Author: Admin

I love period piece films as long as that period isn’t Victorian-era England. Those ones aren’t necessary bad, they just feel overdone to me and now I have developed a slight bias against them. Sorry, not sorry.

Civil War era films usually get me all excited though. Or just pre-Civil War slavery films. I don’t even need them to be based on real events, which is the recent trend. Just give me a movie with brothers killing brothers and morals on the line. I wanna tear up at the hardships of war and get mad at something that happened 150+ years ago.

So the Free State of Jones is based on real events? Cool, whatever. I accidentally saw a trailer a few months ago before another screening and it looked pretty interesting. I know it was originally supposed to come out in March but got pushed back to Summer for reasons. Doesn’t matter, still excited to watch it.

“Oh, sup prof. Just chillin'”

In October, 1862, Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey), up for the sweetest name award, was also serving in the Confederate Army. For whatever reason he was given nurse duty, so he used that status to save his friends from the battlefield and getting them to doctors quickly. Then his son, Daniel (Jacob Lofland) appears, saying that their farm animals were taken and crops to feed the army. Newt agrees to escape with his son and take him home, but tragedy occurs and Newt is forced to just bring home a body.

Newton came from a small farm in Jones Count, Mississippi. He has been poor and kind of pissed off at the rich. Pissed that their sons don’t have to fight in the war, when he feels the entire war is them fighting for slaves that only the rich have. So he decides to stay home with his wife (Keri Russell) and young boy. He becomes a protector of all the homes in the area from Confederate troops looking to take more than the 10% allowed.

They quickly turn on him and he has to go into hiding in the swamp. There he joins a camp with Moses (Mahershala Ali) and four other runaway slaves. They hide together, work together, and eventually get guns to protect themselves. Overtime, more and more Confederate deserters are on the run and end up at this camp until they have over 100 members. Newt has developed a relation with a House slave Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who has been secretly helping their group.

Anyways, short story long, they eventually set out to take their land back from the Confederate soldiers that are trying to take their crops and resources. They get three counties to their name before resistance starts and decide to start their own Nation, a Free State of Jones, to like, grow their own crops and have equality and all. Fun times.

Donald Watkins and Troy Hogan play two other slaves, Bill Tangradi and Thomas Francis Murphy play our confederate leaders trying to stop this group, and a whole lot of other white people, played by Sean Bridgers, Joe Chrest, Brian Lee Franklin, Kerry Cahill, and Christopher Berry.

The way to prevent your stuff from getting stolen is to burn it all down.

Never before in a movie have I seen a drop in quality so much as Free State of Jones. At the beginning we are dropped right in the middle of a random Civil War fight. It showed that the Civil War was brutal, people died and marched on and died some more. Newt escapes, quite easily apparently and continues to be mad at the rich for not fighting their own fights and his friends losing their livliehoods over it. Sure, makes sense. Newt doesn’t care about Slave rights or anything, he has none. It isn’t until a Slave helps save his sick son.

But even then, it is extremely awkward in this movie, even when he is living with just runaways. They never get close. When it is a giant army of Confederates and the few slaves, people are still dicks to slaves. It isn’t until one of the more cringey movie moments that I have ever seen that things start to change. When Newt’s character gives a speech about how basically everyone there is someone’s slave, no matter the color and they shouldn’t be jerks. He used a bit more “colorful” language, but that speech helped change everyone’s mind, albeit temporarily, to work together towards a goal.

In terms of modern comparisons, it reminded me of the All Lives Matter backlash to Black Lives Matter. This movie argues that the poor southern farmers were treated just as bad as slaves, but then goes on to show that technically the slaves still have it worse. I don’t know if the Moses character is real at all, but they put all of the slavery baggage on him, as the other members of the camp apparently don’t have lines and I barely heard two of their names mentioned. It was such a shit way of trying to get us emotionally invested in the slavery story, when they only put personality in him and Rachel. We also find out he has a wife and kid somewhere in “Texas” (again, we are in Mississippi), yet they are able to reconnect extremely easy post war with zero explanation as to how.

This kid is killed off in the first 10 minutes and gets more promo pictures than other people in teh film.

There are more problems with this movie outside of making it super white focused. I can’t remember when, but early on in the movie, we get a title card that says 85 YEARS LATER… and we are shown a court room setting where the whiteness of a person is being put on trial, because his great grandmother might have been Rachel, making him part black, and thus his marriage illegal. This was a real trial and actually true, but HOLY CRAP, this has no reason to be in this movie at all.

The “future” scenes do nothing for the rest of the film and they keep coming back, breaking up the plot and slowing it even more down. Whoever decided to add this constantly interrupting subplot/finale to the film should be fired from whatever future film jobs they have, because it was such a poor choice.

The Confederate “bad guys” and post War bad dude are basically cartoon villains, just missing some finger twirling of their mustaches. The film is especially insulting over the “peanut scenes” in the last twenty minutes.

Oh, and guess what. The film doesn’t end with the end of their rebellion or the end of the civil war. It goes over another year or so after the fact, during early KKK period and reconstruction. Why? Because they feel like it. Because the ending drags on and on, for over thirty minutes. The filmmakers had no idea how to end this film and practically none of it matter for the overall story they were trying to tell.

Fuck, Free State of Jones. I can’t believe it ended up being so blah. There were good moments in there and with 45 or so less minutes, plus more character development for some other characters, and this would have been fantastic. This film makes me less excited for The Birth of a Nation, which is stupid, I know.

I’m not angry at your Free State of Jones. I’m just really disappointed.

Oh sorry, here is an extra picture. It is really hard to find any of Moses or Rachel, let alone any of the other black characters in the film. This is basically the best I can do (without huge watermarks), even by googling the movie title with actor names. Shit, if you google the movie and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, the main love interest, you will find barely anything from the actual film and some pictures of her from Belle.

The director was Gary Ross, an old white guy who has only directed a handful of films. His first one was Pleasantville, which I love and adore, but I guess it makes sense. In that movie, he told the problem of Racism in America using only white people. In Free State of Jones, he basically just does that again, but in a more insulting way.

I first watched Raiders of the Lost Ark when I was in 9th grade. Given that I was born in 1989, that is actually a long ass time after the movie came out. And by watched the movie, I mean only watched like half of it because it was in a class. And by Raiders, apparently I meant one of the other two Indiana Jones movies. Because a few days ago I figured I should re-watch the entire movie before checking out this documentary, and hey, I was surprised that I totally never saw Raiders before.

Now now, I know what happened in the movie. Almost from beginning to end. So much of the film has become parodied, redone, and referenced that I could tell you most of the major plot points like a basic wikipedia article. I just never sat down and saw the dang thing until two days ago.

So why the hell am I watching Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made? Good question. It’s because I am a movie reviewer and I want to watch everything, damn it. If I only watched films I had a history in some way with, this would be called Gorgon Biased Views instead.

Yes, that last joke and this picture are brought to you by teenage levels of humor.

Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in the summer of 1981 and changed many lives. In particular, it changed the lives of Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb. Chris knew after watching it that he had to recreate the movie. He found Eric, who was a year older, another Raider fan and asked him to join in. He became the director and story board guy. He basically drew out the entire storyboard from the movie after just one viewing. And then they found Jayson, who ended up being key to all of their special effects and production team.

And then from 1981 to 1989, over summer and winter vacations and Holiday weekends they began to recreate Raiders of the Lost Arc. They didn’t film it in order, so scenes show them grow up and descend in age at random. Most of their first two years of shots were bad and had to be redone. They had to close down sets for fire issues and falling outs between friends. They basically used every Christmas and Birthday present to get more prop work done to authenticate the movie. But damn it, in 1989 they finished it, showed it to their town, and moved on with their lives.

Pictured: Not Harrison Ford and Not Steven Spielberg.

Moved on with their lives, for a short time period. They didn’t actually recreate the entire film. They could not do the “plane” scene near the end, with all the explosions, blood, fights, and planes. So they just never tried to because they’d be too disappointed. But their movie got famous again by 2002. It was seen by people throughout the film industry, passing around bad copies of a VHS tape. Eli Roth found it, yes that Eli Roth, loved it, showed it at a Butt-A-Numb-A-Thon run by Harry Knowles and the crowd went bananas.

This got them re-famous. This got them on tours. This got them to meet their idols. And so of course, with all this behind them, they set out to finally film that one last scene. With Kickstarter backers and real cameras and everything. And of course, their life stories, the film, and trying to film the last scene is really what this documentary is about.

As a reminder, I did not grow up with Indiana Jones being a major player in my life. Blame my parents, they showed me what they wanted to when I was young. Despite not having an emotional connection to the film, I had an emotional connection to these kids and their adult final forms as well. It is incredibly inspiring. It is about overcoming all the odds, showing what kids and people can do with limited resources and a whole lot of heart.

It made me long for my own childhood of freedom and time, making me a bit jealous I didn’t do more with it like these kids. I regret not going to the double screening of this documentary with the final cut of their film, but hopefully I will now see it one day in the future. And uhh, probably those other Indiana Jones movies as well.

Eddie The Eagle is one of those movies that I heard was coming out, I wanted to see, and then never saw. I know I know, it happens all the time, but usually I at least manage to see the movies that interest me.

Fun fact about watching the movie. Well, fun to me. The entire time, despite knowing the actual actors name, I assumed it was Emile Hirsch. The problem is that I could not remember Emile Hirsch’s name, but assumed it was very close to Taron Edgerton. They don’t really look alike, have no where similar names, but I finished the film thinking “Man, that guy from Prince Avalanche sure did nail it!”

It is one of the strangest mix ups I have ever experienced, so strange that I decided to write about it in the intro of a movie review.

“What is this, a ski jump arena for ANTS?”

Eddie Edwards (Taron Edgerton, not anyone else) always wanted to go to the Olympics when he was a boy. He was kind of nerdy, but he had a goal and put his mind to it. He just wasn’t very athletic. He tried so many types of Olympic actives but always came up short. His mum (Jo Hartley) encouraged him to reach for the stars, but his dad (Keith Allen) eventually got sick of it, wanted him to end his obsession and to focus on getting a job and an income. And then Eddie decided he was doing it all wrong. He should train for the Winter Olympics instead.

So Eddie learns to ski and heck, he becomes pretty good at it too. He gets decently fast, but he still doesn’t qualify for the British Olympic team. Partially because they think he is a weird guy and not “Olympic Athlete” material. You know, he is quirky. An embarrassment. So what does Eddie do? He finds a new thing to try. Olympic Ski Jumping. If he can learn how to jump and reach a certain distance, then he can qualify for the Olympics on his own, standards be damned!

Which is why Eddie heads to Germany to a Ski Jumping school. If he can learn to jump quickly, he can participate in a competition, qualify, and still make it to the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics! Yes, those Winter Olympics. The same ones that featured the Jamaican Bobsled team. And sure, he finds a gruff but eventually lovable coach (Hugh Jackman) and is faced with the fact that most jumpers start training when they are 6 and not when they are in their 20’s. But damn it, this is his best chance at going to the Olympics and he won’t let anything stop him!

Also starring Edvin Endre, Rune Temte, Iris Berben, Jim Broadbent, and Christopher Walken.

Yeah, technically this is not how an Eagle would fly. But if an eagle had Skis, maybe they would!

I am only human. That means I like to be inspired every once in awhile, and hell, I can find a sports movie inspiring as well. I love the classics but I have found lately that sports movies are trying to hard for inspiration and forcing too many changes into the story. Only a movie studio can take an amazing 100+ game winning streak and lie about everything after the team finally lost and think its a good idea. I’ve been needing something greater than Spare Parts or McFarland, USA or Million Dollar Arm to really get me going.

Thankfully, Eddie the Eagle had everything I wanted and fulfilled something missing in me for years. Hell, I felt inspired just six minutes into the movie. A lot of credit needs to go to the sound and music team. I don’t know what inspired the music, but the tune throughout the film just made me feel like I could do anything.

And heck, the movie is about a guy that constantly got shit upon by others. Especially those in charge. No one wanted him to succeed and constantly they blocked his attempts to go to the Olympics. But he made it. Did he medal? Nope. Did he do his best? You betcha! And he broke records too. Mostly because no one before him had really Ski Jumped in GB since the 1920s.

And what confused me the most after the film ended is that it DIDN’T give me a nice blurb about what ended up happening with Eddie after the Olympics. That is because the Olympics changed their rules to make people like Eddie ineligible for the Olympics in future years. Basically, modern Olympic people don’t know how to have fun and are jerk faces. But I had to learn that on my own.

Egerton was wonderful as the lead and I just wanted to hug him the whole film. This is a drastically different role than the one he played in Kingsman, so I am now excited to see where Egerton takes his career outside of that franchise. The guy can act.

Fly like and Eddie the Eagle. Do it or live in regret the rest of your life.

Anton Yelchin has passed away at 27 thanks to a freak accident at his home. This is terribly sad and tragic news. A young death is always hard to wrap your mind around and I don’t think I will really understand he is gone for a few years. He has five films on his IMDB, at the time of this writing, is five films, so he will still be gracing us with his presence for months to come.

I always try to quickly review a film of a recently deceased actor, if possible, as soon as I can as a sort of tribute to them. This review is actually up on the site just two days after the passing, my quickest turn around. Yelchin has been in a ton of films I haven’t seen so there was plenty to choose from. Thankfully, for the films I have seen, he has consistently given his best and never been part of a film I absolutely hated. From Star Trek, to Green Room, to Like Crazy, to Fright Night, to Charlie Bartlett, to fucking Odd Thomas, his range of characters is pretty great.

And it sucks that with his early passing the world has lost such a great acting potential. Who knows where he might have taken his acting? Would he have an Oscar? Does complaining about the loss of talent make me an asshole? Who knows.

But now I am reviewing a film, 5 to 7, recommended by another critic last year. And I will probably go back and watch a lot of recent films from him because I probably should have watched them before. But now I’m rambling, woo new movies!

I’m not crying, it’s just been raining…on my face.

Brian (Anton Yelchin) is a typical New Yorker. He is living as a writer, but nothing he writes is getting published. It is okay, because his parents (Glenn Close, Frank Langella) have money and he doesn’t have to rush to a job. They want him to go to Law School, but they will let him try writing for now.

Then Brian meets Arielle (Bérénice Marlohe). He sees her smoking a cigarette, so he walks across the street to join her. Suave as fuck. She finds him charming so she invites him back to smoke next week, and since he shows up, she invites him on a date later on from 5 to 7 that night. A very specific time because it has cultural meaning.

The 5 to 7 time in French culture at least is a more open time for couples, where they can be off doing anything and it not really be suspicious or weird. And it has grown to mean a time when you can hang out with your paramour. Brian didn’t know about this, so he was very surprised to find that Arielle had a husband (Lambert Wilson). But he is aware of Arielle dating Brian, and hell, he has a side woman as well (Olivia Thirlby). They are just an open couple who know they need companionship outside of their marriage and their family. Yep, kids too.

Brian is young, 24 or so, but he really likes Arielle and cannot stop thinking about her, so he gives it a shot. He has to realize that he is the side bitch and can only see her romantically a couple hours a day. No romantic weekend getaways. No late night parties. Just a little bit of intimacy. And that is a weird thing to get used to.

Shit, if I had them as parents, I would probably just write all day too.

I was a bit worried going into this movie. It felt like a romantic comedy. I knew it wouldn’t be typical, but I have seen a lot and it is hard to make something feel unique and different. Hell, when they introduced the dad’s mistress, I was worried this would turn into a What Maisie Knew situation. Without going into too many spoilers, it flirted with that specific scenario, but thankfully still surprised me.

The best part about 5 to 7 is that it felt real. Brian was a young and inexperienced kid and not the best flirter, so their first interaction was awkward. I almost judged Yelchin and thought it was just bad acting, until I realized it was supposed to look pathetic and made perfect sense. Brian wasn’t perfect, Arielle wasn’t perfect, everyone in this movie had flaws and felt realistic. Hell, the parents bickered and argued, but you could tell there was love there and understanding.

So thankfully 5 to 7 featured fantastic acting from all the major players involved. And the story is pretty unique despite dealing with a subject matter in films before.

If you want a realistic movie about extramarital affairs, that are parts of open relationships, and how it affects the lives of everyone involved, 5 to 7 is a pretty good choice. If you want to just see a well acted film, 5 to 7 is still a good choice. At times amusing, other times sad, 5 to 7 is probably the whole package for a film.

I first was going to give it a 4 out of 4, but I am sure that is just my emotions taking over. The reality is the film was sad, but I never was able to fully connect with it emotionally still. I didn’t cry and really, how great can it be if I don’t cry?!

Benghazi. What a political buzz word. A city that no one had any idea even existed before the events in 2012, but it became quite a big deal.

And I couldn’t care less. I am mostly annoyed that it has become such a buzz word without a lot of meaning behind it that shitty internet and news people are referring to controversies as “word”-ghazi, depending on the situation. It is just as ludicrous as adding gate to the end of it, if not more so. And both things need to stop.

Yes, these indeed are my thoughts going into the movie 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. I don’t know shit about it, outside of the fact that controversy exists. I know it is supposed to be a real story, but Michael Bay is directing it so who knows. I know that this movie is based on a book written by someone who was there, so who knows the actual accuracy of the book.

After all, who cares about truth when the outcome is income.

I expect a plethora of pew pew pews on both sides.

Apparently, Benghazi, Libya was named one of the most dangerous places in the world. Despite that, the US still kept a “diplomatic compound” in the city and nearby is a “secret” CIA compound staffed by private military contractors. And the movie begins with Jack Silva (John Krasinski) flying in to join their team. “Rone” Woods (James Badge Dale) an old friend picks them up, tells him to not mess with the locals and you know, helps fill in the new guy so that we can as an audience can learn things.

Despite tension, the US Ambassador to Libya (Matt Letscher) is still there, with a small rental cop security team. He gets worried when he sees people taking pictures of the compound. And worried he should be! Because on September 11, yes that day, some people attack the compound.

Now, our private military CIA people are the only friendlies in the area and they go against orders to try and save the ambassador. They have no support incoming and they are basically going to war with a tiny army, but it is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do, right?

Also starring David Giuntoli, Max Martini, Pablo Schreiber, Dominic Fumusa, David Denman, David Costabile, and Alexia Barlier.

Shit, there are explosions too. Instead of pews, we get boom boom booms.

I know what I am about to say is terrible criticism for a film and I know it is a word I should try to avoid while writing a review, but after pounding my head, I have no idea how to talk about the movie with any other vernacular. 13 Hours was boring. It dragged. It is almost two and a half hours long and it felt like four. It took a whole hour before the assault on any compound began, which is a shit ton of time to spend to try and make us care for the characters (which doesn’t work).

Sometimes when your goal is ultra realistic combat situations (which this is arguable, clearly many liberties would have been taken), it no longer entertaining. I hated Act of Valor, because they wanted realism at the expense of acting and story and it showed. In this case, Bay wanted to drive home an opinion, honor some people, and explode some shit.

I think forcing someone to watch this movie twice in a row would actually be considered torture and so technically it fits the theme of area the movie is set in. Go figure.

It wasn’t completely terrible, it was just boring. It failed to ever grasp my attention and felt like it would never end. Thankfully, this is the final major movie from January of 2016 that I had to watch. Hooray, I caught up only six months into the year! Too bad the months after it also were filled with bad films.

Bay, stick to Robots and Turtles. At least they are occasionally interesting.

Dory, Dory, where do we begin?

I am not the biggest fan of Finding Nemo. Now, I was a pretty nerdy student in high school, who obviously liked movies, but I hated watching movies in school. It felt lazy to me and I wanted to learn things! So I was annoyed having to watch Finding Nemo, for the first time, in my 10th Grade Biology class. And then also for my 10th grade Coastal Marine Biology class. I also was annoyed at it, because now when people say Nemo, they think of that movie and not the great classic Little Nemo!

So yeah, my reasons are bad. In time I have come to see how good the animation is and like the humor and story, but it never was my fondest Pixar movie.

And now we have Finding Dory. It unfortunately is the first of many Pixar sequels over the upcoming years, including the dreadfully approaching Cars 3, another strike against it.

Also a couple years ago, after Blackfish came out, a very biased documentary that kind of irked me, but gained praise everywhere else, they announced they would be making changes to the films plot. For reasons. As to what the movie was like before the changes, no one will really know. But if they went from showcasing sea parks from good to bad, then that is super kind of awkward.

Oh well, let’s just keep reviewing, just keep reviewing.

Oh shit, is that an Octopus? I love octopuses in film!

In this film, we get to find out about Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) when she was a cute little baby Dory (Sloane Murray), with big eyes and kid voice. This is where we meet her parents, Jenny (Diane Keaton) and Charlie (Eugene Levy), who have made it their goal to teach Dory about her short term memory loss, the dangers of the sea, and what to do if she ever gets lost. And I think you can tell what happens. A few minutes of some of the saddest shit I have ever seen in a Pixar movie, especially as a new parents.

Anyways, a long time later, she meets Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo (Hayden Rolence). The majority of the film takes place a year after Finding Nemo, where Dory is kind of a pain on Marlin and Nemo’s lives, but they love her anyways. Things happen and she remembers that she has parents, she lost them, and a rough name of where they live, off the coast of California!

Hells to the yeah! California with a couple of Clownfish, across the entire Pacific! And the journey isn’t the issue. What they find when they get there is that Dory used to live in a Sea Park! Not one that super exploits animals. But one that takes in sick animals, helps make them better, and eventually releases them back into the wild.

And inside, Dory meets Hank (Ed O’Neill), a septopus (because he is missing a leg) who doesn’t want to return to the ocean. And Destiny (Kaitlin Olson) an old friend and a nearsighted whale shark. Bailey (Ty Burrell), a beluga whale who has no echolocation. And and and Idris Elba and Dominic West voicing a couple of sick sea lions. And Sigourney Weaver as a mysterious role!

We also have Crush (Andrew Stanton, also the director) and Mr. Ray (Bob Peterson) returning, because why not.

Yep, this is the closest thing you will get to a The Wire reunion in a long time.

Oh, let me also mention Piper. It was the animated short. It had crazy amazing graphics, was very cute, about birds on a beach, but it had a problem with a shit ending. Mostly, that it didn’t know how to end.

As for Finding Dory, being a feature length film, the animation is not the same hyper realistic quality of Piper, but similar to Nemo in style (which makes sense). We aren’t given a lot of new cool environments like Nemo though. We have a small dark crash site, a kelp forest, and a lot of rooms and tanks in a Sea Park. So in terms of visual pleasantries, Finding Dory feels mostly darker and bleaker in terms of scenery.

Unfortunately, Dory also feels really repetitive. In Nemo, her memory for the most part was a big joke and led to a lot of laughs. But given the cry inducing intro (damn birthing hormones) and the constant problems, this joke was turned into a very sad issue. A crippling problem for Dory that prevented her from trying new things knowing she would get distracted before she finishes. It was a good thing to acknowledge her issue and ramp up its seriousness, but it takes away a lot of joy for a problem that just, well, keeps being a problem.

The ending also feels like a complete jumbled mess, with a no way at all realistic final few scenes that turn our once scientifically accurate fish series into a Looney Tunes cartoon. I hated the ending and it dragged as the issues were never solved in an easy manner, leading to more and more issues that made me indifferent to what would actually finally happen.

Ignore the controversy. This couple have 2 seconds of screen time and are not a reason to hate/support a movie.

Despite all of this, I didn’t hate the movie. I was just mostly disappointed, expecting a certain level of plot greatness from Pixar. I loved most of the new characters, mainly the septopus, the sea lions, and the Clam whose name they didn’t say and I can’t find in the IMDB credits. (They also didn’t say the sea lion names in the movie, quite annoying when you think about that). Beluga whale started out fine, but they made him real annoying by the end.

And you know what? The message of the film is a good one. Disabilities change your life. They can make life scary, they are serious, and they affect more than just a single person. But fish (/PEOPLE) with disabilities aren’t useless creatures. Practically every new character, along with Dory, has a problem and they are able to overcome their problem, or learn to live efficiently with it. Hell, there was even a weird plot about a frazzled bird and Marlin learning to trust her to do things correctly. It is about acceptance and friendship.

It is also just a film that has weird issues about sea parks, a lot less humor and not a lot of originality. On an unrelated note, I was also annoyed that despite taking place a year later, all of the fish kids are still fish kids. Come on Pixar, grow those bad boys up.

When it comes to animation, Michael Stocker has seemingly done it all. His first animation role in a movie was with the 1994 classic The Lion King and from there he moved onto actual animation roles in Hercules, Tarzan, and The Emperor’s New Groove. After a few years, he found himself an animator working on purely 3D movies like The Incredibles and Cars.

When Toy Story 3 came around he was a directing animator and now, with Finding Dory, he is a Supervising Animator, leading the entire film along side David DeVan.

So when we got to sit down and chat with Stocker on the past, present, and future of animation, he had a lot of interesting things to say.

“The rules they used to animate Pinocchio, we all used to animate Dory,” Stocker said. Despite a change in technology, the same rules still apply to making an animated film, technology just makes things easier. “The difference is we are doing it in a computer, we are doing it in a 3D world.”

New technology comes with its pros and cons. “One thing that is easy [with a computer] is that when…fifty people animate Dory, it will still look like Dory. When fifty people draw Dory it will look like fifty different people drew Dory.”

The advancements in technology actually hurt them in a few ways since the release of Finding Nemo in 2003. He compared using new technology to opening a very old Word document on a newer computer: It wouldn’t understand the older data. “We had to go back and rebuild Dory, rebuild Marlin…The challenge was that people loved this world…We had to make sure that our new world matched that exactly.” Despite advancements in technology, they had to match the world aesthetic from 2003 and couldn’t upgrade every component.

Newer technologies did make certain aspects of the film a bit easier to handle. Software they developed a few films back was used extensively in Finding Dory. When they were not sure how to animate or take a current scene they were able to take a pen and just draw freehand what they wanted into the scene. Instead of taking a day to animate it and maybe trashing the whole thing, they could visualize in less than a minute and match the animation to their drawings.

As for the future of animated film? “I’m not sure,” laughed Stocker. “Things are changing so fast.” What he did know is that the challenges in the future for Pixar will drive the technological improvements. It will be a movie by movie basis. He went on to note that with Cars 3 coming down the line, it had a similar issue with Finding Dory, where things had to be rebuilt while maintaining their previous aesthetic.

Stocker was very open about his past in animation and his role in the Finding Dory film. But more importantly, he said his favorite animal was the octopus, and thus was a big component of Hank the Septopus from the film, arguably the best part of the movie. Coming from a family obsessed with the octopus, both in sports and in our child’s nursery, I can say that he clearly is a man with the finest of tastes.

Welcome to documentary review day, or foreign film day, depending on what I feel like doing and feeling. Today, I don’t look at just any documentary. I look at a documentary that is really local to my current location. I am looking at an award winning documentary, technically

I am looking at The Last Man on the Moon. Now that it has made it onto Netflix I finally had a way to watch it. It is actually a winner of the Texas Independent Film Award, given out by the Houston Film Critic Society. I mean it went up against such classics like…Results. And uhh, other films I haven’t seen.

Just because the competition was weak doesn’t mean the movie didn’t deserve an award though. Just remember that!

And in The Last Man on the Moon, we look at the space program, astronaut Gene Cernan, and how he has the honor of being the last man to ever walk on the moon. Not typically an honor one thinks about. When one thinks the moon and people on it, they think of the first two names and kind of gloss over the rest.

But damn it, after Apollo 11, there were six other missions that went to the moon! And since Cernan left, no one else has graced it with their feet. Well, no one that isn’t a robot.

Yeah, Science bitches!

This documentary is actually about more than the moon landings though. This is basically a sort of bio on Cernan’s life. How he grew up, when he joined the Navy Air Force, his days as a pilot, his first wife and first daughter, his second wife and many new kids, how he first heard about the space program, got drafted and tested and picked over dozens of individuals, and his not one, not two, but three trips into Outer Space.

Shit, I just talked about the entire documentary!

I think it is important to show that astronauts didn’t just go out into space and to the moon once, they had multiple trips. His first trip was part of the Gemini missions which had a lot of failed aspects. He was part of Apollo 10, the last mission before they finally let people go to the moon. And of course he was part of Apollo 17, how he scraped in barely to the final trip the US would fund for testing.

It is actually a really informative documentary, looking at early aspects of NASA that isn’t super common knowledge. I loved his story about his first interview to be an astronaut, the tests involved, the secrecy, and how no one knew really what the hell was even going on. It made science feel sexy again. And everyone knows that science was the sexiest in the 1960’s during the Cold War.

The Last Man on the Moon was a better documentary than I imagined. And it was about a man who did a lot who doesn’t get a lot of recognition. I wouldn’t say I am biased, but I heard his acceptance speech when it won the TIFA, and it made me cry a bit. A speech about reaching for your dreams and achieving what you love in life, never giving up, and making every minute count.

Shit. Astronauts are the coolest American heroes. Space Cowboys and what not.

If I looked at all of the anime films I have reviewed, the total number would be closer to 0 than to 10 I imagine, and that is sad. There are a lot of anime films, and I watch a lot of animated films. But I believe the only ones I have reviewed in the last 4-5 years have been the ones out of Studio Ghibli and that is it. Much like there are other black films made by people other than Tyler Perry, there are other anime films made by studios outside of Ghibli, and damn it, I need to start giving them a chance.

Or you know, say I will on this review and then wait a year before my next anime film. Whatever happens.

The only reason I knew about The Boy and the Beast was from seeing a trailer before some other movie and hey, this one looked interesting. The trailer didn’t really say much, but the visuals were cool, and of course then someone recommended it.

Boom, sold, let’s get this anime train rolling.

I am so excited to write this, that I didn’t even notice I was using a PROMO art picture.

Ren (Aoi Miyazaki, Shôta Sometani) is a 9 year old kid, whose mom has died with a dad out of the picture from a divorce years earlier. He is going to be sent to live with another family, but he wants to live with his dad, he wants his mom back, and he hates everything else. So he runs into the streets of the town to live on his own. While out there, a cloaked beast man, Kumatetsu (Kôji Yakusho) runs into him, mentioning needing a disciple, even if it just a weak human. Ren having nothing better to do, follows Kumatetsu and finds himself in another world where animals walk upright and talk and have personalities.

Now in this world, humans aren’t actually allowed due to the darkness that can be in their hearts. Ren finds out that no one actually likes Kumatetsu, a brash and arrogant fighter, but he is one of two fighters vying to be the next Grandmaster of the area. The other is Iozen (Kazuhiro Yamaji), someone loved by all, many disciples, and two kids, Ichirohiko (Haru Kuroki, Mamoru Miyano) and Jiromaru (Momoka Ono, Kappei Yamaguchi).

Now obviously Ren doesn’t want to be yelled at, but he feels bad for Kumatetsu for having no one on his side. So he agrees to be his disciple, to make himself a stronger person, to have a place to belong to.

And this story is not about a master and disciple coming close together, becoming strong, and doing the thing you think they will do. No, that is just the first hour. Then directions change, things get weird, and they stay weird.

Also featuring voice work from Suzu Hirose and Yô Ôizumi.

The only time in the movie where the boy’s mouth is bigger than the beast’s.

I will just go straight into it. Like I just said, only the first half follows the general plot line that I laid out. That is what I expected the whole movie to do. You know, to give me a classic Karate Kid like story, where the master and the disciple grow and learn together, and then they both achieve their dreams and do good and be good and fuck the bad guys.

But it is a lot more complicated than that. The plot never goes away, but more things start to happen that change the primary motives for some of our characters. As they age, their priorities change, and holy shit, they are like real people. I mean that in comparison to cartoon characters, not the fact that 90% of the cast are beast things.

Great, a story with character growth. But what else? Well, the animation is nice to look at. The fights are decent enough. And the comedy/drama is balanced.

Now again, things get a little bit weird near the end. The plot doesn’t get hard to follow, but the character actions do get a little bit muddled. Hell, Ichirohiko is a big part of this thing. If it was supposed to be a surprise what happened, then the surprise was bad. I also thought the character was a woman based on the voice actor as a kid and was very confused to see the deeper voice when they grew up.

The Boy and the Beast! Something different, that’s for sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So many tagged names and so few stars.

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

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

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

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

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