Gorgon Reviews

Garry Marshall is a man with a plan. He directs a lot of films, a lot of them women centric as well. From Beaches to Pretty Women to The Princess Diaries (and its sequel), he makes films about women for women.

But lately he has changed his mind. He has had holidays on his mind. Holidays with a lot of people and interconnecting plot lines. Yes, he is that guy. So he gave us Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve and now, Mother’s Day. There was a lot of hope that he would get super into this and give us weirder shit like Flag Day and Cinco De Mayo, but unfortunately he passed away this year and we only will get these three films.

I also could have reviewed this a long time ago. Like, end of 2016. I wanted to watch it and Bad Moms back to back, and so I watched them both to see if they would qualify for my Worst Films of 2016 list. And as you can tell, this one did not make it, it wasn’t that terrible, so instead, I just saved it for the next Mother’s Day instead.

That’s right. I am writing this in 2016. So if my site still exists in May? That would be nice. To date this review further, Obama is still president, I am 27 years old, and I have not seen The Belko Experiment yet.

All of these actresses are currently alive at the time of my writing this as well.

Alright, big cast of characters here we go. And don’t worry, I already decided to not tag any of the kid actors.

Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) is divorced, with two kids, but she is still friends with her ex, Henry (Timothy Olyphant), and maybe curious about getting back together. Who knows. Oh wait! He is married now, to Tina (Shay Mitchell), a much younger woman. And the kids love her. And he wants them on Mother’s Day for a little bit too coming up, because hey step mom. Yayyy.

Bradley (Jason Sudeikis), is not a mother, but his wife (Jennifer Garner) is! Or was. She died, in the war, because she was a soldier. [NOTE: Garry Marshall loves having female soldiers in his movies]. He has two daughters, one of them in the mature age, but he just wants to wallow at home. He does still work, he runs a gym, and he has a large group of ladies (Loni Love, Lucy Walsh, Beth Kennedy, amongst others) who want to set him up with friends.

Jesse (Kate Hudson) and Gabi (Sarah Chalke) are sisters and sharing a house together, both working on families. Jesse is married to Russell (Aasif Mandvi) and they had a boy. Gabi is a lesbian, with her partner Max (Cameron Esposito). And their parents (Margo Martindale, Robert Pine) know nothing about the kid or the sexual preferences and show up to surprise them.

Let’s see, we also have Kristin (Britt Roberson), who was adopted and wants to learn about her mother. She is long term dating a guy (Jack Whitehall) and doesn’t want to get married despite having a kid with him. He is a stand up comic trying to win a local club event run by Wally Burn (Jon Lovitz).

And a famous lady who sells jewelry on TV? That is who Julia Roberts plays.

She is worried her boys might see too much of their new step-mom.

Mother’s Day is exactly as one would expect it. Four or five plot lines, all briefly interconnecting in a big city, all around the holiday of Mother’s Day.

And unfortunately for me, my favorite character was played by Sudeikis. The only of the leads to be a man. And yes, it is because I could relate to him most of all. But also Sudeikis makes me happy in most of larger films, so it is just more him and less me being lame and not relating to women.

Aniston’s plot line was a bit more annoying, as it made Olyphant out to be such a bad guy because it was from her point of view, when it is obvious she is overreacting and getting on our nerves. The “old fashioned parents” being anti-everything also felt awkward in this movie. Character Actress Margo Martindale was such a bad person in the film and she technically never really got better. It ends with her happily telling racist jokes to Russell’s mom basically.

Mother’s Day isn’t bad. It is just emotional drama porn. Julia Roberts is in here because she is in most of Marshall’s films, and it is a very wasted plot line.

But the good news is? It is still way better than Moms’ Night Out.

I have never been one of those geeks super into the Alien franchise. After all, that shit is scary, and I didn’t watch horror for the longest time.

I can understand the appeal, but after Alien and Aliens, the only other film in that series I have seen was Prometheus, so there is that. Allusions and references will mean nothing to me.

So I am not excited to go into this film, but I am a bit excited it isn’t just “Prometheus 2” or anything. Because I want my scientists to be smart and not watch the opposite of that. I do want nice scares as well. But mostly, I want a shit ton of Danny McBride.

I hope this isn’t Danny McBride.

Alien: Covenant is set about ten years after the events of Prometheus, aboard the ship named Covenant. It is a colony ship, with a ship ton of bodies on board while asleep. There are also hundreds of embryos frozen and about 15 or so crew members to run the thing if problems arise or when they get close to the new planet. Lastly, they have a lovely robot helper to run their ship while they sleep in Walter (Michael Fassbender), who is totally different than David from Prometheus!

Sure enough, some bad stuff happens, their voyage gets stopped, they have to make repairs, and their captain dies! Oh no! Now Oram (Billy Crudup) is in charge, and he wants them to get back on schedule asap before more bad stuff happens. Daniels (Katherine Waterston) is the new second in command, and she was also in a relationship with the captain so she is pretty upset. Tennessee (Danny McBride) is their pilot/tech guy or something and Lope (Demián Bichir) is some sort of head of security, maybe.

While doing repairs, they received a faded distress beacon from a place not too far away, and according to scanners it is ALSO a perfect planet for them to live at. They decide it is their duty to check it out, saving them 7 years on a different awesome planet would be sweet. Once they get there though, spores, aliens, a lot of problems. But hey, they also meet David, so we get to find out what happened after Prometheus. Ain’t that swell?

And here is a bunch of the crew actors! Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, Uli Latukefu, Tess Haubrich, Carmen Ejogo, Jussie Smollett, Callie Hernandez, Amy Seimetz, and Nathaniel Dean. With maybe, MAYBE, about 2 minutes of screen time for James Franco.

Front chest bursting is so 30 years ago.

Alien: Covenant is a film that wants to explore some pretty deep questions in a hypothetical setting. It wants to talk about Rogue AI. It wants to talk about where we came from (like Prometheus before it). It wants to talk about the next stages of evolution for beings. It wants to talk about what it means to be a creator of life, a mother, without necessarily giving birth in the traditional sense. It wants to play on human emotions at the loss of a loved one (because straight up every crew member is apparently in a relationship with another crew member). A lot of good discussions and themes can arise from this film, some of which is subtle and some of which is blasted across the screen into your faceholes.

But you know what Alien: Covenant does not feel like? An Alien movie. Oh, we get a least one Xenomorph in this film, but it kind of sucks. It is defeated easily, with the smaller aliens seemingly posing a bigger challenge. And this movie isn’t scary. We got some gross scenes? Yeah, a bit, but I have seen a lot worse. We have some people flipping their shit of course. And we have a lot of crew members make terrible decisions over and over again, a big problem with Prometheus. But I never really felt scared. I never really felt the tension.

The best elements from Covenant would fall under the Drama Genre, which would be fine if that was the goal of this film, to make it a drama. This is a franchise known for changing its genre between films, and it could have really fucking worked (although, admittedly, people would probably still be disappointed). But it still tries to hype up its action and horror moments which for the most part just fall flat.

The best part of the movie is Fassbender and Fassbender, including the best scenes where he has to act with himself. I probably said something similar in the last movie about the “best parts”. But the twists feel obvious, McBride isn’t even used as a comic relief, it is setting up for a future movie (which I will note I have no idea where it really wants go with), and above all, just not as good as most people would have hoped.

But hey, Ridley Scott wants to make like, six more of these, and he is super old, so I guess that is what will happen.

Sometimes I can be so into movies and pop culture that I miss the obvious big ones. Some of the most classic films of the last forty years I may have not seen yet. And bigger news events I may have missed out on.

Like this whole, death of JonBenét Ramsey thing that happened like, 20+ years ago. Apparently it was a pretty big deal, a lot of people assumed the parents did it, it was a very strange case. And a sad case. But you know, it was in Colorado, a state always recovering from a big tragedy it seems like.

It also was turned into a shit ton of movies, including TV specials. It was referenced on South Park even, and I just, uhh, never cared to figure out the reference.

Either way, this is a new documentary on the topic, Casting JonBenet, and it attempts to tell the story in a bit of a different way.

By telling the story in dozens of ways! Dozens!

This documentary is pretending to cast a film, about the death of JonBenet. And it is casting for the roles of the father, the mother, the older brother, the police chief, a few other characters, and of course, JonBenet, in the town of Boulder, Colorado where the event took place. That is the key. We have a lot of people who remember the events from twenty years ago and this is the case that sort of started the idea of armchair detectives. It would especially be true in a community where the crime took place.

So the crux of this film is straight up people auditioning for a role in a film, and also having them talk about the case. Talk about what they noticed, what stood out to them, and of course, their theories on the case.

And hey, if you want to see a documentary on local Boulderites talking about a past event that they can only theorize on, then this is the perfect documentary for you. If you don’t, then you certainly won’t want to watch the documentary.

I mean, I was hoping they would go over some of the real facts of the case. But they didn’t. And we are left with yes, a lot of people have thoughts on this case, and a lot of things are plausible, but technically, we still have no fucking clue why this girl is dead, and we will likely never know.

And with my review of Tatara Samurai, I will say that this is my final review of films from WorldFest in Houston. I watched over 20 films that were at the festival, and a handful of shorts, and still only reviewed like, 6-7 of those films.

But I was excited for Tatara Samurai. It was the only film from Japan and the description and picture associated with it just seemed to scream out quality. And to be honest, I would much rather have a samurai film come out of Japan than a Hollywood film trying to tell the same story. There will be a different amount of respect for the source material.

Most of all, we should get a lot of authenticity. Both in terms of location, story, and materials used. It could be as authentic as The Witch if they wanted it to be!

That horse looks authentic as fuck.

Set somewhere in the 16th Century Japan, we have feudal warlords feuding, and a lot of poor villagers get caught up in the crossfire. And I do mean crossfire! Because guns are starting to be a thing, and guns kill people hard. Harder than a sword, I guess.

Speaking of swords, the majority of this film takes place in the village of Tatara. A small community, somewhere in the mountains (slight joke, most of Japan is mountains). Gosuke (Sho Aoyagi) is our main character with a lot of legacy behind him. You see, he is destined to be a Murage. A Murage is someone who takes the local ores from their area and turns it into steel. The steel is then sent elsewhere to be turned into swords, swords that are more durable and powerful than any other local steel. They are the cream of the crop. The prada. The gucci. You know.

And Gosuke’s dad (Masahiro Komoto) just became the new Murage after his grandfather (Choei Takahashi) retired, meaning Gosuke’s training is about to increase ten fold. However, Gosuke has also been training in his sword fighting. He has dreams of becoming a samurai, but that is unheard of from people in small villages. Until they hear of Lord Oda Nobunaga, who will take any soldier and if they are good enough, make them a samurai.

His dreams could come true. But he would have to leave home, throw away his family destiny, and go on a voyage. And if he does leave, what will he truly be leaving behind at home, and how will they change without him?

Also starring Naoki Kobayashi, Akira, Toru Shinagawa, Yoshiko Miyazaki, Anna Ishii, Tomoko Tabata, Denden, and Shun Sugata.

He was so poor, he had to train in a flooded valley with a stick.

Tartara Samurai was not what I expected, in a good way. I expected a lot of action. I expected extreme fight scenes. What I got was a period drama, set in a war, about a small community not sure of what to do.

And I also got a shit ton of authenticity, like I talked to at the start. I am not an expert in 16th century Japan, let alone how they make steel, but I HAVE to assume, based on how delicately they showed the process that it was all 100% real. It was astounding to see the number of people involved and how many hours it must have took just to melt it all down. On the same level of authenticity, there was a small scene with a boat. But there is no way that boat was CGI. It was a straight up, 400 year old style boat they either built or borrowed for this film. It was maybe on screen for a minute and it was so gorgeous.

Everything else is fine too. The plot doesn’t go the way I expected, but the characters behave as one would expect, a lot of respect for families, custom, and all that stereotypical Japanese shit. The acting is fine, the small amount of conflict there is is nicely choreographed.

This is not a film for those expecting a lot of action. But a nice period piece made with a lot of passion behind the project, and you will end up loving it.

One of my final reviews from WorldFest, I decided to watch What’s The Big Deal? (Che Vuoi Che Sia?) on a foreign double header. First a Spanish historical drama, and now an Italian comedy. Two different extremes, but I wanted to end my night on a good note.

And after I watched it, I realized I don’t think I have seen a single “Italian” film for realsies on this website. Except for Tale of Tales, a fantastic movie from last year, but one that is also in English so it is hard to remember it is foreign.

Either way, for someone who is such an Ancient Rome fanatic as I am, I figured I would have hit plenty of Italian films before this.

The globe is showing the Americas. Shit, is this actually American too?

Sex. Cold hot sex. Sex for all ages. And porn. Emotionless and distant porn. Porn people are too attractive.

People have a lot of feelings about these words, but for Claduio (Edoardo Leo) and Anna (Anna Foglietta), it doesn’t really come up. Their lack of money comes up. Their want to start a family comes up. But they think they can’t afford it yet. She is a teacher without the Italian version of tenure so she can’t take time off and keep her job. He fixes computers for people who mostly download viruses thanks to too much porn.

But Claudio has an idea for a website. He thinks it will be the next best thing, he just needs some initial funds. But his crowdsourcing goes nowhere, so they drunkenly post a video saying they will post a video of them having sex if they reach their goal, because after all, that is all people care about online.

And it works. It goes viral. And when his wife finds out they won’t let him delete it until the period ends, then he can just deny the money. But the euros keep rolling in, and maybe, just maybe, they might share their bedroom with thousands of people to change their lives.

Also starring Rocco Papaleo as Uncle Franco, who lives with them and encourages them, and Marina Massironi, Franco’s wife who wants them to separate for awhile to rekindle their marriage.

“To get these fuckers to give us money, we have to BECOME these fuckers!”

So the film is of course in Italian, but the screening I went played the first ten minutes without subtitles and I mostly got the gist! Don’t worry, it restarted the whole thing. But it was a comedy, and knowing the basic plot it still made plenty of sense, which is a good sign.

The couple felt really believable, and they had a lot of chemistry. They teased each other and felt like really open people. The fact that they were atheist was mentioned, but not really relevant to the plot it seemed. But they weren’t married for that reason at least.

The film had humor and it had believably. The way it showed their spiral into fame wasn’t as believable, but maybe it would be believable in Italy. I know in America, no one would give a shit and move on with their days.

And finally, the ending. Well, I didn’t really get the ending. Of course the couple was arguing a lot as it built up to the night, but their argument last second didn’t seem to make sense in context of their characters. I could be wrong, but it seems like they kept switching their sides in the argument as well.

The ending just felt odd in comparison to the rest of the film. People are complicated, the film tried to show that, but it went to a few extremes in the end for the sake of drama over a good story.

Oh snap! Another chess movie! Are we getting a resurgence of chess films?

A couple years ago we had Pawn Sacrifice and the documentary Brooklyn Castles. And within the last year we had Queen of Katwe. Now, a Spanish (as in Spain) film about a fictional chess master? Sweet. After all, the two non documentaries above were about real people.

But why not a chess movie about a fake grandmaster? They have many boxing movies about fictional people, so why not.

And this one has subtitles. Fingers crossed that hey have subtlety too. Since this one is called The Chess Player and not The Chess Grandmaster, I assume there is something subtle.

Rainstorms are not subtle.

Don’t be fooled by Diego Padilla (Marc Clotet) and his good looks. He is also wicked smart, and we are introduced him as he is crowned a world chess champion in Spain in the early 1930’s. That is where he meets Marianne Latour (Melina Matthews), a journalist to cover the story. Apparently he decides to give her an inside scoop, with his penis, because they fall in love, get married, and have a baby. Hooray!

But now Spain is in a civil war. Padilla wasn’t actively fighting, as he was a chess player, but his friend Javier Sánchez (Alejo Sauras) definitely was and trying to take out the fascists. Padilla had a job working for the government, teaching the conservative generals chess, but it wasn’t a lot. His wife was French and wanted to move back to Paris thanks to all of the violence, so he reluctantly agrees because who would want to be in a war torn country?

Hah! Hah! Just kidding. Nazis happen. And they find themselves still dealing with this shit. However, at this point, Padilla gets arrested and sent to a prison run by the Nazis. They think he is a spy, a communist, something! And now he is stuck. His wife tries to get him out, using her good friend Pierre Boileau (Lionel Auguste) to talk to the French government still in charge, but they find out despite paying a large bribe, they “executed” Padilla nonetheless.

Except he lives! In prison! And he has to use his chess skills to eventually survive prison, the war, and the guards, if he wants to see his wife and daughter again.

Also starring Stefan Weinert, Mike Hoffmann, Andrés Gertrúdix, and Pau Durà.

Staring at a chess set is relatively subtle.

At some point during WorldFest, I just naturally assumed every movie would be a little bit shitty. It is an indie film festival, so there are a lot of not so polished turds running around. Given the topic of this film and location, I assumed it would be relatively low budget but hopefully with a good story.

Thankfully I was able to get a good story AND a shiny well crafted film. It is so crisp, the camera work is phenomenal, and it uses World War II not as its main focus, but merely a back drop in the story of this man’s life.

And the people feel incredibly real. Or at least our main couple does. They fight, they love each other, and when they finally get to reconnect after all their years? Well, let’s just say it isn’t just them running across a meadow into each other’s arms.

Although sure, part of me would have loved a typical romance ending to tear at all of my hearts strings, but without it I still found myself crying in a good way. So good on The Chess Player for trying something different with its story. By showcasing a new different aspect of World War II that is of course never talked about. And by using chess.

A wonderful story, extremely well shot and acted and full of surprises.

Hey everyone! Remember Guardians of the Galaxy? No!? Then what the hell are you doing here for?

People loved GotG and claimed it to be one of the best films for Marvel. Clearly they didn’t see Captain America: The Winter Soldier that same year. But despite how fresh and funny it was, it had terribly weak villains, more so than most other Marvel films in my opinion.

But the soundtrack was dope. It revitalized old classics, and had the sweet finale of a new mixtape. Before going into Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 I refused to check out the soundtrack released a few weeks ago. In the first film, it was glorious discovering the music that went along and frankly, I feel like it is almost spoiler territory for this film.

Man, I hope this new mix is just as banging. And the movie should be good too, as well.

Like how Russell is banging that old dude look. Rock on!

Set only a few months after the first film, so we have to travel back in time to the year 2014. You know, that way Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) is still a baby for a movie for cuteness reasons. The crew is still together: Starlord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), and Rocket (Bradley Cooper). And guess what! They have also pissed off an entire race of golden perfect people, led by Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki), while also capturing Nebula (Karen Gillan) to turn her in for a bounty. Family bonds? Fuck ’em.

There is still a lot of angst between the members, not knowing how much of their crew is a family, or how much of it is just for the convenience and money. In addition to the golden people, they also have to deal with Yondu’s (Michael Rooker) crew, trying to bring them in again for a bounty.

Oh and remember Starlord’s daddy issues? Well, the timing is wonderful for this film, because apparently some mysterious alien man named Ego (Kurt Russell) is his daddy! He has proof and all, they just have to go back to his own personal planet, to help Starlord realize his heritage, his past, and his destiny. Sounds exciting for Starlord, and no real issues will probably rise from that. Ego has a companion, Mantis (Pom Klementieff), who can read anyone’s feelings and sometimes calm them down. Alien powers!

Also starring two scenes with Sylvester Stallone as another ravager, Chris Sullivan as someone who likes mutinies with silly names, and Sean Gunn. Like, a shit ton of Sean Gunn. I expected to just get a quick cameo, maybe a line or two, but fuck, Sean Gunn is all up in this movie with a major-ish role.

He might even have more screen time than the chick with the antlers.

A lot of your time is busy, deciding what movie to watch, so I will get to the point. In terms of Marvel films, this one felt really disappointing. The first film had issues that a lot of people seemed to gloss over, and the sequel is not as good as the first in so many levels. So I left the theater feeling extremely disappointed. GotG2 is not a BAD movie, but it just had the potential to be so much more.

For our positives, I did laugh quite frequently still. Drax is now my favorite for sure, while there was a toss up in the first film, because they made his personality so extreme in this one. It is also very visually exquisite. One scene near the end with a body reforming in particular stood out, along with colorful explosions and alien landscapes. And Yondu was elevated in this film and given the best scene(s?!) with the best song, so that becomes a standout moment.

And now, the rest. Remember how Drax was my favorite? I said so sentences ago. He is my favorite thanks to the humor, BUT, I am pretty sure he did jack shit the whole film. Outside of the opening fight scene, which is one we can ignore for this point, he did only one real battle/fight scene at all. He is supposed to be Drax the Destroyer, and he is just there for the most part, making quips, and that is it. It was like they forgot his main purpose.

The Gamora/Nebula side plot dragged. Gamora is barely given personality, and Nebula has never been really any good at all, so to see the argument play out and conclude in this film, it just feels like an incredible waste. Starlord/Ego had some interesting moments, but again, the plot just felt very messy. Not really hard to follow, but lacking significant details and just feeling rushed.

This is the third film Rooker has been in with Stan Lee, because people tend to forget about Mallrats.

Yondu was bad ass, but just like in the first film, the made his arrow thing extremely overfuckingpowered. Why they never had him just go up to Thanos and kill they never really stated. His “backstory” and sadness in this film isn’t explored well at all either.

And it hurts me to say this, it really does. Because my own baby was Baby Groot for Halloween to my Rocket Raccoon when she was just four months old. But Baby Groot, although cute, was again, just a distraction. He got a bit annoying with his antics and it gave me scary flashbacks to the Minions in Despicable Me, taking an okay idea and running it into the ground. Rocket was cool though. They gave him a lot to do, some anger, some great humor, and he was definitely highlighted well.

Volume 2 had a few decent song choices, and the ones that work end up working REALLY WELL. A lot of the songs though also became pretty forgettable after the fact, although they did a good job incorporating the music into this movie, by also making the characters more aware of the songs.

Volume 2 is okay. It is. It just isn’t really super. It is flashy, funny, but it just lacks a lot more substance. The type of things you go into expecting in a sequel now that the “origin story” has been told.

The reason I picked Yellow Fever over my original choice at WorldFest was the main reason anyone picks any movie. Star Appeal. You know, recognizing an actor that you know or like, and hey, let’s watch their new thing.

Also I wanted to laugh. It was a comedy, and everything else was a drama at that time slot. Easy choice.

Besides, I could use more reviews of films that are diverse. Like an Asian-American lead actress. However, highlighting this fact out, basically undermines the whole point of the film. Whoops.

My wife would be upset if I didn’t super highlight that this guy was on Gilmore Girls.

Asia Bradford (Jenna Ushkowitz) is Korean, and yes she has the name Asia. Okay, let me first take a step back. Asia was adopted from Korea when she was a baby by a very white couple in New York City. Her mom, Li (Nahanni Johnstone) is a home maker, and her father, Michael (Michael Lowry) is in some sort of business job. He makes the money, he works a lot. Asia has basically lived in America her whole life, she doesn’t know Korean or anything about it.

And now people still call her Korean. They ask where she is from. They want to define her based on her race, not her own unique personality. Recently 18, she has an attitude about everything, and let’s the world know through her online blog called Yellow Fever.

Their world gets a little bit of upheaval though, when an old family friend is back in NYC to sell his recently deceased mother’s home. John (Scott Patterson) is a middle aged white dude, who has been living in Korea, loves Korean things and of course knows Korean. Basically the opposite entity of Asia. His return brings back the idea of lost friendships, romances, and adds a whole lot of confusion to Asia’s growing mind.

And she has a younger brother. That is slightly important.

“Teach me how to be Korean, white man!”

Yellow Fever took awhile to get going, but when it finally “got there”, I was still disappointed.

Yellow Fever is about more than the Asia character, but also the entire family. The boy has a very small plot line and is used mostly just to bring the characters to air their grievances together. A lot of the issues came out just due to poor communication and apparently the parents having no clue how to interact with each other. It was clear the wife was going crazy wondering about her husband, who had a totally good secret, and any normal person would just let them know and everything would be peachy.

None of the characters really felt relatable or believable. Ushkowitz is so much older than her role and looks nothing like an 18 year old girl, it is distracting. It was cringe after cringe.

As for its comedy elements, most of the jokes fall flat. It ended up being a movie about a few miserable people doing miserable people things. Although, sure, Patterson was pretty good at his part.

Low budget sci-fi has a bad name. Because wit a low budget, comes CGI that stands out. With a low budget, means a lot more of the budget goes into the bad CGI than good actors. We might get people who used to be famous or were on a TV show a decade ago, and they are relying on that fading star power to turn a profit.

Basically, the SyFy channel is a big reason why low budget Sci-Fi has such a bad name.

But I went and saw Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter anyways in theaters, because a low budget can still bring on strong human emotions and universal themes taken to extreme. Even if the robots look terrible, it can transcend the budget and tell an amazing story. Sci-Fi doesn’t need those dollar bills, it just needs a good plot.

And I can already tell what kind of plot this film has.

Set in the future, robots have basically taken over the world. Damn Artificial Intelligence. People still exist, but in hiding mostly, and some are people trying to fight back.

Our heroine is Sienna (Tracey Birdsall), who is great at killing robots and looking fly at the same time. She works with a small crew, including Dr. Johnson (William Kircher), their leader Ralston (Stephen Manley), a tech guy Blister (Tim McGrath), and a lot of guns. They have heard about a rumor of a bunch of EMP bombs on another planet, but it is just rumors. They have to just keep doing what they are doing.

But not Sienna. Screw that. Screw robots. She wants to find the bombs on her own if she must and save the human race. And she will break out a former fighter friend of hers, Skullcrusher (Daz Crawford) to help! But what Sienna doesn’t know about her past might change her destiny.

Also starring Ashley Park as a sexbot, Tony Gibbons as a voice, and Marc Hawes as a mysterious character.

Remember, no matter how bad the technology, the story can still be good.

Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter started off so strong.

Wait, no, the opposite. Right away, the title alone, makes this seem like a dud. How generic can a title be? Generic enough to be the title of something straight to DVD, selling for $5 max in a Wal-Mart bin. Something that seems like a parody of a successful film. Although I don’t know what this title would be a parody of, except that it has “Rogue” in the title, so it might make people think of Rogue One?

Outside of the title, the movie is a total snoozefest. Remember when I said sci-fi can hit those hard themes? Well, Rogue Warrior attempts to hit some themes, but it doesn’t go about them in a great way. They lack subtlety, they don’t go hard into any details, and they are a bit inconsistent.

For example, we have PleasureBots in this movie. You know what those are. And they are robots. But apparently, they aren’t affected at all by giant EMP bombs that turn off all the robots on a planet (and you know, those same bombs don’t do anything to the interstellar travel vehicles, but whatever).

The actions scenes are lame, the acting is poor, the twists are mostly nonsense. Not only did I hear snores in my auditorium, but I myself was going in and out as I tried to watch for anything to redeem this film. And there isn’t.

There are just no redeeming qualities here, and I cannot believe that it will be shown in a few theaters at some point in June.

How many times do I have to watch JFK get shot? I mean, I am a young guy, so not as many times as some people who were alive back in the early ’60’s. But just last year we had Jackie, Parkland was about his death, and he probably died in The Butler.

And now we have a film about a president, who has been in other films recently, like Selma, All The Way, and uhhh, The Butler, again. But usually he is a smaller part. This movie, LBJ, is about LBJ and only LBJ.

Just kidding, a lot of it is about JFK getting shot, because it is super important to him getting presidency. Sucks to not be the 100% star of your own film. But LBJ would look at this and probably say something like “Doesn’t matter, Had Presidency.”

Blood still on the coat.

In Dallas, JFK (Jeffrey Donovan, Mr. Burn Notice himself), is shot and soon dead in a hospital. His wife (Kim Allen) is in shock, his brother Bobby (Michael Stahl-David) has become withdrawn, and a nation is on the edge of their seats wondering what will happen next.

And in walks Lyndon Baines Johnson (Woody Harrelson), vice president, Texan, to swear himself in during a tumultuous time. And not just because of an assassination. Civil Rights riots are at an all time high, and the Southern Democrats are not willing to let the equal rights act go through. But it was one of JFK’s visions, and the best way to honor him would be to get his vision into reality.

But Johnson isn’t just some goddamn JFK puppet. He is a doer, not a talker. He ran the Senate well and made sure things happened. So even though he was never voted the president, he is going to rock that White House, pass some bills, and try and make America better.

Also starring Bill Pullman, Brian Stepanek, C. Thomas Howell, Michael Mosley, Rich Sommer, Wallace Langham, Richard Jenkins, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Ladybird.

“You know presidents, bunch of bitchy little girls” – Bruce Campbell, probably.

LBJ is not a linear film nor does it actually begin with his death. We get to see parts of Johnson’s life before he decided to run for president as Senate majority leader, losing to Kennedy in the primaries, agreeing to accept the VP position, attempting to bring about the Civil Rights Bill as VP, then the president dying, taking over his duties, and trying to be president. Technically, just a few years of his life, and a lot of it is focused on his relationship with the Kennedy brothers.

And again, that is all out of order, telling the story of the last president to voluntarily not run for a second term.

In terms of acting, Harrelson knocked it out of the park. He still had a bit of his woody crude streak going on, but for all I know, maybe LBJ was just like that. The make up work done to him was incredible and he really transformed into this president, I quickly forgot it was actually Harrelson. A very well done performance. Jenkins and Stahl-David also do relatively good performances, and I am still on the fence as Donovan as JFK. It is one that is just very hard to see.

The story is the weaker aspect of the film. It is a very standard feeling biography. It is only on the most important years of his life, it hits upon a very big current issue, and it puts a weird spin on it with him just wanting to be loved. Apparently. I don’t know how much of it is true, but it comes across as false. Thankfully the film is only a little bit more than 90 minutes, which almost seems strange to have it so short despite being a presidential bio film.

For LBJ, stay for the acting, but maybe read up on a history lesson to get a more complete view of the man that isn’t bogged down on specific themes.