Gorgon Reviews

Trumbo! The great white buffalo! Of the main acting awards, this is the final film I needed to see to complete the categories.

I missed it when it came out in November, because, I dunno, I was busy or something. I didn’t care to see it. I figured it wouldn’t get nominated, no matter how much I like Bryan Cranston.

But hey, he did get nominated for best actor. And with a mustache! It is basically what Johnny Depp was doing with Mortdecai. That is the movie in 2015 he wanted to win Best Actor for right? I can’t think of any other film.

Erm. Trumbo! True story! Communists! Time to party! Red Party.

That’s a communist joke and damn it, that is probably a communist dress too.

Back to Trumbo, or Dalton Trumbo (Cranston) as everyone everywhere calls him. He lives a good life. He is one of the most successful writers in Hollywood. He has contracts with movie studios to write exclusively for them, meaning that his family can live a nice life. That is of course his wife (Diane Lane), main daughter (eventually Elle Fanning) and two other kids who we don’t care about.

But he has a secret. A very vocal secret. He cares about the rights of the workers. Any workers technically, but specifically the Hollywood workers who don’t make money and should make more instead of the Hollywood fat cats. He is a…a…a…COMMUNIST. And there are a bunch of them too. This is now the late 40s and people are starting to get afraid of the Commies, thanks to the Russians and the coldness of their threats. So they try and round up all the communists in Hollywood and KILL THEM! No, not kill them, but black list them. Refuse to let them work in movies ever again. After all, if they are writing their movies, they could be putting subliminal communist things into mainstream America and fuck us from the inside! That would be terrifying.

And Trumbo is about how this man and his friends decided to try and fight for their first amendment rights. And to work despite the blacklist through aliases, friends, or by boldly ignoring the threats of others. Guess how many Oscars Trumbo won while black listed? Three. He was basically penning the “Fuck The Police” song well before the boys in Straight Outta Compton.

And of course we have more people in this movie: John Goodman and Stephen Root are brothers who make a shit ton of B movies. David James Elliott plays JOHN WAYNE. Louis C.K. is a fellow writer commie, Alan Tudyk is a fellow writer, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is a prison man, and Helen Mirren and Michael Stuhlbarg fuck some shit up.

It is rumored that Cranston was able to grow out the ‘Stashe in just 3 minutes.

Despite my wildly successful movie watching lifestyle, I am super behind on almost everything before 1990. I only barely have the 80’s covered, and everything before that is pitiful. So if I can watch a modern movie telling me about movies back in the day, I consider it a win. I have never seen Roman Holiday or The Brave One, but you bet your ass I have seen Spartacus. Getting to hear behind the scenes stories of how these films were written and what they had to do to hide Trumbo’s name was fascinating. It is probably the sexiest thing I have ever heard of when talking about 1950’s Hollywood writers.

Cranston gave a pretty good performance. I am not willing to call it incredible. I saw a lot of Cranston that I have seen in other roles, and I never really saw someone other than himself. I didn’t feel like he ever fully transformed into the man he was playing, not even when he was sitting in the bathtub. I can say it was my least favorite of the Best Actor nominee performances, and would probably rather someone like Steve Carell or Mark Ruffalo from Infinitely Polar Bear.

C.K. and Lane both did excellent jobs with their supporting characters, although Lane wasn’t given a lot to work with.

Story wise, again, there were a lot of interesting moments, but I will say I got confused a few times at a lot of the extra characters, who they were supposed to be, whose side people were on, and just why they were relevant. There are a lot of extra characters here with important roles, too many to list and name, and yeah. I can’t remember most of them. Thankfully it was only small bits of confusion and I could still easily grasp the main points of the story.

Shit. Did you know Mojave was the name of a desert? I think I dd,, but I had only heard it pronounced out loud before and never written.

So instead of pronouncing this as Mo-Ha-Ve as it actually is, I had to tell people I was going to see Mo-Jayve. No one knew what I was talking about, but thankfully it was so stupid that no one could even call me out on it due to their own confusion.

And uhh, unfortunately that is all my pre-story for this film. I knew absolutely nothing about this movie going in, not even the actors involves, so no cool trivia here!

The table once was used in a real room!

Thomas (Garrett Hudlund) was famous since he was 19. He lives in Hollywood, people know him. He is all up in that entertainment industry. And he doesn’t like where his life is at. His wife and daughter have moved to London and he is alone to wallow in his pity. He decides to head to the Mojave desert and maybe, you know, kill himself. After wandering a bit and setting up a camp, a stranger comes up to his camp seeing his fire. Jack (Oscar Isaac) is a weird dude. Talking about Satan and Jesus and talking about books. He is the type of guy that looks like he is up to no good, and maybe he is going to kill him. So Thomas attacks first and gets away.

During their adult hide and seek desert game, Thomas shoots a man coming into his cave and it turns out to be a police officer, not Jack. But Jack sees this happen. He knows what Thomas has done and he plans to use it against him. Especially when Jack finds out that Thomas is famous.

Thomas heads back to LA, not sure of what he should do. He doesn’t feel like he should turn himself in, for obvious reasons. He doesn’t think Jack will do so either, since he is pretty sure Jack killed a few people, so he doesn’t want to deal with the cops.

But Jack instead wants to just kill Thomas. Thomas got away from him earlier and he is a bad guy living in Hollywood pretending he didn’t kill a cop. Who is the sociopath now?!

Also with Mark Wahlberg as a coked up Producer and Walton Goggins as Thomas’ agent.

#NotAllCops deserve gun shots from cave men.

Mojave starts off slightly confusing and pretentious, and doesn’t change a lot along the way. I was confused after the first desert scenes. I thought I was suddenly watching flashbacks, no idea where the narrative was going when Thomas got back to LA. It all didn’t seem to matter to the actual plot, and instead was just there to give Wahlberg something silly to do.

No offense to Hedlund, but he is about as charismatic as a potato. He is played off as the lone wolf type. The character in an RPG group who wants to think he is cool for being dark and mysterious but ends up being a dick stealing from the loot bowl. That can be good, if given enough story and characterization, but it sort of just feels lazy on the writers part for him. He is sad because depression basically. And while there doesn’t need to be a reason for depression, for a film it would at least give us something to latch onto for him to hope for his survival.

They put all their effort into making Jack the cool character. A well written sociopath always helps a movie. Always. Isaac does a great job of unnerving the viewer while almost putting them on ease that maybe he isn’t the bad guy after all. If you are going to watch Mojave, watch it for Isaac and nothing else.

Goggins is wasted in this film, and Wahlberg presumably did it as a favor for William Monahan, the writer/director who also wrote The Departed. This is not The Departed. This is a slow film that has a few redeeming qualities, but is no where close to being as high as they wanted it to be.

The 5th Wave, title alone, already pisses me off. I really wish it was spelled out as Fifth, and not the number. That is a minor complaint.

The title itself just comes with so much weight to it though. We are already on the 5th wave? Man, we just started though. That means four other waves happened and we need to catch the fuck up so we can be prepared for the next one.

I have been told it is decent book. It is a planned trilogy with the last one coming out this year. The producers liked it, one of them being Tobey Maguire, and signed it to a trilogy of films!

And you know what else? This is a quote from a critic. This is what the series should do. It “should do for aliens what Twilight did for vampires.” Oh god. Oh god no.

Love at first scope sight.

Let’s get this done with. Aliens appeared. Circled the globe in a big ship. Then after awhile, all electricity stopped. Anything with a motor, all of it. That was wave #1. The 2nd wave was massive flooding caused by earthquakes. Took out most coastal cities and lakes also boiled over. The 3rd wave was a modified avian flu that took out tons of people. Most people who caught it died. The 4th wave involved the aliens taking over human bodies like parasites. Apparently they still look and act human but you don’t know who is out to get you!

Our hero is Casey (Chloe Grace Moretz) who used to be a normal high school girl. She had her crush on Ben (Nick Robinson), a BFF Liz (Gabriela Lopez, who I will say is barely in this movie, but I can’t imagine her not coming back eventually and I want to say I called it by tagging her in this review), loving parents (Ron Livingston, Maggie Siff) and little brother Sam (Zackary Arthur).

Eventually, shit goes bad, and Casey is alone. Her brother Sam was saved by the army, thankfully. That Colonel Vosch (Liev Schreiber) sure is a swell guy. Of course he is taking the kids to train them into soldiers to battle the Others (aliens!), where the 5th Wave is allegedly a full on attack. Oh boy.

Thankfully Casey runs into Evan Walker (Alex Roe) Mr. Farm Boy dream man, who saves her from dying alone on the highway. Turns out she is allergic to bullets. He has a thing for her, so he wants to help her get to the army base and reconvene with her brother. They just have to make it 60 miles on foot with alien snipers everywhere.

Also starring Maria Bello as an army person, and Maika Monroe as a fellow child soldier who would have bad ass tattooed on her actual ass if it wasn’t sexist.

Is it? Can it be? Can it be a…LOVE TRIANGLE!?

The 5th Wave wasn’t very good. It could have been good. It had an interesting premise. I won’t say it was ruined only by teenage angst. No, there were a lot of issues, and teenage angst on its own is not an issue.

Plot wise, so many things occurred in the film due to poor decisions or badly explained reasons. How did Casey get separated from her parent and brother? Because of shit plot. Specifically when she was separated from Sam, it was one of the most badly done things I have ever seen. So much that it didn’t even make sense for her to get left behind. Aliens involved or not, the way they filmed it couldn’t have been more ridiculous.

After the introduction, we have two main plots. Casey on her own, and the training facility for kids. That is where we get to see high school crush Ben and her brother. Almost everything involved with the army base is cringe worthy. I think part of it is supposed to be, because they aren’t real soldiers, just kids. But it comes off as just awkward and stays that way. Only half the scenes with Casey are cringey, and unfortunately it is all of romantic interactions between her and Evan. Now, as a straight adult male, I can definitely see why Alex Roe was picked for Evan. He is dreamy and has facial hair and a somewhat slightly athletic build. But the chemistry between them is just awful.

A lot of the plot happens off screen it feels like. Like the 60 miles of traveling that the two apparently hiked through the woods relatively quickly. Or even worse, one aspect of the finale involving bombs. One of our characters apparently puts on a God Mode cheat and they become an invincible plot changing character, doing all these amazing things with ease, just to end the current conflict. The bad guys don’t even act bad in this film. Everyone is all talk and nothing terrible seems to happen, outside of the one “shocking” moment early on. All the twists are obvious and the film ends at an okay point, but not with a whole lot resolved.

They did have tsunamis in this film though. You remember the 2nd wave. They looked pretty realistic though, it was appropriately scary and cool, so I liked that. Bello’s random character had a lot of intensity to it, so she also surprised me. But everything else about this new teenager sci-fi/fantasy romance film series is forgettable. We all make mistakes sometimes, Moretz.

Confession time. I did not do my due diligence. But I did almost just say “do do”. If I am ever going to watch a movie part of a pre-existing franchise, I always make sure I have seen all the previous films before it. Just recently I had to watch all the Alvin and Chipmunks before Alvin and the Chipmunk: The Road Trip. I did it with Madagascar 3 and I did it with Ice Age 4.

The theme for all of these are kid movies, but I have to do something similar when Resident Evil: The Final Chapter comes out. Kid movies are easy to do, and honestly, can multi task like a beast through them.

But I did not see Ip Man or Ip Man 2. I have known about them for at least 3 years and heard good things, but never sat down to see them. Getting to review Ip Man 3 was kind of last minute, the kind of last minute that didn’t allow me to put a lot of time into two whole movies full of subtitles. But I read pretty excellent plot outlines on them (Wikipedia), and hey, if I like this one, they are certainly going to be watched within a few months!

Oh I know that guy. This is now familiar and I am no longer afraid.

Alright, Hong Kong! Did you know that something from Hong Kong was called Hong Konese, not Hong Kongian? The more you know.

Ip Man (Donnie Yen) is living with is wife (Lynn Hung) and youngest son, and he is now a successful martial arts teacher. He is a Master at a big school, where masters work together and have their own disciples, including Master Tin (Ka-Yan Leung).

Despite the police force in Hong Kong, crime is still rampant with many street gangs. An American developer, Frank (Mike Tyson) is trying to muscle in his way to HK and is using locals to do the work for him. He hires a former student of Master Tin, Ma King-Sang (Patrick Tam) to force a school to sell its prime real estate to him. Thankfully, Ip Man’s son goes to that school, and he helps guard the school from the vandals.

But that is not all! No, there is also a Cheung Tin-chi (Jin Zhang), who also studied under the same master as Ip Man. However, he claims to be the better martial artist. Apprently Ip Man teaches a modified version of Wing Chun while Cheung knows and teaches the official way. He wants to challenge for title of Grand master, but first he has to earn money (with the bad guys!) despite morals, and make his own gym a big deal.

Also featuring some wife drama. And featuring Karena Ng as Miss Wong a teacher, Kent Cheng returning as Fatso, and Kwok-Kwan Chan playing a young Bruce Lee, whom Ip Man most famously trained.

I want to wear all of the cool outfits, but have no energy to become a grandmaster. 🙁

I had to take some serious notes throughout the film to make sure I wouldn’t get confused, given my unfamiliarity with the back ground. But thankfully, Wikipedia’s plot outline for the third film is also pretty detailed. It just has a big spoiler in the first few sentences, which is stupid.

I loved the fight scenes in the film. They ranged from elegant (the fight scene between the two Wing Chun masters) to extreme (Ip Man taking on what felt like 1,000 fighters, workers, gang members while protecting his son). And they were all so very good. I enjoy the crap out of a fight scene where I can actually tell what is going on. The actors and stunt fighters (if there are any?) did a wonderful job and every jab, punch and strike is visible and well choreographed. In particular, I also really enjoyed a fight scene down a stair case with a lot of interesting angles.

The biggest problem with the movie is that the whole thing seems messy. I was worried about describing the plot, because it seemed to go so many different ways. It wasn’t one nice and easy to follow story, which I believe the other films might have been. Maybe none of the plots were big enough for a film, or they had all these things they wanted to say and only wanted to do them in a single movie for budget reasons. Who knows. But it is quite crowded and at times it meanders.

Yen has a lot of charm as our lead character and watching him definitely made me want to watch the other films. He is extremely charismatic, but in a quiet way, and it is nice having an honest good person to cheer for in the movies. Too many anti-heroes nowadays. Ip Man is a saint.

I almost watched The Grandmaster a few years ago, but the US release was delayed for some reason. And because of that, I forgot about the film, but it is about the same man. I have to believe he was the coolest dude to have this many movies about his life.

Ip Man 3 was the exact thing to get me back into watching martial arts film. I was planning on re-watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the first time since I was 11 before the sequel is released, and I think I finally have the energy to do it.

There comes a time, when we heed a certain call. When some countries, must come united as one. That is basically the intro to We Are The World, and I am stealing it. But it is okay because I said so right now.

United Passions is about bringing people together, who share a passion, and uniting them under one. A federation of like minded individuals. One that is international. One where people are proud to associate with each other. One where people can talk about Football.

That’s right. FIFA. United Passions is about the founding and history of the organization that brings us the World Cup every four years and is totally fine with people dying in Qatar so the world cup can be there in 2020. They had quite a bit of controversy this year, with charges being put on many members, accepting bribes and kickbacks from announcers and and sports marketing organizations. This had led to situations like, I don’t know, Qatar having a world cup, and a shit ton of revenue going into these people’s hands.

So the fact that they also have a movie coming out to show how great they are is both terrible timing, and also just pathetic in the strongest sense of the word.

Despite the number of trophies awarded in this film, this film will be awarded no trophies.

This is the part of a review where generally I do a rough plot outline or synopsis to let you know what the movie is about. But you know what it is about. It is about the founding of FIFA, how it started, and things that happened in its history after the fact. As John Oliver put it, it is a sports movie about the executives, not the sports stars.

And I can’t be too detailed, because after about 10 minutes I realized how much of a piece of propaganda junk this was, and my brain started to shut off. So here are the bare essentials. Gérard Depardieu plays Jules Rimet, one of the original founders who had to convince everyone this was a good idea. He also might have been their first president? He really wanted Africans and South American’s to be treated with respect and have an equal chance of winning.

Sam Neill is Joao Havelange, who helps FIFA get bigger or something. Also eventually corruption. He is replaced by Sepp Blatter, played by Tim Roth, who totally gets the corruption out of the game. Totally. Also in real life not movie land, Blatter is one of the biggest components in the corruption scandal.

Also featuring Jemima West, Thomas Kretschmann, and Fisher Stevens.

And now the ball is in our court, viewers and soccer fans.

So I am taking these claims from Wikipedia, but I am sure they are sourced correctly. About the corruption and the film ignoring FIFA’s current reality and the decades of rumors:

Roth has said that he asked the filmmakers: “Where’s all the corruption in the script? Where is all the back-stabbing, the deals?” He said he attempted to convey these elements through his performance, saying: “It was a tough one. I tried to slide in a sense of it, as much as I could get in there.”[9] The film’s director, Frédéric Auburtin, claimed he inserted “ironic parts” into the film.

But after watching the film, all of this is hard to believe. There are no obvious winks at the camera or anything, so if anything was subtle, it was extremely subtle. Instead the film plays out like a dreamy Hallmark film. Sure there is some adversary. Like racism! They have to overcome racism! And uhh, some minor corruption. But they get through it and the good guys win and sportsmanship!

Basically everything about this movie is dreadful. I could only look at the clock waiting for it to end. They had some sports, but soccer itself wasn’t the focus so it was all terribly done. There was one point where it was a championship game of Brazil vs Uruguay, I think in Brazil. It would be their first win and the whole country was watching! But it was like an incredibly awkward montage. It kept fading out to black then fast forwarding to a later part of the game, with the narration all being from an announcer of the game. Add in shots of people looking anxious in the stands and listening on the radio. Except it faded at least 5-6 times and it was just so terrible.

Thankfully the tone didn’t go all over the place. It was consistently cheesy and shit. Everyone who watches this film will be united in their passions of “lack of interest” towards a second viewing.

Is it over? Is it done? Is it dead?

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, besides having a lousy title, is supposed to be the last Paranormal Activity film. And it is in 3D! Huh, that is the same thing that Saw: The Final Cut did.

Frankly, I don’t buy it. These films are super easy to make, super cheap, and usually get a nice return on investment. There has to be more in the future, if not a completely “unrelated” plot with more security cameras. You know, just something.

Oh well, let’s hope this one resolves or answers some of the mysteries instead just creating a more confusing mythos.

Oh look the kid actors from Paranormal Activity 3. You know, the one that didn’t answer things and was a bullshit prequel. That’s a good sign.

The film opens up with a flashback to the end of the third film. The girls (Chloe Csengery, Jessica Tyler Brown) are taken my some hidden entity and the old grandma to do fun culty things.

Flash forward to 2013. Emily (Brit Shaw) and Ryan (Chris J. Murray) are living in their house with their little girl, Leila (Ivy George). Well, Mike (Dan Gill) is coming to live with them for a couple weeks after leaving his long term girlfriend. He just needs a break.

So Ryan records it. He likes recording things I guess. Mundane shit like cleaning or decorating for Christmas. And during this, Mike finds a box that has an old weird looking camera in it with some VHS tapes. Weird. The tapes are mostly weird late at night entries of two young girls who seem to be aware they are being seen in the future.

But the weirdest thing is the camera itself. It is custom made and fancy, but also has some weird glimmers and shines when it is recording. Of course you’d think it is because it is 20 years old. But really it is seeing ghosts and Ryan just doesn’t realize it yet.

Until he does, and bad things start to happen and blah blah possessions demons end film.

Also featuring Michael Krawic and Olivia Taylor Dudley.

I don’t feel bad about spoiling the look of the ghost.

I almost sort of wish I could have seen the movie in 3D. Because honestly, I don’t understand the point at all. I don’t see what 3D could have done to enhance the movie, not even its shitty jump scares. I guess it enhanced maybe how much money it made, but that would be it.

This is the worst Paranormal Activity movie. Worse than 3 and 4. This is the truth the franchise is ending out on a shitty note.

First of all, the camera explanations were, by far, the worst they have ever been. The camera work early on was completely random and never justified. Once he found the weird camera? Sure, I can imagine trying to use it. But then to keep using it? To have that all lead up to needing cameras to observe over night? It was nonsensical.

Just like previous films, for the most part they never feel the need to look at the security footage the next day, and if they do, they never do anything about it outside of religious things. They don’t leave the house when things get scary, they are basically just asking for their daughter to get possessed.

Outside of the fact that some scary stuff happens on camera, this is basically nothing like a Paranormal Activity film. There is nothing subtle about the suspense. You see the “ghosts” early and often. Add on the videos of the girls from the past, you get some lame component seemingly try to emulate Sinister or V/H/S. Those videos are technically subdued, but they are also not scary whatsoever.

Ignore this horror. Let the franchise die with dignity. And yes, I am referring to Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones.

Last year, I made my 2015 Oscar Predictions public. I was excited to do the same thing this year, but I realized that predictions are boring. Maybe in a one on one conversation they can be cool, but they don’t tell the full story of the season, and at the end of the day you are just reading a list.

Now, I was excited like a lot of you Thursday morning to see the nominees and ready to refresh the official list website. Unfortunately the whole thing was overshadowed by the death of Alan Rickman. And you know what. That sucks. That sucks more than who or what was snubbed. That sucks more than any awards ceremony. So I won’t do normal predictions, I am going to make these my Oscar Hopes.

Sure, I could give real predictions. But that is really just repeating what every one else has said about the Oscars. If you want that, you could look here, here, or even here. If you wanted to know official odds and gamble on it, you could even do that.

So instead I am just going to deal with the categories I know a lot about. I will also list the order I hope the Oscar goes to, and damn it, I will talk about it after the fact. No boring list here. This is straight up strong opinion time.

Starting from the bottom up. I didn’t like Stallone in Creed and it made the film average for me. I just don’t see the hype. I really really hope he doesn’t win this. Rylance was the best part of Bridge of Spies, but the movie itself was average. I think I like Ruffalo a bit more than Bale, but they both were pretty dang good in their films. Neither hold a candle to how good I thought Hardy was. His accent, his character, his monologue. Fantastic acting from a man who had a lot of hits this year.

This is the hardest category for me to talk about. Clearly there are four great choices here, and honestly I’d be happy with any of them. There is no hope for McAdams who was good, sure, but everyone else here was phenomenal.

I couldn’t even recognize Winslet in her role, but she was just as important to the plot as Fassbender. Vikander had the best year of any woman, giving a just as good performance in Ex Machina, while also in Burnt and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Mara was the best part of Carol to me, telling a lot through just her eyes and stares. And Leigh held up her own with a lot of dudes in her film, giving the second best performance after Walton Goggins. You cannot go wrong with any of these ladies and it is the most anticipated category to watch.

The real answer here is Steve Jobs but the Academy didn’t nominate it. Argh. Hell, the whole reason I am talking about this category is just to make that point. I don’t know much work the writers had to do to adapt their screenplays from the source material. I think Carol up here is a basic insult, since it needs to be in Best Director, the screenplay not being nearly as important to that movies success. But yeah. Steve Jobs. Aaron Sorkin. What the hell Academy. I know I said I wouldn’t bitch about snubs, but I really had to just get this one out, so I can never talk about it again.

The only surprising thing about this category is Boy and the World, which I think no one really knew about. Inside Out is the easy best animated picture of they year. It had emotions, emotions for the emotions, and emotions for my own self. Anomalisa made me feel in a different way, but wasn’t the type of film I would want to see again. Shaun the Sheep was good, but again, not great.

I think this is the year. This is the year DiCaprio will win Best Actor. He has consistently put out great performances, but I never feel like he was robbed, because I usually liked the actual winner better. If DiCaprio doesn’t win in it, I would only want it to go to Fassbender, who also blew me away with his performance this year. Redmayne was good and transformative, but I don’t think he needs the award two years in a row. Damon was the perfect person for The Martian, but a lot of it was him just playing himself. I am sure Cranston is just fine in Trumbo, but definitely either DiCaprio or Fassbender.

Yes, Blanchett acted great in Carol, but I thought she was upstaged by Mara and Blanchett won it a couple years ago in an arguably better role. Lawrence was the best part of Joy and definitely was acting, but overall I don’t think the film deserved any nominations. Ronan was my favorite performance of the year when I saw it, incredibly subtle and she carried a very simple movie into something strangely amazing. But then I saw Room, where Larson acted her ass off. Room has an incredible plot and her character has a lot of demons, so she shows off all of her skills in this film. A great follow up after her film in Short Term 12.

This is actually my most boring of listing categories. In reality, Spotlight is most likely going to win Best Picture with the smallest extra chance given to The Revenant due to the shear amount of nominations it has. And I also recently already made my Best Movies of 2015 List. Sure enough, 6 of these movies made the list, so I just put them in order of my favorites! Simple simple. Brooklyn and Bridge of Spies did not make my list though. Brooklyn I did like, Bridge of Spies was average. But hey, I guess they have to give some distinction to Spielberg. For reasons.

That’s all I have today folks! I will make sure to not make a real Oscar Predictions post, but instead focus my next few months on watching all of the films I haven’t yet seen. After that I will return to watching the worst of the worst for your entertainment.

Two years ago, I was facing another hoard of January movies and afraid of what might come out. But I had seen a trailer for Ride Along months before and was a bit excited about it. Kevin Hart can amuse me and the concept seemed funny enough. It was going to be the movie to save January for me. I was so ready for it.

And then it was average. It being average made me feel even more disappointed since I had such high hopes for it. That Awkward Moment ended up being my good January movie.

That’s right, with fucking Zac Efron.

And now two Januaries later, we have Ride Along 2. Kevin Hart also had The Wedding Ringer last January, making it three years in a row he has had a film come out that month. That is never a good sign for an actor. I hope he is getting some other roles out there somehow.

This time with new hilarious side characters who are from the finest of films before this one!

The sequel takes place only a few months later, I think. Ben Barber (Hart) is now a police officer, but he is in the mentoring stage and not a full time cop just yet. So he gets to shadow other cops, lieutenants and detectives, like James (Ice Cube)!

After a drug bust gone bad, James finds a mysterious USB drive with a crazy hard to beat encryption. Thankfully the hacker who did it left a calling sign and they are able to track it to A.J. (Ken Jeong) out of Miami. James only agrees to take Ben along with him as part of his training as a wedding present to his sister (Tika Sumpter). Oh yeah, the wedding is in a week, so hopefully they get back in time.

Oh no! It turns out A.J. is involved in a murder plot. And maybe someone out to murder him as well. This turns their quick Miami trip into working with Detective Maya (Olivia Munn) to solve the whole thing before they get dead. And not a spoiler, as it is the first scene, it is clearly the nice rich ship dude, Antonio Pope (Benjamin Bratt) behind everything. They just have to figure that out using their smarts first.

Also featuring Michael Rose, Sherri Shepherd, Carlos Gómez, Bruce McGill, and even smaller roles by Arturo del Puerto, Tyrese Gibson, and Glen Powell.

As I said and I shall repeat again, the finest of films I tell you!

Ride Along 2 was worse than the first film. It is an Action Comedy that has barely any laughs and non exciting action. It is a bore, which is definitely not an emotion you ever expect from either of those genres. You can totally expect that from Dramas.

In terms of humor, I did find one part near the plot finale did make me laugh. I laughed out loud and a lot, it was a nice shake up. But one great joke doesn’t save the film. Maybe I am getting immune to Kevin Hart’s ranting. Ice Cube had to play a serious guy, but 98% of his jokes fell completely flat. As for the action, it seemed almost like a parody without it being a parody. It had so many action cliches it was like watching something that came out of the 90’s but it never was aware of that fact. Explosions for every minor thing (which can be funny if intentional, like in 21 Jump Street), terrible shoot outs, and never any real fear or worry behind it.

There was one car chase scene where, in order to explain why Ben was a great driver during it, the film became to morph into a pretty bad looking video game. It was supposed to be similar to Grand Theft Auto, but the constant shifting of the game in his mind and in reality was only a major annoyance and took away from what could have been one of the more exciting parts of the film. In that sense, it is another example of what some movie in the 90’s might have done, but nowadays only a straight to DVD film would think that is a good idea.

On a final note, do you know the last time a movie decided to place its sequel in Miami? Do you? It was fucking 2 Fast 2 Furious, a travesty of a movie, and it is a surprise the franchise didn’t die on the spot. I don’t see this franchise lasting 7 movies, because at least The Fast and the Furious was decent. This is two weak films in a row.

Now that I have a new baby, my wife and I are trying to figure out what her future will be. You know, will she be good at sports or school? Will she be a gymnast or a singer? Will she like bugs or kitties? You know, the normal things. Because if a parent can do anything, it is force their own ideas and beliefs onto their baby and shape them how they want, right? I think that is right.

So I definitely wanted to see the documentary Trophy Kids. I figured it would teach me how to make my child into a future super star. That way she can earn millions of dollars doing sports stuff (Even though no women outside of like 5 make millions I think) and I can retire early because of it. That sure would be swell.

But of course that is not what this documentary is about. Hell, it isn’t about athletes who were Trophy Kids or Trophy Kids currently in training. Nope, it is about the parents. It is about the lengths they will go to for their child to succeed. And by lengths, I mean how dickish, angry, and abusive will these adults be to their kids in order for them to be scared into doing things correctly.

After all, yelling at your kid five feet away from them, in the stands, and on the side line will totally improve their performance. It is easy to listen to your parents shrieking voices with all the other sports distractions around you.

In Trophy Kids, we examine several different sports and aged kids, and how all their parents are more or less the same.

There is no crying in baseball, but there is crying in golf.

The one parent who is slightly different from the rest was a very religious mom with twin boys, who was training them to be future Doubles Tennis champions. She talked a lot about Jesus and their path, and they were all freakishly nice. That one wasn’t too bad I guess.

Everyone else? A guy who divorced his wife and forced their kid to move with him in high school to focus on his football training. After all, his wife is making him too feminine. Pictured above is a dad with a golf prodigy daughter who could put and hit at 3 years old. She doesn’t like him as her caddy.

And the other main story is dealing with two dads who have sons in high school basketball. Since their youth, they have had personal trainers, height training, and of course actual basketball training. Basically a full time job. And their dads get to go and yell a lot during high school match ups and get coaches fired. Thanks dads!

The documentary starts off a bit slow but ramps up after a halfway mark. Hell, if they could have just spread out a lot more of the intensity, this might have ended up as a 4 for me. There is one extremely powerful scene with the football dad in a car ride. It starts off simple and then suddenly everything is switched to 11, and suddenly, child abuse. It was surprisingly how long that scene in particular was and how messed up in the head the dad actually ended up being.

But really, shit, I just feel bad for the kids. They all want to do good and live up to their parents expectations, but of course the expectations always get raised and they are never satisfied. It is sad for them and when we get to see where a few of them place after the fact, it is just sad. Damn documentaries, making me feel emotions.

Norm of the North? What in the flip is Norm of the North?

What? You didn’t hear about the Lionsgate animated film coming out mid January? What? Did you also not hear about Strange Magic last year around the same time, which ended up as my #2 Worst Movie of 2015?

Norm of the North has also not received many trailers or TV spots. It is the type of film they are releasing and not expecting much. And let’s not forget that the critic screening of the film is Thursday night, at a time when normal people can already pay money to see it. That is where you put movies you don’t really want the critics to ruin.

But maybe they do expect something out of it. After all, two sequels have already been announced. The sequels are only planning to be 45 minutes long and straight to DVD, but they are still planned!

Here is the real question I wonder though: The Nut Job 2 was also scheduled to be released on the same day, but it has apparently moved its date. However no one out there knows where it was eventually pushed. It has disappeared off the map. Did Norm of the North somehow eat it?

He is looking kind of chunky.

So, we have a polar bear named Norm (Rob Schneider. And now you know what you are working with here). Lives in the arctic. And he can speak Human. We learn this when he tells a seal his life story about why he cannot eat the seal because he is a terrible hunter and doesn’t do polar bear things anymore. Just humans. He in particular likes to dance, of course. He calls it the Arctic Shake. Remember that. That will be important later.

The only other animal who could speak Human was his grandfather (Colm Meaney), the king of the Arctic, but he has disappeared. Speaking of shenanigans, there is a house suddenly on the ice! Fully furnished and ready to be lived in. Apparently it is a model home and some group is shooting a commercial, hoping to sell homes to get people to move to the Arctic. It is an untapped reservoir luxury gold mine. Or something.

Norm tries to get them to flee but only helps them make a good commercial. The owner, Mr. Greene (Ken Jeong) just wants to rip people off. He also has the idea to use an actor to dress up like a polar bear to sell their idea to the world. Of course Norm sneaks to NYC to become that actor and put a stop to everything. But he also feels bad for the PR lady, Vera (Heather Graham) who just wants to get her daughter (Maya Kay) into a good school.

Time to Arctic Shake his way into America’s hearts and stop the Ice take over from happening.

Also featuring the voice work of Bill Nighy, Loretta Devine, Gabriel Iglesias, and Michael McElhatton.

And these little fucks.

Oh where do we begin. Sure, the lemmings. That is what those tiny things are, and three of them join Norm on the adventure. They are apparently indestructible and can do anything, making them a perfect plot device to solve any and all problems. Except for tense moments near the end when characters decide to not use them to untie them for some reason. Oh and they are vulgar too. They pee a lot on things and fart and burp and teehee. They are going for the fucking Minion market and it is despicable.

The plot is paper thin. Points move too fast without a lot of explanation. For some reason none of the animals will believe Norm about the house, despite it being a physical thing anyone can go to, and a lot of witnesses (The Lemmings) and a respected community member. They just laugh at him…for some reason. And in the conclusion, despite none of these same animals going on the journey, they totally believe everything because The Lemmings say so, which is totally contradictory to how they behaved earlier. There is no sense to any of it.

Part of the plot involves getting America to like him shown by some fancy real time approval ratings graph that everyone can just access about things. And after going on a talk show, says one thing, he dances, dances in the street, and everyone loves him. Yay resolution! Well done bear. It is ruining Shut Up And Dance for me now.

The animation was poor and blocky. A final storm scene was almost painful to look at. The Coca Cola polar bear commercials have better overall quality to them

I can’t find any real pictures from them in NYC, just promo art.
But at the same time, look at that background bear and see how terrible it all is.

The director had his button on a fade out button and used it constantly to go between scenes. I was going to vaguely describe an example of it being used improperly, but it hurt my head trying to describe the scene.

I kid you not, my four year old step daughter turned to me twice during the movie and told me this was a bad movie. She didn’t laugh at all. I laughed at a joke that could be misconstrued as a pedophile joke. It also had a decently offensive gay joke, to throw the whole thing more under the bus.

I don’t feel like I am done. There was a love interest. But I didn’t even link her above because she had all of three lines throughout the film and ended up being not important, despite literally marrying her at the end. The final plan of the bad Mr. Greene, which he kept secret, was simply recording Norm talk and changing his words around. And after that happened, Norm basically gave up. “Oh ho, they heard me say something else now. Nothing I can do about it!”

Just. Fuck. This was bad.