Author: Admin

The Secret Life of Pets is just one of those animated movies coming out this year that I gave absolutely, positively, no fucks about. There are animated movies all the time and all of them are competing to be the best.

I wasn’t apathetic because it wasn’t Disney or Pixar. I like a lot of other studios, I am not some weird populist. No, I am apathetic because it is being made by Illumination Entertainment. Before this film, they have made 5 movies and they are all objectively bad. Despicable Me, its sequel and Minions were bad, The Lorax was bad, and Hop was racist and bad.

I only saw the original trailer for The Secret Life Of Pets a few months ago. Outside of the awkward title, it just didn’t look like it would be an original movie. Oh, talking pets? That hasn’t been done before. (Cough)

Now a 25 minute scene on venom drugs in a kids movie? That is new.

The movie takes place in NYC, big place, lot of people, lot of animals. And pets can talk and understand each other. Not just pets, all animals. They have some universal language despite not having the same noises.

Max (Louis C.K.) is a loyal house pet, taken as a puppy from a box for free by his owner, Katie (Ellie Kemper). He is greatful for her and waits almost all day in front of the door when she leaves. He has a ton of friends in the apartment complex and across the way who like to hang out while the owners are away. There is Chloe (Lake Bell), a fat cat, Mel (Bobby Moynihan), a pug, Buddy (Hannibal Buress), a dachshund, and a bird Sweet Pea who I guess doesn’t talk, just chirps.

But then Katie comes home with a surprise. She comes home with Duke (Eric Stonestreet). He is big, he is wild, and he is taking over the alpha dog status from Max. So Max wants to get rid of him. He wants to destroy the place so Katie will take him back to the pound. They begin to fight with each other more and more, and sure, yeah, somehow it ends up with them both now out of the apartment, collars lost, just trying to get back home.

And they are in New York City. Everyone knows it is a rough and tumble place for strays. You all saw Oliver & Company. On the streets they have to deal with animal control, the League of Flushed Pets (run by a bunny voiced by Kevin Hart), and shit like water.

Also featuring Jenny Slate as the puffy Gidget who lived across the street and was in love with Max, Albert Brooks as Tiberius, a hawk, and Steve Coogan, Dana Carvey, Tara Strong, and Michael Beattie.

Duke could straight up eat Max. And Katie. And me.

Like I had feared, The Secret Life of Pets doesn’t offer a whole lot to the animation genre. The animation isn’t state of the art, with the quality looking more or less the same as the first Despicable Me film. This time there are only four or five important human characters, so their awkward proportional bodies isn’t super distracting like it is for other films. We just get slightly exaggerated pet bodies, which is a bit easier to accept.

About half of the film reminded me of Toy Story, the first one, the one that came out 21 years ago! New pet (toy), they argue and fight, both pets (toys) get lost from home and face near death to get back. Hell, there are a couple of scenes where they even have to chase a car where one or the other is trapped.

Nothing was surprising about this movie. It is incredibly simplistic and places where they could have added conflict and a bit of emotional connection are just nothing. Duke had an older owner and they attempt to find them during their time in the city. Without spoilers, things don’t go the right way. Perfect time for a nice emotional scene, but it is rushed through and another bullshit conflict is added. Bullshit conflict to move the plot is lazy, and this film is full of it.

One more complaint paragraph before some pros, don’t worry. The ending was a complete mess too. From the quickest phone call animal control response ever, to the unnecessary all out brawl between pets, to a no real stakes rescue, to the third or fourth time of the animals driving crazily vehicles, it just ended on so many bad notes. And yes, a brawl to solve a big issue is shit. Grown Ups 2 did it, and this movie did it just for a quick joke. Especially when an easy explanation could have fixed everything and taught some better morals.

Unrelated fun fact: An Andrew WK song appears in this movie. Party, party, party!

“But why with all these issues did you give it an average rating?” Well, surprisingly the voice acting saved the shit out of this movie. Kevin Hart as a bunny? I didn’t know I needed that in my life. His voice works great in animated films and his antics get less annoying when he isn’t the lead. Jenny Slate has been annoying to me in her last few films, but her as the Gidget was also pretty great. Albert Brooks as a hawk is the final amazing aspect of the voice acting. All three brought their A-game and brought it on hard.

The animation wasn’t completely average in every area either. The scenes with the snake, both seen above and as a sort of password felt really cool. They worked the 3D really well to make these animals pop out in unique ways. And shit, there was a dream sequence about sausage featuring the finale song from Grease, and it was a visual explosion of wonder.

The Secret Life of Pets won’t win awards for story, visuals, or make a lot of money. But the cast do the best with what they are given and technically make the best film Illumination Entertainment has ever made (in my eyes).

I still don’t want a sequel, because the entire idea behind all of this is just so uninspired. It feels like a straight to DVD animated film, just with some top tier celebrities to voice the animals.

This review is published slightly early. Tickled will come to Houston starting Friday, July 15 at the Sundance Cinemas.

Documentaries come and go, but crime lives forever. I believe a famous philosopher of film said that once.

When I first saw the trailer for Tickled I knew I wanted to see it immediately. It screamed out that this would be a weird documentary, a unique documentary, a documentary that might involve a giant crime syndicate that no one knew anything about.

And yes, Documentaries do have trailers.

Tickled began with a simple premise. Journalist David Farrier, out of New Zealand, likes to investigate and report on the weird stuff. He runs into a flyer that more or less invites young, athletic males to come out and get tickled for a little bit, for up to thousands of dollars. And it is not sexual, it is part of competitive endurance tickling.

What is that? Well, I guess it involves being strapped down and tickled by multiple people, and seeing how long you can last? Obviously you also have to be ticklish, no cheating here.

So David figured he would check it out and asked the PR group behind it if he could interview them. He got a hard no. Like, a paragraph long no. One that also wanted to make sure that he knew it was not sexual and they didn’t want homosexuals involved with, noting David’s sexual preference.

Huh, okay. Normally the story would be over then. But then he kept getting messages from the group, being quite crude in their content. Telling him he isn’t wanted, he shouldn’t be gay, things of that nature. That is when they decided to make a documentary on these events, wondering where they would go and who the heck is behind all of this.

Because they already know who is on top of this.

Things of course got weirder for David and his crew. Now that the documentary was getting started, lawyers got involved. They cam all the way down to New Zealand to talk about things and they were not happy to be on camera. Things got defensive super quickly and left people in a sour mood.

So what is a journalist to do? Well, travel to America on a work visa! Not just to do lawyer things, but to better investigate. They get to talk to people who did the competitive endurance tickling. And by that, just one person would be willing to be interviewed, as most didn’t want to be embarrassed. We got to learn about other tickling things going on in the states, and just how many of these “competitive evnets” exist across the US. There used to be a woman early on the internet who paid men for tickling videos and it seems to be where a lot of it got started.

Oh, we also get to see how vicious these groups can be when their ticklees (If it isn’t a word I am making it one) would stop working or start being a nusance. They would try to destroy their careers, friendships, family relationships, everything, all on account of tickling. Huh, sounds familiar.

I am being vague on purpose of course, because the mystery goes much deeper. And what David and his team uncovered is an entire underground tickling empire that might all come from the exact same source. Spooky!

Not that there is anything wrong with tickling or fetishes. It is just when people get sue happy and ruin peoples lives over it, that is where the issue comes in. I am quite surprised at the results of this documentary. At times it felt like they lost track of what the goal was and were just getting Tickling Fetish 101, but all of it was bought back and connected and made a very cohesive journalistic documentary. It is also well shot, legally gray, and sort of like a mystery.

Did I think that a documentary about tickling would be one of the best that I had seen this year? Of course not. But that’s why actually watching the movie is so damn important.

Mike. Daveeeeeee. Two pretty bro names. Played by two people who can be pretty bro-like. Maybe a match made in Heaven.

For the most part I tend to miss new comedies that come out because they normally screen against films that seem more important. Not necessarily better films, because they could go against worst movies, just more “important”. Like the first biographical movie of some famous person, or literally any musical, or a blockbuster, etc.

But hey, I got to see Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates! Aka Zac Efron‘s third comedy released this year and it is only halfway done, holy crap. When did Efron become such a comedic working star? Was it…Oh yes. It was with That Awkward Moment when he posed almost completely naked on top of a toilet. That was probably the moment.

“This movie is sexist! It should have been called Lady1 and Lady2 Need To Get Their Free Vacation On!”

Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) are brothers who like to party. They finished school, but have made their adult living selling liquor to bars, which sounded cool, and is cool! But also unfulfilling. Blah blah blah, family drama, Dave is actually a good artist but he just wants to hang out with his older brother and chill hardcore. And their younger sister, Jeanie (Sugar Lyn Beard) is getting married! To Erik (Sam Richardson), yes a black man, and their wedding is in the wonderful Hawaii. However, there are concerns over Mike and Dave’s party behavior from Jeanie and their parents (Stephen Root, Stephanie Faracy). Every time they get drunk and hitting on women, disasters strike and they ruin the party.

So they give them the task that they have to bring wedding dates. Some nice girls, so they will flirt with them and not hit on everyone else and ruin things. They post an ad on craigslist, this gets them pseudo famous, and it gets Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) and Alice (Anna Kendrick) interested. Free vacation! Alice is down in the dumps, what, with getting left at the alter and all.

They decide to dress up, look nice and make up jobs and meet Mike and Dave to convince them to take them to Hawaii! And hey, it works. As you knew.

Of course, they are “hot messes” and only help riley up Mike and Dave more. Hooray destination wedding!

Also featuring Chloe Bridges as the Maid of Honor, Lavell Crawford as the Best Man, Alice Wetterlund as the bisexual cousin, and Kumail Nanjiani as the very foreign massage artist.

Hell, I’d be willing to go to Hawaii as their dates as well.

After watching MaDNWD (that’s the beautiful acronym of this movie title), my first thought is that I really wanted to see Wedding Crashers again. However, I had no desire to ever see MaDNWD again.

I don’t think this is a bad movie, I just think it had a lot of decent potential and it was wasted on more immature comedy elements. Devine is the “Extreme” brother, so everything he does is at the highest levels to garner a reaction. It is just over the top, but for the most part no one else reaches his level. Efron tries at times, but his character is given a lot more of the more natural humor and Devin is playing just the exact opposite.

I liked Efron and Kendrick in this one (barely with Kendrick), but mostly just hated the Plaza and Devine characters. Devine is meant to be annoying, and hey, it works. Plaza is still going hardcore into these extremely crude characters, briefly starting with The To-Do List and hardcore into Dirty Grandpa. Neither were super funny and that is half of their dang cast.

The funniest scenes were the ones that weren’t spoiled by the trailer. They shouldn’t have shown the ATV scene, such a waste. The massage scene was my favorite, along with the “boring” scene. But for the most part, the plot went almost exactly the way you’d expect it to go.

No surprises here. Occasional laughs. Some full frontal female nudity and a whole lot of butts.

I do wonder though, where the hell was the Bocce competition? I was really excited to see Bocce in a popular big release film. But that shit got trailer mentions and no actual screen time. Booooo.

Every once in awhile a truly surprising film comes out. It could be surprising by having incredible acting from people considered to be B-stars. It could be surprising by having some new technology and allowing great special effects.

Or it could be thanks to a truly absurd and original idea that just blows your mind as a viewer. Something that has never been discussed like it was in a movie before, something that will leave you as a changed movie goer by opening your mind just a tad bit.

I am about to fully review Swiss Army Man. But as a suggestion, if you know nothing about the film and want a crazy experience? I suggest you go and watch it without checking out the trailer, without my small plot synopsis, completely blind and just let the movie happen on you.

Uh oh, dead Harry Potter, that means this is your last chance.

Hank (Paul Dano) is on a tiny deserted island, like, really small, with only some rocks in a big mound. He has been there for some time and he is ready to kill himself. But then, a body washes on the shore.

Hank hopes it is a live person so he can have company, but nope, it is just another dead body. This dead body (Daniel Radcliffe) gave him one small glimpse of hope before smashing it all away. And this body keeps farting, almost constantly, making it even more bizarre. But then Hank sees the body floating on the water, almost propelled by these same farts. Since Hank has nothing else to live for, he hops on that body and rides it like Jetski to freedom.

Well, at least to somewhere else. He finds himself on a much bigger beach, with a forest and trash. He is now SOMEWHERE in the world and damn it, that body helped him. Maybe that body can help him some more too, or at least, he feels like he has to bring him to civilization to get the proper burial he deserves. So he brings him with it.

And sure enough, that body ends up helping him in more ways than he ever imagined. And when the body starts to talk back, Hank helps him more than he ever imagines as well.

Also featuring (slightly, very slightly), Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Richard Gross.

LIKE A GODDAMN JETSKI.

Are you still with me? Even though you found out the movie is about a farting corpse and a guy trying to make it back to civilization? I bet the Jetski gif made you stay. You’re welcome for that, and that happens in the first 10 minutes.

Speaking of time, Swiss Army Man is only around an hour and a half long and it ends up being the perfect time for a movie this long. We don’t get overlong sequences of them trying to survive and the ending goes at a good pace. We are given several different montages of the Radcliffe / the “Multi Purpose Tool Guy” being used in unique ways to help Hank survive and they are done in a strange way to really add to the magic of the whole movie.

Keeping with the slightly absurd concept, the music in this film is a phenomenal fit. The movie music is basically made entirely by Radcliffe and Dano. Okay, I know in reality, the music is done by some performers, somewhere else, with extra instruments and all. But as it is put into the film, it is mimicked after their own dialogue and noises and flows wonderfully. The music itself is an experience. It feels airy, full of adventure, and downright inspiring.

The reason this movie works so well is that Dano and Radcliffe fully commit themselves to their roles. There are no sly winks to the camera or hidden smiles. They are two people in this serious situation and despite how crazy it all feels, they work together to make it work. It takes some high level chemistry to pull it off. Both Dano and Radcliffe pull off extraordinary performances. Definitely Radcliffe’s best performance ever. And it is a top one for Dano, but for Dano, almost everything is top level.

Swiss Army Man is bound to be one of the most unique experiences in cinema over the last decade. It is a magical film with enough ambiguity to make the viewer think and draw their own conclusions. The ending gets a bit weird, but to me it really just shows that anything is possible. Just don’t give up and the weird can become reality.

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Welcome to July 4th! And because Independence Day: Resurgence had to go and come out super early and of course not be good, I have to review something else today instead. And I had nothing. Nothing in my to watch queue fit the theme of the day and my mind was completely blank.

So sure. Netflix to the rescue? I first searched for the word America (and American), but none of the movies really felt patriotic. Or the ones with America in the title weren’t new enough for me to want to review them.

Okay, fine. So I went for the next best word to describe today. Straight up Freedom, and a movie called just Freedom is what I got. And it had to do with American civil war stuff! Great! I just had one of those also, Free State of Jones, but it also didn’t come out July 4 weekend so…yeah, we already talked about that.

A mostly random film that I know nothing about, just for July 4th review.

Although with a civil war theme, I wasn’t expecting this guy to be a main character.

Samuel (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is a slave and he doesn’t to be a slave. He is on a plantation with his mom (Phyllis Bash), wife, Vanessa, (Sharon Leal), kid (Aaron Bantum), and other people. The group of them and someone nicknamed Big Hand (Phillip Boykin) want to escape and finally try it, but the plantation owners find out really quick. Big Hand distracts the dogs so the family can escape though.

This pisses off the owner, Monroe (David Rasche). He really liked Vanessa, like sometimes slave owners did. He gets his old friend, Plimpton (William Sadler) to get out of retirement and hunt the slaves down with a small team. He used to be really great at it too.

Ahem, sorry, back to Samuel. Samuel doesn’t like singing. What the fuck right? He also doesn’t believe in God, or at least the “white man’s god” that would make them slaves and hurt them so. Yet he is alone in this regard. His family thinks he is ridiculous for not going on with their masters religion. Which is why his mom starts telling the story of a guy, a hundred years ago, who knew his great grandpa or something, who also made the song Amazing Grace.

Yep, we have a side story, of John Newton (Bernhard Forcher), a British dude who had to sail a ship as the captain. He just had to go pick up slaves, take them to America, and come home. His fiance (Anna Sims) would be waiting for him. Hell, he wouldn’t have to interact with the slaves. That is what his first mate (Jubilant Sykes) was for, also a slave. Fun!

And so we get the stories of the Samuel family escaping to Canada, and this British guy getting sad about slavery while taking them to the US. Also featuring Michael Goodwin as Garrett.

Yep, this is what I expected with the civil war theme.

At the end of the movie, I was shocked to find out that a few characters in this film were supposed to be real. This Garrett fellow apparently helped get 2,500 slaves over many years to freedom. Cool dude. And of course, John Newton, a British guy who actually did make the song Amazing Grace. This film was partially a biography to him, or at least why he was inspired.

Ah. Cool I guess? The story itself though had very little to do with Samuel’s story. And the “connection” to the story was unfortunately forced and silly, because Samuel isn’t a real person, just Newton is.

Instead, Samuel and his family get to be the slavery representation of thousands of people who had similar trips. They just wanted to also talk about Newton for whatever reason. The struggles shown for the family are relatively small on their hundreds of miles of journey though. In fact, most of it went pretty smoothly.

No, the crux of this movie is people being mad at Samuel despite Samuel having a perfectly reasonable attitude towards life. Slaves were forced to like Jesus and Samuel never really caring for that fact makes a lot of sense.

But no, by the end he figures out that Jesus is still awesome, despite his own personal struggles. So he finally sings a song when he is free, and then the movie ends.

The reason I gave this a 1 is because there is a surprisingly large number of songs in this movie. And yes, all of them are Gospel in nature but I happen to like that. Most of them didn’t really feel realistic as they tended to have that “produced” quality to them, but hey, it helped break up the monotony that was this dull, possibly offensive story.

The Purge franchise is a weird one. It was extremely unique in concept and it had the ability to go in so many ways. The Purge received mix reviews and I enjoyed the crap out of it. The Purge: Anarchy received slightly better mixed reviews and I enjoyed the crap out of it.

But I know there is a lot of potential in this as a franchise. Especially if they don’t try to tell a single story over and over again in different films. Give me different characters, different unique settings, and see how this shit went down. Maybe, just maybe, eventually give me that prequel film I know you are just dying to get out. But only one damn it.

The Purge: Election Year apparently wants to try and end it. They say this could be the final purge night due to (plot) reasons which will be noted below. But if anyone imagines this is actually the final Purge movie, they are probably delirious.

Oh well, I just hope they are more subtle about certain aspects than with Anarchy, where they literally had a no-name government character explain it all in the last five minutes of the film.

This one technically spells out the Purge for us as well.

Alright, I had to do a bit of math because they didn’t want to give me the year, but I think this is set in the year 2035. That is a really long time from now. The first Purge was in 2021 and Anarchy was 2022, so recurring characters are 13 years older and the Purge itself has been happening for 18 years. So alright, HUGE jump into the future, a lot of things happened I guess.

This is about Senator Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell), someone who has dedicated the last 18 years of her life to politics and ending The Purge for good. Why? Well, during the first purge (I assume, or else this takes place even more in the future), he family was tied up, tortured, and she was the only one left alive thanks to a sadistic game. Oh okay yeah, that seems like a good reason to hate it. She is an independent Senator, but people love her, and damn it, she is now running for president. She would be the first President that isn’t a member of the New Founding Fathers party since The Purge started.

She is running against a guy (Kyle Secor) who also is an actual Minister, for not so on the nose comparisons. Her head of security though is Leo (Frank Grillo), from that last movie! I mean, sure, this means that it is literally like a decade later or something, but whatever, he is still pretty good at thinking on his feet and killing bad dudes. But security isn’t too bad, what with the low crime rates and all.

Oh shit, guess what! There is a Purge in March, like normal! And the New Founding Fathers have heard the concerns of the citizens and decided to lift the clause saying that government officials Class 10 and Higher are no longer immune to the Purge. Timing is everything of course, because they want to totally just kill Roan and make the election an easy one. Roan of course refuses to go to an underground bunker and instead deck out her house like a normal American.

Oh and there is another plot. Joe (Mykelti Williamson) runs a grocery store and his Purge insurance premium went up thousands of dollars the day before the Purge. So now he can’t just let his store get robbed and get it paid for. He is going to wait up on the roof, joined by his business partner Marcos (Joseph Julian Soria). There is also a girl (Betty Gabriel) who rides around in a specialized ambulance to help out despite no protection. And a girl (Brittany Mirabile) who really wants a candy bar. And Edwin Hodge returns again, this time as the leader of the main resistance movement!

No one has been this obsessed over candy bars since Bill Murray in Little Shop of Horrors.

The Purge: Election Year is arguably the weakest film in the series, despite what people say about the first film. Horror is only sort of an element here, it is replaced even more with just bloody gun fights and action sequences. The horror scares that exist aren’t so much the depravity of human beings, but more just people jumping out of the dark.

I will say that this film does the best “world building” of any in the series. They had smaller elements in Anarchy, but on almost every street we saw glimpses of people purging in grotesque and eerie ways. It added unique moments to the franchise. On the other hand, all of the creepy and disturbing moments that are advertised in the trailers and posters are mainly bit parts in the actual movie. The people dressed like Washington, Lincoln, Liberty? That scene was maybe 2-3 minutes only. No, the real bad guys just came from an actual group of soldier like people just trying to get the Senator.

This film is also anything but subtle. Obviously they haven’t been doing a good job at it before, but it really doesn’t give a fuck this time around. We even get a board room scene of politicians trying to figure out how they will get back at the senator.

Here is a list of random weird things in the film: Election Day is apparently in May now, they show the results and call it somehow early in the morning when people just start voting, the movie seemingly glorifies gun violence while shaming the purge at the same time, an annoying amount of misplaced morality in the final act of the film.

But also, what the hell is this movie being set more than decade after Anarchy? What do they have to gain by forcing this story so much forward? I can only assume future Purge films are going to be awkward filler telling non related stories (which again, I am fine with), or even worse, tell us about a post-Purge America and just make this a slightly scary regular action flick. No idea their end game, but clearly they don’t either.

Election Year introduces some nice concepts. Like foreigners traveling to America just to kill and leave. And random acts of Purging. But it loses a lot of the horror touch and doesn’t know how to be subtle if their life depended on it. The movie is still an okay adventure for maybe a single viewing, but harping on morality without giving good reasons for it just kind of piss me off.

Since the dawn of time, Man has grown to be a species that wants to be the very best. Like no one ever was.

Best at what? Well, anything really. Best eaters, best sleepers, best non-sleepers, best money makers. There are competitions everywhere about anything. But then the video arcade machine was developed, and the youth of America had way to spend their quarters. Games meant to be tough, meant to be quarter thieves, meant to be unbeatable. But then people “beat them” and smashed records.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters came out almost a decade ago, highlighting the competitve arcade movement from the 1980’s and how goals were still being achieved today. We learned about Twin Galaxies, the official world record keeper of arcade games and number one host of tournaments.

From the tiny town of Ottumwa, Iowa, legends were born. And with Man vs Snake: The Long and Twister Tale of Nibbler, a new legend (old?) legend will be highlighted ad so will his return for the quest of glory.

It all started in the summer of 1983 for Tim McVey, no, not the terrorist. He walked into Twin Galaxies, saw Tom Asaki (current World Champ at Nibbler), playing a really long session of the game, and noted that he could beat whatever score Tom got. Of course, Tim was just being a shit head. He had never played Nibbler before. But he decided to put a quarter where his mouth was. And by January of 1984, Tim had completed the first ever 1 Billion point score for Nibbler, all at the age of sixteen.

But people who game change over time, it is said.

Nibbler was awesome in that it was the first video arcade machine to even have 9 digits, just teasing people that they could reach a billion. But to do so requires a marathoning session, of about 35-36 hours. Nibbler is also great in that you can earn lives for playing good. So once a player gets over 100 lives or so, they can just walk away from the machine, grab some food, use the bathroom, etc and let their lives go down. It isn’t as unforgiving as Donkey Kong.

What Tim never knew is that later in 1984, Enrico Zanetti, a kid in Italy, allegedly broke his high score, but it was never really counted in the American scoreboard thanks to a lack of publicity as he did it.

But now, in the mid 2000’s, Tim finding out about the score and how he kind of really didn’t have the record for the last 20-30 years, wants to prove he still has what it takes. But he is old now. He has a wife, a dog, a 40 hour a week job. He has gotten out of shape, and honestly, you need to be in some amount of shape to stay away for a day and a half.

He also now has competition. A video arcade expert out of Canada, Dwayne Richard, is challenging him to a marathon, where they would push each other’s limits and aim for the billion again. But as it is real life, problems occur, goals are failed, and shit happens.

The documentary is about Tim wanting to prove he is still the best, even if it is just for a little bit.

“One day, I am going to Nibble out the competition in Nibbler. And nibble that score down point by point. An nibble this here cookie.”

I loved Man Vs Snake, surprisingly a lot. I wasn’t super fond of King of Kong. The whole thing felt a bit unbelievable, the “bad guys” felt cartoony or like they were intentionally edited that way. In a way, Billy Mitchell (mullet gamer) and Robert Mruczek (ref guy) from King of Kong seem like completely different people in this documentary, like it was also made to help redeem them and their organization as non-shady people.

But in Man vs Snake, it isn’t about a guy going up against a whole organization of people, or just a particular shady player (although there are some slight hints in the documentary). No, it is about Tim really playing against himself. Proving that he is still worth something (in his eyes) today like he was a kid. After all, he already broke a billion. He was the first to do it in the world! So who cares if he does it again and adds a couple million to the score.

And also, in a way, this documentary is about love. Both from your spouse and your friends, encouraging your loved ones to reach their goals. A sort of good will spirit towards your fellow man. There aren’t bad people in this documentary. Just people who want everyone around them to give it their all and break some god damn records.

Man Vs Snake, definitely watch it when you can. It is a bit of a roller coaster ride, but in my eyes, better than The King of Kong.

I have still never seen the UFC themed movie Never Back Down. I barely even know it exists.

But I did watch the sequel, Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown. When I rented it from Blockbuster (old movie alert), I didn’t see the 2 on the title, just saw that Michael Jai White was involved (and it was his first time directing!) and decided to give it a shot. I don’t think I needed to see the first film to get it, so all was well.

And now, years later, we have Never Back Down: No Surrender, the third awaited Never Back Down film. This one is starring and directed again by Michael Jai White, only his second time at the head of a movie.

And again, that is why I am watching this movie. White makes me excited, what can I say?

Has Michael Jai White ever turned down a role that lets him take his shirt off? I think not.

The third film takes place some amount of time after the last film, and things are different now. I think. Case Walker (Michael Jai White) is thinking about getting back into the ring and slumming it out on his own. But that is ridiculous, he is a great fighter and shouldn’t be worried about minor scuffles.

He runs into an old friend, Brody James (Josh Barnett), who is an elite fighter as well and Brody convinces Case to join with his gym and get back into the big ring. So he does sure, no pressure.

Speaking of pressure, they decide to go to Thailand to train and fight. The PFC is holding their big match there in a month or so, James vs Caesar Braga (Nathan Jones), a scary looking man with anger issues and a criminal record. Of course! The whole thing is being promoted by the legendary Hugo Vega (Esai Morales), who cares only about profits. Hell, they even allow performance enhancing drugs in their league, no judgement.

And of course, Case is just there to help James train. He doesn’t care about getting on the ticket. But when people find out he is there, he gets popular again. They hear about how great of a fighter he still is. He gets a viral video. So things begin to happen to get him on in the ring as well, no matter who gets hurt along the way.

Also featuring Gillian White as our necessary love interest/publicist, Stephen Quadros as a trainer, Amarin Cholvibul, Dan Renalds, and JeeJa Yanin as lesser fighters in the gym, and Sahajak Boonthanakit as the only press person to talk.

That dude is like a head taller than the other dude. That is a head worth of ‘roids.

Never Back Down: No Surrender is not going to win any awards. It won’t be nominated for awards either, unless there are UFC film awards, because I don’t know how many of those come out in a year. This film is not the amazing, wonderful, tear inducing, Warrior. No, this is the third film in a straight to DVD UFC series.

So by its own standards, it is just going for some entertainment, with some decent fights. The fights are decent, and the entertainment is also light. That’s right, just light entertainment.

If the movie was less serious or more comedic, then I probably would have thought it was okay. The way our main character got out of a serious conundrum by the end was pretty smart, but still feels disingenuous at the same time. Our hero was against the fight he was forced to take and didn’t want to do it. But he ends up still doing it, just in a weird way. It gives the film a final fight that they advertise on the cover and poster, but in reality, it shouldn’t have happened at all.

I can honestly say I don’t remember a lot about the last movie. But I remember smiling more and thinking it was at least fun. This one was just mostly awkward, with some bad acting and an occasional decent to watch fight.

You saw the title of this review. You aren’t a complete noob. You know what is going down.

With this, I have reached review number 1650 for my website. Like I have been saying more and more lately, sure, that number isn’t sexy, but a milestone is still sexy to me. My last few Milestone Reviews have had a theme of career ending films for the actors involved. So I figured we needed to take a break from that and switch to babies.

I used to hate babies. They confused me. Then I went and had one of my own. Hell, my baby turned 1 just last week. Literally a week ago from this posting. That is crazy. I understand babies now. And I also understood that Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 was considered one of the worst films ever created. Have I seen it? Of course not, why would I watch anything back then starring babies? But now it is basically a film I have to review eventually as a Milestone Review.

BUT IT IS A SEQUEL. A movie has come before it. Baby Geniuses. A whole five years earlier, when it was still the 1990s! The 90’s have a lot of weird and strange movies, reviewing them all would be a terrifying endeavor. But this time, there is an important reason. If I never see Baby Geniuses, then I can never see Superbabies without the proper context! Don’t worry, Superbabies won’t be review #1700. Instead I will just sneak it out sometime in the future. Definitely before review #2000.

Daww, babies giggling or something. That can be cute.

Babies are inherently smart. That is the main point of this movie. They know a whole lot about the universe. Secrets of the universe. That is all hiding up in their baby heads. And they can communicate with other babies, using their baby talk language. It is just that once they start learning the actual human language they forget everything before then. They call it crossing over. Learning human talk means forgetting everything they knew from baby times and thus becoming non important entities in the world.

If you missed my explanation, don’t worry, a high tech computer explains all of the backstory to Dr. Heep (Christopher Lloyd), despite being a doctor who knows all of this to be true. Heep and Dr. Kinder (Kathleen Turner) just haven’t fully figured out baby speak yet. They know how to teach babies to be incredibly smart, including karate and shit, they just don’t know how to communicate with those little ankle biters.

Look at how evil they look! Mwhahaha!

Anyways, their best baby is Sylvester (I don’t want to tag the babies or their voice people) as he has been there the longest. He is almost 2 years old, an excellent fighter (sigh), and constantly trying to escape their laboratories at BabyCo. BabyCo is a company that just makes toys and items for babies, makes sense.

Sylvester (or Sly as they call him) is a twin that they took from an orphanage. The other twin is Whit, but he was adopted by Robin (Kim Cattrall) and Dan (Peter MacNicol). Robin is the niece of Dr. Kinder, and Dan is just really good with babies and writes books or something.

Holy fuck that is a big baby!

Anyways, Sly does another escape attempt, and guess what! It is successful. It involves hiding in a dirty diaper basket, getting thrown away, and getting the crap (heh) out of there. He tries to bring another baby with him, a girl, but she is too scared to go. So, obviously, she goes alone.

And then he heads to a mall. To hide, he switches clothes with a girl baby and goes completely undercover. Yep, he wears drag as the baby calls it. Sly waits until the mall is closed before going out of hiding and he has the mall to himself! Yes!

When you have a mall to yourself, obviously you can now play video games. And change your outfit! So we get an entire baby fashion show, seeing the baby in a tux, a Saturday Night Fever outfit, and more get ups. While dancing and doing random shit.

This picture isn’t good enough. Just watch the scene while it exists on YouTube.

That scene really irks me for probably obvious reasons. Babies can’t dance, just like babies can’t fight and stuff. But since this is just a one camera shot of him dancing a few times, not a lot of quick cuts, they couldn’t fake it well. So they got a tiny good dancing toddler/kid or midget to do all the dancing. Or a large person and made them look small by perspective. But then they OBVIOUSLY just kind of attached a the face of the baby onto the dancer both times. It looks awkward as it is badly done and obviously fake.

Just such poor quality. I mean, at this point in the movie I already knew it was terrible. I just didn’t expect it to get this bad.

Oh hey, did I mention JoyLand? It is a baby themed Theme Park, entirely indoors. Kids can use it too. All of it is free for them, parents have to pay and the money goes to research or charity. Everything is robotic, including that one giant robot baby. There is an entirely robotic petting zoo too, that a child can take a controller for an animal and make them do things. Why? Because apparently no one else has one like it.

Although, it takes away from any reason to really go. People can see fake animals every day, clearly a real petting zoo is a superior thing, but whatever. I am sure the robot stuff won’t come back to harm them.

I also have barely talked about these guys. Maybe I will do that now.

Thanks to the most unlikely of circumstances, Sly picks and outfit that Whit owns. And they both happen to be wearing it. Robin decides to take Whit to the mall and they run into each other in one of those big crawl tube places. They freak each other out, go opposite ways. So Robin ends up grabbing Sly and the goons end up grabbing Whit! Oh no!

Sly is stoked, because he escape. He goes back to that house. He finds out that Whit had a sister, a bit younger than him, Carrie. And Carrie knows that Sly is an impostor but doesn’t know what to think. Whit is back at the secret lab, with a bunch of smarter babies, all sad and crying and confused. But no one cares. They don’t care about the crying baby. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE CRYING BABY EVERYONE.

This lady is a big fat phony. She just wants to eat the babies.

Where am I? I barely remember.

Dr. Kinder realizes quickly that the goons grabbed the wrong baby. It is actually that fuckface Whit, her nieces adopted kid. So she figures she will just go running over to her house to grab the correct kid, no problems.

But there are problems. Namely in that Dan through his own research has basically figured out baby talk. He can understand the babble and what it means in actual Human English. That’s fucking crazy. And when his kid tells him to not let him be left with Dr. Kinder, he listens.

There are a fuck ton of other babies in this movie, but none of them really matter.

Anyways, some more dumb stuff happens for awhile. Then all the babies in the research facility are sent to Lichtenstein, because that is where their other lab is. The babies at the house led by Sly decide to break into Joyland/BabyCo to break the other babies out. Or destroy the research. Or something. They do it by hypnotizing Lenny (Dom DeLuise), whom I don’t even know why he is in this movie. Him or Dickie (Kyle Howard).

And of course, the robot animals and robot babies are used to take out all the guards. Some more things happens, Dr. Kinder loses, and the babies Whit and Sly decide to cross over from the baby speak land into Human language land, leaving behind the secrets of the universe and more. Sly gets adopted by Robin and Dan and yay families.

The ending then has like, 3 minutes of montage of the babies doing stuff, like, actual clips from the movie we just saw, with the Randy Travis song The Gift Of Love for some reason. I guess they wanted that emotional impact ending and to fulfill your quota of babies for the next week.

Kyle, what are you even doing? And this isn’t even his worst outfit.

I can readily admit that this is not my best written Milestone Review. It is not even top half most likely. It doesn’t help that within the first 10 minutes of the movie I knew I already hated it, with the rest of the 80 or so minutes not doing a damn thing to change my mind.

So yeah, it became a bit harder to remember all the different aspects of the film. Like random baby names. Like the purpose of Deluse or Howard in the film. Like the plan at the end. Like how Lichtenstein was even involved. My mind tried to completely wipe all knowledge of the film right after viewing it, with only my few notes written down as a guide to actually write this summary.

It doesn’t help that this movie is from the 1990s, was a crap quality, and finding decent pictures of it on google was a major pain.

The biggest problem with this movie is that it is a comedy that doesn’t have any good humor. Oh, they insert a bunch of giggling babies to make you think funny moments are happening, but babies giggle at every random little thing. It is like they made this movie for babies and no one else to find entertaining. But if you know babies, they can watch and be entertained by anything, regardless of how deep the content is.

And honestly, if you are going to have a movie where babies before 2 years are super smart, know all these things and communicate with each other, you shouldn’t still have them sound like babies. That is boring. You know what is funny? Babies sounding like adults. Just look at those ETrade Baby commercials, talking about adult things with a grown up voice.

Hilarious!

This movie is not and once I hit Publish, I will forget about this one too. Let’s assume I need no previous knowledge to understand Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2.

What can we say about a film Independence Day: Resurgence? A summer blockbuster to one of the best summer blockbusters, Independence Day.

I loved Independence Day. It has good jokes, good characters, good action, great speeches, and a super patriotic feel by the end. It is wonderful. A sequel has a lot to live up to for it and one that would be really hard to match, let alone surpass.

But also, also. If you didn’t know, the studios decided to cancel all Press Screenings for this film, outside of like a world premier and day of screenings. My reps thankfully let us watch it the Thursday night of at a regular show time, so I of course went the full on IMAX 3D for the full on spectacle. But cancelling press screenings is probably the worst thing you can do to drive up hype. It didn’t work for No Good Deed, and it certainly wouldn’t work for this film.

Take that smug look off of your face Liam, you don’t know if this movie is any good.

Twenty years ago, the world stood up to an alien invasion and destroyed those fuckers to save the human race. Good job everyone!

This led to World Peace, as we knew our petty squabbles were complete bullshit. Earth Defense was the most important thing. So we all worked together and used Alien technology to rebuild. Our destroyed cities became more high tech (more TVs?). We got sweeter weapons. We got an Orbital defense system, sweet ass jet fighters that can go into space, and a fucking moon base!

Former President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) is an old man who has strange dreams and keeps imagining some strange symbol. His daughter (Maika Monroe), grew up to be a fighter pilot as well and now works for the new president (Sela Ward). David Levinson (Jeff Goldbloom) is now an Alien expert working for the UN and currently in Africa to speak to a warlord (Deobia Oparei). The warlord killed a lot of aliens in combat, but is now seeing things and tech is being strange. Also in Africa is a Alien psychologist (Catherine Gainsbourg), and some reporter maybe who is a poor mans comic relief (Nicolas Wright). David, sadly, doesn’t hang out with his dad (Judd Hirsch) as much as he used to.

Oh yeah, speaking of fighter pilots, the president’s daughter is dating Jake (Liam Hemsworth). He is a hot headed kid, really great pilot, but a risk taker. His co-pilot is a smart guy/old friend Charlie (Travis Tope). The actual best pilot is Dylan Hiller (Jessie T. Usher), the step son of Will Smith’s character. Smith isn’t in the movie, because he died 11 years prior to this movie doing test pilot stuff. But the mom (Vivica A. Fox) is still around! And China’s best pilot is Rain Lao (Angelababy), people love her too.

So many people, so little time. Aliens are coming, bigger than ever. This time the spaceship is over 3,000 miles long! They really want our planet, damn it. Brent Spiner and John Storey return to their old roles, William Fichtner plays a general, and Chin Han is a moon base commander.

The aliens sure do have this planet on…lock down. Yeaaaaaaaaaaah!

When you have a sequel, you are allowed to compare it to its predecessor, no matter how long it took to come out. So let’s do it over and over again to get my points across.

In the first film, we have world wide destruction. All of the major cities get hit and more. Armies are wiped out. In the second film, the only places hurt are a moon base, some of Area 51, and wherever the ship decided to land its planks. Literally no big attacking or trying to wipe out of any threats.

In the first film, we have one of the best speeches ever given by President Whitmore. It makes me tear up thinking about it. In the second film, he gives another speech and it is pointless and lame. We also get a different half-assed presidential speech after that, also pointless, given how World Peace was already established.

In the first film, our leads were a president, a fighter pilot wanna be step dad and wanna be astronaut, and a smart dude who worked in television. In the second film, our leads are the president’s daughter, the pilot’s step son, a new character who is connected to the first two in age and experience, and the same smart dude with less quirks. A lot of new cast members we are supposed to care about because they are related to people we cared about in the first film, without developing them in anyway at all.

In the first film, our characters had heart, emotions, and as a viewer the whole experience was fun. In the second film, the heart and sadness is taken away, and I am not having fun, just waiting for the thing to finish.

Although the return of Dr. Brakish Okun was the smartest move on their part.

Independence Day: Resurgence had some nice moments. I liked what they did with the Queen at the end of the movie, giving us something unique. But our final explosions of the bad guy ships were practically non existent and ended quickly. Resurgence had a ton of editing issues, where so many parts felt rushed, yet the ending with its stereotypical count down clock dragged on and on.

There were so many characters introduced and barely used, yet the sequel is almost 30 minutes shorter than its predecessor. An African Warchief why? Because he had swords? Angelababy’s character was supposed to be the second best pilot or something and despite her role, her character’s name wasn’t even uttered in any form throughout the film. That pisses me off so much. I shouldn’t have to wait for credits to find out something as important as a character’s name.

There will be more Independence Day movies, but the future of this franchise is going to be something completely unlike the 1996 classic. In fact, a big part of this film is dedicated just to setting up future films and maintaining a pointless mysterious air, instead of focusing on the film at hand. It is no wonder they canceled the press screenings. They barely even released a coherent film this time around. You’d think after 20 years they’d be able to focus on this one task and not have their eyes towards the future.