Category: Uncategorized

“What the hell is this shit? It is 2013 and you are just now reviewing the Best Picture winner from 2010? No one cares anymore! We already know its good!”

I have the meanest readers some times. Yes, I am a bit embarrassed that I am just now reviewing The King’s Speech. I just kept putting it off. I did see it a long time ago, but before I reviewed it, I felt like I should probably…you know…re watch it on Blu-Ray. Yeah, technology!

Enough excuses.

After all, did King George VI ever make excuses? All the time? Well damn.

Before King George VI was King George VI (Colin Firth), he was just the son of King George V (Michael Gambon). His older brother, King Edward VII (Guy Pearce) (“Hey, why is everyone a King?” Shhh) is set to be King before him, which is great, because George6 has a problem.

He sucks at talking. He has a terribad stutter, and it is frankly down right embarrassing. He is royalty, and he muffles all of his words! No one can take him seriously if he cannot give a simple command. They tried everything, including throwing money at the problem, but nothing seems to work.

So his wife (Helena Bonham Carter) decides, against his knowledge, to go off the beaten path to look for help. He has basically given up hope and doesn’t care anymore. He would just rather hide instead. As it is with movies, the man she finds is named Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) and quite unconventional. He wants to get into psychology, and determine why people may stutter. That is personal shit, a bit too personal for a potential king.

OH NO. CERTAIN HISTORICAL EVENTS HAPPEN AND KING GEORGE VI BECOMES KING GEORGE VI. Fuck. Now he has to talk. He really needs to fix dat stutter and fast. But can he? Can he do it?

Just like any problem, all the king really needed was helpful aides.

There is a reason this movie won Best Picture, and it lies almost 100% with Colin Firth, who also won Best Actor. I know I’ve used this phrase before, but it is really the only thing fitting of this situation. Colin Firth acted the fuck out of this role, and there is no touching him in this movie. Stuttering is not too hard to pull off, if you want to mock a person and be an asshole. But to pull off I guess a “sincere” stutter, throughout an entire movie? And have it all look completely real and natural? Damn, maybe he just has a strong jaw and tongue! It is just insane how great he is at this role.

I tried to tip my movie after I saw it because I had such a great time. Oh yeah.

Everyone else is good too, notably Mr. Rush, as always. Not sure why Helena was nominated for her role, she is barely in this movie. But hey, congrats to her a anyways!

The story itself is not one I can see myself watching again and again, after all, there are some boring parts. But for the topic at hand, it made a seemingly “Who Gives A Fuck?” topic a star experience and helped everyone care about a now dead British King.

3 out of 4.

When I saw the trailer (I never saw this trailer) for Save The Date, I assumed that the stars were also the writers! It looked like an indie romance comedy that these comedy stars keep doing on a small budget (I based this on the poster only).

Lots of assumptions, but seriously, they are all very similar. Trust me.

But some other person wrote it! So uhh, maybe it will just be different and realistic?

We all know the real reason I watched this movie. Sup Alli?Sarah (Lizzy Caplan) is moving out of her apartment! Why? She is moving in with her long term boyfriend, Kevin (Geoffrey Arend). Yay relationships!

She never wants to get married, but hey, living together is fine. He is the lead singer in a small band. Sarah’s sister, Beth (Alison Brie) is a lot more secure in her life, and she is currently planning her wedding to Andrew (Martin Starr), the drummer of that same band! What a convenient way for everyone to be introduced quickly!

Despite everyone telling him not too, Kevin decides the best course of action is to propose to Sarah at the end of their last concert before going on a big tour, in front of all their friends and family! This doesn’t go the way he had planned it.

This causes a lot of strife in the group, obviously. But hey, Sarah warned him. She is also totally interested in this Jonathan (Mark Webber) guy at her work. He will do, he hates marriage too.

This leads to fighting amongst all people, sex, cheating, and maybe even a pregnancy. Yep, pretty realistic I’d say.

To be fair, this does look super realistic. Dat frizzle. When you watch a movie like this, you hope the acting is awesome, and it probably has really great dialogue. Well, the latter is generally true. The conversations felt real, the reactions felt real, no one was a silly stereotype. But the acting? Definitely not high on the Ben Affleck scale.

I actually enjoyed the plot and (I will say it again) realisticness of the whole movie, but the ending ruined it a bit for me. I don’t want to stereotype it and say the ending felt “artsy” and thus bad, but…other words really escape me. It’s a bullshit way to end a movie, and they should feel bad. I demand a complete story, not snapshots of random lives.

Someone who was working on this must have just got out of art school.

2 out of 4.

Holy shit, they made the movie.

I watched Atlas Shrugged Part I, the first part of a planned trilogy, and got almost nothing out of it. It was weird and confusing, a bunch of business stuff, all of it over my head. It also made about zero dollars.

What I do know about Atlas Shrugged is that its end message is that Capitalism is the best, and the Freer the Marker, the better the world. Right? Well, sticking true to that point, the creator of the film said they would only make Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Strike if Part I made enough money to cover the cost of Part II. Well, the free market said no to that, and that we did not want this trilogy to happen.

But here we are, with Part II out and in our faces. Not only did they make it anyways, they replaced THE ENTIRE ORIGINAL CAST WITH NEW PEOPLE. That is completely unheard of. Everyone character who is in both movies has a new actor or actress. I guess it makes sense. The first one bombed, replace all the people. Still an odd circumstance to happen for a movie.

Something sexist about cleavage and laying down rails.

At the end of the first movie, more laws and taxes were put in place in Colorado, so an oil tycoon decided to set fire to his fields, saying he left it as he found it, and now he is on strike. Oooh, guess where the subtitle came from? Well, he disappeared, but no one cares.

Dagny Taggart (Samantha Mathis) is kicking ass. Her John Galt line was a success, and her knew partnership with Henry Rearden (Jason Beghe) lead to a new metal that is lighter and cheaper than steel. BIG SUCCESS. Despite government interference, every thing is great for them.

Too bad the people aren’t having fun. The 99.97% or whatever are protesting in New York, times never change. Well, famous people keep missing. Nice pianists, for example. Dagny’s brother, James (Patrick Fabian) is running the company now, so he is rolling in the cash. Getting dates with random clerks (Larisa Oleynik, most famous for being Alex Mack from The Secret World Of Alex Mack, woo!) and stuff.

Well, long story short, Dagny finds some weird engine thing, somewhere. Most of the scientists are now disappearing, so she finds the last one available (Diedrich Bader) to figure out how to make it work. It could be even better for the future of energy, since gas is $40 a gallon! Maybe.

Longer story short, government hates everything happening. They make it so corporations can never change ever again. They have to sell to everyone. They cannot sell their business. They cannot change their CEOs. They must remain stagnant, and nothing will change, and no more patents. This is pretty intense. Dagny throws a fit, is losing her scientist, and really wants to find out who the hell John Galt is.

Ray Wise plays the Head of State, Esai Morales is Francisco d’Anconia, and D.B. Sweeney plays John Galt. Ah, that’s who he is!

When Diedrich Bader is your last hope to figuring out science stuff, you are totally going to get fucked over.

Here is one benefit of Part II over Part I. I actually could understand (mostly) what the fuck was going on in Part II. Part I I watched, read the synopsis of, and still found myself pretty dang lost. That’s a problem, and I would say Part II is a better movie because of that reason.

But it is bad. The CGI shows that the movie was made on an extremely low budget.

I also think it was probably too detailed and close to the book, but thats without knowing the book. I am sure this didn’t have to be a trilogy, and because it is split up into parts, it is “okay” to leave you with a cliffhanger ending like they do. Really it just annoys me.

Despite all this, I still want to see the trilogy get finished. First, I wont read the book ever. Or the plot synopsis. Second, I am excited to see the entire cast replaced again, which looks entirely likely. Third, there is a chance part III will be a musical. It is an old source, but fuck it, its the same guy in charge.

Come on. Shit on Ayn Rand’s grave and make her book’s movie (against the will of the free market) into a musical. Do it.

1 out of 4.

First off, I am a bit disappointed. The movie 42 doesn’t get me any closer to figuring out the question of life, the universe, and everything.

Unless that question is baseball related. That’s right, 42 isn’t about The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, but instead baseball, go figure. Not just any baseball story, like the forgettable Trouble With The Curve. This is baseball history! The story of Jackie Robinson, the first black MLB player. Well, technically the first black MLB player in modern, post World War II baseball. After all, Moses Fleetwood Walker played in the MLB for a season in 1884. But after that, sixty years is a pretty long time, with “Negro Leagues” put in place, so Jackie Robinson still turned heads in his debut.

Despite the turned heads, he still didn’t help us answer that dang question… 42 doesn’t focus on Jackie Robinson’s (Chadwick Boseman) entire life, but instead about 2.5 years of it. But before we get to Jackie, we first get to learn about Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), GM of the Brooklyn Dodgers. If we listen to his reasoning at the beginning, he wants to try something crazy. That’s right, a black man on the Dodgers! Why not, that should increase ticket sales, and he will also do whatever he can to get his team a pennant.

So he picks Jackie from the pile, gets him on their minor league team, and hopes he can kick enough ass to make it on the MLB team, while holding back his anger enough to not let the rampant racism get to him.

This is a true story, we all know he makes it to the team after a year in the minors, and the rest, really is history. We also see a little bit into his relationship with his wife (Nicole Beharie), and I do just mean a little bit. There are other members of his team who all embrace in him different ways, some with petitions (Ryan Merriman), some with open arms (Lucas Black). Some managers didn’t give a shit (Christopher Meloni), and some made it their mission to make his life a living hell (The Phillies) (Alan Tudyk). But that is to be expected from a Philadelphia based team I guess.

This also has the smaller, yet still important, story of Wendell Smith (Andre Holland). He was the the first black member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, but first had to travel with the teams for two years, writing articles about Jackie and his struggles. That means Jackie Robinson was influential on more than just the baseball level, he just chose to end racism through beating the other team’s pitchers and stealing bases.

Oh there is also a John C. McGinley cameo as the radio announcer, dropping classic line after classic line of old timey talk.

Jackie probably thinks I am talking far too much about white people in this review.Speaking of white people, I guess Branch Rickey was pretty dang important to this story, but no one really talks about him in popular culture. The filmmaker makes sure you know how much of this all falls on his shoulders, and how it would not have happened (so soon) without him. Yep, this just ends up being another civil rights movie where white people are the saviors. Just like The Help and The Secret Life Of Bees. This literally keeps happening in film, and it is kind of annoying.

Even though in this example it might be true, it is still frustrating to see that it is focused on so heavily just to sell more tickets.

I loved Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson. I am glad they went with a relatively unknown actor for the role, because that was one of my bigger problems with the movie Ali.

Overall, 42 is a feel good inspirational movie and it succeeds at that level. There is some intense emotion in here, but it still ends with everyone smiling by the end. It could have dealt with a lot more of his life, but hey, after his first year, he wasn’t the only guy able to make the switch. He was a great athlete, and this is an acceptable (if not entirely accurate) portrayal of his life. I personally still left the theater happy, despite any real issues.

 

3 out of 4.

Strange. For whatever reason, 750 is a sexier number than 700. Huh. Number talk?

Damn straight. This is my 750th Review! In less than two years as well. 750 means another Milestone Review! I could have waited a week and a half and let another Stephanie Meyer movie take the claim, but I am tired of it, and really, I couldn’t think of that many The Host Jokes. So instead, I went for something that is one of the most hated movies in the last few years, by one of the more hated directors in the last decade.

Oh yes. The Last Airbender by M. Night Shyamalan. The good news is that I have never seen Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon, so I have nothing to compare it to. That means I can actually judge this movie on its own merits, and not have any previous misconceptions about how it will be! Hooray, honesty.

Here is what I know before watching (outside of the hatred from fans). I knew the children of M. Night loved the show, so he wanted to make this movie for them. He wanted to make a trilogy to tell the entire series, and he, again, was doing this for his kids. Shit, that should be reason enough to not fuck it up, right?

Movie for his kids. Has a kid in the movie. Works for me so far. Let me know more, M. Night!

Alright, complaint number one from the fanboys. White people. Apparently in the cartoon, everyone is some form of Asian, and that is that. Well, that makes sense from an anime thing. Personally, when I see anime, I see most people as White-ish, and I don’t think they care about it in Japan. BUT NO. THIS CARTOON AS ASIANS. THERE NEEDS TO BE ASIANS IN THIS MOVIE. OR ELSE IT IS BAD. Here is a picture showcasing its anger.

Hmm, I don’t get it.

Alright, so this is people overreacting about nothing. In fact, they are saying that M. Night Shyamalan, an asian man himself, is racist, for making certain lead roles white instead of Asian. In case you don’t understand that, I will state it in a different way. Groups of people are saying that certain roles can only be payed by people of Asian decent. If they are not Asian actors, they will hate and potentially boycott the movie.

Now which sounds more racist? Exactly. Fucking hypocrites.

“Get to the fucking review already, or else I am out of here!” – Loyal reader.

Alright, in this world, lets call it Asia, there are people called Benders. Wait wait wait. First there are four elements, like a traditionally old lame game or show. Of course they are Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire. Water is the bitch element, since there is no Heart. Benders are people who can control these elements and do fun magic like shit with them. They can create said element, but they can control it if its nearby. That makes Earth and Wind the shit in my book, theres always that stuff a round.

Then there is the mother fucking Avatar! He (or she?) can control all four elements, not just one. HE’S A MOTHERFUCKIN’ BADASS. He can do it all, hell yeah!

Too bad that asshole went and died or something, and now the Fire Nation ( a large group of fire benders) took over and went all asshat on everyone.

That’s right. We’re talking about you, you asshat!

Well, turns out the Avatar doesn’t die, he gets reborn. So there was a search to find the next kid who could Avatar it up. They have to be an air bender, I think, or something, and well, that is bad. So they killed all the air benders.

All of them. Except one.

And holy fuck I just got the title.

This is my mind now!

Either way, Katara (Nicola Peltz) and Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) are wandering around their Eskimo village, just hanging out. Katara is all water bending, Sokka all, I dunno, regular fighting? Well, they find a boy in a bubble. Kind of fucked up. Also this weird flying thing.

I don’t even know what the fuck this is.

Kid in a bubble, kind of weird. But hey, his name is Aang (Noah Ringer) and I am still not sure how to pronounce it. But hey, they are his responsibility. He wants to get back to some temple, and they just assume he be trippin. But then he is able to control wind. That is rare as fuck! OH MAN, DID HE ALSO CONTROL WATER? MAYBE? Not sure.

Oh hey. Fire nation attacks and totally steals him away. That sucks. Some Prince Zuko (Dev Patel) tests him and finds out he is the Avatar. Great! They’ve been looking for him, probably to kill him. So he escapes. Sad times.

He finds that flying beast and his two white friends, and runs away as fast as he can! Then he is in some Earth Bending place. They are all oppressed, not living up to their rock nature. He leads a revolt, and everyone loves him. Yay! But it turns out he is still a kid and not fully trained. Like. At all. He knows air stuff, and that is it. Water is the next to learn, he was just never taught before being frozen in ice. Whoops!

That’s right, this bitch can do something the Avatar cannot! Owned.

So they set off on a journey to some special water temple, so he can learn how to control water like a pimp. You see, it isn’t just a mind over matter thing. They have to dance around with their arms and legs, in a … dance like thing to control it in certain way. Kind of like elemental martial arts, because that’s how fights work in anime. But along the way, he leads a lot more revolts and everyone loves him. Everyone, but the fire temple guys.

They are so mad (and also realize whats happening) that they are going to meet him at the water place. Meet him with a HUGE FUCKING ARMY.

Okay, here is like 10 people. But the ships have more!

Big war happens! Some Princess Yue (Seychelle Gabriel) chick has awesome blue eyes and some sort of special power. The heads of the fire nation are super super mad. We’re talking Commander Zhao (Aasif Mandvi) and Fire Lord Ozai (Cliff Curtis) mad. Do you know how mad that is? Because I don’t. Fire Lord sounds petty dang serious though.

Sounds bad. BUT THIS IS A FUCKING TRILOGY. A rated PG trilogy, but still, there is supposed to be two more of these! So of course Avatar guy figures out water powers during the attack, is amazing as fuck at them, and rapes everyone in the face. With water.

It is a serious description for a serious scene.

Then you know, it ends the main bad guy defeated, and some chick ready to take his place.

You thought I’d show the chick? To bad.

Conclusion:

Hey, this story is pretty neat!

Not necessarily the movie execution. That was bad. I was fine with the pretty colors early on, but that faltered eventually. Honestly, everyone looked ridiculous in these fight scenes, doing random martial arts at each other, but not really fighting because its all elemental base. I mean, it could be cool, but it wasn’t that cool in the movie.

I understood that it was going to be a trilogy, but (and listen to me closely EVERYTHING), trilogies can be made of movies that still tell a complete story and don’t just punch you in the nuts. This complete story was what, dude learning about water and defeating one guy? No, the overarching goal is still there and I am disappointed. I want more. I feel like it’s not complete. Fuck. No one complains about Star Wars A New Hope because it is a story of a guy trying to be a Jedi, not like, save everything. He saves some things, but he completes his goal and we get a full fucking movie. This just leaves you like a fish out of water. Flopping around, waiting to die.

Again, the story sounds great. If anything, watching this movie is going to make me watch the cartoon (which should be one of the main two goals of fans of the cartoon from this movie to achieve. The other being a decent story I guess) and then I can comment on how much the movie got wrong from his source. But I am used to that. Just like movies from books, movies from cartoons will be different.

And they better be! I don’t want rehashing damn it. Tell me new stories.

But really, this movie isn’t as bad as the hype. It’s people being mad at the director for other things he has done, mad that it doesn’t 100% match the source, and arguing about the least important thing in acting (theater and move), the race of the person playing a role. Come on, this is the 21st century. We have a black president! That shouldn’t matter. When I saw The Lion King broadway, the kid Simba was black, but when he turned adult Simba, he was white. Was it hilarious? Yes. But it was also completely acceptable.

Still though. It could have been better.

1 out of 4.

Scary Movie 5.

Fuck. I watched Scary Movie 4 before this, even though I swore it off after seeing Scary Movie 3. Fuck my need to be a completionist.

Fuckkkkk.

Basically, long story short, Scary Movie 5 is a parody of Mama more so than Paranormal Activity 4. So hey, that’s unexpected. The trailers didn’t really show any Mama scenes. But the other major movie “parodied” is Black Swan, with a scene from Inception, and an even shorter scene from Sinister. Hell, they even have the new Evil Dead in there, but it is obvious (if not by the timing alone) that it is based only on the trailer for Evil Dead, not the actual movie. Oh yeah, Rise of the Planet of the Apes too, because why not?

BUT AM I DONE? NO. Also Zero Dark Thirty, and The Help. THE HELP? WHAT? WHY? That doesn’t even remotely get near the topic of the title.

Okay, calm down self. You can’t freak out this early.

Either way, Jody (Ashley Tisdale) and Dan (Simon Rex) are able to find his brother’s missing kids in a cabin in the woods. They are all weird now, the oldest talks of some entity Mama that is helping them out. They get to stay in a kick ass home, with lots of surveillance, where paranormal things happen. Their housekeeper (Lidia Porto) is very religious of course. Dan is a scientist trying to make Apes smarter, and Jody wants to get back to her ballerina roots like her mother. So she tries out for Black Swan, and has a rival (Erica Ash).

I don’t want any celebrity who was apart of this to miss out on getting tagged, so here is a big list of people in this movie! Usher, Heather Locklear, Sarah Hyland, Jerry O’Connell, Terry Crews, Molly Shannon, Snoop Dogg/Lion, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Katrina Bowden, Katt Williams, Darrell Hammond, and Mike Tyson.

There is also a narrator, who sounds a lot like Morgan Freeman, but it is not Morgan Freeman, I repeat, it is not Morgan Freeman! They did it to make you think he was in the movie. It’s all a lie, so he shall not be tagged.

Yep. Taken from the trailer, clearly.

If you need a recap of where the Scary Movie franchise went wrong, see my review of A Haunted House. Yes, A Haunted House is a much better film than Scary Movie 5, no question about it.

It has only a couple of the scenes from the trailer actually in it, which is a pretty annoying habit that needs to die out. Instead of having an overall unifying plot, it feels instead like a bad sketch comedy show (given the over-exaggerated everything), with scenes that barely fit together just to include some pop culture references in it. But Scary Movie arguably only talks about 3 horrors, and fills the rest with a thriller, a suspense, and a movie about apes! That isn’t even appropriate for something called Scary Movie. Bad movie makes, bad!

I went in expecting bad things, and well, this time it came true. I think I heard giggles once in my theater, two days after it came out. I actually did laugh out loud once, and it was because of something the narrator said. But other than that, this film might have been better titled Silent Movie given the reaction from the audience.

Also, Usher isn’t in the IMDB credits yet, but he totally has a dance scene, so I wanted to draw extra attention to him.

0 out of 4.

Well, I guess I put off seeing The Iron Lady long enough. I may have had access to this movie since it came out on DVD in 2012, but I never really found myself in the mood to see it.

After all, I knew it would include a few things with 100% certainty. 1) British people, 2) British Accents, 3) Old people losing their mind, and 4) Politics. For almost a year, I never felt like British Politics and Old People would satisfy my mood, and I would never get to really see the movie objectively with an open mind.

Well, clearly I ran out of time. April 8, 2013, Margaret Thatcher died, and now I am just an asshole for not seeing her movie first.

I won’t look at the guy’s mouth in the corner, I won’t look at that guy’s mouth in the corner, I won’t look at-
AHHH ITS SO BRITISH!

Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep) is the first female Prime Minister (and currently the only one right?) in England history. This is a movie about her rise and fall to power. Also about her love life.

What a shitty plot description. I ain’t even mad though.

She has a husband who is very loving and dedicated to helping her politically, played by a very thin looking Jim Broadbent. I do love his voice. He needs to do more voice work in films.

I saw Iain Glen in this movie a lot, but I am not really too sure exactly who he was or why he was important. But man, was he around.

But yeah. She gets kind of kicked out of office because people get upset with her. Maybe blame her for many economic collapses, ruining their lives, stuff like that. Hard to really say. Then she gets old, gets dementia, and has a hard time remembering things, like the fact that her husband is dead. She might even forget she is a lady at times, but definitely remembers that she is iron.

Some Iron beings would love to have the opportunity to be the most hated person in England, as long as they got to be a person.

MARGARET THATCHER DIDN’T EVEN WATCH THE FILM ABOUT HER. Nor did her children (Who still bad mouthed it regardless. They’d make great internet movie reviewers). Either way, I don’t feel bad anymore. Too bad that was mostly because I saw the movie, and not that she didn’t see it. Still.

Here’s my big issue with the movie. It is called The Iron Lady, which I guess is a nickname she earned during her time as Prime Minister. But the film makes sure you know for a fact that most wouldn’t describe her as that anymore. In her final years, she gets the normal old age frailty, along with dementia, causing her to forget where she is, what she has done recently, and other events. Like that her husband is now dead, and she isn’t a PM anymore. Well damn. That is great acting opportunity, but not necessarily interesting topic for the movie about her life.

It would be fine if it was just at the end of the movie — if it was told in a chronological way. But it began and ended with the fact that she is old now, and had it spliced throughout her life. Great. So we really only get one scene of her as a young gal (when she was played by Alexandra Roach). After all, we have to get Streep in there ASAP. So we do get scenes of her on the road to PM, as PM, and the harsh decline, but it doesn’t feel natural watching it. Almost as if its blurry visions of Thatcher’s own recollection.

I don’t mean to be mean, but that is all I can think of as a description.

I found the movie hard to follow and very uninformative about Margaret Thatcher, which is why I am watching a movie on her life in the first place…damn it! I want to delve more into why she is the most hated and loved person in Great Britain over the last 100 years. How much of it is because she was a woman? Do people really hate her that much? Who knows. The movie doesn’t really try and answer that. Bah. What a waste.

Streep was of course fantastic in this movie, which is why she won Best Actress (back when the award meant something!). But I am disappointed that this is the only film I have on Thatcher, because it didn’t really teach me shit.

1 out of 4.

I feel like a bad Ben Affleck fan. Here I am, talking about his greatness, despite having finally seen Pearl Harbor, but I have not seen a third of the movies he has directed. That means the first movie he directed, Gone Baby Gone. I might not have really known it existed. Whoops. Of course he has his brother in it, but it is nice to know his first work that lead up to Argo, right?

Damn straight. Forgive me Affleck Fans 4 Lyfe, my former Myspace group that I was in. I have redeemed myself in your eyes I hope.

But maybe not in the eyes of Ben’s brother.

Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) is a private investigator, with his long term serious girlfriend Angie (Michelle Monaghan). On the news, there is a story of Helene (Amy Ryan) who’s child has been abducted, and she is pleading for the police to find her quickly! The police chief (Morgan Freeman) is super sympathetic to the cause, because he has lost a child himself, and has made child protection his number one goal as head of the department.

The next day, Patrick and Angie get a visit from Beatrice (Amy Madigan), the sister of Helene, wanting to hire them to find the child. This is a special case, they do specialize in finding missing people, but that means people on the run, not people who have been kidnapped. The last thing they want to do is find the child in a ditch somewhere, kind of ruins the mood. Eventually, they agree to help Beatrice, Helene, and Beatrice’s husband Lionel (Titus Welliver), while also trying to not get in the way or ruin the police investigation at the same time.

What follows is the dark paths their investigation take them on, the reprecussions that follow, and the many months of aftermath of uncertainty and grieving. You know, without giving too much away. Ed Harris and John Ashton play cop guys, and Michael Kenneth Williams is of course a drug dealer.

OH GOD I HAVE SPOILED THAT THERE IS BLOOD IN THIS MOVIE. MY BAD.

To fully enjoy Gone Baby Gone, you definitely can’t multi task through it. There is a lot going on in this thriller, with many layers of information coming in at different rates. But it is also not your typical mystery to figure out the ending, because it is actually the last thought on your mind while watching it.

Nay, loyal readers, the main point of this is the characters themselves, and their lives as they are all affected by this simple child abduction story.

But then again, personally, I did think it was going a bit slow early on, after they agreed to take the case. You know, because clues are hard to find then. I just didn’t expect so much of the movie to take place after the case had been “solved”. Solved in quotation marks can mean lots of things, so stop guessing!

Either way, it is a well acted drama/crime movie, I just think it could have been a little bit more entertaining (or quicker?) with certain developments.

3 out of 4.

As you all know, I am a patriotic American, so if there is a movie out there that will increase my patriotism, by golly, I will see it!

Not that I needed any more convincing to see Olympus Has Fallen. I love a lot of the actors in this movie, even though certain male leads may be pushing out a lot of crap in a row. But hey, this looks like Die Hard meets the White House! That is especially good news given out A Good Day To Die Hard turned out.

Arguably, both this and Die Hard 5 are going to be political. Probably. Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) used to be the best secret service agent there was, working for President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart). Unfortunately, after leaving Camp David on a snowy night, his limo hits a bridge and they are only able to save the President, not his wife. Mike didn’t do anything wrong, but the President just doesn’t want to be reminded of his dead wife every time he sees him.

Few years later, he now is stuck with some desk job. Can’t shoot anyone in the office (legally), damn it! He still relives that night, and his long term lady friend (Radha Mitchell) can’t seem to help him.

But unfortunately today is a day where everything will hit the fan. A fighter plane is able to make it into the DC airspace, and begins to open fire on the white house while the President has the South Korean Prime Minister under his care. But in the panic room, it turns out not everything is as expected. Surprise, North Korea is behind all of this! Not only have they locked the President and Vice President in the panic room, but they have taken over the building as well, and have pretty egregious demands for the country that they are holding hostage. Clearly only one man is good enough to save the day here.

Featuring Rick Yune as the bad guy, Morgan Freeman as the Speaker of the House and now acting president, Melissa Leo and Angela Bassett as government women, and Dylan McDermott as an also former secret service agent.

 

Honestly, to me this looks like they are just dancing. Sometimes you can get an idea that is so crazy, so wild, that it works on some grandiose scale, and I believe that is what is happening with Olympus Has Fallen. It is action packed (after the icy intro and set up) and entertaining. Sure, you can probably figure out how everything is going to end before its through, but that doesn’t even matter in this movie.

That’s right, no real big surprise twists! I think if the entire point of a movie is a twist at the end, it really loses its potential to watch it again for fun (unless you are watching with new people). That means Olympus Has Fallen is rewatchable!

Now there are some pretty dumb characters. I think the President is a moron, but at least he is a bit hard assed. Part of the conflict involves getting three passwords from three individuals, through torture! The President has the last password, and orders the other two to give up their own because there is “no way” he would ever give his up. You know, to stop their torture. Gee, I guess he didn’t realize that they will probably just torture his friends to get the password out of him, since it basically worked two times in a row.

But this movie is about Gerard Butler kicking ass, and damn it, he does. Nice fights, guns, explosions, and a high body count. This movie was so great that I am no longer looking forward to White House Down. When there are two similar movies within a few months of each other, one of them will always outshine the other. I don’t think there has ever been a situation where both have been amazing, but at least the other one has Jaime Foxx playing the President.

3 out of 4.

The Collection is the sequel to The Collector, a film I can’t say too many people saw. If you are too busy to read that review, it was decent. Guy goes into house to rob it, while another guy (The Collector), is setting up a giant booby trap filled house, to catch strays and torture people with. Bad place, bad time.

I liked the general idea of it, but thought it could have been less torture porn-esque. I am most excited that this film took three years to come out later. I kind of get pissed off at the horror franchises that want to release a movie every year (usually in October). This has the potential to keep up the thriller/survival aspects, with a big game of cat and mouse!

While also exponentially increasing the body count!

Set a few months after the first, we learn now that The Collector is actually a serial murderer, who will go to a place, kill a lot, and take one person at the end, thus the collecting aspect. Which is what happened at the end of the first film! Arkin (Josh Stewart) was captured, and fate left unknown. Unknown until he somehow managed to escape! Oh yes, when the Collector fucked up hundreds of people at a night club, Arkin escaped, but another girl, Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick) was taken in his place. Oh well, as long as he is free.

Just kidding. Turns out Elena is a rich girl, and her father (Christopher McDonald) really wants her back. So he hired a team of mercenaries (including Lee Tergesen and Shannon Kane) to go and capture Arkin, to attempt to find The Collector’s lair, to get his daughter back at all costs.

His lair? Yep. So of course it will be more booby trapped than ever before, not to mention all his past collections might be around too. Did I mention higher body count?

Gets captured, escapes, gets capture. How much does it suck to be that guy?

In a sentence, The Collection takes everything we loved about The Collector and poops on it. That is what I thought at least. We learn that this Collector fellow is a big deal and has been doing it for awhile. Seeing the amount of people in collection later in the film helps prove that point, but it is still an outrageous number for there not to be some national man hunt out for him. Seriously, especially if it is just one city, there would be door to door searches. But eh, most people assume they won’t get killed or collected (and tortured) I guess?

I will say I liked the ending. The post conclusion ending. I was worried it would end the same way as the first, big firey explosion, can’t find his body, oh no, and someone gets grabbed. No, we get a form of revenge and closure. Closure?! Yes, closure. There can’t possibly be another movie to follow up this one.

Either way, the lair itself I thought was just lame. I didn’t like the traps, the deaths, the plot, any of it. I might have given it a 0, if it wasn’t for the last 60 seconds.

Yep, a good ending is at least 25% of the grade! But the rest is skippable. What a bad horror movie.

1 out of 4.