Gorgon Reviews

Shit. I should have saved this movie for actual Christmas. Jeez. What is wrong with me? I blew it, clearly.

Happy Christmas is an indie movie, so of course it makes sense to come out on July 25th, which I guess is the “Christmas In July” day, but I don’t get that concept at all.

Either way, we are going to have a movie about Christmas now, damn it. I don’t care what holidays are nearby.

But I hope the baby is the main character. Like Santa. Santa is a baby right?

Jenny (Anna Kendrick) is just a girl, standing in front of her brother, asking for a home. She is having some troubles in her life, but she just needs a break from it all. Thankfully Kevin (Mark Webber) has room in his house for her to crash. His wife, Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) is a novelist, but right now she is taking a break to be a stay at home mom because they have a baby! Yay babies!

And yay Jenny in their house. That means automatic free babysitter. Kind of hard to accept free rent without helping out.

But just one night in, Jenny gets blackout drunk and embarrasses her good friend (Lena Dunham), requiring the help of her brother late at night to get her. Some reliable baby sitter, huh?

Well, these old coogies can’t seem to accept her young hip ways and she finds herself constantly disappointing them, despite trying her best. And hey! She wants to help Kelly get back on the writing thing.

But seriously. Can she just not fuck up once? Maybe by Christmas? Or will she just be fucking the babysitter? (Joe Swanberg)

She ate all of those pretzel bites the night before. What. A. Night.

Quintessential indie film. Some comedic moments, a lot more dramatic ones, everything really close to reality, very few actors, and overall, just okay.

I mean, there are truly fantastic indie movies out there. This year we were able to get Obvious Child and Locke. After watching this film I was left wondering “Is that it?”

I guess with their lower budget they just want to tell a simple story, but a lot of times I am not left wanting more just because it was such a great story and I am super invested in the characters. It is more me wondering why any of it even mattered?

Oooh, a group of people learned to accept each other by the end. And there was awkward moments. (Awkward moments are key to indie movies).

As I already said, Happy Christmas was okay, but borderline on boring and disliked. So a low 2, if you will. You can tell my indifference, as I couldn’t even write 500 words about this one.

I actually had the opportunity to watch The Signal in theaters when it came out. For free. There was a pre-screening one whole day before it came out to make you feel special and I had tickets to go. The only issue was it started four hours after I got off of work and I didn’t want to wait around for the random movie. Hell, even the director told me I should go see it.

But apathy took over, and even the random picture didn’t help.

The only thing that drove me to watching this movie at this point was having the time and nothing better to do. (Which is relative. I had less than 2 hours of time and nothing to do. Plenty of other movies I wanted to see above it).

How I picture the face of William Eubank when he found out I didn’t go.

MIT students come in all shapes and sizes. Like Nic (Brenton Thwaites) who has muscular dystrophy, (which chrome wants to auto correct to astrophysics…foreshadowing?!). He is helping take his girlfriend, Haley (Olivia Cooke) to school, along with his MIT friend Jonah (Beau Knapp). Those two are in trouble with MIT because a hacker named NOMAD hacked into MIT servers using their IPs or something, so MIT rightfully assumed it was them.

But outside of that, Nic wants to end the relationship, because long distance + deteriorating disease = not a good time.

While almost to California, they get strange signals in the middle of nowhere Nevada. In fact, they think it is Nomad. They kind of want to show them a piece of their mind.

Next thing they know, people start flying around, darkness, scares, loud noises. Boom. Waking up in a very white room with people wearing protective hazmat suits around them. And at the center of it all is Damon (Laurence Fishburne), who tells them they have been in contact with aliens and need to be studied. Well screw that. They aren’t lab rats. He wants to get out of there. Hopefully he feels less diseased and more powerful after that alien encounter.

Hopefully.

“Da fuq mate, don’t come near me with your ectoplasm.”

Sorry director who tweeted me. But I am glad I didn’t waste four or so hours of my life waiting to see this movie and then watching it. It had some unique moments in it, especially near the end. But the first 4/5 of the film just felt so weak and underwhelming. I can blame this solely on the actors involved too. I like Olivia Cooke in Bates Motel, but her character wasn’t given a lot to work with. It was mostly Nic with a lot of Damon and neither of them impressed me. They were pushing me towards sleep almost.

It is definitely unique, in a few ways. Lets not take away that aspect. And it is for sure Science Fiction. Some nice turns along the way and a lot of not nice ones.

It is hard to explain just what it bad about this, outside of just being super boring. The side romance plot was also weak, and the other best friend, he can just get out of this movie completely for all I care.

If you had to see a movie about signals, go see Contact.

With Tusk, we have the first “crazy idea” from Kevin Smith‘s SModcast to be made into a movie.

Maybe inspired by The Human Centipede, maybe their own twisted version of a film, who is to say. Personally, if I was to make a Walrus inspired movie, I’d make it off of this very famous Betty Boop episode. But this is just the start for the Smith planned Canadian Horror trilogy. The next film to be Yoga Hosers, and then Moose Jaws, all set in the same universe. Not to be confused with Anti-Claus or Clerks III, very different projects.

Basically just saying that he is pretty busy and he put out Tusk remarkably fast despite all of the projects going on.

One would say Smith is masturbating his film credits now.

Wallace Bryton (Justin Long) has a Walrus like name and a walrus like mustache. I don’t know if that is relevant. He is a podcaster as part of the Not-See Party, where Wallace goes around the US and interviews weird people or internet famous people (aka weirder people) and his co-podcaster Teddy Craft (Haley Joel Osment) doesn’t! Apparently they are super famous at this podcasting. No idea where they got this idea for the movie though.

Wallace heads up to Manitoba to interview a kid who cut off his own leg on accident. Sure they made fun of him hardcore, but the kid wanted an interview, so he is going to give them an interview. But when circumstances go wrong up there, he has to find a new guy to interview and stat. Or else he came up to Manitoba for no reason. Yuck. I mean, he left his girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) behind too! So he sees an advertisement in a random bathroom, an old man with a lot of interesting stories to tell. He offers a room in his mansion just for someone to listen.

So sure. He could be interesting. He won’t stay in a room, just an interview. But surprise! Howard Howe (Michael Parks) drugs him and keeps him prisoner, lying about things that begin to happen to him and as to why he cannot leave. And I don’t know why I am making this suspenseful. He is going to try and turn Wallace into a fucking Walrus and turn his mind into an animals. Yeah. He will do it too. Just you watch.

Unless, of course, Guy Lapointe (Johnny Depp), a French Canadian Inspector who has been on Howe’s trail for years can help find him first.

Justin Long actually wanted to make a movie based on his Brandon character from Zack and Miri Make A Porno.

Most people know in a movie, as an actor, you never go full Walrus. Well, Tusk went full Walrus and more.

First off, hats off to Mr. Long. He didn’t half ass anything about his character. He gave a 110% and despite the ridiculousness of his role in this movie, he was super hardcore about it. Michael Parks was downright creepy and twisted. Genesis Rodriguez is not someone whose name I really would ever remember, but even she had at least one fantastic scene halfway through, giving her own monologue. JOHNNY FUCKING DEPP IS IN THIS MOVIE. And he was great. You will have a hard ass time recognize him or his voice. It literally may be his most well acted role in years.

And the walrus. Holy shit. The walrus was one of the most disturbing abominations against everything holy that I have ever laid my eyes on. And at the same time, it felt a bit believable. “Believable” being a strange word. It was both horrifying and comedic at the same time, but I think I just had to laugh not knowing what else to do with all of my emotions.

Tusk could have been a train wreck. It could have just been a long joke by a couple of potheads that no one would actually want to watch or see. But it was surprisingly unique and not a low budget shit fest. I am surprised. I really am.

The documentary Fed Up was something I heard about many months ago when it was roaming the film fest circuit. Outside of having its own interesting topic, the significant other really wanted to see it too.

I try to only do one food documentary in a given month (because it is a very popular genre for whatever reason, like my last one Forks Over Knives) and this one is indeed again about health. But it has a very specific goal.

Obesity and diabetes in America. Okay. I guess that is what a lot of those are about too.

This one is brought to us (narration and produced) by Katie Couric who she has self claimed made a life out of reporting on these issues. Which issues? Well, clearly I am just filling this top half with filler until I start talking about them, so I might as well show you the picture now and get it over with.

The title is a pun. Pun’s make the documentary world go round.

So what is bad. Processed foods? I’ve heard that before. Meat? Nah, meat is normal. So what is it?! Sugars. Namely the high amounts of sugar in products like soda, processed foods and fast food restaurants.

It isn’t as simple as that though. The documentary first attacks the theory of carbs in vs carbs out and that all carbs are created equal. It also argues against a lack of physical activity with a lot of case studies.

In fact, using science, it helps explain just what these refined excessive sugars that appear in most processed foods contain versus the daily recommended amount. It explains how when the industry started to cut out the fat, they increased the sugar content to keep the taste, completely nullifying any gain.

And it introduced us to the lobby groups that have pushed to squelch the sugar information from getting out and the few government programs that have tried to note the excessive sugar type’s harmful effects.

It isn’t just a big witch hunt and they don’t say all sugar is bad don’t worry. Just certain types in certain environments and bad practices these people use that could have caused an obesity epidemic.

I found the documentary fascinating to watch really interested in what it was showing.

I just didn’t like all the tactics it used. It did some bullshitty stuff. For instance, when they were interviewing a “bad person” they showed an unedited part of the interview. So we saw him start to badly answer a question and then go for a do over. That is supposed to show that he is a liar or something. Because everyone else always talks to clear. That is cheap and bad.

It also featured a lot of extravagant animations to get the point through, some of which were pretty extreme. It definitely wasn’t dignified.

In other news, great topic and information, but bullshit fluff and bad documentary tactics dropped it down a peg for me.

Enemies are quite annoying. Everyone probably has a few. I know I have several, including: The Morlocks, Jafar, Tropical Flavored skittles. The list just goes on and on and on.

But what if your enemy was yourself? I have heard that if your enemy is yourself, it is often your worst enemy. That has got to suck. The film Enemy is actually based on that concept!

Actually, it is based on a novel, The Double. It is definitely not based on the movie The Double that came out this year, also dealing with doppelgangers, and it most certainly has nothing to do with the movie The Double from a few years ago.

Huh. Maybe The Double (2014 film) is a twisted doppelganger of The Double (Book) and it prevented Enemy from being a regular doppelganger of The Double (book). The Double (2014 film) stole Enemies identity!

My head hurts. Oooh beards!

Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal) is your average regular college professor. He teaches about totalitarianism and dictators! A theme that may slightly be relevant to the movie. He lives with his girlfriend Mary (Melanie Laurent) and she thinks he is a cheating fool. He has been weird lately and keeping secrets and making secret phone calls.

Why? Because Adam has made a relevation. After watching a movie recommended by a coworker, he noticed a bellhop in the background. And that bellhop looked just like him. Turns out this Anthony Claire (Jake Gyllenhaal) has only been in a few pictures, all side who gives a shit roles, but by golly, he looks just like him. After a lot of sleuthing Adam is able to set up a meeting with Anthony.

Shit. Is. Bananas.

Well, when someone seems to be an exact replica of you with a different personality, who also knows where you live and who you interact with, it is pretty easy to get paranoid. Anthony himself has a pregnant wife (Sarah Gadon) and is in a committed relationship.

What can either of these gentlemen gain from this doppelmagic and more importantly, what can they lose?

It is hard to stalk someone when you don’t know which one is your husband.

Reading up on an analysis of the film and book after I watched the movie, there was apparently a lot that went over my head. Intellectual smart person stuff that might require reading or degrees in movie theory to get. And don’t worry, i am not letting that fact get affect my view. I just had a recurring “what the fuck, spiders?” thought going through my head throughout the movie. I’d say its a small enough part to get by.

Enemy is incredibly well acted and Jake G is showing off over the last few years a great side to himself. With this, Prisoners, End of Watch, I’d almost be willing to watch most anything with him as a main actor in it. Dude figured it out and it was good.

Enemy is not a quick movie and one that requires you to pay attention. It has a small number of important characters in it and really tries hard to drive the appropriate emotions through silence. However, the film is also really friggan yellow. And that just in general bugs the crap out of me. Over filtering.

I hope another film comes out with a similar plot to make more duplication jokes. Really.

Zombie Romance. It is totally a thing now. After all, we got Life After Beth and Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies). That means a trend is brewing, only about 50-60 years after the Vampire Romance trend kicked off [Completely guessing on that number. Research is for losers].

So it should come as to no surprise that a movie called The Coed and the Zombie Stoner even exists. Before you ask, no, it is not technically a The Asylum movie. They bring us the C grade films like Asian School Girls and Sharknado. This is its own entity (but The Asylum is selling it on their website, so who knows their involvement).

This is clearly some sort of sex comedy horror B-Movie.

Science and books are fun!

Chrissy (Catherine Annette) has a problem. She is super smart and has a high GPA, but for whatever reason, to maintain her scholarship she had to be in a sorority. She doesn’t fit in with these girls, she doesn’t like to hang out with people, but they accepted her as long as she had a fraternity boyfriend.

Well, P.J. (Ben Whalen) dumped her because she talks too much and isn’t a skank. This means she might get kicked out of the sorority by Bambi (Jamie Noel), the queen bitch, if she doesn’t find a man in 24 hours. She could get one of the geeks, but they are gross. While working late in a lab one night, she is surprised to find Rigo (Grant O’Connell), a zombie! He is not decayed or old, but apparently he was a student back int he 80s. He accidentally took the professors zombie machine for a dorm shower, turning him into a zombie. Because he was such a pothead, the marijuana kept him young and strong. Somehow.

Well, he is really charming and not a bad guy at all, so she would rather date him to save her own career. Soon they become a power couple on campus which only creates jealousy from Bambi and PJ. So they vow to break them up any way they can, even if it leads to a zombie apocalypse.

Also starring Andrew Clements as her stoner brother (I really think it was brother) and Dora Pereli and Lena Young as other sorority girls because of the genre.

They got him in ZBE. Get it? GET IT?

Say what you will about the genre in question, there is a market for these types of films out there and they shouldn’t be ignored. That is a lie. Most of them should definitely be ignored. They feel like they have a $5 budget, have suggestive scenes and bad plots just to steal horny teenager’s money.

The Coed and the Stoner Zombie is not one of those movies. This one tries to make a good version of the sex comedy low budget genre and excells at the goals the genre puts out.

Did I laugh? A few times. Was the plot interesting? Well, it was certainly ridiculous, but I liked the twists and turns by the end despite the levels of ridiculousness. And yes, there were a lot of weed jokes, frat/sorority jokes, and naked people.

So yeah. It was okay. For the most part these types of movies are extremely boring and shitty and this one is able to rise (slightly) above them. Which is more than I ever expected.

Locke came out a few weeks ago but something about the title or the dvd cover just bugged me. Based on name and cover alone, I figured it was some sort of slow crime movie. Had to push it back. Too much energy to appreciate a slow crime movie.

The reason I finally decided to give it a shot is because I saw The Drop, and gosh darn it, Tom Hardy just keeps impressing me with the roles he has produced. He isn’t just some guy who can bulk up and do action scenes. He is an actor, so I want to see the man act.

Well, it turns out this movie is much better defined as drama. Not drama crime, not drama thriller, just straight up dramatics.

“Hell, I’d watch Tom Hardy just driving a car and talking on the phone.” – Locke’s director

Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) is a construction foreman who lives and works about 90 minutes outside of London. It is late, another hard days of work, prepping for a huge cement pour job the next day. The biggest in all of England really. A lot of things can go wrong and he is one of the most qualified men to handle it.

You see, Ivan is a hard worker. He has been doing this job for a nearly a decade, he is reliable, a nice guy, a stand up citizen, someone who could do no wrong. His wife and son are waiting for him at home to watch a football match. But as he leaves work, he is heading for London, not for home.

You see, Ivan had a moment of weakness. Seven months ago he had a sexual relationship with a woman. It was incredibly uncharacteristic of him, but it happened. Even though he barely knows her, she is in London now undergoing a premature birth. So now he is trying to make things right. He is going to be with her and see the birth of his baby.

During this time, he had to email that he won’t be in at work tomorrow, one of the most important days. He has to call his wife and tell her of what is going on. He has to call the hospital as the woman is all alone and has no one else to talk to but him. And he has to help the work operation go off without a hitch with a lot of bosses getting mad at him.

The other characters are voiced by Olivia Colman, Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott, Ben Daniels, and Tom Holland. But you know, we only get one face.

You will get no diversity in pictures from this movie. NONE.

At least from my point of view, Locke was everything that Cosmopolis wanted to be and more. Cosmopolis felt like a weird fantasy film thriller thing, with a lot of it taking place in a limo. It suffered from vagueness despite the good ending.

Locke takes out any vagueness and lays everything bare on the table in front of you, like one of those Nantaimori models.

Technically a type of bottle movie, but also a sort of one man show. Other movies like Buried or Brake feature one man as well, but those men are literally trapped in boxes versus Locke where he is trapped in a sort of moral quandary. The character Locke is very clear with his convictions and unwavering with his goals, and you can’t help to respect that despite his dickish act of betrayal.

It is hard to feel so attached to a character normally, but when truly watching this film you will feel like a silent passenger in the car with him. It is an extremely morally resonant film and one where you won’t necessarily know how to feel by the end.

Belle is one of those indie movies that makes a lot of noise early in the year, yet usually gets ignored when it comes time to award season.

Not saying this film is deserved awards or anything, that is just when it was released. A nice indie number that is indeed not about Beauty and the Beast, but instead, racism in the victorian era. Ah yes, the Victorian era, where women wore corsets and giant dresses all the time, and men wore…I guess mostly regular clothes. And wigs!

But this work of fiction, based on books, is also pseudo historically accurate. Namely the character Lord Mansfield was actually Chief Justice of England during the time of the movie and presided over several cases that are relevant to the plot. Sweet. But the rest is just guesstimated fluff. I love fluff!

Despite the picture, this is also not a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.

Dido Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) was born in the West Indies and she is a mulatto. Her mother was a local, but her father was of the English Royal Navy (Matthew Goode) and he has decided to claim her and take her to England. Because he is at sea all the damn time, he places her in the care of his uncle, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) and his wife (Emily Watson), even though she is BLACK and they are distinguished members of society.

But they get over it, kind of, and raise her as an aristocrat with her cousin Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon). However, she is still slightly shunned by society and not able to play all the reindeer games. Like when it comes time for suitors, she is told she cannot interact with the other gentleman as none of them would find her desirable.

Also at the same time, Lord Mansfield is ruling on a case involving a ship who threw slaves overboard out of necessity to survive, running low on supplies. They echoed it as similar to throwing cargo overboard and want to collect the insurance on their haul. His ruling on this and the events surrounding it could change Britain forever and some people think that having Dido around might influence his decision.

We also have Sam Reid as a young freedom feeling lawyer, Tom Felton and James Norton as brother suitors of varying tastes, and Miranda Richardson and Penelope Wilton as…other people.

I guess I would conclude Belle is a good movie, just one that is pretty darn predictable. Oh sorry, I am concluding before I describe.

Yes, Belle is well acted and I felt good by the end. But a lot of the movie just felt like Victorian filler in the middle. The plot is literally finding suitors for a few ladies. Is this a Jane Austen novel in secret?

Which is my main complaint. Not that predictability is a necessarily a bad thing, but if I kind of know what to expect the entire movie and it follows the path pretty straightforwardly, what is the point? It should have a lot of stuff going on for it in the middle to really make up for that fact.

And it has a few unique events to be sure. Well acted, as I already said. Outfits are nice, message is nice. But I kind of just expected something more. The film itself was incredibly safe.

Philadelphia in the 1970s was a rough place. The Flyers were winning Stanley Cups and beating the Russians (literally). A lot of bruisers and quite a few cruisers.

We also had the MOVE organization, which was a black liberation group founded by a man named John Africa. In fact, everyone had the last name Africa in the group. You can guess the reasons why. They were kind of Amish in away, just wanting to form their own community and raise their kids in a “natural” way.

Unfortunately, members of the Philadelphia Police Department frequently crashed their lifestyle and came to blows with the group (Also literally), which is why we have this documentary in the first place. Let The Fire Burn pieces together news stories, court records, and committee meetings to tell the story of the MOVE group clashing with the police from the 70s to the mid 80s. It does it without a narrator (where transition and background details are shown via text on screen only) and without modern interviews retelling the events. No, only things that were recorded before and after the events immediately.

And what this documentary does is tell the horrifying results of a few stand offs and a climatic end that you wouldn’t be able to guess. Unless you look at the title of the movie and put two and two together.

Ohhh. They must be talking a bout the fire burning a joint. Because of stereotypes.

And (not?) surprisingly, Let The Fire Burn is a powerful, eye opening, and awesome documentary. Shit. I wanted to multi task during parts of it, but I found it hard to put away. Some of the interviews with members of the MOVE group were just so well put together it is hard to find fault with anyone. Anyone outside of the Philadelphia Police Department that is.

I think what I found most surprising about this documentary is how it took this movie for me to learn about this subject. This seemed like a really big event, with really big consequences and holy shit why the fuck had I never heard about it before? I was angry almost that I just learned about it. I was angry with what they decided to do at the end of the last “showdown” and I was of course angry with what happened in the aftermath.

Let The Fire Burns is a great documentary that I recommend to everyone to watch. I don’t want to give anything away, because there is no way I can do the documentary justice. I also feel like it was incredibly unbiased, giving just the facts and just the news and committee meeting footage. Fantastic movie, horrible event.

Of all the movies coming out this week, The Drop was the one I was most excited for (Outside of Atlas Shrugged: Who Is John Galt? but who knows when I will get to see that one!). Mostly because I didn’t have to see a trailer for it at all. Not a once. I got to go in mostly blind and just see what kind of story it would give me.

Exciting! All I knew was the main actors, setting, and some sort of thriller maybe.

So, to make sure no one gets to experience it like me, let me tell you about the plot and stuff!

It also features some guy who you might really want to see in movies before it is too late.

“Ain’t sayin’ no names or nuttin.”

Although they didn’t explicitly tell me the setting, I can almost guarantee this one takes place in Boston, in a drop bar. What is a drop bar? Well, a lot of illegal money changes hands in the city. Gambling, hookin’, drugs, you name it. Not the type of money you can just deposit without drawing questions from the tax man.

In order to keep the money safe, it is stored at a different bar every night, a huge network of them. Very few people know which bar will be before the day of and it is seemingly random. It helps prevent theft of that money and keeps the bars in check too.

This movie is about one of those bars, a drop of cash, and the people who work there. Namely, Bob (Tom Hardy) the kind and slightly slower bartender and his Cousin Marv (James Gandolfini), the owner/former owner.

It also features a neighborhood lady Nadia (Noomi Rapace), a kind of weird maybe ex (Matthias Schoenaerts), the mob (Michael Aronov), a detective on the case (John Ortiz) and a puppy. Yes, a damn puppy.

The puppy is of course secretly key to this whole damn thing.

This one was it. This is the last movie that James Gandolfini will ever appear in, as the only other thing with him in it not released is apparently a part in some never picked up pilot for Criminal Justice. And I think he went out on a good one. Enough Said was only okay, but The Drop? This is a good movie.

Speaking of actors in the movie we are talking about, what in the fuck Tom Hardy? His voice is so weird and unique in this movie. Once the opening narration started, I imagined it belonged to anyone but Tom’s character, but there you go. Whether it is accurate to the area, I don’t know (or give a fuck). It was interesting and it really seemed to work.

The story itself is a slow moving one and one that seems worth the wait. Arguably, the characters are all just so odd or weird on their own that even though it is not a comedy, the bizarness of the situation and accents kind of make it amusing. You know, in a darker or weird way.

Despite it wrapping up the story pretty nicely and being unique, I think I’d want some more of this setting. Fuck it. Give me a sequel.

But then again, in a year I might forget all about this movie. Hard to say. Yay Tom Hardy.