Gorgon Reviews

I was surprised when I was at the local RedBox, another random free rental, and had nothing that I wanted to see. That’s a lie, I had two things in mine, but both disappeared in the two hours between checking and getting. You lose, you lose.

Either way, my two backups were complete guesses. This one had Jesse Eisenberg in it! Nice! He is about 50/50 in terms of quality movies. Why Stop Now indeed? I shouldn’t be worried that it has some big stars in it and it is clearly a straight to DVD release.

“Why Stop Now” is most certainly the response to someone telling the director to “Stop Now”. You know, because its terrible. Speaking of terrible, that joke took too many words to tell it, and is therefore terrible as well. Now the joke is running itself into the ground. Like Why Stop Now. Yeahh, brought it back around. Oh, fuck. Eli (Eisenberg) loves him some piano. Loves it hard. He is some sort of adult already, and trying to get into a music/piano school? He has an audition tomorrow, but gets hammered. Smart thinking, Eli.

Especially because he has to take his mom (Melissa Leo) to rehab in the morning, and his sister to school. The problem with rehab is that they either must have good insurance (which they don’t) or be on drugs at the time to get entered, and right now, she is clean. My brain right now hurts, typing this up, I will have you know.

His sister has a sock puppet, that has been getting her in trouble at school, basically being insensitive. Yep. Either way, they have to go to her drug dealer, Sprinkles (Tracy Morgan) to get some pills. This of course puts them on some “zany and wacky” adventure, involving the drug market, family bonds, and trying to get everyone to their appointments on time. Too bad Eli also gets stabbed in the hand during all of this. Hard to play a piano with a knife in it I guess.

Well, at least the sock puppet is racially sensitive. I am going to try something different here.

No.

Just fuck no.

Don’t do it. It’s bad. It’s a trap. Fuck it. Fuck it completely. Run away. Just burn the movie people.

0 out of 4.

It turns out, more than one movie came out this weekend. That is right. The very strongly advertised and anticipated Oz The Great And Powerful. Really, I feel bad for any other movie trying to make money. It’d be like coming out vs The Avengers.

Of course, there is also the potential for naysayers. You can’t touch The Wizard of Oz after all. It is too nostalgic to be remade, re-imagined, or even associated with anything. Okay sure. Maybe the classic was based off of a book and not original. But at least it was the only one, right?

Fuck to the no. That classic was at least the 6th or 7th movie version of it, in a 30 year span. I just like to point this stuff out to people, who are quick to say Hollywood is no longer original, always rebooting. The movie you love was a reboot on its own.

So if they want to make up a prequel, with a lame china doll girl, by all means, I say let them!

Go figure, it takes place in Kansas. Oz (James Franco) is working at a traveling fair, being quite the ladies man. Maybe too much of a ladies man. His assistant Frank (Zach Braff) he treats like a trained monkey! Foreshadowing. Either way, he makes the Strong Man angry. Has to run, hops in a hot air balloon. Oh no, Tornado! Boom, Oz.

Shit is all in color and widescreen. Potentially dangerous as well.

Good thing he was found by Theodora (Mila Kunis) and not some creepy flying monkey. She is a witch, but thankfully not wicked. Nor is her sister, Evanora (Rachel Weisz), the current pseudo-ruler of Oz. They are all stoked, that the prophecy is coming true! An Oz will save the day, destroy the witch, and he will rule the land. Yay!

Or you know, shenanigans. Greed. Oz isn’t really the nicest or most honest man. Not to mention not actually being a wizard. Can he, will he, kill the witch? Well, just think about the fact that this is a prequel, then figure it out.

Featuring Michelle Williams as Glinda the Good, Joey King as china doll girl, Tony Cox as a helper, Bill Cobbs as a “Tinkerer” and Bruce Campbell. Why Bruce? Because its a Sam Raimi film.

Plot Twist: Bruce Campbell is the wicked witch!

I watched Oz on the opening night, in 3D, of course. It opens with a long title sequence, and its pretty fantastic. Really sets the mood. If you couldn’t tell from the trailer, the Kansas scenes are in a brown tinted lack of color scope, and squarely in the middle of the screen. Thats okay.

But Oz? Oz kind of turns into a CGI slugfest, over the top and extraordinary. I should have known it when I saw it was Alice In Wonderland producers, which might have had 2 real actors the whole movie as far as I could tell. Nothing wrong with special effects, but most of the time, the cast felt out of place or up against a green screen.

The acting in the movie isn’t the best either. Franco seemed like he wasn’t trying, nor did really any of the witches. Kunis plays some odd naivety, Weisz typical angst, and Williams felt like she had nothing to work with.

I might have been a bit bored halfway through, waiting for the eventual plot changes.

But you know what? The ending is kind of amazing. The attack on Oz, to the playful tricks (some of which are obvious, but not all of them), to the resolution, all feels pretty dang great. Not to mention a small part where Sam Raimi actually threw in an Evil Dead reference, which made me as giddy as a school girl.

Was this movie a lot less spectacular than advertised? Yes. But the ending almost made it super worthy to me.

2 out of 4.

Eurrrgh. It happened again! A trailer went way over its bounds and told far too much of a movie. Jack the Giant Slayer, the next fairytale gone epic in theaters today. The worst part of the trailer isn’t that it tells of a betrayal, or shows character deaths. No. It says this cringeworthy line.

“If you think you know the story.
You. Don’t. Know. Jack.”

Please shoot me. Really. The first half being just stupid in general, because we do know the story. Just not this other story. Movie’s don’t make a story version stop existing. Then the last part, which was seen coming a mile away, and…just man. Come on. Stop it guys.

Oh what’s that? Ewan McGregor? Fuck it, I am excited.

The movie begins, with a telling of the poem, of course! Jack (Nicholas Hoult) a wee lad hearing the story from his dad, and Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson), an also wee lass hearing it from her mom. TEN YEARS LATER. BOTH ARE DEAD. The parents mentioned of course. Jack is a simple farm boy, who has to sell the family horse and cart. Isabelle is set to rule after her father (Ian McShane) kicks the bucket. But he wants to make sure she has someone to help her, so why not force her to marry the King’s Adviser, Roderick (Stanley Tucci)?

No, we will not let Aladdin steal all the plots.

Either way, Isabelle wants to prove that she can be a leader, to be one with the people, to do her own thing. Jack just kind of wants to stop being poor and lame and bored. Eventually, beans and a stalk! Oh no, the Princess gets trapped and taken up to the giant land above. I say that, because giants. The knights crew, Roderick, Roderick’s assistant (Ewen Bremner), Sir Elmont (McGregor) and another random dude Crawe (Eddie Marsan), along with Jack. Their goal, rescue the princess, and to not restart some ancient war that they will surely lose.

But you know, betrayal. Love. Surprisingly large amount of death. Bill Nighy voicing General Fallon, a two-headed giant. Unfortunately, the extra head has down syndrome or something.

Fuck it, Ewan gets both pictures. You deserve it, bud. Because I can call Ewan bud now.

Gahhh. Gah.

Alright, this is another polarizing movie, that could have been epic, but fell short from its potential. Here are some positives. I actually found myself scared during a few parts. When the giants were on the ground, running through the forest, chasing them on horseback, I was terrified. Ewan McGregor had technically a small role, yet he made it his bitch, and gave that character so much personality. Hell, even the beginning plot wasn’t that bad.

But the movie floundered.

The epic fight ending ended up being nothing more than a glorified tug of war match. The story of the princess trying to prove she was an equal and could do things on her own ended up being a wash as well. She went from Damsel in Distress, to kind of helpful, to no, let Jack do the hard parts that she could have done just as easily. Seriously, the end of the movie pissed me off. They could have went the smart way, but chose the standard, this movie was made in the 1950s ending instead.

Visually, it is nice, 3D wasn’t that helpful. But man, the ending put a very bad taste in my mouth.

Oh well, watch the movie just to see a clinic on how to make a character your own. By Ewan McGregor, not Ewen Bremner.

2 out of 4.

It looks like The Last Exorcism went the route of Blair Witch Project. Let me explain.

Blair Witch Project of course redefined horror, viral marketing, and basically introduced us to the found footage genre of film. The Last Exorcism didn’t do any of that, it was just another documentary based film. However (even if you never realized it), Blair Witch Project had a sequel, the Book Of Shadows and it was a “normal film” without the shaky cam feature.

Basically, this was a long winded way of saying that The Last Exorcism Part II also has switched filming techniques to the more standard technique. Just because “Book Of Shadows” was basically shunned and forgotten about with time, doesn’t mean that TLEp2 will also be shitty.

Oh fuck me. What the hell is this poster?

This takes place hours after the first film, with Nell (Ashley Bell) being pretty dang freaky and possessed, running around other peoples homes. Don’t worry, they fix her up real nice. She gets sent off to a group home for troubled girls, after a nice psychological breakdown and she is fixed into realizing that possessions aren’t real and no one is out to get her.

Just kidding.

In fact, now that she is in the heart of New Orleans, everything is a lot weirder, especially when she starts seeing visions of her dad and other villagers, including nightmares of her past acts. But she wants to be normal! Not the crazy girl from the cult! She wants a boyfriend (Spencer Treat Clark), real friends (Julia Garner), and not a demon trying to seduce her into a killing fire making machine!

Too bad fate is a bitch. David Jensen, who looks far too much like Edward James Olmos, plays the helpful group home caretaker, and tries to keep her on the path away from all this religious mumbo-jumbo.

I guess this is that new alternative massage and exorcism technique.

I apologize for the lack of detail in the plot description. Unfortunately, the first movie ends with a twist, and I don’t want to spoil that movie just to explain this one better! Who am I to give away one twist ending to help you figure out the sequel? This movie gives you a brief recap of the first movie events at the start, but does a pretty poor job of it.

When you compare part II to part I, part II is just a mess. Gone is any sort of subtlety, as from beginning to the end, it is entirely full of jump scares and hallucinations. In fact, a scene in the first film where Nell jumps at the camera and screams (a literal jump scare) is spliced into this film at least four times, thanks to Nell’s nightmares. It is weird that in her dreams she is imagining herself wild from someone else’s point of view, yeah?

This movie was so bad that by the end, I thought they were going to actually forget to include an exorcism. The exorcism in question was extremely different than your average movie exorcism, so there is a unique plus.  Unfortunately, most of the film is based on the plot from the last 10 minutes of the previous film, which in itself was confusing and left you with questions. Did this film answer the questions? Not at all! They basically ignored them and brought up even more confusing plot lines.

While the end of part I was rushed and confusing, the ending of this film is actually laughable and definitely bad. It almost felt Carrie-esque, but with no sense of fear involved. I was shaking my head the entire last few minutes, ready to get out of this mess of a film.

1 out of 4.

Celeste & Jesse Forever is a movie that I am pretty sure I heard about…once… maybe, and then never again. So imagine my surprise when I see it and say sure. I mean, a lot of those Rudd-esque actors have been in lesser movies they made themself recently. I loved Jeff Who Lives At Home, not even sure why. THIS COULD BE MY NEXT JEFF.

WELL? WHICH ONE OF YOU WILL BE MY NEW JEFF?

Neither.

Celeste (Rashida Jones) and Jesse (Andy Samberg) are the best of friends. They play dumb penis games. But they are DIVORCED! AND STILL FINE WITH EACH OTHER. Saying they will still just be friends is never what actually happens. But I guess it is for them?

Well their friends (Ari Graynor, Eric Christian Olsen) are tired of it. They are basically married, without it. They demand more room, damn it. Jesse is a slacker/artist, not finding a stable job, potentially too childish. Celeste is a hard working woman. She can’t put up with his shit anymore.

So they decide to actually try to be apart. Celeste tries to date other men, who all have flaws (not to mention her own). And Jesse has a girlfriend (Rebecca Dayan). Pregnant. Who he wants to marry. Huh. Who’s childish now, bitch!?

Also featuring a hobbit as a friend.

Guess which one?

Celeste & Jesse Forever is written by…Rashida Jones herself! Her first foray into writing, so I also assume this movie was her idea which explains why she is the main character.

The script is complicated, characters have layers, people change throughout the movie. Everything you’d want in a good drama. But…but…I didn’t care?

I guess its a hard way to describe it. But despite the details, I just didn’t care about the characters or story. Realistic, sure. But entertaining? Not really for me.

Hooray, website based on my opinions on things!

But seriously, I think this movie is lacking something and its hard to describe. But the acting is nice, the story is a good idea. It just needs more. Maybe next time Rashida.

2 out of 4.

When I turned 21, I was in a bowling alley.

Fun story right? Well, that is true. I don’t actually drink, but I definitely took the opportunity to buy a beer from the place for one of my friends. Needless to say, the events of my 21st were pretty dang calm. I realize that most people actually do have a wild night, which probably involves someone blacking out. So if anything, 21 and Over is probably going to be accurate to real life!

If anything, this picture can make a powerful inspirational message background.

Jeff Chang (Justin Chon) is turning 21 today, yeahhhh! But he hasn’t celebrated, because his dad (François Chau) has gotten him an interview with a prestigious med school the next morning at 8am sharp. He couldn’t party even if he wants to. But surprise! His best friends from high school have arrived to make his night special.

Miller (Miles Teller) is all about the partying, and the slacker of the group. Casey (Skylar Astin) is going to Stanford and forgot how to let his wild side out. Guess what issues might get solved in the span of the night?

Casey runs into Nicole (Sarah Wright), who demands he show his wild side. Miller turns to the brains as he tries to get his friend home safely, while running from cheer yeller Randy (Jonathan Keltz). Jeff has to basically stay passed out or super drunk, definitely not prepped for the med school interview he might not actually want to do. But each friend might have some secrets they have been hiding, that theaten to ruin this friendship that, lets face it, wasn’t really too strong to begin with.

Oh, and we have Russell Hodgkinson playing a drunken homeless Chief guy.

Oh shit, this is already a thing now? I don’t think I like it.

Hey, I recognize everyone here from other sources! Skylar Astin was of course the best character from Pitch Perfect. Miles Teller was the best character from the Footloose remake. Justin Chon was not the best character from Twilight, because he was basically even more of a background character than Anna Kendrick.

I like that 21 and Over tried to be deeper than the trailers let on. Each character had at least one problem or issue they were keeping a secret, and Miller/Casey were finding out a lot more about Jeff Chang’s college life than they would have liked. The movie had a good chance to say something about specific issues that are definitely apparent in colleges and certain cultures, but really, they swept them all under the rug by the end.

All the build up, and then plot resolutions were solved pretty dang easily. I was very disappointed in this, especially due to one problem hinted at the whole movie being solved with a line or two as well.

Hey, if my comedies want to go deep, I say go deep, just don’t pussy out by the end. In other news, I did laugh at this, and laugh more than once. It just can’t get a great rating due to some choices it made in the movie. If it had gone just straight party comedy, I would have given it a 3. If it did a better job of adding depth and dealing with the problems the characters had, a 3 as well (but potentially 4). However, since it let weak writing take over, and kind of resolve everything nicely, it just pitters in the average category.

2 out of 4.

“Oh no, not another exorcism movie!”

“Oh no, not another hand held movie!”

Are those complaints out of the way? Good. Time to ignore them for The Last Exorcism.

“Hey look, a priest and a girl. This is like all the othe-” “WE KNOW!”

Cotton (Patrick Fabian) is not your average evangelical preacher. He likes to have fun! He can get a congregation going lickity split, and praise Jesus like its his job. Because it is his job. His dad was a preacher, and he has been doing sermons since he was young. Heck, it is all he knows how to do. But he might be undergoing a crisis of faith. He doesn’t like doing it anymore, he doesn’t believe. He has been faking the exorcism thing for years; he isn’t a bad person, he is just giving a service that people request. But after the birth of his son, and some issues there, he now feels bad taking advantage of people.

Thus we have this movie. He is going to do one more exorcism, with a film crew, to help prove how phony it all is. Silly Cotton, you are about to get fucked.

But when he gets to New Orleans, home of a pretty intense blend of spirituality and culture, he finds out he needs to read his own fine print. Nell (Ashley Bell) is apparently possessed, but he hates exorcising children. Thinks it is a kind of abuse. But the father (Louis Hertham) insists. Strange family. After the wife died, started to home school his daughter, eventually keeping her locked up the whole time, but not his son of course (Caleb Landry Jones).

Well, all of her problems could be psychological. Could be abuse from the dad causing it. Or any number of things that I won’t mention. Who is winning this fight: Jesus, or science? Iris Bahr plays one of the film crew.

The chiropractor might be the real winner here.

Hey hey hey, this movie might not be all too bad. It isn’t just a simple exorcism story. Creepy girl, being creepy, with people dying. No, this plot might have layers. Layers, everyone! I love layers.

The idea that possessions are complicated, and surely there could just be people not all that right in the head.

Well, the ending I hated. Kind of came out of nowhere, didnt make any sense (from out point of view) and had some pretty dumb events going on.

But there are more problems. Documentary style movie is fine. But the fact that the cameraman was a character there that was never actually on camera, or spoke, or anything, is pretty spooky. When crazy shit is happening, he doesn’t scream, but he may run away. I think they forgot that they made him a character and pretended he didn’t exist.

I do think the buildup of this movie was pretty decent. Not a typical horror, having thriller elements throughout just to make seemingly average situations pretty unnerving. But a lame ending, that we now know lead to a sequel? Well, you just went average.

2 out of 4.

Dark Skies might have one of the worst trailers I have ever seen, this year and every year. Besides giving away far too much, it looks like a parody of itself. We have a kid who talks funny doing a growl about a sandman, some events that are set up to show potential child abuse, and the “oh face”. Oh my goodness that oh face. Not to mention the look of shock that follows the “oh face.” It has to be a joke, right?

I mean…right?

He has to be faking this whole thing. Come on guys. Right? Come on! Lacy (Keri Russell) and Daniel (Josh Hamilton) are a married couple on the top of the world! Or the opposite of that. Daniel lost his job (that darn economy and all!), and Lacy isn’t doing that great as a real estate agent. The bills are piling up, and now someone keeps breaking into their house and messing up their kitchen. For example, they are stacking all their boxes in elaborate shapes and taking all the pictures from their frames. Alright, I guess that is kind of weird.

If you saw the trailer, how many children do you think they have? I know I just thought it was one, but there is an older son as well! Jesse (Dakota Goyo) is the kid you just found out about, and Sam (Kadan Rockett) is the little brother growling in the trailer. They, too, are experiencing weird things. Strange dreams/drawlings, having street lights go out on them, or even seizures. This all can’t just be a coincidence!

No coincidience, just aliens fucking with them. That definitely explains it better. Heck, they even found a paranormal expert (J.K. Simmons) who knows all about these aliens, who confirms their suspicions. They found him on the internet too, so he must be legitimate.  But can the family still escape this long abduction/testing plan, or is it too late for any of them?

“Watch out bitch! It’s right behind you! Turn around!” – Me in the theaterWell, the initial thought I had after the fact is that the trailer is a bad representation of the movie. Every single ridiculous scene is way better in the actual movie, meaning the trailer just spliced them badly. For shame trailer, for shame.

Dark Skies takes its time to set up the events, perhaps a bit too slow. The beginning of the movie dragged on at a crawl, and I wanted to leave because of that. The youngest kid actor was bad as well, but I guess because he is a kid that is okay?

Despite this, the film did eventually get better. The aliens showed up on actual camera a lot earlier in the film than I would have guessed. The ending is what really sold the film. Instead of the horror feel, it turned into a last stand type situation as the family prepped for the aliens to come and get their abducting on. The last 10 minutes involved scenes that can only be described as some sort of acid trip, and hey, they were a bit scary as well!

Overall the “horror” of the movie was really light, mostly some jump scares and kids doing weird things. Nothing to write home about. The actual last 30 seconds of the film are a bit disappointing, but I do think overall Dark Skies has something to offer to the film watcher, especially if you look at is as a thriller. You just have to wade through a lot of crap to get there.

2 out of 4.

Documentaries, schmokumentaries.

But hey, Netflix has them, and sometimes they should be watched. Should Waiting For Superman be watched? We. Shall. See.

Ah. Hitlerman. Just who we wanted.
Wait. Superman? Like the regular boring one? Fineeeee.

Fun fact, this movie is about the failing American Public School System.

I watched it during the middle of the day, while I was prepping a lecture at a public university. I have found out that I am the problem with the American Public School System, and I apologize profusely.

Wait wait wait. This is talking about Elementary Schools, Middle Schools, High Schools. Never mind, I take back my apology.

Basically, tenure is a thing now in high schools, that teachers get basically right away from unions. Leads to bad teacher, hard to get rid of bad teachers, and schools that don’t care. Some amazing schools exist, but the only way to get into them (to make them fair) is a random lottery, versus money. So uhh, that sucks. Kids get sad, and we need to know about it.

Actual picture from documentary, generic stock photo, or something I took 8 years ago?

Well, this is one of those awareness documentaries. They let you know that something sucks, show it to you over and over again, and then that is it. Tell me to continue the cause? What? I ain’t got time for any causes.

The last 30 minutes (roughly) is watching many different lottery processes, and watching a majority of the kids look sad and cry and stuff. This isn’t regular guilting, this is extreme guilting. Whatever, its a fine message. I just hate that it doesn’t do anything about it. Awareness is not a worthwhile enough reason to do something. Shit, I think I got a little bit more out of the subject from Won’t Back Down than I did from this.

1 out of 4.

Dwayne Johnson has a movie a month for the next few months. Seriously. Look it up. February, Snitch. March, GI Joe 2. April, Pain & Gain. May, Fast and the Furious 6.

Holy crap, that is a lot of rocks!

But what makes Snitch different? Well, in the ads for Snitch, I only saw that “Dwayne Johnson” was starring in it. That means it was not “Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson” like you see most of the time. Pretty crazy right? Has he finally made the switch (minus those other three movies?) Probably not. But I will respect that and not defile him with the nickname in this review.

Because The Rock would kick my ass if I defiled him.

John Matthews (Mr. Johnson) runs a construction company, built it himself, hells yeah. But he is divorced, because this is what drives plot. His ex Sylvie (Melina Kanakaredes) was able to keep the son Jason (Rafi Gavron) in the divorce, because John drove around a lot as a truck driver for his job. Damn, sucks. He has a new family though, a wife (Nadine Velazquez, solid solid upgrade) and a daughter there as well, but still wants to be in his sons life. He is about to go to college!

But his son does a dumb thing. He agrees to let his friend ship him a package of high quality drugs to his place, so he can pick it up later. Little did he know, that his friend got caught, and just snitched on Jason to reduce his own sentence. Jason didn’t want to help sell them, but agreed to help his friend, and now it looks like it was his idea! Sucks to suck. With federal minimum sentencing laws, he is looking up to 10 years in jail, despite the first time offense and no solid evidence. Unless he can snitch out someone else. The problem is, he doesn’t know any other drug dealers, and he is not willing to set up a friend.

Good morals, bad situation.

John wants to do anything to help his son. He is able to get the district attorney (or some equivalent title thing…Susan Sarandon) to reduce his son’s sentence if he helps set up an arrest himself. He just needs the help of one of his workers who used to be in on the drug game (Jon Bernthal) to get him started. Also featuring Barry Pepper as head of the local DEA thing and Michael Kenneth Williams as a big drug dealer guy.

By now you realize that if I see weird facial hair, I am going to post the weird facial hair.

First off, fuck this based on a true story nonsense. This time it is based on the fact that federal minimum sentencing is real, and it causes people to rat out other people maybe not actually involved. That is it. Go die, true story message. Die hard.

Snitch tries to go in two different directions, an action movie, and a drama where the father wants to do anything to help his son (like John Q, I guess. But more action). Part of the problem is that the action really isn’t there. The ads show lots of action, but that is mostly one and a half scenes of the movie, so I would definitely call action a stretch.

So that means we have a drama, folks.

A drama that isn’t that bad, but ehh, not to great either. Mr. Johnson actually great. Most of the supporting characters are so-so. The fact that this movie is just a strange way of saying that mandatory minimum sentences are bad, is kind of silly. They could have done it a lot better making it a more realistic picture, instead of the small action sideplot near the end.

Mr. Johnson did do great, as I said, but it would have been a better role for a frail guy. That is all. We are so ingrained in seeing Mr. Johnson as an action star, I can’t imagine him getting beaten up in this movie, or overcoming any difficulties by the end. Because he is Dwayne ‘The Friggan Dwayne Johnson’ Johnson.

2 out of 4.