Category: Uncategorized

Lies have got to be very sturdy. Lies can make a foundation for buildings and relationships, so lies have a lot of use. The more you lie, the more weight it can hold, I guess.

After all, you can have a throne of lies. So they must be able to support your weight and be at least a little bit comfortable.

I just don’t know if I’d trust a bridge of lies. Bridges usually have to hold dozens of cars at once, including the things that cars hold. Those bitches need to be super sturdy.

I’d want more than lies. I’d want some cement too. And I dunno, a couple engineering and psychology students to supervise the mixing of cement and lies. And if that isn’t enough, the actual physical embodiment of lies, to make it mostly a Bridge of Spies. Then it becomes something I’d stand on to hang out and shit.

I wasn’t even considering weather. Snow can add a lot of weight to it all.

In the 1950’s, everyone was afraid there would be a Nuclear Holocaust across the globe thanks to the cold war. Hell, people (including me) still are hugely afraid of this occurring. But back then it was new and caused kids to cry and shit. The information age was rampant, so there were spies everywhere. We sent guys over there, they sent Keri Russell over to us.

They also allegedly sent to us Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance). He did some USSR spy stuff. He was also found by the US Government, so everyone in America collectively wanted him dead for being a traitor. But to prove we are better than them, we have to put him on trial with a real lawyer. They settle on James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks), an insurance lawyer who did some criminal stuff in the past. Thankfully, Donovan is a good man and he does the fuck out of his job to defend his client, even if all of America hates him for doing his patriotic duty.

Since this is a true story, allow me to go further. As Donovan is the only man that Abel is willing to trust after awhile, Donovan starts getting used as a pawn by the USA government. He is brought in to try and trade Abel for a captured US Soldier, Francis Powers (Austin Stowell). He has to go to East Germany right as the wall is being built, while the East Germans have captured a US college student, Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers). That is two FPs. I smell a conspiracy. And Donovan wants to get both of them back, and not leave one to torture or worse.

Man, what’s a scumbag insurance lawyer going to do? How bout be a hero! FOR AMERICA! And one Russian spy.

Amy Ryan plays his wife, Alan Alda his boss, and Sebastian Koch / Mikhail Gorevoy are his main negotiating partners. I was going to mention the main US Agent in East Germany too, but I can’t find him on the list at all. Generic white dude.

That perma-frown face, if turned upside down, somehow stays a frown.

Steven Spielberg is the main reason I wanted to see this film. He hadn’t directed a film in about three years, and damn it, I wanted more. Lincoln could only hold me off for two of those years. He is a magical little man that can make phenomenal movies.

With Bridge of Spies, he tried a little bit hard and didn’t come across as honest as some of his past films. Maybe done intentionally, given the subject matter. The filter to make the film look like it was “set in the past” generally bugs me, and this time was no different. Despite the color scheme, the film was beautifully shot. I especially enjoyed the rain scene.

The acting from the big names was acceptable, but Rylance stole the show. Quite a few realistic jokes and an unflinching sense of awareness that nothing he could do could change his situation. Nothing ethical, a least from his point of view. Hanks was pretty good too, but the last third of the film just featured him playing sick with coughing during negotiations. The character itself was annoying at that point, somehow making it seem like he both didn’t care about the exchange and cared more than anyone else.

My overall complaint with the film is that it just felt far too long. The true story subject is quite a long one, but it seemingly skimmed over areas I thought would be more prevalent (court scenes), and spent far too much time on other plot points(the US Pilot training to be a spy, in particular). Thankfully they didn’t also spend a lot of time trying to humanize the college student. The one scene before he gets arrested felt like it was too much already.

A decent movie, but one that only excels in smaller doses and doesn’t feel as grandiose as the subject matter deserves.

Oh hey, Vacation. A comedy series a lot of people look back with fond memories. Because it told the truth. Family vacations are terrible, but we all grin and bear it because that is just what you gotta do.

It is a concept most people can related to, and with nostalgia being the strong bitch that it is, it makes sense for there to eventually be more Vacation movies. Movies that capture the true American spirit: cramped in a car with people you already hang out with too much. At the same time, people assume that if you make a new version of something old, the old one gets tarnished or something.

Those people are dumb.

Which is why I do declare I will not make comparisons to the first Vacation movie. I will judge this on its own merits as a new comedy, that may have references to a previous movie.

And my noble steed on this ride will be a small car.

Vacation is not a reboot or a remake, it is a sequel.

Rusty Griswald (Ed Helms) is now grown up and has a family of his own! He is a pretty good pilot, but works for a shitty airline that only does short domestic flights, so he can spend time with his family. His wife, Debbie (Christina Applegate) is a stay at home mom, raising the two boys. The older one, James (Skyler Gisondo) is almost done with high school, very sensitive, plays the guitar. He constantly gets picked on by his much smaller younger brother, Kevin (Steele Stebbins), who is a dick and is into wrestling.

Well, they normally go out every year to a cabin in the woods, but Rusty realizes that everyone finds it boring. So he decides to change it up. A cross country road trip from Chicago to California to go to Walley World! Yeah! Rusty had fond memories of the park as a kid, despite that one film where a bunch of bad things happened. This time it is going to go right and they are going to ride the best roller coaster in the country. Damn it.

Of course shit goes bad. Their car is weird and European, white water rafting, bad hot springs, crazy truckers, thieves, and more. They also make a pit stop to visit Rusty’s sister, Audrey (Leslie Mann), who finds the idea of a trip ridiculous. She is also super wealthy for marrying Stone Crandall (Chris Hemsworth), who is a super attractive weather man. The only other real plot line is James constantly running into Adena (Catherine Missal), a girl on another road trip.

Vacation also offers a lot of cameos. Of course we have Chevy Chase, but we also have Ron Livingston, Michael Pena, Kaitlin Olson, Nick Kroll, Tim Heidecker, Colin Hanks (Apparently), Norman Reedus, Keegan-Michael Key, and Charlie Day.

Most of my vacations ended up at a college strip fest as well.

Vacation ends up being different than its predecessor in many ways. For one, it is a modern comedy. So there is an industry regulated volume of a dick jokes that it needs to have in its film to make it to the big screen. This sort of thing isn’t always noticeable, because if they have a lot of varied other jokes, you usually don’t even notice all the dick jokes that are secretly hiding in the back ground. Unfortunately, if a movie is 95% dick jokes, they stand out like a sore…thumb. (You thought I’d say penis, heh heh heh).

So yes, it feels like Vacation is a one trick pony, where that trick is jumping over a bar that is floating about an inch over the ground. It would have been nice if they decided to raise that bar instead and make longer smarter jokes, but those are hard and require patience I guess.

Ed Helms just wasn’t interesting. A typical character in his wheelbarrow and it didn’t seem to offer anything new. There was some good interactions between the kids, and Applegate did a fine job.

Honestly, the reason I am giving this a passing rating is for two scenes. One, Four Corners monument scene was surprising and strangely funny. But more importantly, Charlie Fucking Day. This movie is borderline watchable for his scenes alone. Hysterical. High energy. Wet. Fantastic. Technically soon you can probably find the whole scene on Youtube, but I feel like the film should get some credit for featuring something so marvelous in its data innards.

Yep. Without Charlie Day this movie would have just been downright terrible. You don’t hear that phrased that often.

Sometimes it takes a long time to get your documentary filmed and published. Like, let’s say, for example…oh…I don’t know…The Wrecking Crew!

The director, Denny Tedesco, started getting film for this project in 1996. I was seven years old when he started this documentary. At that point in my life, I doubt I had even seen a documentary. The film was completed twelve years later, in 2008. He went and showed it at some of the festivals and people loved it. The issue with his documentary was that it was basically impossible for him to get a distributor. You see, this documentary uses music. A LOT of music. And all of the music is owned by a corporation or person and they need to pay those people money to use the song in the documentary. This suddenly makes the documentary costs several hundred thousands of dollars before they can even start selling copies!

Needless to say, no one wanted to front load that bill. So they raised a lot of the money on their own. Roughly $300,000. Somehow that still wasn’t enough. It was 2013. So he turned to Kickstarter. Using the story he wanted to tell, he was able to raise $300,000 more dollars to pay off the fees and make the film even more snazzy. And now it is on Netflix for us to enjoy.

Enjoy what though? All this intro and I don’t tell you about what it is, like some sort of movie slut.

Well. It is about music. It is about most of the famous songs that you know and love from the 1960’s and 70’s. Back when bands didn’t necessarily know how to play instruments that well and companies were figuring out how to sell an image and look more than talent. They needed to make hit records fast and didn’t have time to spend weeks in the recording studio when there is all that touring to do. That is where The Wrecking Crew came in, the most famous recording studio band of all time.

And you forgot all of their birthdays. 🙁

The name The Wrecking Crew was just a nickname for a lot of these people. They weren’t an official cohesive group that worked together, but technically each individually signed musicians who knew how to play their instrument well, could read music fast, and could improv on the fly to make a tune better. Sure, a lot of these guys were hired over and over again, so they grew to be friends and had that bond, but technically any of them could be replaced at any moment. This documentary does its best job to talk about as many big members of this crew as it can, based on who is still alive. It even gets a few of them talking to tell stories about musicians from behind the scenes.

Funny enough, we can all thank Brian Wilson from The Beach Boys for basically setting this up, using different musicians to make his Pet Sounds album. What? Didn’t know about that? You missed my review of Love & Mercy then (which I only just saw mere weeks before this). The efficiency and professionalism made these people work hard for their money and helped create such fantastic music.

Back to the front, Danny made this documentary because of his dad, Tommy Tedesco, who was one of the main guitarists from The Wrecking Crew. He wanted to tell his story, and didn’t get a chance to show it to the world before his death. If you want more name drops, the most famous member of the crew ended up being Glen Campbell. Yeah, he got super damn famous and started as a studio band jockey!

I didn’t do a lot of talking about the details of the documentary, because hey, it is on Netflix and you can easily watch it for yourself. Just hearing the music and hearing their stories is a blast on its own. Overall I didn’t find it life changing in anyway. It was light, easy, and fluffy. Yeah, I said fluffy damn it.

A good documentary that a lot of people should watch. I appreciate the effort and passion that went into it and it really shows on the screen. Now give me more more documentaries about people who did all the work for others, or something. Yay the little guy!

I would consider myself a fan of Adam Carolla. He is a man’s man, and not just because of his role on The Man Show.

But in general, he is like a old man’s Nick Offerman. He knows a lot about cars, building stuff, and…being an adult? I guess.

Either way, I was very upset when he was kicked off from Celebrity Apprentice, because he probably should have won it after Penn Jillette.

Damn it, I keep getting side tracked. Carolla made a movie, starring himself, funded by a shit ton of people. Whatever site he raised the funds on let him reach past his goal to fund the film. It even broke a record for whatever that site is. And now that I will see Road Hard, I will have seen and reviewed all two movies he has ever been the main star. Big numbers there.

He might even be able to afford his own Waffle House franchise.

Adam plays Bruce Madsen, a man with a manly name, who has gone through a lot. Well, most recently it feels like, he has gone through a divorce. That is a shame, but it is what it is. Sure, he isn’t living in his amazing house anymore that his TV career paid for, but at least his kids are happy. And fuck. They are smart too and wanting to go to college? What is up with that?

You see, Bruce used to be famous. He got super well known for The Bro Show on television. This lead to a lot of money and other TV show opportunities. It ended up being better for his co-host, Jack (Jay Mohr), whose career skyrocketed and is now hosting one of those late night television shows. Damn, that sucks for Bruce! Needless to say, the jobs aren’t coming as easy for Bruce as they used to be. People are starting to only remember him being really good on that Celebrity Barn Raising show.

So Bruce has to go back into stand up comedy, his roots. He has to travel around doing small time shows, that don’t sell out, but do okay because he is that “guy who used to be on the TV!” And college is expensive. He needs a big break to get his career off the ground. He needs to get back into TV, getting a steady pay check to enhance his resume. He needs something to get him back out of the comedy clubs to land back on his feet.

Featuring Diane Farr, David Alan Grier, Philip Rosenthal, David Koechner, Cynthy Wu, Larry Miller, and Howie Mandel as himself.

In this picture: Literally not landing on his own feet.

I think I can speak for all Adam Carolla fans when I say this movie is him at his finest. Hell, if you couldn’t tell, this is literally him playing himself. I tried to drop off enough hints in the intro, but he made a fictionalized version of himself, dumped a few more shitty moments on it, and called it a movie. Regardless of one’s skill, you probably know how to play yourself in most situations so the acting should just come natural.

I hope there is no bad blood between him and Kimmel in real life. That will make me sad.

Back to to film! Not surprisingly, I enjoyed this tale. It is a simple one, but it has some good comedic moments, features jokes in the form of stand up comic acts, and has good supporting characters who also make me laugh.

Sure, because it is a simple story, it doesn’t really end up too surprising by the end. It just tells a simple story solidly, and I can respect that. Like a well crafted stool. Or a…movie that isn’t shit.

Yeah. Much like that.

I am happy to say that I was able to go into Sicario with a blind eye. I knew nothing about the plot and I was happy about that fact. Hell, when I first saw the cover and name, I just assumed it was some random horror film.

But what I was unable to avoid was the hype train. The hype train drove through my city like a…well, train. Praise from all sides about the acting, directing, cinemetography, plot, you name it, people loved it.

That sucks. Now I went into the film expecting greatness. The important note here is that I did, in fact, go into the film. I was supposed to see 99 Films this night. I convinced myself otherwise, to avoid the free pre-screening, and pay my hard cash money to see the movie so I can review it and compare it to its hype. I might have had to wait until a DVD release if it wasn’t super hyped, and who the hell knows when that would be. I can’t miss out on potential Oscar greatness for Andrew MotherFucking Garfield!?!

Some say Garfield is living his post-Spider-Man life as an immigrant on the run from the law.

Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is an FBI agent living in Arizona and she is pretty dang good at her job. She is currently working on a string of kidnappings in the area by a Mexican Cartel lord. The guy pretends to be a legitimate business man, but they all know he is running the gangs secretly and taking orders from Mexico. Kate and her partner, Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya), also find out that parts of the house were rigged to explode. Well fuck. These assholes are going to start booby trapping their hideouts to smuggle people places. This means every future job just got that much more dangerous and things really really suck.

But have no fear, every day American citizens. The government is on the case!

Kate is hand picked to join a larger, inter-department task force, lead by the CIA. She doesn’t know a lot about the mission. Just that it is lead by an asshole, Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), who only slightly works or the CIA, and his mysterious friend, Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), someone who isn’t even American, nor is he CIA. He is a “consultant.”

Next thing Kate knows, she is whisked away to El Paso. She was told the overall mission of the task force was to bring own the kidnappings and drugs in that area. To actually hurt the cartel from the top and not through their lackies.

What she didn’t know is how many laws would be broken in the process. Not including murder, crossing borders, torture and kidnapping. Lovely. What’s a moral girl gonna do in a situation like that?

Also with Victor Garber, Jon Bernthal, Maximillia Hernandez, and the best Miami Spy, Jeffrey Donovan.

You can’t fool me with your hipster glasses and fake mustache. I know it is you, Michael Weston.

Sicario was one of those perfect movie experiences. Outside of the two dudes who literally had phone calls during the showing. This is what I get for going to a non-screener, non-drafthouse like setting.

Why was it perfect? Sicario was like a slow burning wine. It was dark, realistic, slow, beautifully well shot, great characters, tense moments, and with a bit of moral ambiguity. Not a lot, but a bit. Someone should let me know if what I said about wine makes any sense, because I don’t know anything about wine, but the saying seemed natural enough.

Acting on all fronts were great. We got Brolin being a dick, pretty standard. But the obvious and clear stand outs come from Blunt and Del Toro. Blunt has been having a heck of a career with her last few movies. She seems to always give it her all and seems to be getting even more dramatic roles in the future thanks to it. Blunt gets to play our law abiding character who doesn’t know what really goes on, the one the audience gets to relate to.

Del Toro isn’t introduced until later in the film, but by the end he definitely becomes a true co star and almost another main protagonist. I once had a friend who said he would watch anything with Del Toro in it. But that was in 2010 and he was trying to justify being interested in The Wolfman. I knew he was in a lot of good movies, but I wasn’t a megafan. But hell, this is the type of performance that could make someone a megafan. His character is very rich and the movie does a nice job of slowly unraveling his mystique. He is one of the most BAMF characters in film this year, while at the same time you never really know if you are supposed to be cheering for or against him.

I wouldn’t be a good reviewer if I didn’t further talk about the cinematography. Denis Villeneuve likes pretty movies and he wants your eyes to be ecstatic. You’d know that if you saw his recent movies, Enemy and Prisoners. That is why with this film and Prisoners he used the legendary Roger Deakins to set up his shots. So much attention to detail was put into every frame, the only thing that could ruin it would be mutilated bodies and dead nudity.

Oh.

Yeah. Some of that is in here too I guess.

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

I won’t make a sad intro about the death of Robin Williams. I have already had to talk about that with World’s Greatest Dad and Night At The Museum 3.

No, let’s talk about how Boulevard, good or bad, is going to be his last official film that was released. Actors don’t always leave with the best of films. Recently, James Gandolfini gave us Enough Said, but also The Drop! Philip Seymour Hoffman gave us Mockingjay Part 1. Yuck.

I think I accidentally made this intro sad again. And now that I have stars at the top of the review, you can see where this score is going.

And fuck, right there, there it is. A sad Robin Williams.

This is a story about a man who has lived a very simple life. Nolan Mack (Williams) has worked in the same bank for the last few decades and no, he doesn’t even own the place. After work he goes home to his wife, Joy (Kathy Baker), and they sit around and do old people things. They actually sleep in separate beds now. There is no sexual chemistry between them and they just seem to exist in each others company. Hell, Nolan’s only outlet on life seems to be hanging out with his friend, Winston (Bob Odenkirk), but that is only occasionally.

Things change when his dad (Gary Gardner) goes into cardiac arrest. This is a life changer for Nolan. He realizes he is getting up there in age and isn’t doing a whole lot with his life.

So he actually goes down a shady…boulevard, and ends up meeting a male prostitute. He gives Leo (Roberto Aguire) a lift, but with no real idea of what he is doing. Eventually he takes him into a hotel room and they talk. They just talk and hang out. Nothing sexual, and sure, Nolan will pay him for his time. Nolan seems to just want someone to listen to him, someone he can listen to as well. Nolan wants someone he can help out and buy things for and try to fix. And yes, Nolan too is totally gay. Has been his whole life. He just could never accept who he really was deep down.

Also featuring Giles Matthey as a bad guy pimp!

“Get out of the streets, and into my car. Get in the front seat Leo, get into my car!”

Boulevard has a simple message about a relatively simple man. It is never too late to truly be you. If you have been hiding your whole life and are 70 years old, you can still express yourself and come out, so to speak. And it doesn’t have to be just about being gay or transgendered, it could just be doing what you have always wanted to do before it is too late. Boulevard says you can teach an Old Dog new tricks.

That’s a nice message. Probably a good story. It did not feel as good in the actual movie.

That is because the movie is extremely slow. Most likely deliberately, but still, slow. I don’t end up caring about Nolan’s personal journey, or Leo’s life. I kind of just felt bad for his wife the whole time. I am not saying Nolan should have kept lying. But it was just awkward and uncomfortable, the whole situation.

The acting isn’t that great, the atmosphere is melancholy, and just…well, damn. This might be a great inspirational movie for some. But to me, it is just a bad film and thankfully won’t be the lasting impression on William’s legacy.

Everyone knows that James Cameron really loves the ocean. He is stupid rich and just wants to conquer it.

In some ways, I am starting to think that Matt Damon is like a James Cameron-lite. He doesn’t like water, but he is starting to love the shit out of outer space. Three films in three years have featured a Mr. Damon spending time away from Earth. First in Elysium, he went from the slums to the orbit. But you know, he was just there for a little bit. In Interstellar, he was in space for a long..long time. And he was alone!

Think of it like a Three Bears situation. In Elysium he was in space for a small amount of time, in Interstellar it was too long. But maybe in The Martian, Damon will find his “just right” amount of space time. You know, then he can go back to Earth and start doing political things again. Or Boston things. Or maybe, just maybe, fingers crossed, he can go back to voicing Bill the Krill.

Damon had a lot of time alone to reflect on his career while pretending to be on Mars.

Set somewhere in the future, NASA has successfully put people on Mars! Yay! We rock! Speaking of Rocks, there are a lot of them on Mars. And sometimes there are dangerous rock storms. When a particularly powerful storm begins to develop, Commander Lewis (Jessica Chastain) decides that they need to evacuate the planet. There is a chance their escape rocket could tip over and then they’d be stranded! During the storm though, Matt Watney (Damon), a space botanist, gets hit by some debris and goes flying. All of their suit flashy devices say that his suit has opened and he has to be dead.

So Lewis and the rest of the crew (Michael Pena, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie) escape Mars to begin their flight home a few weeks ahead of schedule.

But it turns out, against extreme odds, that Matt is actually alive. However, he is now stranded. The mission only was supposed to last about 30 days, and they had made it to 17, so his rations aren’t that plentiful. He has a huge checklist of responsibilities suddenly that are all vital to his survival. He has to figure out how to grow his own food on a desert planet. He has to make sure his equipment doesn’t break, so he doesn’t run out of water or oxygen. He has to figure out a way to communicate with NASA. And of course, he has to figure out how to get himself home. Even though Matt wants to survive, he openly acknowledges his impending doom and realizes that almost everything he does is just prolonging his most likely catastrophic death.

Eventually, obviously, he isn’t 100% alone. Or else it would be an impossibility. Back on Earth, thanks to satellites, they are able to eventually note the differences of the site and realize he must be alive and kicking. This is where I can sneak in all the rest of the actors.

Who is involved in the mission to get him back? Well, of course, the Head of NASA (Jeff Daniels), a different head of NASA type guy (Chiwetel Ejiofor), head of the Mars program (Sean Bean), head…engineer…of the shuttle? (Benedict Wong), an Astrodynamics guy (Donald Glover), head of NASA PR (Kristen Wiig), and Mindy Park (Mackenzie Davis) who controls a satellite. Or something.

This unfortunate scene reminded me too much of Fantastic Four and now I am undergoing PTSD.

Ridley Scott has been not putting his best foot forward recently. Exodus: Gods and Kings and The Counselor were terrible, and Prometheus had a lot of issues. So I have to go into every new movie of his with a bit of a hesitation.

Thankfully, Scott did not disappoint this time and knocked The Martian out of the park.

The absolute best part of the film is its attention to detail and scientific accuracy. I don’t know how hardcore they went into it, but I will be checking Neil Gegrasse Tyson’s twitter to see if the stars on mars were at least accurate. But everything else is so damn sound and smart. I almost stood up in the middle of the movie to chant U-S-A and show off my Science Boner. That is a bit graphic, but the metaphor is necessary to emphasis how sexy it all was. It isn’t dumbed down and they just go full on smart people talk on the viewer.

After the science, we have to talk about the Damon. Damon plays what has to be the greatest Botanist ever on the silver screen. I don’t know how praise worthy that statement actually is. The writers made him smart, charming, witty and a guy with a morbid sense of humor. He tells jokes to logs where he notes everything he is doing, with the caveat that it probably won’t matter since he will most likely die. And he even got to say “Fuck” twice in the film, despite the PG-13 Rating!

Basically everyone in the cast was great in their roles. Even Stan, Mara, and Hennie, the crew members who people don’t care much about. I want to give special shout outs to Glover, who had a small role but was extremely convincing, and Wong, who was an important side character who for some reason didn’t even make the IMDB credit list.

The film is of course also visually wonderful. Mars, the future Houston space center, outer space, all of it is great. I don’t think 3D added much to the film, and it should be a good experience without it. It isn’t as necessary as Gravity.

Despite how much I liked the film, it only has one issue. There is a sort of epilogue after the events, so you can find out what happened to characters. It seemed off to me. It was also a bit sudden of a tone shift. The previous scene I was almost at the point of tears (You don’t get to know if from happiness or sadness, sorry), but they ended it too quickly for all the emotions to rile up in me. And the last few minutes were just…meh.

Oh well, 99% of a film is still pretty damn awesome.

Divorce sucks. No way to sugar coat it. It breaks up families, people start having trust issues, children get fought over, you know.

There are some pros I guess. For the kids, they get two Christmases, and everyone knows that means more toys. And you don’t have to spend much time ever with someone you presumably hate!

But, in America, getting a divorce is actually very hard. From alimony to child support, from splitting of assets, to the legal code, it can get very confusing very fast. In fact, a lot of people out there seem to be making assloads of money over the break up of couples.

It isn’t a bad thing that people make money off of doing a job, that should be expected. What is unexpected is the lengths the entire system goes through to make sure your divorce hurts you in the wallet as much as possible. Which is really what Divorce Corp. is all about.

So what kind of shady shit is going down? Glad you asked. Obviously the documentary goes into extreme amounts of detail and personal anecdotes, so watch it for the full picture.

See? It is a giant office building behind a church? Fuck your subtle metaphors.

First of all, the family court law has gotten very complicated over the last few decades. It used to be relatively simple, but due to increase in complexity, for really no reason at all, it is basically impossible to represent yourself in court. You are basically forced to hire a lawyer regardless of how amicable your divorce will be. And of course, the divorce court lawyers can cost anywhere between 500-1000 dollars an hour.

If children are involved, Child Support isn’t a set in stone amount, it is based purely on the difference of income and how much custody the parents have. So, if someone has 100% custody, the other parent has to actually pay a lot more. This actively encourages couples to fight it out. Fighting it out makes the trial take a long time, which racks up the hourly fees, in order to earn money to probably just pay off your lawyer fees. The two lawyers probably know each other or are friends, and they both know the longer they take, the longer they get paid.

It is a shitty situation to be in. But that isn’t the end of it.

The court can appoint people to come in and monitor both households/parents. I don’t remember what they are called. These people have a fee as well, and the judge can force a couple to pay for them. These people aren’t neutral, can be friends with one firm, and can say whatever they want to make one parent seem bad. Of course, they have also been shown to accept bribes and more. Yayy.

These things are just the bottom of the barrel. I actually had to pause the documentary 20 minutes into it, sort of shocked with how fast and hard the information was coming at me. The whole thing is kind of disgusting and can make you just afraid of stepping outside.

Why only a 3 out of 4? Well, it is definitely dense and very detailed, but at the same time, it still just felt a bit one sided. Most of the anecdotes they showed have a lot of the “he said, she said” element, and for all I know, the people in these situations were bad. The evidence at times could easily have been hidden from the viewer.

Clearly the documentary has an agenda, and the agenda seems like a good one. But I feel like things can’t 100% be as bad as described everywhere. Maybe some parts of the country are just worse than other parts. Maybe. Hopefully.

I am happy to say that before I watched The D Train, I knew absolutely nothing about it. I had only briefly seen the poster/DVD cover. Enough to recognize the two leads.

I actually thought this was a war movie. Again, quick glance at the cover, I thought the arm in the background was like, a gun strapped to the back. I thought they had just won a war!

Or you know, a movie about trains or something. A lonely New York meet up that turns into friendship. Fuck it, let’s just go into it.

Quit yelling. I’m trying to relax on my couch, far away from war and trains.

Dan Landsman (Jack Black) is a weird dude. But we will get into that. First let us talk about his normal tendencies.

Dan has a wife (Kathryn Hahn), a 15 year old boy (Russell Posner) and a baby girl. He has a boring job doing something and has been there for awhile. It isn’t particularly rewarding, but it pays the bills. His boss (Jeffrey Tambor) is an older guy who doesn’t like new technology and is generally swell.

And he is the self-appointed head of the Alumni committee for his high school class. The others (Kyle Bornheimer, Henry Zebrowski, more) don’t agree with a head, but whatever, they have a 20 year old reunion to prep for. No one seems to give a shit and turn out is looking low. Things turn around when Dan finds out that the coolest kid in school, Oliver Lawless (James Marsden), has finally made it after all this time. He was an actor and wanted to be a big star and now he is in a national television commercial about sun block!

OH MAN SO COOL. He thinks if he can convince Oliver to come to the reunion, more people will show up, and he will be a hero! He just needs to fly out to LA to convince him in person. So he lies about it as a business trip to his boss and wife, just to hang out and party with Oliver.

And Oliver is a great dude. They get drunk, they get happy, they dance, they flirt with women and Dan is able to convince Oliver to show up!

And also, something very different happens. Something that has never happened to Dan before. Something that will make his trip home and subsequent weeks leading up to the reunion very weird and uncomfortable.

Enough to drive a mediocre middle aged man to drinking? You betcha!

From the description, it looks like The D Train can be a very uncomfortable movie from start to finish. An average dude in a boring life, put into a super liberal party setting, with a man he has strangely idealized for decades. He has always wanted to live vicariously though him, but now he has the opportunity to seem cool and actually celebrate with the man. Life is wonderful!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t an uncomfortable movie, just a boring one. Sure, there was that one scene. And like, a good scene at the reunion, and maybe another good joke. And that is it.

The best thing really about this movie is that it was a different sort of character for Jack Black. Not different like Bernie, but more just regular dude. So good job Jack, diversifying your resume. That will be good help in the future assuming you need it. Marsden unfortunately adds nothing to the film. Hahn does a pretty good exasperated housewife though, sick of her husband’s shit.

The plot isn’t even that bad. With some work, better dialogues, and better…just scenes in general, it could have been a solid movie. Instead this movie is about a nickname and a dream gone wrong, and is completely forgettable.

Surprise, surprise. That was my emotion when I left The Maze Runner movie last year. Going into it, I thought I would hate it. I thought it would just be another terrible young adult movie adaptation that a company wanted to film to get that sweet post-Twilight money. It had a laughably bad trailer with some cringe dialogue, but I left it excited and wanting more.

Sure, I knew that whatever happened, there should be no more mazes after the first one, so calling it Maze Runner anything afterwards doesn’t make a lot of sense. Blame that on the author not coming up with a better series name.

This time, for Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (dropping the “The” was a solid choice), I am going in basically blind. I haven’t seen trailers for it or TV spots. I just want it to surprise me with whatever else is going to happen. This review is also so late because I wasn’t able to attend the press screening for the film, because I instead saw The Visit. Regardless of what has happened, this franchise has gotten some money out of me.

They don’t have to tie me up like these poor saps. Besides, I don’t carry loose change.

Remember where we left off? We got out of the fucking maze, that’s what. The evil Corporation WCKD (Wicked) who was testing on them have been killed and resistance group has saved them. Yay!

Or are they really the good guys? The first film already implied they were bad, so things shouldn’t be too weird to assume they are indeed bad. Even though they are being taken care of by the wonderful Janson (Aidan Gillen). The surviving crew is immediately debriefed, checked up physically, and welcomed into the facility. Forget who we have? Well, there is our main dude Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), the certifiable GOAT Minho (Ki Hong Lee), the minority, Frypan (Dexter Darden), and the sweet one, Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster). Yeah, I too am surprised at how few of them made it out. I really thought there was more.

Oh yeah, and then there is the woman, Teresa (Kaya Scodelario). She doesn’t have a lot of personality so I forget about her.

Needless to say, bad things happen at the new facility, so Thomas and Crew end up escaping. They gain the help of Aris (Jacob Lofland) and Winston (Alexander Flores), who helm them realize this place isn’t good. They are collecting kids from all over these mazes for some …wicked…reason.

Now they have to go into The Scorch, the name for the desert, and survive against the elements. And against the Cranks, which are like the infected humans that they are immune to. Basically zombies. Then they basically go from area to pre-established area, each with their own notable leader, who have their own new world agendas. They are kind of like a fleeting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Along the way they will meet Rosa Salazar, Giancarlo Esposito, Alan Tudyk, Barry Pepper, Lili Taylor, and of course, Patricia Clarkson.

But first, they are going to get sand in every nook and cranny.

At over two hours, The Scorch Trials thankfully tries to fit as much as possible onto the screen for us viewers. So much that it is hard to imagine the film as a whole. I’d rather break it down, which means I am going to make another Likes and Dislikes list. Last time I did this was with Avengers: Age of Ultron!

Likes:

• Right off the bat, things get tense and there is quite a lot of action in this movie.
• The soundtrack can keep you mostly on the edge of your seat!
• The Cranks/zombies are an interesting add on to the series. They are fast zombies basically and it was totally unexpected. Some of there scenes were quite terrifying, helping blend this into a more hardcore Dystopian future film.
• For the most part, beautifully shot with great camera work.

Dislikes:

• The intelligence of the characters would not be consistent. They would do something really smart, but then something terribly stupid just so the plot could lazily move forward. The standing around during the sewer scene is a prime example.
• There continues to be very cringeworthy dialogue.
• The film feels like it doesn’t have a cohesive story to follow. Just a bunch of small barely connected parts. And like I said, the main characters don’t feel special, they just feel like they are meandering in the middle of something way bigger than themselves and they are insignificant.
• One scene in particular where a character does a “Noble Suicide” because he is going to turn into a Crank. How? By shooting himself in the head and telling everyone to leave him alone an keep walking. Not only was I pretty sure they were out of bullets by then, but also what the fuck, you are about to die, you don’t need to keep the gun. Just kill yourself so they can get the gun back. There are fucking zombies out there.
• The glass breaking window scene was as nonsensical as they come.
• Teresa was so useless. She was like an emotionless blog used to move the plot forward, usually thanks to Thomas trying to do something for her.

This may read as being a bit nitpicky, but in all honesty, there were a lot of cool moments, and a lot of bad minor or stupid moments. After a second movie I feel like I should actually know more about what happened on this planet. If there is one movie left I feel like I should know more about their overall end goal by now, instead of running around like headless chickens.

I was pretty sure I would have given this film a 2 when I started writing it, because at least I was entertained in the film and I was even scared at points. But a disappointing finale, along with a lot of scenes that made me tilt my head in confusion, leads me to realize this is poorly put together. When your film starts to break down once you think back on events and plot points, that is never a good sign.

Hell, this is the same reason why the last Transformers movie got a 1 instead of a 2. Plot doesn’t hold up. Hopefully the third movie can restore some sort of awe and greatness to this franchise. And, you know, not just be a spray painted golden turd.

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