

Either way, Henry has to escape and run from a giant Akan army of masked unnamed soldiers. He quickly meets Jimmy (Sharlto Copley), who knows about his situation and seems helpful. At the same time, he keeps showing up almost everywhere with elaborate disguises and surviving extreme situations. Very strange. Henry needs to trust someone, needs to take down Akan, and needs to save his wife. And hopefully get his memories back.

Also starring Andrei Dementiev as Slick Demetri, Oleg Poddubnyy as Yuri the henchman, and Darya Charusha and Svetlana Ustinova as dominatrices.

Oh and Tim Roth! For like, one quick unfulfilling scene!

Despite appearances, Jimmy is not a time traveling soldier.

Hardcore Henry is the type of movie that delivers on its promise and not much more. If you want almost non stop action with the unique filming style, you will get it. A decent plot and acting? Eh, calm your expectations.

The director has said they wanted to do this movie with the intention of making it a personal experience for the viewer, and not the video game angle, but that doesn’t really hold water. In this movie we have an escort mission, dozens of different weapons, chase mission, and even a last ditch health pack type situation before the big boss fight. It felt like a video game. The personal experience angle never really works, because it isn’t a 4D film. We aren’t getting turned around left or right every time he does, so our head doesn’t move with the scene. That is a vital component if it wanted the audience to feel like the protagonist.

Honestly, the reason I am even giving this film an average rating is thanks to Sharlto Copley. He really makes this movie, his characters are wonderful and, at times, incredibly campy. Without a character like him and just a voiceless action star, it would be a boring film with the occasional headache.

At the end of the day, it is a unique style and so it can have some points for trying. But should this art form continue in the future, I hope we can remember this as the starting point and not the best the genre had to offer.

I cannot stand Terrence Malick films. No I haven’t seen a lot of them. I haven’t even seen The Thin Red Line.

But I have seen The Tree of Life and To The Wonder. The former I couldn’t get behind at all, despite some lovely visuals, and the latter was just a complete train wreck from my point of view.

Some people call him pompous, some just refer to him as art house, and I just cannot stand his movies as of right now. So sure, I will give Knight of Cups a chance. But I am going in with a huge bias on my shoulders that I cannot shake. I will never get the time I lost from To The Wonder. Never.

Given the director, you have to assume every shot, no matter what, is actually a metaphor.

Also given the director, describing the plot of the film can be a bit tricky. So let’s run to IMDB for some help:

A writer indulging in all that Los Angeles and Las Vegas has to offer undertakes a search for love and self via a series of adventures with six different women.

Our writer is of course Rick (Christian Bale), whom is apparently good at his job and sought over, but he cares not about his job that much. He cares about his past and who he is going to fuck next. And that means he has more than six relationships in the film, as there are a lot of unnamed girls without speaking roles.

The six women include: Nancy (Cate Blanchett), his ex-wife, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), a museum enthusiast, Helen (Freida Pinto), a model, Della (Imogen Poots), a free spirit, Karen (Teresa Palmer), a stripper from down under, and Isabel (Isabel Lucas), who, I dunno, likes beaches I guess. They all like beaches though. Beaches are kind of a big thing here.

Oh and he has family! Wes Bently plays his brother, Brian Dennehy his dad. Antonio Banderas has some role of significance, if you can call it that. But I don’t know what or why. Some rich guy.

There has never been a more metaphor-y beach.

I tried, I really did, to understand this movie from a different light. To think about the bigger themes that he might be getting at. To imagine the scenery as its own character. This was all advice people gave to me about Malick movies. Despite my hatred for the last two movies, I knew I had to watch this one do my best to review it fairly, because only watching movies I will probably like does not make me a great film critic.

But this movie just felt like a waste of time. It is two hours long and it felt like it was over three hours. The film felt like it was about to end three separate times before it finally showed the credits. The story that was told could have ended at any moment, because it is hard to say that there really was an actual ending they had in mind. It was all very spiritual and airy. Rarely do you see any character actually talking. Most of the dialogue is spoken over scenes of characters living and interacting with each other. And of course other dialogue is made by never seen characters, some talking poetically, or telling random stories, or…just who the hell knows.

Knight Of Cups is a confusing film. It is broken down into sections named after Tarot cards, which is also where the title comes from. And if you try hard, you might figure out why a section with the characters in it is called The Moon, or Freedom, or Death. Knight of Cups is presumably made so that you can derive your own opinions on the film based on what you get out of it.

And what I get out of it is a big waste of time. Sure, there are some well shot scenes. A whole lot of beaches, and some Californian mountains and death valley. But if I cared about well shot pictures of nature, I’d be watching Planet Earth, not a film that should have a basic story.

According to some people, there is only allowed to be one good horror movie a year. Something that is clearly leagues above the rest in terms of story, production value, acting, and whatever. Last year it was It Follows, the year before that The Babadook. In 2013 we had The Conjuring, and if I can plug my own favorite for 2012, I’d say Sinister.

Without watching The Witch, you can tell it is the type of movie that would love that distinction. Hell, it was a horror movie that played in festivals. That is a rarity.

It also very early in the year, most of the best films have come out in the second half (except for It Follows). All I can really say about 2016 before this movie is that it surely isn’t The Forest and it definitely isn’t The Final Project.

Creepy mood lighting: Perfect for scary hiding witches.

In the early 1600’s, America was a scary place. You lived on the plantation with other settlers, you did what you were told, you survived attacks from the natives, and you struggled to survive. To be banished would be akin to death. But for one family, they accepted banishment. The patriarch, William (Ralph Ineson), was a devoutly Christian man and he was upset with the plantation church. He disagreed with them on the book of God, and so he accepted the banishment because he knew the Lord would provide for his faithful family.

So he took his wife (Kate Dickie), oldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), slightly teenager son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), and young twins Mercy and Jonas (Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson), on a cart into the world to find their new home.

Well after a few months they have a sizable farm. A house, a barn, some sheds. They have grown corn, have some goats and chickens and are surviving. Oh, and the wife gave birth to a baby boy, Samuel. Oh, but the corn crops have developed a rot and most of it isn’t edible. And while Thomasin was playing peek-a-boo with Samuel, Samuel disappeared. They can’t find him and assumed a wolf took him. But maybe it was something sinister? Maybe a witch?

These are only the first of their many problems. Distrust, poorness, hunger. And maybe a witch is causing tiny issues to grow their family apart. Maybe it is all just their own religious fears and puritan values causing the anger. But bad auras are afoot, and no one can save them now.

Also featuring Bathsheba Garnett and Sarah Stephens.

This is a scariest forest than the forest in The Forest.

The Witch was directed and written by Robert Eggers, a man who clearly loves his job. The level of realism in this movie is incredible. From the outfits, to the language, to their principals and actions, everything just seems to make sense. I didn’t find myself shaking my head, wondering why a character did something. No. They all have their reasons and make perfectly logical decisions for their character based on the events unfolding around them. It is fantastic.

You might be wondering if I am actually saying that this is a “horror” movie with great acting, and I totally am. They all sound like they have been speaking that dialect their entire life. Admittedly, the dialogue at times is hard to understand and I don’t pick up every important word. But the point is still made and that point is authentic as fuck.

I wouldn’t describe The Witch as the scariest movie ever, but it is definitely extremely unsettling and it feels downright evil. This is a slow burn horror film. You are frightened because you are living in a Puritan family’s world, facing their real fears and taking on the world as they see it. It is very religious based, and that type of horror can affect someone on the psychological level.

For those who aren’t familiar, one big aspect of the Puritan Christianity is they believed that when they were born, they were pre-selected for Heaven or Hell. Most people were selected for Hell and there is nothing they could do to change their outcome in life. Clearly those meant for Heaven would do great things, and everyone else would have faults and be bad. But they couldn’t help it. So succumbing to your fate and living in constant worry was just some of the many things you would do during this time period.

The witches they show in this film also feel authentic. Eggers based everything on this film on primary sources of the time and it just adds to the downright creepy realism. I should also add the score created great tension with heavy violin play, and allowed the audience to get frightened without any cheap jump scares.

The Witch is hard to watch, frightful, and it is clear that everyone involved put everything they had into it. It is the type of horror film I could see myself watching again and again, just needing a few months or years of downtime in between.

Go home 2016, this is probably the best horror film of the year and one of the best films of the year.

Growing up, I never really felt like a girl. No, I didn’t skip from toddler to womanhood. I am just a dude. But still, I don’t know what it feels like to be a girl.

I never found someones diary and betrayed their trust by reading about their deepest and darkest secrets. Except for Anne Frank, but apparently she was cool with it since she was dead and all.

Thankfully, I have movies that tell me what it means to be a girl. And I also now have The Diary of a Teenage Girl, so I can get those few years of middle and high school. That is definitely the years I understood girls the least, given my friendship and dating record.

What? Oh this is getting too personal. Sorry, I confused a prestigious movie reviewing website for a Live Journal again. Ahem.

Now let me put the rest of my secrets on audio. No one can get to them then.

Minnie (Bel Powley) just had sex for the first time and she is only fifteen. Whoa. This is already getting too personal for me.

She has been wanting to explore her sexuality for awhile, but she is sort of shy, not the best looking girl and lacking confidence in her breasts. But she had sex finally after seducing Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård). For those who can read actor names in the parenthesis, you will realize that he is not a high school aged boy, he is a super adult. That is because he happens to be the boyfriend of Charlotte (Kristen Wiig), Minnie’s mom. Oh boy. That’s a rape.

Except they get super into each other. Like. A lot. And I do mean into each other. This ups Minnie’s confidence to walk down her school’s halls and know she can take on the world.

But again. This relationship is not appropriate and bad. He is manipulating her. Or fuck. Is she manipulating him? No, that’d be crazy…

Also starring Abby Wait as Minnie’s younger sister, Miranda Bailey as Minnie’s friend, and Christopher Meloni as Minnie’s father.

If you look closely, you will see this picture is very inappropriate.

I have never felt so much like a teenage girl in my life before. That should be apparent given the introduction. Powley did such a fascinating job as the lead. Powley herself is 23 years old at this point, but she was a teenage girl before and frankly looks very young. So along with acting the shit out of being an actual teenager, it made me feel quite uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough to look up Powley’s age.

The film was rated R for a variety of reasons, including GRAPHIC NUDITY, but surprisingly no actual male dick. The only penises you see are drawn/animated. Lot of boobs though. And a lot of very uncomfortable sex. Sex sex sex.

Moving on. The rest of the film, outside of the awkward teenager ness and great acting from Powley, was also good. The supporting cast felt realistic, the plot felt realistic. It was all just about a girl finding herself. There a quite a few films that fit into this genre, but this feels like it should go directly to the top tier.

This film happens to be up for several Spirit awards, including Best Actress and Best First Feature, meaning the director hadn’t done a film before this one. Pretty crazy to think about. Marielle Heller, not only directed for the first time, but also wrote the screenplay, which is also her first. It clearly takes a woman to really understand all the weirdness it takes to be a woman.

As it happens every year, this year I find myself lacking in the Best Actress potential nominee department. Somehow these films with strong lady leads allude me, it is probably cause I am a man.

But damn it, this year I got to see Carol before they announced Oscar nominations. Sure, it might presumptuous for me to assume that it will get nominated for anything, but it literally received two nominations for Best Actress for the Spirit Awards. One film, two spots of the five. That is pretty damn good. I admire that they didn’t try to shoe horn one of their leads into a supporting actress role, like plenty of films attempt depending on how crowded a potential category is. And after all, competing against yourself must feel a bit awkward. But for 40% of the nominees to be for Carol, I’d have to imagine at least one of them be given some love for the Academy Awards.

Not that strong independent women need to be shown anything at all, technically. Fuck, feminism is hard. What do I say? Just start the review? Okay okay.

See? I am so feminist, I won’t even mention that thing that is on Carol’s head.

Film is called Carol? Fine, I will talk about Therese (Rooney Mara) first then. Therese is young and living in her own apartment in NYC in 1949-51, I couldn’t figure out the year. She works part time at a department store for the Christmas holidays, selling dolls and trains. She has a cheap camera for taking photos, thinking she might be a photographer one day. She is dating a fine young boy, Richard Semco (Jake Lacy), who wants to marry her and taker he on vacations to Europe.

But then she meets Carol (Cate Blanchett). Carol is older and richer and lives out in New Jersey. She has a husband, Harge (Kyle Chandler) but they are getting a divorced, and a young daughter (played by Sadie Heim and Kk Heim. Yes twins, and no, Kk is not her official real name). Why divorce? Well, the love is gone. And Carol might have had “a thing” with the godmother, Abby (Sarah Paulson), Carol’s childhood friend. Yes, a thing means a romantic relationship, when she was already married, to a woman.

Well, due to reasons, Carol and Therese become friends, Therese never really knowing she could find a woman desirable. But this was set 65 years ago and that would not fly. In fact, it is very bad news for Carol’s divorce, as her husband is using her past moral indiscretions as reasons to file for full custody of their daughter, not joint. This wedge is meant to bring her back into the fold, but Carol would rather flee the North east to be away from him, to be herself, until the trial where hopefully it would all just be heresay. But she wants Therese to go with her. Travel west, see the country side. Enjoy each others company. You know. Regular road trip stuff.

Some other guys are in the movie, but they aren’t lesbians, so fuck them. John Magaro, Cory Michael Smith, and Nik Pajic.

I would be appalled as well dancing with Chandler.
You just know he is constantly whispering “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose” in her ear.

Carol was intricate, intimate, and insanely detailed [Editor’s Note: Yes, that was already covered by intricate.] Carol seems like the type of film that must be based on real events, with the actresses involved recreating the scenes word for word, smile for smile, as it happened in real life. From the first frame, you will begin to feel that old timey movie atmosphere wash over you. It feels like a film that literally came out of the 1950’s, but with the cameras used and credit style. Of course my own viewings of 1950’s cinema is excruciatingly low, so I am not a complete authority on that. But damn it, it still made me feel that way.

Since my rating is already obvious, my only real complaint about this film is that it took me quite a long time to get really involved with it. The beginning is slow, mostly the scenes of Therese without Carol where she is hanging out with her boyfriend and his friends. Yes it is important to establish her life outside of the future romance and not make her a love sick puppy, but they dragged on. Potentially on purpose, to show the boredom that had crept into her life.

But the scenes between Carol and Therese? Everything was golden. Their eyes, their body language, their tones. Fuck, I could stare at Rooney Mara starring at Cate Blanchett all day. It was that real. These two women were complete power houses in their own right. I can see them both being nominated for Best Actress for the Oscars as well, not just Blanchett for playing the titular role.

Carol will probably be in the running for Best Director as well. I think this is a heavy category this year, with Spotlight and The Revenant, but Todd Haynes completely dominated this film. Everything was on spot and meticulously planned. He is the type of guy who has great attention to detail, but isn’t insane about it like Wes Anderson.

Finally, if I wanted to be vague, I could describe this film as “Cate Blanchett has a mid life crisis, leaves her husband, and travels west” and you might think I was talking about Blue Jasmine. What’s that? Blanchett won Best Actress for that film? You don’t say.

When I first heard about people talking about this hip new film named Tangerine, my first thought was “Oh yeah, that foreign one!”

You remember the 2015 Academy Awards right? Well, one of the films I never saw and didn’t win was named Tangerines. I didn’t know what it was about, but clearly it must be the hip new movie they were all hyped on. But then I was wrong. Yes, within a year, there was a foreign film named Tangerines and an American filmed named Tangerine. Both nominated for awards. And of course, the plots have nothing to do with one another. Or tangerines for all I fucking know.

Silly me. Getting confused over something so fucking weird.

Fun fact! This movie was filmed on three iPhone 5S smartphones! I had to added the word smartphone, because I didn’t know how to pluralize “5S”.

If I made an attempt, people would argue and debate it for decades.

The story is actually about Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez), who yes, is a female transsexual prostitute. She just got out of jail, 28 days, for a posession charge. She is happy to be back on the streets, and more excited to see Chester (James Ransone), her pimp. She is in an exclusive relationship with him, outside of the hooking.

But according to her best friend, Alexandra (Mya Taylor), Chester has been sleeping around with another woman! Not only that, but a white woman. A “REAL” woman. Some Dinah (Mickey O’Hagan) chick.

Fuck that. Sin-Dee went to jail for Chester. And he couldn’t wait four weeks. What a prick. So she goes on a campaign across LA to find Dinah and find Chester to confront them to see what the heck is their issue.

Also we have the story of Razmik (Karren Karagulian). He is an Armenian taxi cab driver, and he has a thing for prostitutes, including Sin-Dee. He loves her so much, he would leave his own Christmas Eve family dinner to find her to get his fix on. Also featuring Alla Tumanian and Luiza Nersisyan as his family.

Spoilers: She finds the girl and treats her badly.

Tangerine was an in your face, realistic movie. Yes boobs and yes penis. Yes language and yes uncomfortable situations. Yes very argumentative people and constant bickering. When I say realistic, I of course only mean that everything seems natural and with the addition of drugs, I can see all of this happening in real life at some point. Not realistic in the sense that I actually know anything about this stuff. It is all foreign to me.

The most surprising aspect of this movie is that James Ransone was in it. He isn’t the most famous actor by any means, but damn it, he was in Sinister and the star of Sinister 2. Everyone else in this movie are unknowns and first time movie people.

I thought the chemistry between all of the actors was pretty strong, including our two leads who knew each other in real life (I think).

Despite all of this, Tangerine is a movie I can never see watching again. It was a fine art piece, but mixed on the entertainment. The acting was decent, but I can’t imagine these people playing any other role with the same passion.

Either way, it is nominated for Best Picture, Actress, and Supporting Actress for the Spirit Awards, so you should definitely check it out on your own on Netflix. Make sure the kiddos aren’t around though.

Did you know that being a movie reviewer could be quite hard? It is. Sure, you think it is just putting on a movie and watching it. But to be the very best (like no one ever was) you have to watch them all. The good. The bad. The grotesque.

I am happy to say that in a little over 4 years, I am now reviewing my 1500th movie. That is right. A Milestone Review. 23 months ago, almost exactly was when I reviewed my biggest milestone, my 1000th review. That was of course The Human Centipede.

I tell the story of why it took so long, and honestly, the delay for The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) is similar. I don’t want to watch this. I know I had to someday. Might as well save it for a special occasion. And hey, in 500 more reviews I think you know what we will get for that review.

I tried to make sure the pictures weren’t completely inappropriate. Only one of them kind of is.

Or for some of you, all of these are inappropriate.

In this sequel, The Human Centipede is just a movie. That means the sequel is set “in the real world” instead of the world of fiction. And in the real world, things are much more nasty.

Our star (?) is a man named Martin (Laurence R. Harvey). Martin, as you can imagine, has a lot of problems. He was sexually abused as a kid by his dad, and now his mom (Vivien Bridson) hates him for getting him locked up. He is over weight, sees a shitty psychiatrist (Bill Hutchens), has his own pet centipede, and of course, is obsessed with The Human Centipede.

I think it is in black and white for the censors to allow the movie to exist.

His only responsibility is a security guard job where he sits in a booth and stares at video of people in a parking deck. Yes, the parking deck security guard is the lowest form of security guard, but it is necessary. He also ends up watching the movie over and over. He might get off on it. And you know my might is not even a guess. Some sick shit happens in that booth.

But not as sick as his book, that he is writing. He is watching the movie constantly to learn from it. He wants to make his own human centipede. But not with only 3 shitty people. No. He wants 12.

He is anti-social though. He doesn’t even know 12 people. He needs strangers.

The other issue with Martin is that he is not a trained surgeon. He doesn’t know how to operate on people, to attach them to one another or anything. Well, not in a real science or sanitary way.

He has to use basic tools. Even if he did know how to do it the right way, it would take so much time to make the 11 connections that most likely parts of the centipede would be dead before he could even finish. And that would be sad and awkward. More sad and awkward than the human centipede in general.

I don’t think playing the “what is more awkward” game makes a lot of sense in this movie.

Good news! He is also obsessed with the real life actors who played in the movie! Like Ashlynn Yennie, our starlet who survived the first film. Well, this sneaky guy Martin somehow pretends to also be a casting studio. He offers all three members of the centipede to audition for the new “Tarantino movie”. Unfortunately, Yennie’s agent is the only one to take up the offer and she shows up all happy. But now the “Real life” Yennie gets to be part of a centipede as well.

Some nice layers to this movie. You can tell they had the best writers working on it all.

This is all Martin. CGI free and ready to party.

Who are our lucky victims? Well they are played by Emma Lock, Maddi Black, Kandice Caine, Dominic Borrelli, Lucas Hansen, Lee Nicholas Harris, Dan Burman, Daniel Jude Gennis, and Georgia Goodrick,

Some of these people are dicks. Some are just party chicks. Some were prostitutes and cab drivers. Some are noble family people. But all of them are people who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and Martin took the first people he could get his hands on. Even if they had a kid in the back seat.

Martin knows party tricks as well!

I feel like I am stalling. I totally am. Dude hits everyone over the head with a crowbar. All the time. Apparently that knocks them out. This is the most unrealistic part of the movie. There should be a lot more dead people.

Anyways. Martin flips his shit. His mom wants him dead for the reasons listed above. She angers their skinhead neighbors and tells them it was his idea, just so they can rough him up and kick his ass. Eventually he retaliates against her and obvious shit happens. This causes him to finally go through with his plan to put the 12 humans together.

Warning, the next photo is my one “graphic” photo. But the calmest one I could find. I needed one.

AHHH CENTIPEDES SO GROSS.

Anyways, he puts them together. Some people die before he can attach them, so he doesn’t get to put all 12 together. That is a shame.

He gets to have his centipede though and it gets him super excited. VERY EXCITED. If you graphically understand my meaning. It is very bad for the last person in line, that is for sure. And I will say it was one of the two most disturbing things about this movie.

Unfortunately, it was followed up immediately after by an even more disturbing scene. One that made no sense and literally had me going “WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK” out loud, despite watching it alone.

Needless to say, after these two terrible scenes, people in the centipede start to fight back. One guy in particular breaks his head free from its confines, breaking the centipede in half. This, along with other events and voice mails, makes Martin very upset. He snaps even more than he did before and well, a lot of people then start to die. Mercy killing really at that point.

Yay gross shit. Literally.

You don’t want to know you don’t want to know you don’t want to know.

Normally I try to keep these milestone reviews extra funny and extra spoiler-y. No details needs to be ignored.

I kind of failed on both points with this big one. It is hard to make great jokes when you are so appalled. It is hard to spoil the worst things when you want to scrape them from your brain, not type out descriptions making it more real.

The first film may have tried to make a creepy horror along with a few gross scenes. This one went full on yuckville. It only wanted to make disturbing scenes. Scenes that would ban it from a few countries. Scenes that would make you want to turn it off.

When I watched The Green Inferno, I paused it frequently due to some very graphic scenes because I couldn’t take it. However, this time I never paused the movie. I just needed it to get over with and didn’t want a pause to make the overall experience that much longer.

This film is so nasty though and that is all I can talk about. It really shouldn’t have been made. Yes, it accomplished its goal. But at what cost, film makers? Your director was so preoccupied with whether or not he could, he didn’t stop to think if he should.

Don’t watch this movie. And I have to watch the third one. I don’t know if it is worse, I just know the centipede is longer and it is a prison or something.

I mentioned just yesterday that I watched Mississippi Grind solely for the fact that it was nominated for an award. There are several other films nominated for Spirit Awards that I could have watched right away, and I picked Youth.

No, it wasn’t nominated for a Spirit Award. But it might be nominated for an Oscar. In some form or another. I don’t want to be too obvious with my movie choices, and Youth seemed like a nice out of no where film that no one would ever expect me to watch.

“I’m very very sneaky sirs.”

Youth, of course, stars two old people. Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) is supposed to be a baller as a fuck music composer. He is famous and people love his songs and work. But you know, he is old. So he is on at a resort in the Alps with his good buddy, a filmmaker, Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel). Mick is doing research for his next movie, which he believes will be his greatest work yet. He just has to figure out the ending.

Their vacation starts to get weird when an emissary of the Queen (Alex Macqueen), yes, the British one, visits Fred hoping he will conduct a symphony in honor of a big birthday celebration. Well, Fred, despite being his proper British self, says no. Huh. Rarely do people say no to the queen.

It should be noted that these two friends are also related now through marriage. Fred’s daughter (Rachel Weisz) married Mick’s son (Ed Stoppard). Except now Mick is leaving her for a pop star (Paloma Faith, apparently a real pop star?) for very shallow reasons.

There are other big names at this fancy as fuck resort. There is Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano) an actor who is well known for playing a robot, the most recent Miss Universe (Madalina Diana Ghenea), and even a fat…football player…dude. Or something. That one was weird.

Either way. Shit happens at the resort. Bad and good things. Also Jane Fonda.

And all the pictures for this film make them look really pervy.

Youth is directed by Paolo Sorrentino, a man who I know close to nothing about. He is Italian and mostly has Italian films, but his most recent one before Youth was The Great Beauty, which was also acclaimed and loved. But in all honesty, I don’t remember anything about it. At least the last two films (The only ones in English) seem to be about rich people living fancy lives, but you know, having issues.

The best part of Youth is the cinematography. The movie was shot on site of an actual “You Will Never Be Rich Enough To Go Here” resort, and it is probably better looking than you can imagine. Imaginative shots, montages, colors, almost every shot is wonderful. Youth is rated R for its Graphic Nudity, and by that, naked people everywhere. As it is the only way to stay at a resort.

Beautiful film, decent acting, and hard for me to relate to. I am probably wrong, but I guess the title refers to older people trying to reclaim their youth and show they aren’t old. They are making movies. They are enjoying life and the beautiful women around them. But at some point they have to realize that they are old, life is no longer as grand as it used to be, and they sometimes have to make difficult choices.

It is easy to get lost in this film and at points, I felt it was just too intellectual for me. Some of the imagery was out there and I kept losing track of what the film was even about. Naked people. Oh yes, it is about naked people.