Gorgon Reviews

This Is Where I Leave You is one of those movies that I really didn’t care about seeing right away. I knew I could wait for it, despite liking quite a few members of the cast.

What was my beef? I call it Jason Bateman fatigue. A lot of people in this movie, but his character gets to be the main character, and for the most part, his last several years of roles have been very very similar. The Switch, The Change-Up, Identity Thief, Bad Words, Horrible Bosses. He is generally an asshole character who likes to make fun of others and has bad things happen to him. Sure he is a dick, but people are usually bigger dicks, so his dick-ness is justified.

Either way, I am super tired of him because he always gets lead guy status, thanks to Arrested Development I guess (which is also the same character).

I am tired of what feels like him lazily acting on the screen. It was fine the first few times, but now I really don’t know why I expected anything other than the dead dove.

But we have female on male violence, so I guess it can’t be too bad.

Can we look at that image closer? I think I got a stunt double in here or something, because man, that looks nothing like Tina Fey or what I would imagine Tina Fey looks like mid punch.

Mort Altman is dead. He is survived by his wife (Jane Fonda) and four kids. He was an athiest, but apparently he wanted a Jewish ceremony at his death and have his family sit shiva. That is an older tradition where the family literally sits for a week (outside of food/sleep/etc) to talk and honor the dead. People are meant to visit them throughout the week as well, to allow the stories to be said in a more natural way and to pass on the legacy of the individual. I learned about it at first from Weeds.

So we have Judd (Bateman) who is about to get separated from his wife (Abigail Spencer) because he found her in bed with his boss (Dax Shepard). Wendy (Tina Fey) is upset over her husband (Aaron Lazar) for being too busy with work, not able to stay, but also having to deal with kids and former lovers. Paul (Corey Stoll), the oldest, who wants to take over the family business cannot seem to get his wife (Kathryn Hahn) pregnant. And Phillip (Adam Driver) is younger, reckless, and dating a much older woman, a psychiatrist (Connie Britton), who actually was inspired by their family to go into her field.

What? Oh yeah, their family was written about by their mother in a book, so people know all about their lives. In a way, this makes it very similar to Peep World, but no one watched Peep World.

And yeah. Shenanigans. Also with Ben Schwartz, Debra Monk, Rose Byrne and Timothy Olyphant.

Shenanigans I say!

Overall, This Is Where I Leave You is a typical dysfunctional family comedy film. Maybe with more physical punches between and from siblings, but nonetheless, a lot of this is pretty typical.

TIWILY does attempt to do some things differently. With Bateman’s story line, there are unexpected elements behind it and they were a bit refreshing. But Driver’s plot was incredibly standard, Fey’s seemed like filler, and Stoll’s was underdeveloped.

The best part of the film is actually Jane Fonda! Her character is hilarious and really helps mesh the whole movie together. If you needed a reason to check this movie out at some point, Jane would be your reason.

A lot of it is predictable, a lot of it is okay. Overall, it just feels like too much. None of it feels realistic, to have so many things happen this way in a week, so it is hard to relate to any of the characters, at least from my point of view.

Shh. Go away. Review is over~.

There’s still time right? There is still time to make something about my Oscar Predictions?

I figure I should make some official ones, given the amount of movies I watch. I am going super simplistic with this too, but if you click on a movie link, it leads to my full review for you to judge and get overall feelings for!

Best Picture
“American Sniper”
“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”
“Boyhood”
“The Grand Budapest Hotel”
“The Imitation Game”
“Selma”
“The Theory of Everything”
“Whiplash”

I mean, did you see my top films of 2014 list? Birdman was number 1, but Boyhood was a close number 2. I’d be happy if any of them won, even Grand Budapest.

Actor
Steve Carell in “Foxcatcher”
Bradley Cooper in “American Sniper”
Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Imitation Game”
Michael Keaton in “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”
Eddie Redmayne in “The Theory of Everything”

Arguably everyone did good here, even Mr. Carell, but Redmayne went full cripple with the role. This was his Daniel Day Lewis moment, and I expect him to win unless all the voters also watched Jupiter Ascending.

Actress
Marion Cotillard in “Two Days, One Night”
Felicity Jones in “The Theory of Everything”
Julianne Moore in “Still Alice”
Rosamund Pike in “Gone Girl”
Reese Witherspoon in “Wild”

I think three women can potentially win this, but I picked Moore because everyone told me too. I would love it if Cotillard could win as well, and then maybe Pike. Maybe.

Supporting Actor
Robert Duvall in “The Judge”
Ethan Hawke in “Boyhood”
Edward Norton in “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”
Mark Ruffalo in “Foxcatcher”
J.K. Simmons in “Whiplash”

Most of the acting categories feel pretty easy to guess, and everyone is saying J.K. Simmons here, because he rocked that movie out with his cock out.

Supporting Actress
Patricia Arquette in “Boyhood”
Laura Dern in “Wild”
Keira Knightley in “The Imitation Game”
Emma Stone in “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”
Meryl Streep in “Into the Woods”

Similarly, everyone knows Patricia Arquette is winning this award, as she had quite a transformation over those 12 years. My follow up favorite option would be Emma Stone, and everyone else was meh.

Animated Feature
“Big Hero 6”
“The Boxtrolls”
“How to Train Your Dragon 2”
“Song of the Sea” [Didn’t watch]
“The Tale of the Princess Kaguya”

A hard subject that I have gone back and forth on. I’d like to rewatch HTTYD2 and BH6 really, but my gut instinct gives it to the Dragons.

Adapted Screenplay
“American Sniper”
“The Imitation Game”
“Inherent Vice”
“The Theory of Everything”
“Whiplash”

Shit, I dunno. I really don’t know. This might be the only thing Imitation Game has a chance on, so why not them?

Original Screenplay
“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”
“Boyhood”
“Foxcatcher”
“The Grand Budapest Hotel”
“Nightcrawler”

Another category I have no idea on. Anderson writes good scripts, and I want him to get acknowledgement for his zany movie. I’d say either this or Birdman or Boyhood or Nightcrawler.

Cinematography
“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”
“The Grand Budapest Hotel”
“Ida”
“Mr. Turner”
“Unbroken”

I might be wrong with Best Picture, but I won’t be wrong here. Cinematography is the entire fucking point of Birdman, and it knocked it well out of the park.

Costume Design
“The Grand Budapest Hotel”
“Inherent Vice”
“Into the Woods”
“Maleficent”
“Mr. Turner”

First off, I’d say all of these did a fantastic job. Except for Maleficent. And for no reason other than liking it the most, I am giving it to Budapest.

Director
“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” Alejandro G. Iñárritu
“Boyhood” Richard Linklater
“Foxcatcher” Bennett Miller
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” Wes Anderson
“The Imitation Game” Morten Tyldum

This is a hard category, but I think it will be split from best film. I think the dedication Linklater needed for his movie is worth more than just well done film that Iñárritu put out. But again, it is between them too.

Documentary Feature
“CitizenFour”
“Finding Vivian Maier”
“Last Days in Vietnam”
“The Salt of the Earth” [Didn’t watch]
“Virunga”

Two of these docuementaries I really loved, but of the two, Citizenfour is crazy topical and crazy good. Behind the scenes footage of recent events like you have never seen before.

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Film Editing
“American Sniper”
“Boyhood”
“The Grand Budapest Hotel”
“The Imitation Game”
“Whiplash”

I picked Boyhood, because, well, it has a shit ton of footage to editor together. I assume.

Foreign Language Film
“Ida” Poland
“Leviathan” Russia
“Tangerines” Estonia [Didn’t watch]
“Timbuktu” Mauritania [Didn’t watch]
“Wild Tales” Argentina [Didn’t watch]

I only got to see two of these and I definitely preferred Leviathan way more than Ida, although both are quite slow.

Makeup and Hairstyling
“Foxcatcher”
“The Grand Budapest Hotel”
“Guardians of the Galaxy”

Foxcatcher is here because of a nose, Guardians is here because of paint. Grand Budapest Hotel has to win, right?

Original Score
“The Grand Budapest Hotel”
“The Imitation Game”
“Interstellar”
“Mr. Turner”
“The Theory of Everything”

I can honestly say I don’t really give a shit here, as long as Interstellar doesn’t win.

Original Song
“Everything Is Awesome” from “The Lego Movie”
“Glory” from “Selma”
“Grateful” from “Beyond the Lights”
“I’m Not Gonna Miss You” from “Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me” [Didn’t watch]
“Lost Stars” from “Begin Again”

A lot of good choices here. Of course everyone would like it if The Lego Movie won this, but I loved basically every song from Begin Again. It was the tits. Go that movie.

Production Design
“The Grand Budapest Hotel”
“The Imitation Game”
“Interstellar”
“Into the Woods”
“Mr. Turner”

Production Design? I think Budapest would have this in the bag as well. Everyone knows about Anderson and his design.

Sound Editing
“American Sniper”
“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”
“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”
“Interstellar”
“Unbroken”

I might not know the difference between Editing and Mixing, so I am giving it to Birdman, as it had to incorporate things like drummers/drumlines with everything else going on in the story. Good times.

Sound Mixing
“American Sniper”
“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”
“Interstellar”
“Unbroken”
“Whiplash”

Speaking of drummers. I think war movies tend to win these type of things, but I don’t rememeber American Sniper being that great in this department.

Visual Effects
“Captain America: The Winter Soldier”
“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”
“Guardians of the Galaxy”
“Interstellar”
“X-Men: Days of Future Past”

Okay, sure, here you go Interstellar. You were pretty as fuck with many different worlds. You should totally beat the super hero movies and the monkey one.

LOLOLOL, I have seen one of the next fifteen things. Yeah. Feast, because it was before Big Hero 6. Sooo, I am just guessing on most of these based on the name.

Animated Short Film
“The Bigger Picture”
“The Dam Keeper”
“Feast”
“Me and My Moulton”
“A Single Life”

Live Action Short Film
“Aya”
“Boogaloo and Graham”
“Butter Lamp (La Lampe Au Beurre De Yak)”
“Parvaneh”
“The Phone Call”

Documentary Short Subject
“Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1”
“Joanna”
“Our Curse”
“The Reaper (La Parka)”
“White Earth”

Right or wrong, those are the only two ways this list can be.

I hope you enjoyed my very little effort in this, and I also hope even more that the Oscars don’t completely suck. I am just watching them for Neil.

“Love is Strange? What the heck is this? I thought you were doing Oscar Related movies this week!”

Well, I was, I swear! But. Uhh. I ran out. I didn’t finish the list. I couldn’t. I officially couldn’t get see three of the Best Foreign Films, one of the Best Animated, one of the Best Documentary, one of the Best Original Song, and of course, 14 of the 15 Shorts. Doh.

But I didn’t pick this one randomly. Oh no, this was actually nominated for a Spirit Award for Best Picture. The Spirit Awards are for indie movies and they take place this weekend as well. And look at that, this was the one film I was missing from the main Best Picture category for them.

Boo yah. I am now Hipster.

And what is more hipster than watching an Independent Movie about Gay Marriage.

Speaking of marriage, Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) are getting married! They have been together for over thirty years and are obviously quite old. But NY allows it, and by golly, they wanna get on that.

Good times, happy day, everyone is happy for them!

Then George gets fired. He taught piano and other music classes at a private school, and yeah, they took his marriage as something he wasn’t allowed to do in his contract, even if they knew he was gay. So this is bad because it was their stable income, which means they cannot pay their rent, which means they have to move. But shit, Ben’s income is erratic as he is a painter and George might need to take some time to get a new gig.

So they have to go live with their family and friends. They also want to live in the city still, because that is where they can find work and maintain a NYC presence.

Ben is living with his nephew (Darren E. Burrows), his nephew’s wife (Marisa Tomei) and their son Joey (Charlie Tahan). Ben might get on their nerves.

George is living with their former old neighbors (Cheyenne Jackson, Manny Perez), a younger gay couple who are both cops. They are a lot active than George is.

Issues, annoyances, and a bad start to a new marriage.

But not as bad as his start to that painting. You can’t erase water colors.

John Lithgow is really enjoying his acting these days. From his brilliant arc on Dexter to his cameos on HIMYM, he is just doing anything he wants at this point.

Acting wise, both leads do a great job. Their love is believable and their chemistry is nice.

I just find the plot of this movie to have a mostly blah concept. So they both go separate places, one becomes an annoyance on the place he lives, the other mostly just gets annoyed by what is going on around him. And their life goes on.

In that way, this movie has a very indie feel. A small concept script with not a lot going on. And I can’t help but feel cheated of a lot of potential plot to tell a more entertaining story. Some interesting things happen, it is very realistic, and the acting is good. But darn it, I just want a bit more in my stories.

Four out of five! Four out of five! I am getting so close. As an update in my attempts to watch all five of the documentaries nominated for Best Oscar, my other three have been Virunga, Citizenfour, and Finding Vivian Maier. That is because I never watch these things, I always watch shitty food documentaries and other crap. BUT HERE I AM WITH FOUR OF THE FIVE.

Man. Only one thing can beat this feeling. Like, an unlimited stack of pancakes. Or all five. But also pancakes. We will see. I don’t think I can make it.

Now we have Last Days In Vietnam! PBS put it on their website for free for a few days just so people like me can watch it. Was awfully kind of them. And the title isn’t vague at all. I instantly know what it is about. The last days in Vietnam! For America!

Here are people pushing freedom over into Vietnam.

I don’t want to get into a history lesson, but after Nixon ceremoniously left the office, Vietnam was in shambles. North Korea was fucking things up, South Korea was in trouble. Next thing you knew, America wanted out, but at the same time, a giant North Korea army was marching down and nothing could stand in its way! The USA had to evacuate, but at the same time, didn’t want to let everyone get slaughtered. There were attempts to get people to safety, to America, to wait until the army was right up on the capital gates.

Things were hectic, things were scary, and thankfully it wasn’t too long ago for everyone to be dead. A lot of major players, both in Vietnam and at home, are featured in this documentary to tell the stories. We have stories from Soldiers to Citizens, from Henry Kissinger to refugee. Overall it paints a pretty decent picture of what went down. A subject, I can freely admit I wasn’t super knowledgeable about before this documentary.

But also. I don’t feel super knowledgeable about it after the fact either. It is a strange feeling. I was listening and loving the information. But all of it seems to have gone in one ear and out the other. It is probably just a me situation, and not the same for everyone. But this is my review, not yours, so get your own website, jerks.

Either way. Good information, but at the same time, I guess it feels like something that they used to show on the History channel. You know, before the incident.

I was excited to watch Inherent Vice, because the internet told me to be excited about Inherent Vice. It was some sleek 1970s-esque drama/mystery, complete with Private Eye and missing people. It had a sexy poster and a lot of famous people in it.

I honestly didn’t see too much advertising outside of the internet, but it was also by a well respected director. Paul Thomas Anderson has made quite a few good films, all of them well acted, very well loved.

So despite it taking me, I dunno, two or so months after it first started coming out to theaters, I have finally gotten around to seeing it!

And then, uh, I saw it and left quite disappointed.

I am probably just a prude like this lady here.

Here is what I pieced together.

Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is a private investigator, a man with sideburns, and someone who loves women, drugs, and other hippie behavior. His ex lady Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) is now sleeping with a real estate mogul Michael Z. Wolfmann (Eric Roberts). His wife doesn’t like the affair and might be planning something drastic.

Also, unrelated, Tariq Khalil (Michael Kenneth Williams) wants Doc to find his friend, a member of an Aryan gang. The man who also is a bodyguard of Mr. Wolfmann. Oh man. The plot thickens.

Either way, these two inquiries lead Doc on a strange and drug fueled path, featuring death, framing, cunnilingus, sex, more drugs, and more drugs again. Also featuring Hong Chau, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Martin Short, Josh Brolin, Maya Rudolph and Benicio Del Toro.

My face when I found out the side burns had their own place in the credits.

I think the main point of Inherent Vice is to tell a decade appropriate story with a decade appropriate amount of drugs and hazy memory. The story feels disjointed because of how messed up the characters actually are. I’d say it is like an unreliable narrator, but I am not even sure who the narrator was, just a woman.

And I hated it. I don’t care how accurate the experience is, it just makes me feel uncomfortable. Which again, is probably the point. But these are feelings I don’t want to feel, the feelings of confusion.

The set is fine. The acting is fine. The music is good. But the story I found impossible to get into. For the most part it just felt like two characters talking to each other and uhh then the next scene. I like dramas, I like talking, I just could do absolutely nothing with this one.

I am not just reviewing Beyond The Lights because it was nominated for Best Original Song in the Oscars. No, I wanted to see it even before that!

However, yes, I am having the review out this week because of that fact.

I wanted to see it because I heard good things despite a somewhat Lifetime movie looking trailer. I wanted to see it because it was a mainly black cast and it had nothing to do with Kevin Hart or Tyler Perry. Some of their movies are terrible, sure, but at least they are actually increasing the amount of color that our TVs can show. So it is always exciting to see someone else do something to break the trend or lack of trend.

Oh hey, wait. It is British? Never mind. This means nothing now.

It can’t even help our current opinions about law enforcement!

Just kidding. Despite starring British people, it is actually American overall. Go back to flying our flags proudly, folks.

Since Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) was a little girl, her mother (Minnie Driver) has been focused on her career as a singer. She was entered into talent contests and her mother would not let her settle for second place. Her mother raiser her alone and always wanted her child to succeed.

Now, many many years later, Noni is about to win a Billboard award with a collaboration with Kid Culprit (Machine Gun Kelly). It is very impressive, since she hasn’t even released her own album. She has just been on three of his tracks and they have all been super popular. Yes. Now is the time for her to break out and get one of the best selling records of all time.

But Noni doesn’t feel happy. Maybe she hates her relationship with Kid. Maybe she hates selling her body for success. Maybe she hates her mother deciding every part of her life. Maybe she just feels fake. Either way, she decides to end her life. She is saved last minute by the current cop watching her room, Kaz (Nate Parker), who calms her down and makes her feel like an individual.

And won’t you look at that. A relationship might come from it too. Sure it starts in an awkward place. He kind of saved her life. There is some awkwardness that might make people question its long lasting-ness. Especially since Kaz himself is only going to be a cop for a little bit. He wants to run for office, a political kind of guy. Being with a pop star might make people question his seriousness.

I am sure none of that will come up though. Also featuring Danny Glover, who is still too old for this shit, as a cop.

When your mom encourages an outfit like this, you know you might actually be a doll.

And then I enjoyed a movie about a pop star struggling with the music industry and feeling like a real person. Of course I did. Put it that way, it sounds brilliant. Sure, first world problems a bit, but everyone should understand the need to feel loved and important.

The romance in this picture feels very realistic and that is actually refreshing given the last few “romance” movies I have seen. They have problems, they have outside forces telling them one thing or another, and they have their own issues to work through, but they try things out and give it their best shot.

Both Mbatha-Raw and Parker give great performances. Driver is a straight up bitch, but it all fit for her character. Hell, I might not have completely hated her by the end either.

Overall, a good romance/drama. And uhh, the songs are decent too. I guess. (It won’t win).

By all accounts, I don’t think I will be able to see any other movies up for Best Foreign Film before the Academy Awards. Sad face.

I only had Ida before thanks to Netflix. Now I have Leviathan. And it won a Golden Globe, so it has something going for it.

That and a sweet sweet name. The country it comes from is okay.

Wanna know how I know this movie is Russian?

Leviathan is a story about land dispute. Because if anything, Russia doesn’t have enough land, causing the citizens to fight over it.

Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov) is a down on his luck guy. He is good as a mechanic, his “Friends” in the community use him for favors, but it is too small of a town to really make a living there. But he has been there for a long time, has a sweet house with a lot of land on the coast.

His wife (Elena Lyadova) seems pretty distant, and his only child, a son from another woman (Sergey Pokhodaev) is kind of a dick and an average student.

But the mayor (Roman Madyanov) of the town is trying to take his land. Quite successfully! Using some legal loopholes, he is getting it for quick. Kolya is trying to fight it through the law, and through appeals, but he is losing over and over again. It seems like everyone is out to get Kolya and they all just want to use him.

And well, that is kind of true. Basically.

Also with Vladimir Vdovichenkov as a hot shot lawyer from Moscow coming to save his buddy.

Wanna know why I know this movie is called Leviathan?
(I actually have no idea.)

Leviathan is one of those movies that has a boring ass plot description, but one that ends up being far more interesting than it has any right to be.

Again, it is about a dude fighting a legal battle to just keep his home. But only kind of about that. It is about that and people treating him like shit and shit keep hitting him in the face. Literally!

No, not literally.

But still. A lot of fucked up things happen by the end, but even better is that it all makes sense by the end too. The plot points all wrap up! We aren’t left wondering anything! Yay complete films!

I mean. It has its boring. But it definitely tells a pretty good story while doing so. Glad it just wasn’t another super boring foreign film.

Let’s start with the obvious.

Literally everyone at this point knows that Fifty Shades Of Grey started out as some sort of Twilight fan fiction. People liked it, she changed the characters names a bit, gave them some new jobs and that was about it. Literally even the setting is the same. When watching, I could easily imagine Edward and Bella in each scene. The mannerisms, whatever. Yeah.

Either way. That is besides the point.

The other thing I heard about Fiddy Shades is that it is a poor portrayal of BDSM subculture and what this movie really promotes is sexual abuse and lies. Oh good. Perfect date night film then. There are also issues with the rating itself (which I will get to later) and apparently the director and book author argued a bunch on set.

I’m sorry, I can’t hear your criticisms over these chiseled abs and bare skin.

Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) met under unusual circumstances. She interviewed him at his company because he was going to be giving the commencement speech at her graduation. He is a billionaire. She is a senior English Lit major who is doing the interview for her sick roommate (Eloise Mumford). But he sees something in her and she mostly just thinks he is hot.

However, she is also very inexperienced. Despite having average looks, she is a virgin, saving herself for the one she really wants. Fuck this pretense. Christian wants to spank dat ass, and Anastasia doesn’t know what she wants, outside of the fact that she wants Christian’s body too.

So he gives her a taste. Like, a dick taste. But does that get her hooked? No, not really. She knows about what he really wants, and he makes it perfectly clear. He has a contract, things up for negotiation, everything laid out on the table. But she doesn’t want a contract, she wants their relationship instead to be confusing and “normal” where things can happen without rules. In fact, the whole film she just leads him on instead, refusing to sign the contract, not because she doesn’t want to, but because she keeps going back and forth. Not that changing your mind is bad. But refusing to come to a decision for weeks is kind of annoying.

Also featuring the Grey-clan, like Marcia Gay Harden, Max Martini, and Rita Ora. I have been told the last person is a singer.

Grey isn’t the only color in the movie. Unless Red is a shade of Grey. I don’t know, I don’t “see color.”

First of all, I am definitely disappointed in the R rating. Boooo. You might wonder why? The only way it can go higher is the dreaded NC-17 rating, which major movie chains refuse to show! Only indie art house theaters! Well, obviously, an erotic novel for adults only with very graphic sex scenes should be that rating in movie form. But also, this was like, our ONE chance for the major movie chains to change their opinion. They know this is going to make money. They wouldn’t refuse a film version when the book was so hyped up. They would have caved and maybe we would have gotten more NC-17 movies in theaters in the future.

But yeah, missed opportunity.

As for the abuse part? I looked very hard. Christian never does anything to Anna that she does not agree to. Never. Sometimes it takes convincing, but real adult people are allowed to discuss things. Yes he is more experienced, but like in real relationships there will usually always be someone more experienced. If convincing someone to try new things sexually is abusive behavior, then man, I’d imagine most relationships are abusive.

At the same time, this doesn’t really put a good spotlight on the BDSM community, known for being very high on communication. Why not? Christian follows their rules pretty well it seems (despite Anna’s best attempts to muck things up), but they also made him an abused figure in his past who came from a crackhead mom. So they are also painting the picture that BDSM is “not right” and clearly it is due to bad experiences in his youth. Shit, looks like they are also trying to burn all bridges here.

Anyways, Dakota Johnson was very believable in her role, I guess, even if she is stupidly annoying the entire time. The character’s actions rarely make sense to me, but she acted great in it. Dornan had the serial killer look down I guess, but I thought he overacted his part.

In all reality, I thought the movie was okay for the most part. But the ending was down right terrible. Terrible in a “Hey, fuck you guys, you don’t get a complete story in this one, you have to watch two more movies to get a complete story.”

Cliffhangers are one thing. They can work well for a series. But if that series can’t even complete a fucking basic arc, then it is just filler pointlessness. I don’t know anything about how the rest of this story goes, but if it is like the first one, then I can safely assume it probably should have just been one movie and not fucking three.

Also, there were no dicks in the movie. Some bush on both ends, and maybe the start of a shaft once. This is what I assume you all really wanted to know.

Welcome to my third interview going over the Oscar Nominations for Best Documentary! The first two I looked at were Virunga and Citizenfour, and now to continue my “random order” with Finding Vivian Maier.

I don’t know who this lady is, but I have heard she is missing and they made a documentary about it. Sort of like Finding Bigfoot. I don’t just say that because Vivian was a tall woman either.

The story starts with a guy, John Maloof, our narrator and co-director, being an auction hound. He buys random junk hoping to find treasure, and he ended up buying a large lot of unknown stuff which features a lot of undeveloped photographs. When he gave them the old lookie-loo, he found them to be pretty darn good. Classic old black and white pictures. But who is she? Where is she? Why did her work go unnoticed?

I mean. She is right there. How hard could she be to find?

John is able to get Vivian’s work in galleries and it makes people go crazy. They love it and they love the mystery. Well, it turns out that Vivian was a socially awkward nanny. So he was able to find a lot of people she worked for, parents or kids, find old friends, landlord, and piece together her entire life, until she eventually died.

And what a life she had! She did…well. I obviously won’t tell you. The discovery/journey is the whole point. Can see her highs, her lows, her quirks, and her troubled times.

And despite the silly subject, about a passion/hobby/type of career I don’t even care a lot, I loved this documentary. It was so creative, it told a great story, so many people were interviewed and her life through her camera and social awkwardness is now super available for everyone to enjoy. It probably would have pissed her off too, knowing that. But hey, shut up. I am enjoying the shit out Vivian, even if I don’t super love her photography.

A great documentary, not as great as Citizenfour, but still great.

I was just as shocked as everybody else that The Book of Life and The Lego Movie didn’t get nominated for Best Animated Film. But also, I did give the former a 2 and the latter a 3, only. The two I gave 4’s made it and the other was a 3. So clearly, I was really on my game with the Academy.

But how was I to suspect that some foreign animated films would make it?! Crazy talk!

The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a Studio Ghibli movie, which tends to mean quality. I didn’t even know they did movies without Miyazaki, but there ya go!

I would describe this animation style as “moving painting.”

The story begins with an old bamboo cutter (James Caan), being in the forest, cutting bamboo. He sees a glowing plant, and from it drops a tiny little princess girl that can fit in his hands. Shit that’s weird. He obviously brings it back home to his wife (Mary Steenburgen), and bam. That tiny thing turns into a regular sized baby. And hey, his wife suddenly has milk inducing boobies!

That stuff is crazy. The baby grows quickly too, so the local village kids nickname her Little Bamboo. Soon, the princess (Chloe Grace Moretz) is running around with all the kids, singing songs, playing games, going on adventures. Her best friend is Sutemaru (Darren Criss).

But her dad takes her away from the forest to the city. They get a big house with clothes and someone to teach her how to be a real princess (Lucy Liu). That means being a super obedient girl, basically. Seen but not heard. Never showing emotion. Never doing fun things. Terrible.

Kaguya doesn’t want that, no matter how pretty she is. She will avoid suitors at all cost and fight the good fight. You go Glen Kaguya.

Excitingly, the art matches the emotion really fucking well.

The story is actually based on a famous Japanese folk tale, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Clearly western influence made them focus more on the princess than the boring old wood cutter. It is very close to the main narrative, but in all honesty, this version is probably way better. I see there are tons of movies based on this tale already, mostly live action. But again, this is one is probably way better.

Because this one was fucking awesome!

Like, incredibly. I talked about how crazy The Wind Rises, using “Traditional 2D Animation” but feeling like a 3D CGI wonderland. This one instead felt like a living painting, like I was watching an artist make each individual scene in front of me. Just super quick. I guess actors were hanging around too to talk as the characters. The metaphor isn’t perfect, but the animation is.