Category: Uncategorized

The Divergent series has the honor of being the next Hunger Games series, movie wise. Even if The Hunger Games still has one more movie yet to come out. You know. Successful trilogy, third one split into two boring as fuck movies to milk more money out of teenagers. Whatever.

I wanted to like Divergent a lot more than I did. But, TL;DR, it wasn’t a completely original dystopian plot line like it made it look like. It was kind of nonsensical at points, left a lot of questions, and it ended up just being a damn high school clique movie, in its most basic form.

HOWEVER. Insurgent can be something completely different. If the ending of Divergent is any indication, Insurgent shouldn’t be a shitty high school clique movie. It should be a smarter sci-fi dystopian action movie. Class warfare shouldn’t be an issue. Just rebels vs the government. Good. This one can be a huge improvement.

Pls don’t let me down. Plsssss.

I was just as surprised as everyone else over the erotic lunch based three way scene.

The last movie ended with our heroes, Tris (Shailene Woodley), Four (Theo James), Peter (Miles Teller) and Caleb (Ansel Elgort) escaping out of Chicago and heading past the wall into the magical world of the unknown. After all, the wall was put up to protect them from the dangerous outside that had monsters and bad people and shit.

Wait a minute. Sorry. No. They just go into the forests outside of the city? Not outside of the wall? Oh…well then…okay. I guess they are just hiding out from the hippies, trying to figure out what the hell Jeanine (Kate Winslet) wants to do, now that she took out all the working class selfless people. That’s right, only four factions now fuckers. The nerds, the jocks (which are scattered and small), the student government, and the hippies. Because it is still a high school in Chicago. Speaking of those factions, we get to see things from the hippies and the student government finally. The hippies are lead by Johanna (Octavia Spencer) and the SGA is lead by Jack Kang (Daniel Dae Kim, of Lost fame!).

Either way, the plot of this movie is our heroes on the run. Not physically, because apparently it is super easy to hide from almost everyone in Chicago, despite them only using like 5 buildings for most of the population. Their GPS systems must all be out of wack. Also, Jeanine found this mystical box under Tris’ old house that her parents were hiding. That is why she killed them by the way, looking for the box. Didn’t you know that they wanted it from the first movie? (I literally don’t remember it, but it may have been hinted or mentioned). The thing is, this box has a message in it, written by the founders of the caste system. It will let them know how to deal with all these Divergent assfaces. They just need a really strong divergent to open it. Hmm, wonder who that could be…

This movie has a huge number of other people of course. We get the return of Jai Courtney, Mekhi Phifer, Ray Stevenson, Maggie Q, Ashley Judd, Tony Goldwyn, and Zoe Kravitz. But we also have new people, like Naomi Watts and Keiynan Lonsdale! Woo~

Oh, and didn’t you hear that this one featured Bieber?*

As soon as I finished this movie, I was immediately asked by people what I thought about it. And I shrugged. I didn’t know. It took me a long time to figure out exactly what I liked, disliked, and how I thought about the film as a whole.

Here is one thing I know for certain: Insurgent is better than Divergent. For sure. I had a lot to complain about Divergent. You might have heard about me doing so in my review of Divergent. But I still thought it was at least okay. So here is another thing I know: Insurgent is not good enough for me to give it a 3 out of 5, the like it category. It is a 2 out of 4 like Divergent, just a better 2 out of 4.

I was able to see this movie in IMAX, only my second movie to do so after Edge of Tomorrow, and it did feel good on the gigantic 3D screen. It had a lot of CGI based special effects going through these tests or whatever they were called and for the most part the looked pretty decent. It had more action than the first film. Real action, not bullshit “dangerous training”.

On the other hand, the plot was pretty basic. It was very predictable, especially when it came to reality versus simulation. The only wild card was Miles teller. We mostly just had teenage angst carrying the rest of the plot, so it was pretty linear. Major plot points seemed like they were added on as an afterthought (read: that box thing that wasn’t mentioned in the first film at all). And of course, this film still doesn’t feature outside Chicago, which to every one that isn’t a book reader, was pretty sure how this one would start. But whatever.

The film also still features a huge amount of confusing plot decisions and material. Maybe reading the books would fill the gaps, maybe they are shitty in the book too. Who knows. I know this is still entertaining enough to warrant a watch, but not enough for me to want to buy any of the series still or read the books. And the last movie being another shitty two parter means the franchise is probably at its high point right now. So sad. Please go back to Spiderman, Shailene.

* – Bieber jokes are still funny, right?

I would like to think I have my finger on the pulse of the movie community, being pretty aware of when movies are coming out and what I need to see and when.

But I feel like Big Eyes was grossly under advertised. We have people who have been nominated for Academy Awards in the lead and winners as well! Our female, nominated five times, and our male, nominated, I dunno, two? But he won both of them. And it is directed by Tim Burton WITHOUT Johnny Depp. This seems like something people would talk wildly about.

I mean. Shit. It won a Golden Globe or two (I really just don’t remember).

But instead we get it as a sort of limited/secret/whatever Christmas release, all while my TV was filled with ads for Unbroken.

SHIT THAT CAT IS ON DRUGS!

Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) left her husband before it was cool. She just up and divorced and left with her daughter (Delaney Raye or Madeleine Arthur, you know, depends on when during the movie). She wasn’t Margaret Keane at this point, but I don’t remember her maiden/first marriage name.

She left to become an artist, and started doing quick sketches of kids or families at festivals for super cheap just to get by. She couldn’t sell her work for a lot because people didn’t care for women artists.

Well, there she met a man. A Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) (psst, now you know they get married), who does mostly scenic landscape pictures from France. He is a skilled artist in his own right and really likes her work. Well, things get moving, and partially out of love of art and of each other (and a need to be secure financially or else she loses her daughter maybe), they get hitched!

They even sell work that they did. Well, Walter sells the work. He is a natural salesman, able to hype anything up. He accidentally claims that one of his wife’s paintings is his too! Because you know, he wanted to close the deal, and buyers always like to meet the artist. She isn’t a great seller herself. She hates this. Like. A lot. But goes along with it because it brings them money early on.

Oh and hey. Then he does it intentionally. And after they get to be super successful, he basically blackmails her into continuing along with it, taking no credit. Because hey, now they have committed fraud, and if she were to tell everyone, they’d lose everything. Sucks to be a sort of slave in your own home getting no credit.

Did I mention this is a true story?

And then, you know, also people like Jason Schwartzman, Danny Huston, and Krysten Ritter as Margaret’s best friend!

I think the main conflict in this picture is the war between big eyes and shifty eyes.

Big Eyes was such a quaint, nice feeling movie. I liked that it was set in the mid 1900s, but also, I wasn’t given some shitty filter over the whole thing so that I knew it was set in the past. No, it was just given nice regular camera work and the whole thing looked crisp. It wasn’t dark and broody, so it was something very un-Burton like, which was another nice surprise.

Another unexpected treat was Mr. Waltz. He didn’t have the same character as his Tarantino roles. And the only other role I can think of is Water for Elephants, which isn’t like this either. He was a villain, obviously, and a smooth talker, but a lot less stable than his past roles.

Amy Adams also did a solid job.

The thing is, this movie didn’t have enough plot for me. At one point it just felt like I was getting more of the same over and over again. She is still sad about her paintings and feels bad about lying. He still sucks and has schemes to keep her artwork being bought. On and on and on. The eventual court room scene was kind of fun. But still, I thought something was lacking throughout the whole film. Acting was fine, story wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped, but it was still a well shot and pretty movie.

I think Burton picked it accidentally. He saw the title Big Eyes and since he loves eyes so much, he assumed it would involve just giant floating eyeballs playing tricks on kids or something. Yeah, that makes sense in my head.

I wanted to see Top Five when it first came out to theaters, but I was busy that weekend, getting married and taking a vacation and all. Excuses, I know.

And with that, I have nothing left of an intro. I know nothing about this movie outside of who is in it and I am willing to be surprised.

Just a couple people on trains, goin’ places! Nothin’ to see here, move along!

Chris Rock is not playing Chris Rock, but Andre Allen. Totally different guy. This guy used to be a stand up comic, was super funny, then made a successful franchise of films about Hammy the bear, who was also a cop. People loved it. Hilarious.

Then he got off of drugs and alcohol. He didn’t feel as funny. He didn’t want to do those types of films anymore. He wants to make more serious pictures and branch out as an actor. Like his new film, where he is the star, about the Haitian revolution. It is coming out this weekend, and he is also getting married to reality TV star Erica Long (Gabrielle Union). Because of this, their wedding will also totally be live and aired on Bravo!

Yayyyy!…

His agent (Kevin Hart), who didn’t want him to do this movie, also set him up with a full day interview with The Times. The Times hates his movies, and their movie critic has been the meanest. But it isn’t that dude to interview him, it is Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson), who doesn’t want to do a full on fluff piece. She wants to find out real information, new things, she wants him to open up. He just wants people to accept him as a serious actor and person. Hah.

Also featuring Anders Holm, Cedric the Entertainer, Romany Malco and J.B. Smoove.

If I was a voice actor, I would try to imitate Chris Rock’s voice… I’d probably get fired.

As expected, this is a movie Chris Rock wrote and directed to speak from his heart. These are his thoughts and feelings on reality TV, the industry, drugs and alcohol, groupies, journalists and critics, you name it. It isn’t super about him of course, because Chris Rock isn’t known for some ridiculous comedy series where you only hear him and don’t see him. But you can really tell where he is coming from.

The best part of Top Five is the really real-ness of it all. It feels incredibly natural, as if it is actually just a few people or friends talking, depending on the scene. The scene where he went back to his old friend’s house and there was a tiny party is a great example of this.

But even more importantly, the film is also funny at times. I have probably always been a fan of Chris Rock’s work, whether it is his voice or delivery, I don’t know, but I would watch him in basically anything. Because of the realistic feel, Rock obviously fits the character pretty well and it doesn’t take too many leaps and bounds to consider these characters in their role. Shit, it really helps later in the bachelor party scene when we have other famous comedians just playing themselves.

At the same time, I am just a little bit disappointed with the ending. I wanted more. I know why it ended where it did, but I didn’t want my brain to have to do any of the work, I just wanted to be spoon fed.

Which, in a way, is the type of thing this movie was definitely against. Layers!

Due to the way my website works, I am now missing a lot more movies when they are in theaters. I have to decide every week what I want to watch, as I only let myself go to one pre-screening per week except for special circumstances. So some movies fall by the wayside. What did I see instead of John Wick? I don’t even remember. I know I didn’t see Nightcrawler to see Birdman, which was technically the right choice, but Nightcrawler ended up being pretty sexy on its own right.

But everyone already has over-hyped this movie for me. Is it cool to like Keanu again? Sweet! Because I actually liked his last two projects, Man of Tai Chi and 47 Ronin. But if everyone likes this one, then I might love it. Yay Keanu! Yay good publicity! Yay generic as fuck sounding action movies!

How bad ass could his character be, needing to use a sight and all?

John “Leave Me Alone” Wick (Keanu Reeves) has a mysterious past, like most movie characters that are new properties that aren’t based on real live people. But we know he used to be happy. He had a wife. A lover. A soul mate. But now she is gone. No foul play or anything, just a normal bitchy disease that took her life. They knew it was coming. It still hurts though.

And then John gets a package in the mail. A puppy. A fucking puppy?! Yes, a fucking puppy. This puppy, Daisy, was actually arranged to be sent to him from his now dead wife. She wanted to leave him something to help him cope and what better way to cope than A FUCKING PUPPY NAMED DAISY. Seriously guys.

Well, thanks to a small altercation, he ends up pissing up some Russian street thugs. Namely, Iosef (Alfie Allen) really liked his car and wanted to buy it. John tells him no and responds in Russian angering him. So they follow him home, break into his house, KILL HIS NEW PUPPY FROM HIS DEAD WIFE and steal his car. What in the fuck, Russia? What in the fuck?

Unfortunately for the Russians, literally everyone kind of recognizes his car in the car shops, including Iosef’s dad, Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist). Why? Oh, because John Fucking Wick used to be a hitman for them. Their own Boogieman, who could kill anyone or anything that they wanted. But he retired and got out of the business to be with his woman, promising never to kill again basically.

But then, you know. Dude’s Daisy is dead. So a revenge flick like any other, Wick has to take down the whole organization to feel at peace. Or will it really help?

Also featuring Willem Dafoe, Dean Winters, Adrianne Palicki, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane, and Lance Reddick.

“Iosef, Iosef, rhymes with …fuck, I dunno”

Action packed AND I actually feel sympathy for the main character. This is a great change in my mindset. I am used to getting shitty action movies with un-sympathetic anti-heroes, or just tough guys who have bullets bouncing off their chest, or just action movies without a plot. BUT THIS HAS PLOT AND ACTION. I was freaking out. Because the plot was pretty good, despite being something one could break down into “guy gets revenge on the mob” type of flick. I felt some fear for his life.

On TOP of that (more caps is better right?), the action was also interesting to watch. Some work went into the choreography. Work definitely went into the cinematography. Someone cared behind the helm of this movie and didn’t want just another forgettable movie. My mind is blown. When I first saw a picture for the movie, it was so generic and boring. Well, there might have been a turtle neck, which would have been the only odd thing (outside of Archer).

Keanu was a great man to carry this film. I don’t know if it is due to his own really sad life, or the sad Keanu meme, but his angst was apparent the whole movie. It looked like he carried the weight of the world on his manly shoulders.

John Wick is easily a nice recommendable action movie from 2014. I know it sounds like I am describing a 4 out of 4 movies, but I feel like The Raid 2‘s existence kind of makes it hard for me to elevate any other action movie up to its level. I bet John Wick had faults or things I disliked, I just can’t remember them right now. Shhh.

I came upon The Invisible War by accident. Just dashing through the Documentaries on Netflix.

But hey, I didn’t know when I watched it that it was nominated for Best Documentary. This is just a bonus!

I have been pretty bad at watching any of the movies nominated for the Best Documentary, let alone the winners. So this really was a nice surprise. I also now have to just remember to check the large list the next time I am hurting for a movie.

The Invisible War is about an uncomfortable subject. Rape and Sexual assault in the United States military.

It starts off with a happy message. Yay! Women in the Armed Forces! Equality and all! But based on the reports, the military is still almost entirely a boy’s game despite the decades.

There are pros and cons on going to war with actual invisible beings.
Con: You can’t see them.
Pro: You can spray fire your AK for a real reason finally.

Let’s start by saying, the beginning of this movie is rough. It starts with one woman telling her story of her own assault/rape case and how nothing was done about it. Then they throw in like, a dozen or more people telling various parts of their stories, all similar, all terrible. They immediately make you in a really shitty feeling mood and it was uncomfortable to watch.

But it doesn’t stop there. It examines why this happens. It examines how the the military treats problems from within, how it treats those that have left it, and what changes need to be done to fix it all.

And in all honesty, it is very powerful, hard to watch, and important documentary. It is one of those that might actually be able to make a difference in the world. Just give it a chance, unless it brings up past bad things in your life. Then you will probably already know about this one.

And it also made me want to go back and watch A Few Good Men. Or finally watch that JAG show.

I don’t even know what to say about Run All Night. This movie kind of came out of nowhere for me. I had at least heard about things like Non-Stop or A Walk Among The Tombstones

Like, months of notice. This one just in the last few weeks before coming out.

Is this guy even trying anymore? Does he do any serious drama anymore? Who keeps giving him these paychecks for these types of movie? Is it like…is he the next Mr. Cage? After all, he will take literally anything.

I think there must be a robot similar to AWESOME-O doing this. But instead of Adam Sandler movies, it keeps popping out generic Neeson movies. Has to be the only logical solution to what in the hell is going on.

Tag Teaming with pre-accident RoboCop.

Good news! Jimmy Conlon (Liam Neeson) is an asshole and not an anti-hero! He was a hitman for many years, to his good friend Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris). Shawn ran the ports of NYC, a pretty big task, got stupid wealthy, and lives a nice life now. Jimmy the Grave Digger? Well, he is a drunk who has a bad relationship with his son, Mike (Joel Kinnaman). Mike knows of Jimmy’s past. He doesn’t want that around his wife (Genesis Rodriguez) and kids.

Fair enough.

Well, Mike gets into some trouble. Due to no fault of his own, while driving a limo, Shawn’s son, Danny (Boyd Holbrook) wants to kill him. Danny ignores everyone and tries it anywhere, forcing Jimmy to protect his own son. Well, now we got a dead son of a gangster. That isn’t allowed. So Jimmy and his son have to go into hiding. They have to Run All Night, until Jimmy can figure this whole mess out. How to protect his family, how to get rid of his guilt, and how to…well, not suck.

Including Vincent D’Onofrio as a detective who was never able to bring Jimmy Conlon to justice, and Common as a hitman hired to get Jimmy and Mike. Yes, you read that correctly. COMMON is playing a “bad guy”, not a cop on the good guy side. This is truly a historic moment.

Not as historic as this restaurant, that is clearly dedicating itself fully to the color red.

Run All Night has a terrible title. I feel like I should mention that, as titles I haven’t been bringing up as often. It sounds just super generic. Not Fighting generic, but real close.

Speaking of this movie, it wasn’t as terrible as I had thought. First of all, I am stoked again that Liam Neeson doesn’t play a good guy or an anti-hero. He plays definitely a bad guy who tries to redeem himself for his son. So he kills bad people, and has been a bad dude all his life, thus his alcohol/depression. Great. I prefer this.

The action wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great. The plot was pretty predictable, and it even started with a scene near the ending, just so you can make sure you know where the whole thing is going towards. Genesis Rodriguez was wasted in this movie, barely having any lines, and not even being able to freak out about her husbands sudden life of crime. She was passive as fuck.

I liked that they featured the NY Rangers and a hockey game pretty heavily, but as you will see from one of my FB posts here, they also butchered the whole thing up.

What I am getting at is that this movie could drag, but also entertain. It is a storybook 2 out of 4. I am mostly happy that it just wasn’t super terrible though.

First off, no, I still haven’t seen Primer. Stop asking me. I will get to it eventually. My mind is ready for a mind fucking this early in 2015.

Time travel. A fun subject and one that is ridiculously hard to get right. Again, I am not saying I understand time travel and know how it should be. No. I just hate seeing a time travel movie that features it, then has inconsistencies within its own version of time travel, making it a bit confusing. The last movie to do that was Project Almanac. So close.

So, fingers crossed. Because now I am going to tackle Predestination, which hit theaters earlier this year. I didn’t hear a lot about it when it came out, but recently it has been gathering steam. And I really want to see a good time travel movie that isn’t Primer. So, extreme fingers crossed.

What’s this? A woman? In a movie about time travel! How surprisingly rare! But they only showed us Ethan!

Here’s the issue. The Fizzle Bomber. That dude is the issue. He is an American terrorist living in the United States. He is hard to catch. He makes bombs. He blows the bombs up. People get hurt and he has been hard to catch.

In fact, he blew up maybe ten blocks in NYC. Yeah.

So we should stop him, before he blows up NYC. With time travel! And thus, the Temporal Bureau is born! These Temporal Agents travel through time, in a limited range, to prevent major disasters and make our timelines a better place. There are many issues and problems of course. Things might change a little bit.

They have been slowly getting closer and closer to the Fizzle Bomber too. Each time jump they get closer to finding his identity and hopefully stopping NYC from getting wrecked. This should be the final time jump they need for their best agent (Ethan Hawke), disguised as a barkeep. But first, everything has to be perfect…

Also featuring Sarah Snook and much less featuring Noah Taylor.

The second time traveling movie I have seen to mostly take place in a bar. Coincidence? Or alcohol?

Looking at my astrological charts, we are due for a great Ethan Hawke movie again, and, yes, this indeed gets to be the one! Hooray! Don’t let Sarah Snook confuse you either. She was in the not so great Jessabelle recently, and is much much better in this movie.

By nature of it being a mystery and a bit of a thriller, Predestination obviously has some twists and turns. Some you can see a mile away, some that blew my mind. I loved it. And I loved even more than this wasn’t an action cop movie. It was a straight up Sci-Fi Drama with some mystery aspects about time travel. Excellent.

And from what I can tell, it covered up all of the loose ends. Literally everything. It was super careful about what it said and did in every scene, and the level of attention that went into it is impressive.

On another note, Hawke wasn’t that great in it. Not bad, not great, just decent or expected. He was the lead though and his character didn’t have to do a lot to excel. Snook is the one with all the acting and development and she does a fantastic job.

And well, its a movie that is a mystery. Stop asking for more details and just watch the dang thing.

I checked my charts and calendars, and I am pretty certain I have this whole thing figured out.

Yes. Indeed, it looks like we are on my first musical review of 2015! Hooray!

I don’t know how many will come out this year, but dang it, we at least got one. I think The Last Five Years was supposed to come out in 2014, but delays or something occurred. I couldn’t see this one in theaters when it came out around Valentine’s Day weekend, but it was released on iTunes as well. Thanks iTunes! You should be able to buy musicals always on a music organizing program. It just makes sense.

Musicals! Keeping jazz hands in business since 1932.

The Last Five Years has a rather simple plot. It is about a couple, who dated, got married, and lasted a whole five years. We know it doesn’t end up well, since the first scene is our female lead, Cathy Hiatt (Anna Kendrick), crying over Jamie (Jeremy Jordan) being gone. Very sad.

But it wasn’t all sad. I mean, he was Jewish and stoked to be in love with someone who wasn’t Jewish for once! She was an actress who had a hard time finding gigs, but didn’t have a hard time with Jamie. He was a writer of moderate success, but in five years, hopefully he gets something published right?

Long distance, early love, dreams and aspirations. These are all real words, and filler words, because honestly, it is hard to talk about this movie outside of a relationship that lasted five years. Oh, and that it isn’t told in order. You see, everything in Jaime’s point of view is told chronologically, however Cathy’s POV in the story is told in reverse order. We get to see various wins and losses in their relationship, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to follow.

When you can’t even look at each other, you know there is a problem.

You may have noticed that I only tagged two people in this review. Sure, there are technically others in the movie. You saw a flower of actors in the first picture. But I think maybe at most, 2-3 other people have speaking lines. Definitely no singing lines. This is about two people, in and out of love, fighting and loving, singing and loving. A whole lot of love, really.

As they are the only two real characters, they are the only two singers. In fact, most of this movie is singing, very little talking dialogue, which is a nice surprise.

This is not the type of musical I can find myself ever singing along with. The songs are, for the most part, very wordy and emotional and don’t always have easy parts to sing with. It isn’t as hard as something like Sweeney Todd, but it still seemed really difficult at times. Despite that fact, right after I watched the movie, I went on youtube and listened to most of the album again. It was just that emotional and strong. I was really impressed with the lyrics and the story told here.

The acting for our two leads I could describe as phenomenol, but I did cry by the end and got close to it several toher times. And hell, the first two lines of the musical, I kind of figured I would already like it. They really have a “Hey, stop what you are doing and fucking pay attention to the screen, multi-tasking assmuncher!”

It is kind of cute if you read it in Anna’s voice. Speaking of Anna, the only other musical I know coming out this year is Pitch Perfect 2. Jeez, when did she become the singer for everything?

Alright, Neill Blomkamp, let’s do it.

You blew us away with District 9. Elysium had some mixed reviews, but clearly wasn’t as good as your first movie.

And now we have Chappie. Some part Short Circuit, some part robot apocalypse AI shit. But we are bound to get some Sharlto Copley. You guys are BFFs.

But listen here Neill. Should you let me down, we are done. Forget my number, give me back my spare key, and we will negotiate over Fido later.

“You wot, Robo-mate? I’ll cap ur fookin’ head in I swear on me maker!”

Chappie is set in the ridiculously far future of 2016. And it is set in South Africa again, because why not. Director likes it there.

Somehow, South Africa is the leading front on robotics now. They have a huge weapons company, and they have developed a police robot! Yay! Now humans don’t have to worry about getting hurt as a police officer. Instead, indestructible robots, unhackable, perfect, are running the streets with a few cops. Crime is down, life is good, but the criminals that exist seem to be hyper crazy criminals. I guess.

Their creator, Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) seems to still be pretty poor and not even an executive in his company. He has developed an AI software to represent “consciousness” and give a robot the ability to learn and become even greater than a normal robot! It will make him real! Company head (Sigourney Weaver) doesn’t care, so he takes a broken robot about to get scrapped (has an unchargable battery) to do his own secret testing, damn it!

Then he gets kidnapped, van and all, after leaving the facility. Huh, so much for lesser crime rate. He is captured by some people named Ninja (Ninja), Yolandi (Yo-Landi Visser), and Yankie/Amerika (Jose Pablo Cantillo). These guys owe 20 million to some criminal lord, Hippo (Brandon Auret), and it is all their fault. They wanted to take Deon’s money, but he is broke. So instead they want to get a robot to do some crimes.

Well, thanks to gun violence and his own desires, he activates the robot with his program, and Chappie (Sharlto Copley) is born! Anyways. Shenanigans, theft, guns, violence, and a jealous coworker (Hugh Jackman) who wanted to really create the ED-209’s from RoboCop.

What is this? A scene from Far Cry: Robo?

Damn it Neill. What did I tell you. What did I tell you like, 2 hours and 15 minutes ago? I said don’t let me down, Neill. I said I trusted you, Neill. I thought you were supposed to be the chosen one, Neill.

I should start with the good, before I start ranting accidentally. Chappie was delightful. The robot, not the movie. He was a beauty to watch, the CGI was really top notch and it fit so well in the real world. His voice got on my nerves early on, but it got better. Of course most of the jokes and great scenes involved him just learning and being a “kid” robot, ever trusting.

And that’s all I got.

Every single human in this movie is poorly written. Weaver is barely in the movie. Jackman is some polo wearing dude who tucks it into shorts, running around with a gun in an office, that no one gives a single fuck about for some reason. He is a bad villain annoyance with no great motivation, outside of maybe some psychopathic tendencies.

Deon is our smart character, so he is the most infuriating person everytime he does something stupid. Like, you know, not doing something about getting his robot back or stolen property or anything when it would be the easiest thing in the world. So many bad things happen, almost all of them his fault and he doesn’t seem to get it. None of this is addressed in the movie either, he is just very badly written as a plot device.

The trio of thugs? Well, first of all, they are violent criminals, rough enough to still be doing crime despite the robots. Ninja, a character played by a guy actually named Ninja, is insufferable on purpose, so I don’t have any sympathy despite any changes of heart he might have later. The other two are more sympathetic, but at the same time, still dicks.

The ending is super rushed, and kind of awkward. The big robots end up being a piece of shit, that just stall out some of the final action scenes.

And as a side note, the Hippo dude? Subtitles the entire film, outside of like three lines. And of all his lines, maybe 2 are in not-English, so I don’t get it.

And also the sound editing early on in the film was shit. And also again, I am really fucking disappointed this film wasn’t a masterpiece.

Watch out, this is one of those creepy documentaries. I have watched a couple of these before, most relevant is Killer Legends. It talked about four urban legends, where they came from, the truth behind them, the real trials, and movies that they inspired.

It was fantastic and a bit scary.

Cropsey is very similar, but instead of four, we are given the full length to talk about just one. This Cropsey story is something that may have spread lots of places, but was focused mainly in New York and the Staten Island area. This was your standard tale. Don’t play alone in the woods as a kid, or Cropsey will grab you, especially if you are naughty, and you won’t be seen again.

But this Staten Island area also had an abandoned mental facility. That was still there. That was reported on by Geraldo Fucking Rivera, so you know it is serious. It was shut down. That building plus some tunnels in the area were said to be home to some homeless and leftover mental people.

And hey, there was also missing kids!

The most famous story was Jennifer, a girl with Down syndrome, who went missing in 1987. The whole community came together to find the missing girl, with their only facts pointing to Andre Rand, an older homeless man who used to be a janitor at the mental institution and was kind of awkward.

We assume they searched out of the goodness of the heart. No other reason.

So, a lot of people didn’t trust him, and because he was reported being with the girl, a witch hunt began. He was put on trial and of course found guilty. However, there was more than just that girl missing. There were quite a few missing children from that area, and four were notable in that the Law people figured that maybe Rand had something to do with them too.

And with that, we get rushed into modern day. A trial, a re-opening of Rand’s case, and seeing if they can incorporate evidence for a few other disappearing kids. Murder or who knows what. Maybe they can find out where the fuck they are or why they are gone or anything?

Because rumors are rampant. Cults, satanists, sadistic people with disabilities, who knows.

And I think the trial stuff is where this documentary starts to lose it. Early on it was exciting and scary. When they go into theories, it is a lot more interesting. The truth seems a lot less exciting, especially when we realize how little we know. I was a bit disappointed with the ending of the documentary.

Maybe I just wanted it to be a bit more creepier. Yeah, probably.

I am probably just angry with a lack of answers and am left with implied reality. But that is on me. It is an interesting documentary, just one that seemed to flicker out by the end.