Gorgon Reviews

Sharknado 2: The Second One — Because people think that the first Sharknado was a bad B Movie.

That isn’t true of course. It was just a bad movie, worse than a B movie, and it tried too hard to make itself be funny bad, and instead was just terrible.

But forwhatever reason, the internet decided to run with this as a joke it definitely needed, and it got way too popular for no reason.

So now we have Sharknado 2.

Reviews of this are pointless, because I am under the impression that anyone who was going to watch this movie, already did. I do in fact believe I am the last person to watch this movie.

And if not, uhhh, spoilers.

The last movie was set in LA and starred some people. This time, it is set in NYC and the idea of a Sharknado is an actual thing. Hell, even the book How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters: Fight Back When Monsters and Mother Nature Attack is in this movie, though written by one of the main characters from the last movie, April Wexler (Tara Reid).

April and Fin (Ian Ziering) are no longer together, but they are flying to NYC to visit family and friends, when, of course, a bunch of crazy weather shit happens. Huge storm, winter icy blast, and for whatever reason, a shit ton of Sharks, means NYC is about to get fucked up and a whole lotta people gonna die.

And that is all you really have to know. A lot of cameos of random people, but if I told you who, you’d know they would probably just end up dying.

The non cameo real roles include Vivica A. Fox, Mark McGrath, Kari Wuhrer, Courtney Baxter, Dante Palminteri, Judah Friedlander and Judd Hirsch.

Another maybe spoiler, but this one is cooler.

And there it is, a bad sequel to a bad movie. HOWEVER.

And it hurts me to say this. It hurts me so much.

Sharknado 2 > Sharknado. Sharknado felt like I was getting hit in the head with a shovel for an hour and a half. Shaknado 2 merely felt boring and you know what? I laughed occasionally.

The beginning of Sharknado 2 was just as bad as Sharknado, but it got a little bit better. Their jokes are bit funnier. Especially one Shark hopping scene, I down right smiled.

It is still just as cheesy, just as poorly conceived, but you know what. Just a tad bit better.

And thus, I do declare, that Sharknado 2 is not the worst movie of 2014.

Whiplash snuck into theaters way back in October was a limited release and I obviously didn’t get to see it. It left theaters quickly, and I was left on the internet cold and sad. You see, people kept talkin’ ’bout Whiplash. About how good the acting was. What a surprise. How cool it was.

And I was all like “But, but, but, but…I don’t know anything about this movie! :(“. And then they laughed at me of course.

But now I am back, having seen Whiplash, before I compile any sort of top of the year list for myself. It feels good to watch things before awards season. It must be similar to how people feel reading a book before it was even announced that a movie version was going to come out. Pretty intense, I do say.

You can tell you are being intense if you have your mouth open.

Andrew (Miles Teller) is a drummer. He likes to drum, he is in a great music school for bands, and he thinks he is decent. But he is his biggest fan, and who cares what his opinion is.

You see, there is an elite jazz group at his school, led by the legendary Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons). Everyone is crisp, always finely tuned, always with the right tempo, and always winning awards.

Andrew wants to be apart of that band, but Fletcher is mysterious and only has surprise auditions in the middle of other classes. And somehow, Andrew is able to win himself a spot.

Fletcher seems nice to him at first, but it turns out he is kind of a hard ass. He yells, he screams, he demands perfection and he can tell who is the best after only a couple of seconds of play. He wants to develop the next great star by forcing people to move out of their comfort zones and become an elite player. He also likes to mind fuck people, which I am sure is very helpful.

(Zany announcer voice) It looks like Andrew should have been careful what he wished for!

Also with Paul Reiser as his dad, Melissa Benoist as his girlfriend (and yes, she was on Glee), and Nate Lang/Austin Stowell as other drummers.

The closed mouth next to the open mouth amplifies the intensity levels.

Intensity is the key word of the review, because getting whiplash is an intense injury. Not as intense as a broken bone or falling off a cliff or anything, but it exists. The film is called whiplash for the feeling and the jazz song which is one of the main two pieces their group ends up playing.

And it is also the only way to describe J.K. Simmons’ character. I could listen to him yelling at teenagers every day of my life. His voice is why he became J. Jonah Jameson and is why this role was made for him.

In fact, I am pretty sure this movie exists entirely to get him an award, because he was a huge asshat and acted his hatass off.

Whiplash on its own is also a very entertaining film. A lot of energy is put into what most people would assume is just a drummer in a jazz band, but the quest for greatness has its costs. Hell, even the cinematography was great. The ending is basically a giant ball of emotion wrapped that is looking to escape, and then does, and hey credits.

Nothing I just said makes any sense. So I should just use the word intense again.

I’ll be honest, when I first heard of the movie Selma, I had no idea what it was about.

When I found out it was a pseudo-biographical film about a moment in MLK’s life? I assumed Selma was his wife.

Nopers, I was way wrong. Selma is actually a city in Alabama! Yeah, who knew? Not only that, but it was a huge staging ground for civil rights in the mid 1960s, and it had nothing to do with sit-ins, busses, or fire hoses. That is pretty exciting on my part, because that means I will actually learn something new instead of the same few tales they teach us about in school. As it deals with race relations, it will probably end up being topical too in some way.

Not sure how, but I am sure someway it could be topical. Hmmmm.

Martin (David Oyelowo) (We are on cool enough terms for me to just use his first name) had just received his Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, but he wasn’t done yet. This was after his I Have A Dream speech. There was a big issue with Jim Crow laws in the south. Sure, technically, everyone now had the right to vote. But people were getting in the way of that.

Poll taxes, literacy tests, inconvenient hours, and rude as shit clerks made things like that hard. Not to mention the general threat of violence for those who might attempt if they were black. Martin wanted LBJ (Tom Wilkinson) to make fixing this issue a priority, but LBJ wouldn’t have it. He had other issues like poverty he wanted to work on. So Martin and his comrades (Common, Andre Holland, Wendell Pierce and more!) found the staging grounds for their next battle in Selma, Alabama.

A student group (Stephan James, Trai Byers) was already working there, building up community support, and of all the registered votes, only 1% were black despite about equal numbers. It was a great battleground. Even had a super racist sheriff (Stan Houston)! Martin just also has family issues with his wife (Carmen Ejogo) while all this is going down, so, pretty intense stuff.

Oh and a whole lot of people are in here as smaller or villainous roles as cameos. We have Tim Roth, Giovanni Ribisi, Cuba Gooding Jr., Martin Sheen, Dylan Baker, and Oprah Winfrey.

People walked a lot more back then, just a matter of fact.

Thinking back on it, I don’t think I have ever seen a high quality film about MLK and his life. He has appeared in other movies I have seen, like Nelsan Ellis last year in The Butler. But filmmakers seem to be afraid of his life, despite clearly being a popular figure. I wonder if people are afraid of doing him badly and not living up to his larger than life persona?

Well, if they were afraid in this movie they shouldn’t be. David Oyelowo did an INCREDIBLE performance. His walk, his talk, his power, he had it all. His looks weren’t perfect, but man were they believable. And when he did his speeches or sermons in this movie? Yeah, his voice carried it hardcore, and not in the same stereotypical way people normally do Martin’s voice. It had its own uniqueness and similarity that made it seem just as awe inspiring and just as real. Shit, the final speech he gave? I was almost certain it was an actual recording instead of Oyelowo, but I was wrong. It almost made me tear up.

My only issues with the film is that despite its superduper lead, the supporting cast didn’t seem to catch up with him. I think this is the worst ever portrayal of J. Edgar I have ever seen. Out of no where it all seemed more comical instead of serious. Roth was awkward as the evil Governor and he also felt quite cartoonish. I couldn’t take these guys seriously, limiting the seriousness of the film.

I learned a shit ton about the subject though and it is an incredible story, even if certain aspects are fabricated. A very nice watch to learn about a very overlooked yet important event in American history. And damn Oyelowo. You good, you good.

Here it is, 2015, and documentaries are still a thing. And some of the supposed better ones from 2014 are making their way for us to finally watch, just in time for awards season.

I picked Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger…mostly by accident. Was looking for something else, got lazy, and settled on this one. I knew it was new and I heard positive things, so it fit the bill well enough to just run with it.

Who is Whitey? James ‘Whitey’ Bulger used to be number 2 on the FBI’s Most Wanted List after Osama Bin Laden! Jeez! He was a crime boss in South Boston. Apparently killed dozens of people, racketeering, gambling, drug deals, sex stuff, you name it. He has been on the run for a long time too.

The only issue is, he also might have had permission from the FBI to do it all.

You know he is the real deal because he was once locked away in Alcatraz.

Informants are a tricky thing, so if Bulger was used by the FBI to tattle on other people and the FBI knew everything he was doing and didn’t take them in, that makes the government look bad too.

But the documentary does a far better job of explaining everything, way better than me of course. Because this documentary is LOADED with information. About two hours long, it has more information than it knows what to do with. I assume. I don’t know what they know about using information.

So one aspect of this whole thing is you definitely have to pay attention. It does its best job of walking the viewer through the clues and help draw its final conclusions with the craziness that ended up being this trial. A trial that I had no idea even happened.

But hey, apparently Jack Nicholson‘s character from The Departed was based on this guy, if that tells you anything.

Either way, a well put together documentary with a lot of information that I didn’t know a lot about, and one that might make you think.

Dolphins Dolphins Dolphins.

I remember Dolphin Tale just like it was years ago. An inspirational movie, for anyone who is a dolphin and who has lost their tail and thinks they can’t go on swimming anymore. It is based on a true story and I think used the actual dolphin in question. They just cheesed it the hell up and the actual true story was far more interesting than the melo drama the movie created. Just how it goes some time.

But now we have a sequel to Dolphin Tale. It is called Dolphin Tale 2! Presumably the Dolphin now loses a fin and they replace that too, right? Wait, this one is also a true story? Is there some guy just scouring the internet, looking for dolphin rescue stories just so they can make a dolphin tale movie?

I’m hoping for the eventual reboot as RoboDolphin.

The Clearwater Marine Hospital, in the last movie struggling to survive, is now struggling to fit in so many people. They have classes, volunteers, real staff, they have so much goin on. They still want to fix animals and return them to sea, but they have some permanent residents that people want to see, like Winter. Yay fake tails. Winter lives with Panama, because of some vague rule that a female dolphin needs another female dolphin to swim or play with.

Well, Panama dies. Super old. They only have one other dolphin, Mandy, but Mandy is perfectly fine and it is their duty to return her to real life. For some reason, they have thirty days to find a new female dolphin to play with Winter, or else Winter will leave. If Winter will leave, so will their fat profits, because a lot of crippled people come to see her for whatever reason. Thankfully they get another shitty dolphin, terribly named Hope, who is a baby and didn’t get to learn how to live her life in the wild. BUT CAN THEY BE FRIENDS.

Also the main kid, Sawyer (Nathan Gamble), now in high school, is debating as to whether or not he takes a super free Semester At Sea trip, as a high school student again, because he is sad about dolphins.

This movie also features, again, Ashley Judd, Cozi Zuehlsdorf, Harry Connick Jr., Juliana Harkavy, Kris Kristofferson, Morgan Freeman, and Bethany Hamilton. Yes that 1 armed surfer chick is playing herself.

I don’t care about her story, I just know her story gave us the shitty movie Soul Surfer.

The trailer for Dolphin Tale 2 featured an emergency vehicle showing up to the hospital with a dolphin, late at night, getting called Hope for some reason, and then a bunch of shots of people playing with dolphins, basically.

This scene takes place over an entire HOUR into the movie. Up to this point, we don’t get to the dolphin Hope or hear about her coming. It is all out of nowhere. IT TAKES AN HOUR OF SET UP TO GET TO THE MAIN PLOT OF THE MOVIE. Come on! So much damn bad filler up to that point. The worst of it being of course the angst of the kid throughout the film. Look. We all know he is going to take it. He would be stupid to not take it. It is completely bad drama filler for some reason, because obviously that part is based on no true story.

I think the only part of this movie that is the true story is that the CMH real life place got a new tiny dolphin named Hope. I don’t think they were going to lose Winter in any way, but they got a new dolphin in real life, so here is a new movie. That is what this movie has become and any future movies. They also had a Mandy dolphin that they released back and actually had a sick turtle.

Aka, normal life for a marine hospital. And now it is a pointless bullshitty movie.

The young people watched it too. They found it boring as shit. They got excited every once in awhile when dolphins were playing and that is about it. And because the ending featured a long drawn out cheering sequence, they were happy and cheering too because hey, something fun is finally happening. And then balloons. Either way, kids know this movie sucks for the most part too.

2014 has been the year of the Doppelganger. Not Doppelganger Movies, that was just two Hercules movies.

No, 2014 gave us Enemy and The Double (which may have been 2013) and The One I Love. Clones everywhere.

But The Imitation Game, despite its clone sounding title, is totally not about clones! What’s up with that? No, instead we are getting a historical drama about Alan Turing, a British man who did things during World War II. Yes, this is another World War II movie, but instead of bombs and death, we instead get math and death.

“The square root of a bullet is still a bullet.” – Albert Einstein

You see, Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) was one of those very eccentric individuals who also did smart man things. Aka, the perfect type of person to make a movie about, because acting!

Alan Tuning is most famous for kind of leading the science way towards real life computers. Back in the 1940s, they didn’t even have the internet, so presumably all their free time went towards doing crossword puzzles. Especially Mr. Turing! A professor at Mathematics, he loved puzzles and solving cryptography. So he gets himself into an interview with the British Royal Navy to join their puzzle solving squad. Namely, trying to crack the German Enigma Machine.

The Engima was thought to be uncrackable. They had a copy of it, but they didn’t know the code. The code changed daily, right at midnight, and their first message intercepted would be at about 6 am. So they have to go back to square one, even if they solve that days code, every morning. It would be a tireless effort, but these men (Matthew Goode, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard) are up to the job! Just not with the anti-social awkward Turing. Who also doesn’t want to help their daily efforts, but instead build a machine that can crack the code almost instantly and help the Allied forces win the war!

Hurrah!

And he was gay. That is important, because homosexuality in the UK was illegal at the time, so his mere existence was causing him to be an outlaw, yet a huge savior of World War II.

Also featuring Keira Knightley as Joan, a WOMAN on the team (kind of), Charles Dance as the head of the Navy, Mark Strong as a MI6 agent involved as an overseer, and Rory Kinnear as a detective trying to find out what Turing is really up to.

Being a woman in a male dominated field of doing puzzles really makes you stand out.

I am pretty sure a lot of this movie was fictionalized to increase drama and make everything a lot more exciting…and I am completely fine with that. Man, was this film tense and exciting. And well acted! Not just the Cumberbatch either, but the other guys and gals, they did pretty good too.

As for Cumberbatch, it is interesting that in an episode of Sherlock, he referred specifically to Alan Turing’s life and issues they had after finally solving the Engima machine. It was a huge plot point and involved moral ambiguity (which I am always a fan of), and shit, now he is Alan Turing doing the same thing he talked about in another role! Crazy! And a bit eerie. But even more importantly, like a lot of his recent roles, this role was very different from his past jobs and you could tell a lot of fantastic acting was going on there. So good the acting. Acting that shows a love of the craft and maybe a love of the subject matter.

Is it the best at acting? Nah, probably not. But it is up there for sure.

I found the whole thing easy to watch and follow, and it was great that we also got a story of Turing when he was in grade school before he got his PhDs. It is great having WW2 movies that aren’t just about how war is terrible and people are dying and all of that. Which is I guess what The Monuments Men tried to do and failed.

Tally-ho!

It is really hard to find a time to properly use the exclamation Tally-ho, so when I find an appropriate time, I kind of go all out. For those not in the cool kids club, tally-ho was a cheer for Fox hunting, a noble British sport about sitting on a horse while a dog finds a fox and you kill it.

Err yeah, not as popular nowadays I guess, but a sign of someone who has a lot of money back in the day.

Foxcatcher, taking a similar approach, is about rich people and men’s wrestling. Yeah, that makes sense.

I do believe that shirt is NSFW.

Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum). Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo). Brothers, both of them gold medal winning Olympic wrestlers. That is pretty good, especially since they almost kicked wrestling out of the Olympics for 2020 games and on, but those guys fought hard to keep it in, so we are still good. They both won gold in the 1984 Olympics, and they also won medals at World Competitions, World Championship games, and Pan American games. They were the cream of the crop.

Dave actually won a bit more than his younger brother Mark, so Mark usually felt like he was the lesser of the two, even if technically he was a bigger and stronger guy.

They were also living paycheck to paycheck, wherever they could make money at. Inspirational speeches, teaching camps, whatever. So when John du Pont (Steve Carell) invites Mark over to his mansion, of course he goes. du Pont is loaded, from a rich family of horse breeders, and for whatever reason really likes Olympic wrestling. Namely, he would love it if American could whoop Soviet Russia. So he wants to invite Mark down and a whole lot of other hopefuls for the Olympics to train at his facilities, live rent and utility free, AND earn a bi-weekly pay check at the same time. They can train for qualifiers and then hopefully the Olympics.

He wants Dave too, but Dave doesn’t want to uproot his family and move from his home. Other than that though, seems sweet.

But du Pont has a lot of secrets. He is already a very eccentric and strange guy and he acts like he is maybe fulfilling some weird fantasy that he never got to experience as a youth. Or maybe something even darker! Who knows!

Goodness gracious I think his nose can be used to literally catch foxes in!

So, this story is based on a story written by Mark Schultz of his life with du Pont. It was taken by another guy, written better, and the movie was based on that book. Originally, Mark Schultz was all about this movie. Loved how much of it was based on his notes and scenes he saw were based off of things he directly wrote about.

But now? Mark Schultz really really really hates this movie. He went crazy on facebook and twitter, click the link if you want some spoilers. He is all sorts of pissed about how it made him look and implied scenes that went on the film.

Despite this, he still wants to make sure the actors win some stuff though. And that is because the acting was definitely the best part of this movie.

Steve Carell is not Steve Carell in this movie. He also isn’t Michael Scott, and he definitely isn’t Brick. He is a completely different person, with a prosthetic nose, mannerisms, walk, voice, everything. I LOVE it when comedic actors go serious, and it is definitely an incredible performance.

It is a good story, but I feel like too much of it is focused on the not so important aspects of du Pont, and not the really really bad stuff. The really really bad stuff seems rushed and time wise, it makes it seem like in real life they happen quickly after the rest of the movie, when in real life, it is many years difference.

And you know, not knowing the real life stories of the Schultz and the du Pont brothers, it took a long time for me to realize just what the point of telling this story all was. It could have definitely been improved by some telling out of order, I think I would have had a deeper emotional level connection to the film.

But despite the issues, it is still a very well acted movie, and an interesting black spot on the sport of Olympic Wrestling.

Nightcrawler is everyone’s favorite X-Men, right? I mean, after Wolverine, Deadpool, Magneto, Cable, Bishop, The Phoenix, Gambit, Professor X, 1990s Cartoon Rogue, Longshot, Iceman, The Juggernaut, Apocalypse, and that pterodactyl dude, right?

Just kidding. Nightcrawler is pretty cool up there. Transporting around, being all blue and sneaky and shit. Give him a dagger and he is better than any thief in any roleplaying game. So it is about time Fox branched out on its solo movies, away from their Wolverine jerk fest,

Wait, what? It isn’t an X-Men movie? But that would mean we only got sweet Nightcrawler action in X2, and I am super tired of that movie (too much Wolverine Origin story).

Apparently Nightcrawler (outside of worm teminology), can also describe someone who usually is more social and comes out at night. Ah okay. So maybe a movie about a well liked party animal.

“Wrong again, fuckface!” – Nightcrawler director

Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a dirty rotten scoundrel. Or at least he seems that way, when he beats up a security guard (steals his watch) and steals some material to sell under the table for spare parts. Dude is just trying to get by and make a living. Something is clearly off about him. Kind of scrawny. Talks in a funny way. Always looking at people with those deep eyes, rarely blinking.

No one wants to hire a thief either, so he tends to work on his own, at whatever he does, doing some internet researching and jumping head first into his tasks.

So, when he sees a car crash, he is surprised to find a news crew really quickly on the scene. Apparently these guys just listen to police scanners, try to get great footage of crime, either in progress or with people hurt, and sell it to news stations for some quick cash. After all, these news stations want to have the most exclusive footage and first to get the better ratings!

Sounds cool. Louis should get into that business. Just needs a camera, a police scanner, and an ability to haggle just how hard could it be? Anyone can do it, right? Even that dude from American Psycho could pull it off. Also starring Bill Paxton, Rene Russo, and Riz Ahmed.

I will admit I only said that because of the resemblance in the picture, despite the fact that I still haven’t seen it (shh).

Trust me, this is one of those shitty reviews where I describe the plot in a terrible, vague way. That is just because I need filler and don’t want to really spoil anything that happens.

Nightcrawler is that good. I went in knowing close to nothing and boy was I surprised in so many ways imaginable. I heard that Jake was supposed to be the second prince in Into the Woods with Chris Pine, but had to cancel because he was doing this movie. That made me upset. I want to see Jake singing in agony, damn it!

But I am incredibly happy, in retrospect, that he went the Nightcrawler route instead. Gyllenhaal dropped over 30 pounds for this role, making himself a creepy skinny dude with big bulging eyes. Nothing like his ripped Prince of Persia self. BUT HE WAS SO GOOD IN THIS ROLE.

Shit. I thought this would be a lame drama. But it was captivating, tense, somewhat scary, good, and it didn’t go the ways I thought it would. Louis Bloom is a despicable character and creation, but I want to see him do a lot of things. I don’t want a sequel, that’d be weird. But maybe just side stories or something. I think I am just describing shitty fanfiction. Bloom is probably the best bad guy of 2014. And honestly, I feel like this film came completely out of nowhere.

Nightcrawler is just continuing the trend of great Gyllenhaal movies coming out. I feel like the only reason he has a bad rap at all is due to Bubble Boy, which is silly, because Bubble Boy rocks.

I am not going to review A Brony Tale in a vacuum. I try to, I do. But there is another Brony based documentary that I reviewed this year. Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony, it cames out in 2012, two years ago, at a much higher point of the My Little Pony popularity. I mean, it came out before My Little Pony: Equestria Girls!

This one apparently has a much stricter focus. It is specificually about Ashleigh Bell. “Who is Ashleigh Bell? Kill yourself!”

Ashleigh Bell is a voice actress and singer, made most famous for voicing two of the five ponies, Rainbow Dash and Apple Jack. She is now a huge deal to a community and she doesn’t know how to cope.

I guess with the title of A Brony Tale, it makes sense to be about one person. One Brony. Not sure which Brony though, because Ashleigh doesn’t refer to herself as one ever and only talks about them as groups of people.

If Ashleigh wanted to be about 20% cooler, she would call herself a Brony as well.

Oh man, if you wanted to learn a lot about Ashleigh Bell in a documentary, you still didn’t come to the right place. “What?” you may ask. “You don’t learn a lot about Ashleigh Bell in a documentary about Ashleigh Bell? But it is 80 minutes long!”

I know right. You get the basic information. What she did before MLP, her band, her first Brony experience, but you don’t delve anywhere. Mostly I think because the documentary seems to focus mostly on other people and not her. We get some random person who started a famous MLP page. We got several Bronies defending their hobby and the idea of masculinity. We get a MLP history lesson. Basically, we get a lot of things we got in the previous documentary, but in worse less focused ways.

This documentary is an incredible waste of time. Like, it is jarring to see a person go from regular voice to a cartoon character and it can freak me out too. But that doesn’t make this a great documentary. I watched the whole thing and I still don’t know why she had to spend so much documentary time wondering if she even wanted to go to the BroNYC Con or whatever. Of course you want to go and be worshipped and make cash. Why make an easy decision seem like a hard one. Fake drama for your documentary? I don”t know.

Just. Ugh. The last Brony documentary was just a pointless circle jerk. This is like an even more pointless slight arousal that gets wasted.

Still Alice is another one of those movies that got leaked from Sony ahead of time. But no one cared about Still Alice. They only cared about Fury and Annie.

Personally, I hadn’t heard of the movie at all. It sounds creepy I guess.

But then I heard about buzz for best actress and maybe supporting actress, so I figured I’d watch it earlier than planned. I need all the help I can get in the potential Best Actress category. For whatever reason (sexism?), the movies that get nominated for Best Actress don’t often get nominated for a lot of other rewards. Last year is a poor example, and I might be talking out of my ass, but I think it is true.

At the very least, when I look back on the nominations for Best Actress in the past, I notice that I have seen significantly less of them than others. That sucks. Maybe I am just not as interested in super great female acting performances? Hard to say.

Either way, I am ready to be wowed, way more than I was ready for Mr. Turner.

And more than I am ready for a walk on a beach. I am never ready for a walk on the beach.

This is a story about Alzheimer’s Disease. Some people argue it is the saddest of the diseases. It is sadder than Cancer, AIDS, and definitely sadder than Alcoholism. It definitely worked for Barney’s Version, which was a lot better than the cover gave it credit for.

Dr. Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) is some sort of Psychologist at some sort of university. She is big in career. She is married to Dr. John (Alec Baldwin), also a smart person, who also has some sort of university/scientist based job. They have a nice family too.

Three whole kids! None of them are half. A daughter (Kate Bosworth) who is infertile, sure, but married and going to get one of those science babies with her husband (Shane McRae). A boy (Hunter Parrish) who also is successful with college and all. And a third child. Ugh. A younger daughter (Kristen Stewart), who doesn’t want to do college and wants to be an actress. Gross gross gross.

Either way. Alice starts to forget shit. Sometimes blurry vision. She talks to a neurologist (Stephen Kunken), and yep. She has an early form of Alzheimer’s, rare genetic version. Which has its own complications.

And you know. Other sad things!

Like Vests, the saddest articles of clothing I could imagine.

Ah shit. Sadness. Like man. I cried a couple times. Damn empathy. I used to not feel sad over getting older type stories. But here we go. Getting older. Having a family. Genetics. Diseases. Losing and forgetting memories.

I already mentioned that I liked Barney’s Version, for whatever reason the only Alzheimer’s based movie I could thing of. It was great for Paul Giamatti in the titular role, but it is not something I have ever tried to watch over the last three years. Maybe in another five I will watch it again. But man, Still Alice was really really damn good. The story itself shows the decay in a natural and fantastic way. Also a bit scary. Not a thriller, but man, losing the memories that you are trying so hard to maintain. Being such a smart individual and losing what made you feel unique and special? That is scary. I don’t want to get old and have that happen to me. I don’t want my parents to forget I exist.

Also, Julianne Fucking Moore. Before this movie, I could only guess that maybe Rosamund Pike might win it from Gone Girl. Despite how great she is in that role, Moore is so much better. I haven’t seen Wild. I haven’t seen Cake. But I can’t imagine any performance as good as hers (and I was equally vocal about Cate Blanchette eventually winning last year).

Kristen Stewart was in this movie, and I didn’t think she will win any awards, but she wasn’t terrible or anything. Some of you might be thinking that you are surprised she was in a 4 out of 4 movie before Robert Pattinson. But you’d be wrong, because I really really enjoyed Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.