Gorgon Reviews

When it was released, Red received pretty decent reviews from critics but didn’t do amazing at the box office. It made up for it in DVD/Blu-Ray sales though, gaining a small cult following, which is why they green-lit the sequel, surprisingly named Red 2.

The main notable difference between the two is that this one doesn’t have Morgan Freeman. For shame.

Although, as you can see from the picture, it has a lot of John Malkovich being very very John Malkovichy.

The movie begins with Frank (Bruce Willis) and Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) trying to build a home together. Frank is retired (and still extremely dangerous) but he wants to put his past behind him. Too bad Marvin (John Malkovich) comes prancing in, warning him that he thinks someone is trying to kill them.

Well, it turns out there actually are people trying to kill them! Reports have surfaced that they are nuclear terrorists, who are trying to take out Russia. In fact, the CIA are trying to take them in, including their main man Jack Horton (Neal McDonough, who looks like the white Robert Ri’chard), who has hired the world’s best assassin Han Cho Bai (Byung-hun Lee). The MI6 are sending their old friend Victoria (Helen Mirren), and Russia has Frank’s former fling, Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Sarah doesn’t like Katja.

So Frank, Sarah, and Marvin have to work together and find Dr. Bailey (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant war scientist who has been kept in the loony bin for over thirty years. Together, they hope to clear their name, and possibly stop a nuclear bomb from taking out a huge populatio of the world.

I decided to not talk about John Malkovich with my second image.

I don’t think you need to see Red in order to understand Red 2. All you have to know is that Frank and Sarah met in the first film, and everyone else has a huge history with everyone else. If you had to only pick one to watch, go with the original.

Red 2 isn’t bad per say, but it just doesn’t seem to care too much. Sure, it is entertaining, and funny at times, but not a lot happens overall. They are framed fugitives being hunted by the top governments around the world, yet they still have time to walk around Paris and go shopping. It just seemed odd and ruined the flow of the movie for me. The ending chase scene ended up being really predictable as well.

Red 2, just like R.I.P.D. had its enjoyable moments and was entertaining, just not something I would ever recommend to see more than once. I think Red 2 is not really based on the graphic novel like the first movie. Instead it is based on whatever the writer felt like. I usually don’t care how close a movie is to its source material, but I think in this case, they really didn’t know what to do with their characters. Because of that, it just felt like a mess.

John Malkovich is brilliant as always, and a bit more insane than normal. Malkovich is the main reason to see Red 2, and the only real reason.

2 out of 4.

Don’t worry readers, I am not about to spend a whole review explaining why R.I.P.D. (Trailer) just looks like a rehash of Men In Black. From the grumbles I heard in theaters during the trailer, I realized everyone had already figured it out on their own.

Technically R.I.P.D. is based off of a graphic novel of the same name, but it didn’t publish until after the first two MIB movies came out. Regardless, it seems like Universal itself doesn’t care about this movie with limited promotion and refusing early showings for critics. Generally when critics can’t get early showings things are going badly.

That facial hair from Bridges is not the something bad though. Nick (Ryan Reynolds) is a member of the Boston PD, and finds himself dead unexpectedly during a raid. Man, dying sure does suck. He gets pulled up to what he thinks is heaven and runs into…a Proctor (Mary-Louise Parker). What? Were you expecting Jesus? She offers him a choice. He can either go straight to Judgement and find out his fate for eternity, or join the Rest In Peace Department, serve for 100 years, and get a recommendation before Judgement.

Given Nick’s somewhat corrupt cop nature, he chooses to join the force. The R.I.P.D. are sent down to Earth to round up those who have died and refuse to pass on, as they slowly corrupt everything around them. Roy (Jeff Bridges) is a lawman from the 1800s, and reluctantly takes Nick under his wing.

Too bad the deadoes are also working on building an artifact to bring all the dead entities back to earth, and end the world. Good thing Nick just died and can try and stop it!

Kevin Bacon plays Nick’s old partner, Stephanie Szostak is Nick’s wife, and James Hong and Marisa Miller play Nick and Roy’s avatars while they are on earth. A joke that most certainly gets old really fast.

This joke might have gotten pretty old real quick. R.I.P.D. is not as bad as the trailers will have you believe. Sure, it has a lot to work on, and it could have been a lot better, but still, it isn’t complete trash. Critics just tend to give lower ratings to movies that they don’t get to see for free.

As for our leading man Ryan Reynolds, I thought he was really weak in this movie. Sure, his character just died, and he has a lot of angst, but I didn’t believe any of it in this movie. He was supposed to be pissed off the entire movie, but he just seemed passive aggressive and pouty.

Jeff Bridges was over the top in this movie, but it really did work. It was strange at first, having his era specific dialogue mixed in with the modern dialogue of everyone else. Once you got over that fact, basically everything he said was gold. I will give props to Mary-Louise Parker as well, who didn’t really have a lot to work with for her role yet still made it her own. She was in two different movies released this week (Red 2), and thankfully her characters were completely different.

The movie felt really short, and the ending was wrapped up pretty nicely with a bow, by ignoring pretty huge plot points. If you have monstrous beings running around Boston, blocking off whole intersections, with giant vacuum like holes appearing in the sky and taking out infrastructure, you are going to have hundreds of thousands of dead. After the initial appearance of bad guys, the streets became miraculously clear and no humans seemed to die. Great!

R.I.P.D. caused me to laugh on numerous occasions, but in general, the plot and acting from Reynolds felt really weak. It is at best a little bit entertaining, but not something I’d ever watch again.

2 out of 4.

The Conjuring is the second horror movie to come out during the 2013 Summer Season (the other being The Purge) and I can honestly say I didn’t see this one coming. Seriously. I saw zero previews for it in the theater. I didn’t even know it existed until about a week ago. The good news is that I never actually watched the trailer ahead of time, which is a rarity now in my position, so the movie could be a completely new experience for me.

Check out the rating for The Conjuring. It was rated R “for sequences of disturbing violence and terror.” You hear that? It was rated R literally for being too scary. No nudity, no language, no gore, no sex, no drug usage. Just R on terror alone. As a well established coward, let it be known that I am freaking out already.

Shit, matches in the 70s used to be awesome as shit.

The Conjuring tells the “true story” of a case studied by Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) in the early 1970s. I agree that those two were real human beings, with Ed being a Demonologist, and Lorraine a clarivoyant. They traveled around, helping with exorcisms, clearing houses of spirits, and other similar activities. They are most famous for helping the Amityville people.

The family they end up helping in this film are the Perrons: Roger (Ron Livingston) and Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and their FIVE daughters (Kyla Deaver, Mackenzie Foy, Joey King, Hayley McFarland, Shanley Caswell). Poor Roger, you can tell he needs help before the ghosts come.

Well, strange things start occurring around their house. All of their clocks stop at 3:07 am. Their dog died, birds fly into windows, their daughters get tugged on at night, sleep walking, ghostly spirits. Not to mention doors slamming in their faces and literally having demonic ghosts jumping on them.

They cannot move, having put all of their money into this house and land. Sucks to suck. Thankfully the Warren’s agree to help. They bring along their crew (Shannon Kook), set up cameras, microphones, and other devices, pre-modern day ghost hunters. After confirming that there are indeed spirits in the house, they set out to determine if they are sinister or just playful.

Yo dawg, there are rancid feet behind you. DO YOU NOT SEE THAT?

To me, The Conjuring felt like it was celebrating horror at its most basic roots. The story itself combines a bit of Poltergeist with The Exorcist, but into its own unique tale. The major elements in this movie are things we have seen before, but the smaller details are what make it something special.

I always talk about how hard it is for me to figure out a rating for a horror movie. Presumably it is based on some hidden formula combing entertainment and scare factor. After all, people go to horror movies to be scared, so if it ends up just being entertaining, you will be disappointed, and if it is just scary imagery, you will be confused.

I think The Conjuring combines these two elements in a pretty even fashion. It didn’t make me jump out of my seat every minute, but after the intro, I found myself at the edge of the seat until the credits rolled. The chill that something could go wrong at any moment stayed with you. It teased really well, and similarly had well placed humor moments just to throw you off guard.

The Conjuring proves that ghosts and hauntings are still scary. but even more surprising is that this movie was also well acted with a decent plot, truly the scariest thing about it. Similarly, this is the first horror I have given this rating in the last two years of hardcore movie watching.

4 out of 4.

Turbo is the latest example of a kids movie following a very standard formula. Let’s take some sort of entity and either a) give them an impossible dream (and reach it!), or b) give them some ridiculous flaw (and overcome it!). Like a bird who doesn’t know how to fly. Or a plane that is afraid of heights (and wants to race). Or an overweight comedian who wants to box. Or a snail who wants to race in the Indy 500. Oh wait, that one is Turbo!

Fuck. Let’s get this over with. Turbo (Ryan Reynolds) is a snail! He has big dreams. He wants to go fast, and is the fastest snail he knows. In fact, he just did the yard in 17 minutes, a new personal record. He dreams of entering the Indy 500, thanks to words of advice from his hero Guy Gagne (Bill Hader), who claims that no dream is too big. His brother Chet (Paul Giamatti) thinks his dream is stupid, rightfully so.

Well, eventually Turbo falls into a car engine and gets coated with NOS, transforming his DNA and giving him incredible speed! This also somehow turns him partially into a car, with headlights, radio, rear review lights and stuff. Not sure how that second part happened. Even more eventually, Chet and Turbo find themself caught by Tito (Michael Pena), a down on his luck Taco maker. He works for his older brother (Luis Guzman) and their business is not doing well. Why did Turbo decide to not run away as soon as they were captured? No idea. But he could have.

Luckily, Tito is all into snail racing. Turns out Turbo is stupid fast and he wants to use Turbo to get more business. A very noble cause. So they set off to enter him into the Indy 500, for exposure. Nowadays kids would just make a YouTube video and become famous that way.

Oh yeah, Turbo has his own snail crew to back him up now. There is Whiplash (Samuel L. Jackson), Smoove Move (Snoop Dogg), Burn (Maya Rudolph), Skidmark (Ben Schwartz), and White Shadow (Mike Bell). Of course Ken Jeong voices a tiny Asian nail technician.

This movie is about to get fucked. Seriously. No mercy. Cover your eyes if you don’t like violent imagery.Let’s start with some factual errors. Why? Because they matter to me. I am a Masters Geophysics Student, and the sloppiness bugged me. Basically I am going to be super critical.

Turbo made a big deal about getting a yard in 17 minutes. I know it was a yard, because they showed the measuring stick briefly. However, 36 inches in 17 minutes is really slow. Like, really really slow. That is why I went over to WolframAlpha to convert it. Seriously check the link.

WolframAlpha is so amazing it compared the velocity calculated to the the velocity of a garden snail automatically and it is about 33% the speed of the actual garden snail. Great, we have a snail that is statistically slower than most garden snails. Let’s say that factual error can be ignored, fine. Unfortunately, almost every other point in the movie (pre-genetic manipulation), Turbo and other snails are still shown with greater velocities than his trial. Unless it was important to the plot that is (see: the tomato/lawn mower scene).

Come on now, consistency.

[Editor’s note: Apparently IRL and F1 are different things, but similar vehicles. I just know them as “Not NASCAR”. Point still stands, basically.]
The ending bugged me a lot as well. As it is a car race, it involved a pile up of cars real close to the finish. At this point, Turbo and Guy go into a “foot race” type of situation for the finish like, similar to Talladega Nights.  But according to official Formula 1 racing rules (here and here specifically), none of it would count and the whole thing feels pointless.

Let’s get to the most important part of the movie. This plot is inherently stupid and bad. I didn’t read the full rules for the Formula 1 racing, so I can’t confirm if there is no rule that would disallow a snail. However, the concept behind it can only be described as cheating and a snail would never be allowed to race in such an event. They have very specific standards for the size of the vehicles, type of protection they need, everything you can possibly imagine. The snail’s dimensions do not match a car’s dimensions. For an extreme example, it’d be like using a Ferrari. Or like doping.

At one point during the race, the announcer screams that he can’t believe Turbo is passing a car from below. I am fine with his reaction, because Turbo is basically cheating. But the announcer is surprised instead that he could fit, even though Formula 1 cars have about 4.5 inches of room underneath them, while a garden snail is at most 1.5 inches tall.

If you hadn’t figured out by now, Guy is the villain of this movie, but only because he wants to win the race too. Just like the other 30ish humans in the race, all doing it without cheating.

I laughed I think a total of two times. The laziness of the plot, the laziness of the details, and the laziness of the character development ruined this movie for me. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt. “America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.” Turbo would not have lived up to the former First Lady’s opinions on America or Racing.

 

1 out of 4.

Honestly, I was willing to let Sharknado go by the wayside and ignore it forever. Sure, it is one of the most hyped SyFy original B-Movies in a long time, but it was even met with less than average number of watchers. Go figure. Most people just talked about it, very few watched it.

So why am I reviewing Sharknado? In honor of the life of Cory Monteith of course. Made famous by his character Finn on Glee, (and only that), he was an actor who recently died due to alcohol and heroine.

But no, Cory is not in Sharknado. He is now forever associated with the film for a different and worse reason. Case in point, here are his last two tweets before death. (For those who don’t know how to twitter, the bottom tweet is the oldest).

You’re damn right I retweeted them.

Maybe he actually died as a Canadian Government cover-up, as he was able to figure out the Sharknado conspiracy, but I doubt we will ever know for sure.

The vague plot of Sharknado is that a hurricane decides to hit the California coast. Los Angeles is right in its line of fire. The storm is causing sharks to run from it towards to coast, so there are dozens (hundreds) of sharks on the beaches, attacking people in about a foot of water. But when the rain comes, so does flooding, so the sharks are able to get further in land, still running from the storm or whatever. Even going into the sewer system! The sharks are also pissed off, so they will bite and eat anything they get near, except other sharks.

Eventually tornadoes hit LA as well, which pick up the sharks, and then in addition to destroying stuff, they also hurl sharks conveniently at anyone nearby. Well, it takes fifty minutes before there are sharks in a tornado, everything else before that is just flooding or minor wind based.

To add some plot to it, our main character’s name is Fin (Ian Ziering) which is funny now for two reasons. His two friends (Jaason Simmons, Cassie Scerbo) agree to help get to his ex-wives (Tara Reid) house, to protect her and his daughter…while also battling flooding, random sharks, and I guess the weather.

Because once the tornadoes start, clearly they have to find a way to stop the tornado itself. Not just wait it out like people have done for every other tornado in history.

Most of the movie is void of sharknadoes. I guess that is why the images were so hard to find online.

See, there are two types of B-Movies. Because B-Movie generally just means really low budget and they usually are overly campy as well. Still, there are two types. There are the types that are either entertaining through good dialogue or action, and those that are made on purpose to be bad. Those ones that are only enjoyable if you are drinking and making fun of it with friends. The first one is doable, just hasn’t been true recently. Just ask Bruce Campbell.

Sharknado fits into the second category. Seriously. Watching it for actual entertainment on your own is impossible. You will just get mad. It does this on purpose, but most of the best action happens off screen, which just means I am left bored. The danger they have to get through is boring, the dialogue is boring, and there isn’t even that much shark tornado action! The fuck. What if Anaconda had the snake only in the final quarter? You’d be pissed.

So I am pissed at Sharknado. They could have made it ridiculously awesome, but chose not to, because fuck it, low budget movies don’t need to make too much. Just enough. Dumb ass teenagers on the internet are hyping it up, and now there is a sequel. Shit. How can they do a sequel when they didn’t even have enough material for one movie?

0 out of 4.

The Tall Man movie looks like your standard horror creepy film. We got a clear bad guy, the movie is named after him, and he is intimidating looking.

Right? After all, here is the IMDB description.

When her child goes missing, a mother looks to unravel the legend of the Tall Man, an entity who allegedly abducts children.

Alright, yeah, some Tall Man thing steals kids. Creepy.

But it turns out this movie is misleading as fuck. So my plot summary is going to have “spoilers” in it. Know that in advance.

Hey, don’t go running away. Spoilers aren’t the end of the world.

Basically we have a small town that used to be big, but the mine closed, and everything died. People be poor, yo. Also, kids go missing a lot, and never found. Rumors of some Tall Man that takes them away in the night.

Julia (Jessica Biel) is a nurse who lost her husband, the towns doctor, a few years prior. So she lives in a big house with her nurse and her little boy. WHOM GETS TAKEN BY A TALL MAN AND TIES UP THE NURSE.

Thankfully Julia chases him down, she ain’t no weak woman yo, crashes the truck, and tries to save her boy, but still fails.

Here is where the spoilers really begin.

The Tall Man is a woman in disguise, who is stealing her son back, because she claims that son is hers, and he was stolen years earlier. What? Biel is the Tall Man? Only kind of. Maybe there is an organization of people who steal kids from poor homes. Because kids from poor homes grow up to be poor themselves most of the time, and live shitty lives. Just a positive feedback cycle of being poor and lame. So they take the kids and bring them to rich homes for people to raise them better and help the world.

Yes, that is what the movie is really about. Like a third of the way into it you find out that the kid isn’t actually hers. Also there is a girl named Jenny (Jodelle Ferland) in it too. She is kind of important.

Well, at least someone is finally thinking of the children.

Long story short, The Tall Man is a social commentary with a bit of Mystery/Thriller, yet advertised as a horror. None of those genres which are normally known for their big stances on certain social issues.

Poor people stay poor, and rich people can succeed. I guess that is true. It is like a question on a dating site that I used. “Should people with low IQs be allowed to breed?” A lot of people feel pompous and say no, and fuck that. I think they should be able to do whatever the hell they want, especially if it is one of the most basic urges out there.

This movie doesn’t say that poor people shouldn’t be able to keep kids if they can’t get out of their poor situation. No, it lives it up in the air for the viewer to discuss afterwards, or something. But since that is what the movie is about? Even with the final words questioning if it is all worth it, I really think it is implying they are doing the right thing.

That is all sorts of fucked up.

For other aspects, the movie uses surprisingly good cameras to film it all, so it looks pretty good on Blu-Ray. In other news, I really hate the movie calls what happens in it a twist. It is only a twist because of how it was advertised, aka incorrectly. That is just misleading, and that pisses me off. It is like they are ashamed of their own movie.

1 out of 4.

Hey, did you read my review of Quartet? Probably not. Well, long story short, it wasn’t good.

I also noted my confusion over thinking it was a different film, called A Late Quartet. Realizing there were two different films of similar themes and titles around the same time cleared up all my confusion. It totally isn’t my fault I thought they were the same thing, but I will take the blame like a real pseudo-anonymous internet person.

It is dvdsreleasedates.com‘s fault, I swear! I am innocent!

The Fugue Quartet is a pretty big deal. That is two violins, a viola, and a cello, for you music noobs out there. For those music experts, they are also a made up quartet, so don’t go looking for them. They were made decades earlier, and have been kicking ass for a long time.

But poor Peter Mitchell (Christopher Walken), the quartet’s founder and cellist. But he is developing Parkinson’s disease, so his playing days and living days are both soon to be over. After telling the group, certain issues and drama arise, which can break apart the very fabric of the group.

Robert (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Juliette (Catherine Keener), second violin and viola, met via the group, fell in love, got married, and had a daughter Alexandra (Imogen Poots). Well, Robert is thinking about asking the group if the two violinists can split shift their duties, apparently a big no no in music groups. Even worse, his wife thinking the other dude is better than him.

The other dude being Daniel Lerner (Mark Ivanir) a very talented violinist, who they get to also teach Alexandra some tips while she finishes high school. Unfortunately, he decides to give her a different, extra tip.

Can they find a replacement for Peter? Can love survive the marriage or the strange agely different affair? Can Daniel let Robert play some better violin? WILL THE EARTH CRASH AND BURN FIRST? Why is Wallace Shawn in this movie?!

They are about to perform? MY BODY IS READY!

What happens when you take four incredible actors and make them act in a movie? You get good acting! Okay, I never heard of Mark Ivanir before, but he was just as vital and good in this movie as the other big three.

For Christopher Walken, he is still in tons of movies, but it seems more often than not they are making him play a joke version of his actual self. It gets kind of annoying, and you can tell he isn’t trying too hard. In this film, he gets to play a real role and act, and does it well. He had a very emotional moment near the end in particular.

Philip Seymour Hoffman had to play a man realizing he isn’t the best, and that everyone around him knows it. He doesn’t want to be the best second violinist in the world, he wants to lead the group darn it.

Catherine Keener had an amazing scene with Imogen Poots, mother to daughter, and it was so shockingly realistic, it hurt me so.

This movie lets classical music be the back drop and score, making it a bit fancy. It also created an atmosphere making the viewer feel as if they have known the group their whole lives, instantly knowing everyone personally.

More importantly, it shows the group playing music as well. Quartet didn’t really show the people singing. Obviously the actors didn’t play the songs themselves, but it looked like it. We didn’t just get a big tease for a grand show, and then you know, not get it. Fucking Quartet.

3 out of 4.

Here are some facts about Adam Sandler!

Adam Sandler has never made a sequel to any of his movies before Grown Ups 2. He has been in one sequel before, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, but he wasn’t in the first film, and he obviously didn’t make, direct, or star in it.

Who would have thought that Adam Sandler secretly had some standards? He only works with new(ish) ideas. That is unless his film makes a lot of money, like Grown Ups did.

Okay, that is really just one long fact about Adam Sandler. Sorry if you expected more.

The scene from the trailer where he says “Your car is filthy” is cut out. Disappointment. The movie takes place soon after Grown Ups, except now in a small town! Lenny (Sandler) has moved his family away from Los Angeles for a quieter and simpler life. Long story short, Grown Ups 2 is a day in his and his friends life.

Lenny’s wife (Salma Hayek) wants to discuss having a fourth kid. Marcus (David Spade) just realized he has a son who is visiting him today. Kurt (Chris Rock) wants to celebrate his 20th wedding anniversary, but his wife (Maya Rudolph) forgot. And uhh, Eric (Kevin James) really loves his mother and hides that fact from his wife (Maria Bello)? One of his kids might be dumb? His part doesn’t really have a plot.

There are other characters too. Like Nick Swardson, playing some sort of extremely drugged out bus rider. Or Taylor Lautner, leader of the frat boys, with assistance from Milo Ventimiglia.

Sorry agian, but I think that is the best plot description I can give of this film. Honestly, it feels like it is a skit movie. The plot is basically childish adults hanging out, so most of the scenes are really unrelated. It isn’t set up like a traditional skit movie, like the recent Movie 43, but it feels like it could be a long strange episode of Saturday Night Live. Or a live action Family Guy.

The amount of cameos in this movie only helps that stigma. Here is a big list! There is Colin Quinn, Tim Meadows, Steve Buscemi, Jon Lovitz, Shaquille O’Neal, Steve Austin, Dan Patrick, Aly Michalka, Andy Samberg, Will Forte, and even Paulina Gretzky, daughter of (of course) Wayne Gretzky.

Yet no Rob Schneider. Where the heck did he go from the first movie?

I say some shocking things in this review about Mr. Lautner. Read on to find out! D: D:There is a lot wrong from this movie. All the jokes are extremely low-brow, almost 100% poop and sex jokes. In fact, there were so many sex related jokes that I was surprised this movie was rated PG-13 still.

It just felt bad overall. Yes, I still found some of the scenes humorous, but because it was put together so badly and without any context, it just left a rank taste in my mouth. There might have been ten minutes worth of plot. Maybe.

The CGI was out of place in this movie too. The Moose didn’t look real, nor did the “tire rolling down the hill” scene. It almost felt like a cartoon, in that people were doing things that should have killed them, but they were completely fine afterwards.

The ending itself is lazy humor. I am describing it as slap stick to the extreme, as it ends with all the adults in a literal fist fight with a group of frat boys, and kicking there butt. I do mean all the adults, as in everyone linked to above. The ending of the movie is just a long brawl.

Speaking of the frat boys, Taylor Lautner was literally the best part of this movie, and he had a huge role as the main villain, with tons of dialogue. Yet he wasn’t even listed in the credits? What? Six different frat boys were credited, only two of which had real names, but not the main frat guy.

Just an example why this whole film was a mess. That and the unexplained disappearance of Rob Schneider.

 

1 out of 4.

Giant Robots Fighting Giant Monsters.

That should be a good enough review for this movie.

If you are like me, the first time you heard about Pacific Rim (Trailer) you bounced around with joy. Sure, some of you maybe bounced on the subject matter alone, which is fine. But I was even more excited about the fact that Guillermo del Toro was set to direct the film. Guillermo means quality in Spanish, I am pretty sure. Just examine the last two films he directed! Hellboy II? Pan’s Labyrinth? This guy knows how to tell a story, while also kicking major ass.

Spoilers: These robots are here to fuck shit up. Monster shit. In the year 2025, we are currently in the twelfth year of fighting the Kaiju. Kaiju are larger than life mythical beasts that come from a dimensional portal at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The first one to appear took over five days to kill while it rampaged the California coast. The world realized it would have to stop fighting and work together to stop this threat from taking over completely, which started the Jaeger program.

The Jaegers are giant robots equal to the size of the Kaiju that can be deployed to fight the beasts before they cause more harm. Initially they prove to be quite successful, but the Kaiju have started to appear in increasingly shorter intervals, bigger and badder than before.

Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) used to be a great pilot with his brother. Five years prior, a Kaiju took his brother’s life, so he left the program to become a drifter. Shockingly, the UN is thinking of abandoning their Jaeger program due to the amount of Jaegers that are now getting destroyed. Their idea is to build a giant coastal wall to keep them out (very dumb). With only few months left of funding, Marshall Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) brings Raleigh back in to the fold to attempt one last shot at ending this thing once and for all.

Damn, that was a really good plot description. But there are many more people who have important roles in this movie. Rinko Kikuchi is Raleigh’s new partner once he returns to the Jaeger program. Max Martini and Robert Kazinsky play a father/son pilot team who run the fabled Striker Eureka, the fastest Jaeger made. Charlie Day and Burn Gorman are the main two scientists working on solving the Kaiju problem, a biologist and a mathematician respectfully. Finally, Clifton Collins Jr. is the main control room operator for the operation, and Ron Perlman a black market Kaiju flesh dealer.

Spoilers: There is no giant version of this monster unfortunately. If you don’t like the idea of giant robots fighting giant monsters then I really don’t think you will enjoy this movie. Because the movie gives you exactly that, and just a little bit more.

First off, if you are going to see Pacific Rim (Which you should!), you should watch it in 3D. The fight scenes were so incredible, I thought my eyes would melt. The second fight scene in Hong Kong is probably the sexiest thing I have seen in film this year. They were filmed with 3D cameras, so you don’t have to worry about blurriness mucking up the great action.

The Hong Kong fight is actually better than the fight at the climax of the film. Some would consider that to be a big problem, but I can easily forgive it. The final fight gets points for taking place in a different environment from the rest of the film.

I love the casting choices in the film, in that most of the people are not big named stars. This really allowed the viewer to get involved with the story and not get distracted by the eyes of someone like Brad Pitt.

Sure, there are a few weak plot points, and the acting isn’t always top notch, but the stunning visuals, well choreographed fights, and complete bad-assery from start to finish well make up for it. My biggest plot complaints really come from what was NOT said by a few characters. I was disappointed that the movie didn’t delve deeper into some of the ethical implications brought upon by certain actions, but really, that just allows a sequel/prequel to ask those questions later.

Please. Give Guillermo del Toro your money. Go see Pacific Rim.

3 out of 4.

Let’s talk about psychological thrillers based on real life stuff. I only am bringing this up, because guess what, Compliance might mess with your head, and it is totally based on a real story.

Kind of like The Experiment. Except in The Experiment, it was a real psychological test and they fictionalized aspects of it in the movie, and it was still good. In Compliance, it is based off of THIS real life event, and it keeps true to what actually happened. Roughly. I think. Shit, I just read about it again and got all disgusted at it.

Not as disgusted as her face, which looks like someone farted. At a restaurant that is totally not McDonalds but something generically different, it is a busy Friday night. Why are Friday nights busy? Fuck you, that is a dumb question, learn the real world.

Well, they get a phone call from an Officer Daniels (Pat Healy). He says they have a situation at the store, a young blonde girl at the register apparently stole some money from a customer, right out of their purse, so the customer went to the police station to complain. He has the regional manager on the other line, and he needs the manager (Ann Dowd) to take Becky (Dreama Walker) back in the storage room and question her.

Officer Daniels is on the phone the whole time, including when the strip search happens. But it turns out, Officer Daniels isn’t a cop at all, and just some dude prank calling some fast food places to make them do fucked up shit to employees.

What a twisted dude! Bill Camp is also in here as the fiance to the store manager, who might have to take over for her cause it is such a busy Friday night.

This is not sexy. Sure, she is just wearing an apron, but the torture-esque part kind of ruins it. I think reading the story via text gave me a worse emotional reaction than the actual film showing the events. Somehow, I wasn’t able to really get affected by the story when it occurred in front of my eyes.

I am not saying the acting was bad (and it wasn’t great either) because that isn’t necessary. They are just trying to be real people. Because it was close to the actual events, as the film unfolded I found it harder to stay interested.

Basically, whenever they amped up what they had to do to Becky in the room, there was always uncertainty involved, and the phone people didn’t want to do it (yet always did) and it got annoying. They always repeated the instructions starting with “He said I have to…”, which just got ridiculously annoying. I mean, if half the dialogue is hearing the same stuff twice, that gets annoying.

I am pretty sure in real life, especially when the fiance got there, if he was watching her and making her do things for over two hours, eventually he wouldn’t phrase it like that anymore. But we never get to see the really shocking stuff that happens. Only two of them were implied. They spent so much time on the initial get naked and find someone else to watch, it was stalling for no reason.

Overall, it is an okay movie, but didn’t fuck with me psychologically enough for me to love it.

2 out of 4.