Author: Admin

Hooray another franchise is over! After Harry Potter, I am grateful book series are still afraid to break from the trilogy format. Or else we’d get these yearly movies that drive up the box office and everyone freaks out about and so on.

You know, like Marvel movies. Or the upcoming Star Wars films. One a year. Fuck.

Of course, this time it is The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2. The studios will say over and over again it is because the last story needs all that time to tell the story, but it is just for money grabbing purposes. It is putting a pause in the plot, usually meaning neither half are a complete film and overdrawn.

Part 1 was the worst film of the franchise. It had about 30 minutes of plot spread out over two hours. And because of that, Part 2 is almost definitely going to suffer for similar reasons. Even if Part 2 is great, the fact that Part 1 exists and is bad, instead of one coherent picture, means both are weaker than they should be. Happened with the final two Twilights, happened with the final two Harry Potters, and will probably happen again here.

You know, Katniss, this is the last time I might get to dress you.” – Creepy Effie

Katniss Katniss Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence). Katniss found herself choked up over the fact that they saved Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) from the Capital, her emotions all over the place. She knows one thing now. She will help Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and the rebels in any way she knows how. The Capital and President Snow (Donald Sutherland) must fall! And die!

Got it? Good. I’m done with that point of view. Lets change it up.

My man, Finnick Odair (Sam Claflin) is still a bad ass mother fucker, cool spear trident weapon thing. No one can take him one on one. Except one girl. That’s right, Finnick is getting married. They will have ginger babies. Apparently they are all Irish, and Irish is a thing in this world, because their wedding has Irish violin music and jigs and shit. But that won’t stop him from putting his life on the line to take down the bad guys, YEAH!

Okay okay one more. Caesar Flickerman (StanleY Tucci) is the best host in all of the districts. He has flair, hair, and style. Unfortunately in this movie, he only has one scene as a shitty news anchor person. We don’t delve more into his life. Sad news.

Alright, everyone else in this movie are played by the same people you have seen before. Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Willow Shields, Elizabeth Banks, Mahershala Ali, Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright, Patina Miller, and of course, Elden Henson as the best video camera man in the world. Formally best at shooting the puck really hard.

“What are you going to do, just walk up to the door stop and kill him?”

I felt a bit silly typing up the plot outline for this film, as you may have guessed. They are finally doing that fight thing. No longer is this about the hunger games, it is about a revolution, damn it. They should really assume the viewers are smarter and just call it Mockingjay without THG.

Part 2 ended up being a lot better than Part 1, but not as good as the first movie or Catching Fire. The ending wasn’t full of epic moments, but just a slow fuse that slowly ran out of steam. And then a couple more scenes, and an epilogue. Hell, the ending was very confusing just in terms of time. I can’t be more specific without bigger spoilers, but the events being shown and that were talked shouldn’t have overlapped as such.

There were some decent action scenes in the middle though. The best was the sewer scene, although it was also confusing. Dark places means they don’t have to make coherent action, which might just be an allusion to the first film where they just changed the camera angles a lot and shook the camera. They threw in zombies out of no where, which is I guess the cool thing to do in a teen book franchises (see Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials). I am sure technically they are not zombies, but they came out of no where and never were really explained, so that is all I can really call them.

When I think back on the Hunger Games franchise in the future, I will just think about the first two movies. As long as you accept that Catching Fire ends with a crappy cliff hanger and doesn’t resolve anything, it will save you from the extremely mediocre two film filler after the fact. With only a handful amount of Finnick scenes to get you by.

2015 may be the year of documentaries about celebrities. I feel a bit bad that so many of mine for this year are about a single person, dead or alive. I mean, last week I did Amy. And I still have that Kurt Cobain one to do.

But today I talk about Brand: A Second Coming, about Russell Brand, a guy who is definitely still alive and kicking. Shit he kicks a lot.

This is about a documentary about how Brand came into fame, how he reached the top, how he fell, and whatever the fuck he is doing now. He is an actor, a stand up comic, sometimes a singer, and a political activist.

What? You only know him from Get Him To The Greek, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or Arthur? Well, where have you been? Someplace that isn’t England? Oh, that makes sense.

If you aren’t in England, you might never come across this guy. Or the Queen. Or the ghost of Winston Churchill.

Technically, part of this documentary is also showcasing Brand’s stand up tour, The Messiah Complex. You know, where he compares himself to Jesus is vulgar and funny ways. But only a few jokes/stories. Really, I think the main point of this review is to show how he went from acting celebrity, to political…activist…humorist…political something that he is today. Maybe consider him like Jon Stewart. But his show isn’t a big one on Comedy Central, it is instead a YouTube channel called The Trews (if the news had truth I think), where he went over how the news was reported the previous day, showing biases, lies, or whatever.

It is actually a really ambitious project and had actually gained me a lot of respect for him. All I knew about his politics was from that one Morning Joe clip that blew up on the internet a year or so ago. It is actually quite entertaining and shows he is smarter than some of his characters let him put on.

And hey, it was also interesting to see his side of the Katy Perry divorce story, as I only really heard about the why from Katy Perry: Part Of Me. How often do divorced couples each get their own documentary? Outside of presidents and their wives.

Overall, I’d call Brand: A Second Coming as merely interesting. It feels like it is going all over the place early on, and I did find myself wondering why he even had a documentary at this point in his career. Good for people who love Brand already, that is for sure. Probably the most profound sentence in any review I’ve written right there.

I apologize. I have been doing mostly main stream movies lately. My only weird outlet has been in terms of documentaries, which also have been pretty standard lately.

But no, I need to take time every once in awhile to do something weird. Those indie and low budget movies you haven’t heard about. Which is why I picked Circle today. I heard about it a few weeks ago, and since I could remember the title, knew it was weird, and it was short (hey, I have time crunches some times), it was the perfect movie to review.

Fifty people. Strangers (mostly). They find themselves in a two tiered circle. You can visually see it above. They are each standing in their own red circle. If they try to step off, an alarm goes off. If they touch someone else, an alarm goes off. And in the middle of the circle is a mysterious sphere.

There is a African American man (Coley Speaks). A husband (Matt Corboy) and a wife (Julie Benz). A rich man (Daniel Lench), a pastor (Kurt Long), and a Bruce (David Reivers).

Every few minutes a deep thumping sound occurs from the center, and sure enough, a lightning beam shoots out of it and kills one of our fifty participants. Fuck. Don’t worry, you won’t get piles of bodies, they get whisked away, somewhat magically into the darkness around the room, never to be seen again. Turns out if you leave your circle or touch people after the warning, you too get shot and killed. Definitely a rough life.

There is a bearded man (Kaiwi Lyman). There is the first man that talks (Kevin Sheridan), and a silent man (Muneer Katchi). There is a college kid (Carter Jenkins), an atheist (Rene Heger) and an Eric (Michael Nardelli).

Oh see those arrows? Turns out if they turn their hands, the arrows light up around the room and only they can see their arrow. Turns out they get to vote on who is the next to get killed every time the thumping starts. Now things get interested. Who do they decide to kill? What happens when there is a tie? Does the last person alive get to leave? What if there are two people left, do they tie and both die? Fuck.

There is a soldier (Jordi Vilasuso), an Asian kid (Lawrence Kao) and a lawyer (Michael McLafferty). There is a pretty girl (Sara Sanderson), a tattooed man (Cesar Garcia) and a lesbian (Mercy Malick).

There is a cancer survivor (Lisa Pelikan), a one handed man (Zachary James Rukavina), a pregnant woman (Allegra Masters) and an 11 year old girl (Molly Jackson).

I do love me some psychological thrillers. I also love me some movies that take place for the most part in one room. I also love me some dialogue based movies. Needless to say, this movie has them all. An interesting premise, a constant guessing game who is going to die, and lots of arguing. Everyone is talking to save themselves, but some people get caught up in the moment. You can see several games and plans characters have to ensure their own survival, and it is wonderful. I also definitely enjoyed the ending.

There is one bad thing, technically. The acting. There is a lot of people involved, so it is all over the place. A lot of it is kind of shit. But I forgave it for the nice concept and story.

Honestly not much more I can say about this one. Under 90 minutes, on Netflix, and a nice way to spend the evening. Unless you aren’t into slightly weird shit.

The 2010 Chilean mining accident is a wonderful topic for a movie. I am surprised it took them five years in fact.

It was a national event, it lasted months, it involved dozens of people (33 to be exact), and it had a happy ending.

Imagine if they opened the hole and it was a few guys surrounded by corpses. That’d be terrifying. That would be a different sort of movie, not at all uplifting.

So I am going into The 33 with optimism. I hope they get buried within like, the first 10 minutes too. Let them build up that scare factor just a bit.

Besides, the last movie I saw set in Chile that involved a huge disaster and trying to survive was Aftershock. That wasn’t uplifting, well, besides the tectonic plates.

Seeing all those sweaty food deprived bodies could also be considered uplifting.

12,000 miners die every year. That is a big number. But, at least 9 million kids under 5 die every year, and that is only one portion of minors. So it is much more dangerous to be a minor than a miner. I assume.

Well, in this case, the miners were going down on a normal day, just to get the copper and gold. They use relatively small crews, I guess to not upset the mountain too much with the drills and other equipment. This particular mountain has been mined heavily and they are very deep into it. Mario Sepúlveda (Antonio Banderas) needs some extra money, so he is working too, despite not originally on the schedule. And guess what? Not long after they are down there and working, the mountain begins to move. Now, a super rock is blocking their only exit and they are trapped in a relatively small area. They have a hall way or two, and thankfully they are in The Refuge, a room with some food and supplies. But still, it is quite dangerous and scary down there.

The food supplies are not plentiful. The company lied about a few safety measures as well, making escape impossible. And the company isn’t even going to do anything about it! They are a private company, so they are doing the bare minimum, but they aren’t even letting the friends and family members enter the area, as they are blocked off by gates and people with guns.

Thankfully, María Segovia (Juliette Binoche) is not having any of their shit. She is the sister of one of the miners and she basically helps frenzy them into a riot, creating pressure on the government and company to attempt the rescue mission. This brings the Minister of Mining, Laurence Golborne (Rodrigo Santoro) down to the scene. He is moved by everyone’s committment and he promises to do everything he can to rescue the miners, no matter the cost.

Sure they only have 3 days of food for 3 people and it would take at least a week to get a small hole somewhere into their area. And they also have no idea how to get to the right spot, due to the density of the stone being unknown and their drills will curve. But damn it, they gotta try, right?

Obviously with so many minors, we have a huge cast. But most of the minors have no talking roles. But the people they do showcase have families worried about them or other unusual characteristics. And a lot of people helping, including Bob Gunton playing President Piñera. These people are played by Mario Casas, Juan Pablo Raba, Oscar Nuñez, Tenoch Huerta, Marco Treviño, Jacob Vargas, Lou Diamond Phillips, James Brolin, Adriana Barraza, Kate del Castillo, Elizabeth De Razzo, Cote de Pablo, and Gabriel Byrne.

Count them. They don’t even try to make the number of characters accurate.

Did I cry? Of course I cried. They had beautiful tense moments of rescue. They had people who hadn’t seen each other for 69 days, who had assumed their loved ones died, reconnecting. Someone had a baby girl, and you know how they affect me. But just because I cried doesn’t mean it is an excellent film.

First of all, when your title is The 33 and it is a well known fact that there are 33 people, you should probably have all the many extras around who don’t talk when the whole group is together. That dinner scene is unacceptable. Didn’t even have people standing to the side having their own conversation.

Second of all, there is geology in this movie. Not a lot, technically. But there was the big “eureka” moment with how they would get the drill to the correct area. And it was terrible. I cannot believe that is how it really happened, because it would mean all of the drilling crews were inept.

But there were some nice moments of course. Banderas gives an excellent speech or two that really get me going. The scene where they imagined food was super weird. And they really felt like coworkers and a family by the end.

Slightly inspirational without shoving it in your face, and a nice tail. Just those inaccuracies.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was one of the coolest and scariest things I ever heard about, when I learned about it as a freshman in college. I don’t even remember in what class it was brought up, but the real life experiment was so fascinating I remember running home to wiki all I could about it. After all, doing my own research outside of Wikipedia seemed silly.

Hearing about it lead to hearing about all the creepy things people ended up doing in the name of psychology, before jerky standards were set in place. So now things like TSPE cannot take place for scientific knowledge, because you know, humans and shit. So instead of crazier and more ridiculous experiments, this is one of the top tier ones and I guess it will stay that way.

And although they can’t recreate this one for science, they sure can recreate it for film and TV. They did it in season 3 of Veronica Mars, they had that movie five years ago called The Experiment, and more!

But now, this film is about the entire enchilada. Nut just the test itself. But also the people behind it and what occurred before and after, for realsies, in Stanford.

How do you know someone went to Stanford? Don’t worry, they will probably …err, not talk about this.

In 1971, hair was everywhere and government oversight was only a legend. The 60’s were dead, so it was time to get serious. Dr. Philip Zimbardo (Billy Crudup) was a professor who wanted to simulate a prison in their own building. They would do it over the summer when not many students were around and offer to pay people $15 a day to participate in a two week experiment. After extensive interviews to make sure people weren’t crazy, they narrowed down the group of men and used a coin flip to determine who would be the prisoner and who would be the guards.

Zimbardo and his crew (Gaius Charles, Olivia Thirlby, and more), along with Jesse Fletcher (Nelsan Ellis), a guy he knew who went to prison to help “legitimize” the experiment, would monitor the halls 24/7. The men are kept to a strict contract, where the guards are in charge, the prisoners have very few rights, and there is to be no physical violence of any sort.

So the prisoners get brought in my volunteer police to arrest them at their homes to make it feel a bit real. They have to get naked, cleaned, and put into prison uniforms (which are closer to dresses to help break them down), and put into their cells. The guards try to break their humanity right away in order to maintain order and make it feel a bit more serious. The prisoners are referred to as their numbers not their names. They don’t get a lot of sleep. They are forced into exercise and other mental punishments, since they can’t just get beaten down.

And the prisoners break. They break quickly. Mentally and physically. It becomes quickly a torture job, as suddenly, the people who identify as guards feel they have to be mean and the prisoners feel like they are worthless.

And of course, even more dramatic and scary shit.

Some of the guards are played by Nicholas Braun, Moises Arias, and Michael Angarano, who plays the “worst” guard and calls himself John Wayne. He knows how to push buttons.

A lot more of the prisoners matter, and they are sort of led by Ezra Miller and Tye Sheridan. Other prisoners who play big roles include Johnny Simmons, Logan Miller, Ki Hong Lee, and Thomas Mann who joins later to fill in a spot after a prisoner has to leave.

Everything about this movie is real. Including the facial hair.

Want to see a bunch of male youths devolve into their primal forms and do bad things, but not on an island? Then this movie might be for you!

The filmmakers did an excellent job of really driving home the moments when people began to break under pressure. It is one thing to know that the prisoners were referred to as numbers, constantly having their number drilled into their head, and long amounts of time spent sounding off their number until the guards were satisfied. But it is another thing to see it happen. These, for lack of a better word, mental torture scenes are long, loud, and constant. Major props to everyone involved for making me feel sick to my stomach that things like this could have even happened.

From the prisoners, over half of the prison cast seemed to play an important role. There might have been 2-3 people who were just also there, but every single one of them had a personality that presumably matched reality and a lot of them got focus. We were able to see almost every single one of them break and lose any sense of hope. Seeing that is disgusting, but by golly, is it some fine acting.

For the most part, the guards were just lead by Angarano’s fine acting. Angarano has to play a person playing a role, not just some mean dude. It is sadistic and cruel, but surprisingly not physical. No, other guards devolve into physicality. He is just a mind fucker.

This can be a hard watch, but a good one if you want to learn some crazy shit about human nature, while also watching a lot of young new talented actors in the same film.

I love journalism movies. You may not know it, but I used to be a journalist. Yes, sure, 99% of my articles were reviews for a few papers, but damn it, I worked in the newsroom, I discussed articles occasionally, and I wrote at least one article on my own about a non movie thing.

But you know what is even sexier than journalism? Investigative journalism! You know, the journalism that requires investigations! Weeks to months to potentially years of digging around, looking for scoops, talking to witnesses, etc. That is like modern detective work, but where the pay is shit and you are only working for the greater good (or whatever).

Movies like All The President’s Men and Shattered Glass are examples of interesting or even great films that go through the real life process. Maybe some dramatization, but damn it, the facts are there! Spotlight is a new film, also about true events, and about the team that brought them to the public.

You can tell they are a real newspaper because they are actually working and not throwing footballs around.

The year is 2001! Don’t worry, September hasn’t happened yet. It is just summer time. You can tell it is a different time and place by the giant ass AOL billboard in the film. In Boston, life is pretty damn normal. People work, people go to church, people get drunk, eyyyyy Bawston. The Boston Globe is like a lot of other papers, they are worried about the internet taking away a lot of their jobs and trying to change things up. So they bring in this single, Jewish guy from Miami, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber). He is not a Bostonian, however a lot of the paper happens to be from the area. This really gives them a sense of purpose and makes them think they are helping their community, so they are worried about a non Catholic outsider coming in and doing bad things.

And guess what he wants to do? He wants to…make sure the paper matters for the community. Oh okay, that sounds good. But he wants to also do some follow ups on a story he read about. Some priest had apparently been molesting kids for years, but the paper only ran a couple articles on him. He wants follow up and research. So he puts the Spotlight crew on it. A four person team who does the longer projects on it. Lead by Walter ‘Robby’ Robinson (Michael Keaton) who has been with the paper forever, he also has on his team Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James).

But can they really do that? Can they (what most people would see it as) wage war on the church? They all grew up Catholic and have that culture ingrained in their subconscious? Could it really be a bigger issue and something everyone just turned a blind eye towards?

Also featuring James Sheridan, Billy Crudup, Neal Huff, John Slattery, and Stanley Tucci.

This was definitely not a real scene from the film, but boy is it convenient to showcase the actors.

When the credits began to role, I had the biggest investigative journalism movie boner ever. That shouldn’t sound graphic or surprising, because that is an oddly specific thing to say and thus doesn’t mean a lot.

I wanted to go out, quit my job (hah!) and become a journalist again to save the world from bad people. I wanted to call strangers and find out information. I wanted to jostle notes on a small pad of paper while people talked. Oh okay, I technically already do that during movies, but I want to be able to do it when I can also see the paper well and not in a dark room.

Spotlight is a unique story where everyone knows how it will end, but the journey is so fascinating that it still can keep the tense moments. Sure, we know the article gets published, but you can still let out a small fist bump when everything finally comes together, happy that justice and journalism finally win despite the enormous pressures to fail. This is some of the best acting I’ve seen from Ruffalo, Keaton, and Schreiber. Maybe second best for all three. I think they are better in Infinitely Polar Bear, Birdman, and Goon, respectfully.

If there is any weak point in this film, it has to be Slattery. His character just felt like he was a cartoon, being a weird sometimes foil, sometimes not, maybe bad guy, maybe not. It was frustrating with little to no payout.

But outside of that, go see Spotlight, go see some sexy reporting, and damn it, support your local paper.

Ha ha ha! A girl who sang about not wanting to go to rehab went to rehab! Ha ha ha!

Now that this obvious and shit joke is over with, we can talk about Amy. Amy Winehouse was a singer and upcoming British star. She had a soulful voice, very jazzy, and wrote her own songs. I cared absolutely nothing about her.

I knew she had a song Rehab and I knew she had a song Valerie. Valerie might have been a cover. I only knew about those songs, really, because Glee did them on their show before she died. Glee got really bad real quick, but by golly, it kept me up to date with the hip new music. Speaking of Rehab, what in the hell is the deal with that song? I don’t get it. I don’t get why people like it or what is the point of the song. But that is my silly rant.

The point is, I was a bit reluctant to watch the Amy documentary because I didn’t really enjoy her as a musician and she was just “another young artist who died from drugs early.” That quote was definitely too long. In all honesty, it is the same reason I haven’t seen Cobain: Montage of Heck yet. And I like some Nirvana songs. It is just a year with a lot of musician bios, documentary or otherwise.

I don’t care for Amy Winehouse, but I enjoyed this documentary.

Fun punny joke about one of her famous song lyrics that I totally know!

Her friends knew Amy would be a big success, and I guess that is why there is so much footage of her when she was early in her career. And honestly, the only reason to watch it is to learn about her before her big success, see how she was when she was a normal person before the drugs. All of this footage is a raw look on her life and it is very endearing.

This documentary can help you relate to Amy as a person, realize she is someone who might not have wanted all the success and fame. She wanted to write songs and her feelings and that was it. She wanted to love her boyfriend and friends.

You know, and more vague descriptions that probably sound like all real people.

Here is the thing. She was living a very interesting life. And seeing this side of anyone will be quite interesting. So give it a gander. See her reactions to things. And learn about her way more than you know about your own loved ones.

Writing a review without pictures would be like talking about Mark Ruffalo and not making a Hulk reference. You can’t do it.

Hulk had two personalities, regular, and rage. Mark Ruffalo in real life probably also has two personalities, something lame like celebrity and normal.

And in Infinitely Polar Bear? Well, I am not sure of the actual number, but they are all on his sleeve, all at the same time.

Fuck, he is already halfway into full on Hulk mode already. THE REVIEW HASN’T EVEN BEGUN RUFFALO.

Cameron (Mark Ruffalo) and Maggie (Zoe Saldana) had a picture perfect free spirited life. Except Cameron was found out to be Bipolar. It made a lot of sense, but they didn’t let that get in the way. They had two wonderful kids, Amelia (Imogene Wolodarsky) and Faith (Ashley Aufderheide). They were loving and awesome.

But eventually, Maggie couldn’t take it anymore. Cameron was getting too out there, too unsettled and she had to separate with the kids to be away from him. Cameron got put into a mental health hospital to get his life back on track. And now? It is awhile later. Cameron wants to visit and be with his kids and be with his wife, but she can’t allow it. The problem is they are very poor. She had been lying about their house location to get them into a good school, but after that has been “corrected” they find themselves in bad housing and going to a shitty school. So Maggie wants to get an MBA to make their life better.

The problem is that she’d have to go to NYC to do it because she can stay at a friend’s apartment for free. So she has to reconnect with Cameron. You know, so he can be a full time dad, watching them every day of the week for a year and a half on his own. Sure she’d visit on some weekends, but for the most part, he will have to be a responsible individual. And hey, after a year and a half, she will move back and maybe they can all work things out and be a wonderful family that isn’t on the poverty line.

Sure, why not, he can be responsible for other lives. On his own. To make things weirder, Cameron is actually part of a really rich family. It is just all in a trust owned by his Grandma (Beth Dixon) who gives away money from it, sure, but she is very stingy about it. So they get to be poor, while his family own mansions.

Strangely enough, if he transforms in the car, the car doesn’t lose any value.

Ruffalo was the emotional equivalent of a typhoon in this picture. Yes, I could have just made another Hulk reference but that would be lazy. He was all over the place, always energetic and hyper. Just sometimes he was loving life, sometimes he was yelling curses at little kids. Good family fun.

I generally don’t like learning about mental disorders from films, as they tend to over exaggerate the disease and show the most extreme versions. I always assumed being bipolar just meant someone changed from happiness to sadness real quick like. I was also turned off by the film title, it was weird and nonsensical but it makes a bit more sense now. Ruffalo isn’t bipolar. That is only two! He is infinitely polar. And a bear. Maybe they made that joke in the film and I missed it.

I should talk more about Ruffalo. He fucking wrecked this role. He smashed it. Argh I can’t stop. The references, it makes me so mad! Watching Ruffalo was a delight though. Every scene had a sense of charm and love around it, like they were a real, fucked up family.

A fucked up family. Like one that would introduce Gamma rays to their son, accident or otherwise. Damn it. Just watch the movie.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {DVD}.

Dun dun dunnnnn. Dun DUN DUNNNNNNN. That is my impression of the main Rocky theme, you’re welcome.

I first saw Rocky about 5 or 6 years ago. I was pretty late to the game. But I liked it for what it was. I didn’t see any of the other films until this summer, in preparation for Creed. And since I never had to review any of those films for the site, here are reviews of 2-6.

Rocky II was hilarious, because half of the movie was Sylvester Stallone rambling about whatever comes to his head. He clearly is showing he has severe brain damage and Adrian apparently thinks his mental handicap is cute.

Rocky III gave us Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. It was okay, gave us the best montage fun with Apollo and Rocky though.

Rocky IV was my most quoted film, while I had only seen the fight between Creed and the Russian. It had a fantastic ending, where Rocky single-handedly defeated Communism and Robot Boxers.

Rocky V was steaming shit. What a terrible movie. Why the fuck was this made?

Rocky Balboa was 16 years after Rocky V, a sadder tale about an old man coming out of retirement to prove he wasn’t a pushover. And well, I honestly didn’t like it at all. Was a very different tone and was night time half the film, and just mehhhh. What a waste.

Kind like my thoughts when I saw that MJB was starring in the new Fantastic Four. What a waste.

And now there is Creed. They might have called it Rocky VII, but that one if it ever exists will have to be called Adrian’s Revenge.

Turns out Apollo wasn’t faithful. He had an affair out of wedlock and Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) was born. However, he wasn’t born until after Apollo died in the ring, so he never had a chance to meet his father. His mother died when he was young, so he was passed around the foster care and juvie system, always getting into fights, until about 10 or 11. That is when Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad) found him. She, somehow, found out about the affair and the kid, and since she heard the news, she wanted to adopt him so he can learn about his father and grow up in the proper lifestyle.

Now years later, Adonis is fighting in Tijuana, Mexico, trying to be a boxer like his dad, but in secret. Fuck real jobs, real responsibilities. He just wants to punch people in the face.

He wants to punch people so badly, but no one will give him a chance in LA. So he heads to Philadelphia. He goes to see Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone). Rocky is old, managing a restaurant, with no real family to worry about. He doesn’t want to. But he realizes that he might be the only real father figure that Adonis will ever have.

Even better, he doesn’t want people to know he is Creed’s son. He wants to become a fighter on his own, not by legacy. That’s good news. Fuck it. Let’s train the kid.

Oh and Adonis of course meets a lady. Bianca (Tessa Thompson), a soulful musician who is also slowly losing her hearing.

Also featuring Ritchie Coster, Tony Bellew, Graham McTavish and Wood Harris as various fighters/coaches. And a dude who looks a hell of a lot like Edward James Olmos. I have no idea who he is, but he was in the movie a lot as their team doctor guy, had no lines, but I couldn’t find out who he was on the IMDB page, because it was very badly laid out order wise. It might be Olmos. It might be a weird cameo.

You might be able to tell by his shorts that someone eventually let’s the name secret out of the bag.

Creed featured four montages. FOUR. Three of them training, and one a fight montage. All of that exists, but we don’t see Michael B. Jordan splashing the dying corpse of Sylvester Stallone. A shame. More movies need playful beach splashing.

In terms of themes and atmosphere, Creed is a bit closer to Rocky Balboa, but it is also a lot more entertaining. The best shot moment was during the “mid film” fight, where the entire thing was one long shot. Multiple rounds, corner talk, the whole shebang. It was wonderful. I figured they would do that for the final fight as well, but we had to settle with the walk from the waiting room to the ring to be the one long shot.

With Creed, they clearly want to turn it into a new franchise, since Stallone can’t possibly un-retire from boxing for the 50th time and the son route didn’t work out. Creed had some nice moments in the fights and I felt appropriate at the ending, but I don’t like a lot of elements as well.

For whatever reason, Rocky himself doesn’t have as much brain damage as he did in Rocky II, and they are making him progressively more and more normal. You wouldn’t expect that with age. SLIGHT SPOILER, but they make it so that Rocky also has a health concern. I won’t say what, I will say that it, again, has nothing to do with brain damage. It feels like an incredibly bull shit side plot, when they have perfectly reasonable and obvious health issues they could have instead brought in.

The back story for Adonis felt a bit shitty too. It seemed like they had to jump through hoops to get the backstory they wanted, again, over complicating it. The story was also incredibly inconsistent with Adonis’ feelings. He wanted to make it big without using the Creed name to get him by, but instead be a good fighter on his own. Mary Anne also had the same feelings, but apparently they both just figured they should get over it and embrace it, making some of his earlier journey feel a bit dishonest.

Oh well. Some good fights. And Michael B. Jordan was great in it. This should fix his career back up again quite nicely.

Going into The Peanuts Movie, I was worried. There are like, 3 or 4 Charlie Brown movies overall, and they were all made in the 1960’s and 70’s. That is a big gap in content. Yes, there was the longer lasting comic strip, and yes, there was a cartoon show or two I am sure. But in all reality, there hasn’t been new Peanuts stuff in a good long while.

So, will The Peanuts Movie just be a rehash of old material in a new way? Or will it be new material in a new way?

Regardless, it will be presented in a new way, so that is a positive. One of my biggest complaints about Winnie The Pooh from a few years ago, was that it was all material I had seen before, in the exact same art style as before. That was a rehash for no reason. That was a rehash for nostalgia profit. That is annoying. Although, John Cleese as the narrator for the film and the TV show that came out at the same time was a great idea.

Whether the material is old or new, damn it, at least they are portraying it in a new super CGI way, which better cover ups the nostalgia money grab.

“You keep using that term nostalgia? Are you really just upset with your own childhood and lack of fond memories?”
“Shut up, Lucy!” -Me

SNOW DAY! No school, the best news in town. Everyone is excited. Peppermint Patty (Venus Schultheis) and Marcie (Rebecca Bloom) are ready for hockey. Sally Brown (Mariel Sheets) is ready to exploit the situation as always. There is also of course Lucy (Hadley Belle Miller) and Linus (Alexander Garfin), Schroeder (Noah Johnston) and Franklin (Marleik Mar Mar Walker), Violet (Madisyn Shipman) and other Patty (Anastasia Bredikhina). Hell, even Pig-Pen (A.J. Tecce), Shermy (William Wunsch), and the little kid (Micah Revelli) are ready to play.

Everyone but one kid. Where the heck is Charlie Brown (Noah Schanpp)!? Sleeping in again, I see. Damn it Charlie Brown. We got shit to do, and you are off daydreaming and trying to fly a kite in a snow storm? It takes a special kind of guy to be Charlie Brown.

But their snow day is quickly interrupted when a moving truck comes into their neighborhood. Who could it be? Oh, a little red haired girl (Francesca Capaldi)! Oh shucks, she is pretty. And Charlie Brown wants to talk to her, but he is too embarrassed. After all, he is clumsy, he messes things up, he fails at most things. She would never like him, no matter what. Especially if he never talks to her.

Oh, and let’s not forget about Snoopy and Woodstock (Bill Melendez). That guy has been voicing Snoopy for fifty years! And for a few growls and dog noises, we also have Kristin Chenoweth voicing Fifi, the love interest. Yes, her super small role still qualifies her as the only real famous person in this whole movie.

Sorry Snoopy. You are truly the biggest star.

The Peanuts Movie is rated G for Good Old Fashioned Family Fun, and it is still an enjoyable film for child and adult alike. It isn’t even full of crude and sneaky adult jokes. The only adult joke in it is about Leo Tolstoy.

I honestly am not super familiar with past Peanuts content. I read some of the comics as a kid and have only seen parts of some of those movies. I might have seen a cartoon show a few times while growing up, but that would be it.

My main understanding is all the pop culture references so that I can survive as a functional human being. I know when to say “I got a rock” to get the cheap and easy laughs (Pro tip: Geologists love this line). The Peanuts Movie hit all the appropriate notes I could have hoped for in a Peanuts Movie, while also presenting it in a new (yet also familiar) art style.

See, the art style is hard to describe. Everyone is clearly rounder with more than 2 dimensions of shape. But the faces and the face styles are all still exactly the same as they have always been. I was a bit worried when I saw their faces in a poster, but it worked extremely well on the screen.

The Peanuts Movie truly is just a nice family movie. Sure, it isn’t an original concept. But it is a great introduction to a new generation and, of course, nostalgic trip for he older ones.