Gorgon Reviews

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.

We here at Gorgon Reviews are not easily offended. Sure, I have still not seen A Serbian Film and my Human Centipede reviews are sort of my holy grails because of how much I wanted to avoid them, but language, violence, all of that is not offensive to us. That is why I can use “fuck” in my reviews.

I went and saw Offensive at WorldFest because the topic interested me the most of other movies at that time. I wanted to see a low budget thriller.

But I am glad I saw this film for another reason. During the screening a few audience members were talking, quite a few times, so the director Jonathan Ford ran down the aisle, not sure who exactly was talking, and quite sternly yelled “Whoever it is talking will you shut the fuck up!” It is great to see someone so passionate about their work, and a bit of a fantasy as a movie watcher who hates talkers.

Either way, they shut up, and hopefully left seeing Offensive slightly offended by their own actions.

“Offended at Offensive? That’s quite an offense.”

Bernard (Russell Floyd) and Helen Martin (Lisa Eichhorn) are moving to a small town in France! An old friend of Bernard’s dad died recently and because he had no family of his own, he left his estate and wealth to the Martins. However, there is a small caveat that Bernard and Helen must live there for at least a year first in order to receive the whole thing. They can’t just sell it and continue to live their normal lives.

And sure. They decide why not. They are old, a change can be good, fresh countryside air, a small quaint community. They move to the farm, appreciate the space they have, and hey, they even have an nice neighbor (Timothy Morand) who knew Bernard’s father and what his father did for their community. (It involved Nazis and World War II). Bernard’s dad once SAVED the community from tyranny!

Speaking of bad things, there is a group of kids who roam this community. About seven or eight teenagers, probably 14-19. They have cell phones, atrocious giggles, and a bad attitude. How bad? Well, they like to prank the community, which can get people hurt. They will set fires, throw bricks onto driving cars, push people around, verbally abuse, and more. All while recording it to share with each other and laugh about how pathetic everyone else apparently is. And guess what? The local police community does absolutely nothing about them. They are allowed to basically run this town into their own abuse filled playground!

And you know what? Bernard eventually gets pushed around too much. Especially when they go after his wife. And it looks like he needs to be a savior to this town again, just like his father was decades before.

Also starring Fred Adenis as corrupt cop, and Etienne Fouillade and Anaïs Parello as the head teenage shitheads.

This is how it feels when asshole teenagers get on their cell phones in a movie theater.

The idea behind Offensive is a pretty good one. Revenge tales make audiences feel good, sometimes queasy, and they let the audience live in a fantasy that they might wish they would do, but probably never do. Because people are afraid of breaking from the mold. Offensive takes that idea and gives us that fantasy against teenagers, a bit of a taboo subject because, you know, killing kids is frowned upon with their hormones and growing minds and all.

But they made these kids so incredibly annoying. Their group laugh is just one that will make you cringe every time, and you know what? Their laugh alone makes it worth it. Sure, maybe also the stealing, the setting of fires, the deaths they caused and regular physical violence. They made these kids uncaring assholes who just really needed to be violently destroyed so that everyone can chill.

Story was fine and dandy, but the overall acting had a lot to be desired. Floyd and Eichhorn just did not feel believable at all, which is a shame given they are the leads. They were fine at the moments when actual violence was involved, but in the regular general concern for their safety? Meh. And they didn’t even feel like a couple, let alone a pair that had been married for decades before that point.

The narrative itself also speeds up certain events for convenience, but are pretty implausible in a mostly possible story. Our old man has incredible endurance apparently, able to dig multiple graves on his own at night in a relatively short time, and make it look like it wasn’t just dug up earth. It is one thing that sticks out because of how impossibly hard that task actually is, but the film presents it as a great solution to where the bodies need to go.

Offensive is a good story, but hurt by weak acting performances. Still a unique concept on the indie thriller genre.

Alvin’s Harmonious World of Opposites has a lot of things going for it right off the bat.

One: It has an amazing title. We immediately know who the main character is, and we know that there will be some fucked up shit in this movie.

Two: It is the first film I saw for WorldFest here in Houston, in an actual theater. I saw 16 of them before the festival started, but they were in chairs in my homes and at work and on my phone, not in theaters.

Three: The promo image for the movie (seen below) has a large assortment of pandas. So many goddamn pandas. Stuffed, cute, pandas. I actually have 5 stuffed panda toys in my house right now! I am not as obsessed as this main character, but I can certainly, and will happily, relate.

Squeeeeeeeeeee!

Alvin (Teik Kim Pok) is a bit agoraphobic, and he hasn’t left his small apartment in about 18 months. He talks with his friend (Nitin Vengurlekar) on Skype, his job is translating manuals into Japanese with a boss (Ailís Logan) who thinks he is at an office, and he orders everything online. His groceries, a shit ton of knickknacks, and of course panda themed items. He is a bit obsessed, but he doesn’t notice that of course.

Most of his face to face interaction is with his neighbor, Virginia (Vashti Hughes), a vile mouthed racist who blames everything on everyone else and cares not about her volume. Oh, and there is an attractive girl who lives below him, whom he has never talked to, but he has a peep hole in his floor into her bedroom. Erm.

Problem’s begin to really arise when Alvin finds some black substance leaking from the attic into his room. He has some neat freak tendencies, and it is entirely too gross, so he goes to check on it. And what he finds up in his attic he would have never guessed in a million, panda billion, years.

Also featuring Tina Andrews and Dessy Fitri.

If he doesn’t watch it, his foul mouthed neighbor might accidentally eat him.

Alvin’s blahblah is a short film, only about 70 minutes with a handful of characters. Mostly just Alvin and his neighbor, along with the weird lady who lives in her attic. In case you are not ready for the film, the first scenes quickly give us the neighbor on a “cunt” fueled rant to wake up the viewer.

Personally, my favorite scenes were just Alvin hanging out in his Apartment, working, living his life. As advertised, the attic magical “adventure” that he went on was sure, yeah, quite weird. It had gibberish language and a lot of silence. It was bizarre and a complete tonal shift from the rest of the film.

With some thought, you can sort of figure out the purpose of his trip and what it means for his character, it is certainly not given to you on a platter. At the same time, I have no reason to suspect my own interpretation of events are correct at all, and I can easily be reading it wrong.

If this movie was entirely about a man who had slowly turned into a hoarder who never left his small room, I probably would have enjoyed it more. The attic makes the entire thing unique and stand out, but it is just so extreme. It was still quite well done given the subject matter and time.

You know what is exciting nowadays? Getting people cleared of all charges from prison when they were innocent. Now, ideally, they would have never been in jail. And they would have been freed way sooner than 20 or so years in jail. Or way sooner than hours before execution. But every false person imprisoned that gets freed is worthy of celebration and a reminder that our justice system blows.

Technically this documentary came out in 2014 before Making a Murderer, but it is still a subject that a lot of people enjoy hearing about. The Innocence Project has been around since 1992, after DNA evidence helped clear a lot of people wrongly accused in the past. And A Murder In The Park is about Anthony Porter, accused of killing two teenagers in a Chicago park at night in 1982.

It wasn’t until the late ’90’s when a journalism class from Northwestern University and their professor decided to examine the case, found some holes, and made their findings public. They found out a witness recanted his testimony because he couldn’t have seen it, they put some more deniability in it, and even got someone else to confess to the crime. A pretty open and shut case. Porter was freed just a few days before sentenced to death.

Because of how close of a call it was, the state of Illinois decided to finally abolish the death penalty. Just imagine if an innocent person was killed by the government. (Psst, it is bound to have happened by now).

However, what if…what if Porter actually did do the killings, and him getting freed put a different, actually innocent person behind bars? That would be crazy, that couldn’t be real life…

That headline is certainly bold and emotion filling.

It turns out that a few journalism students and a professor with an agenda might not be as good at catching criminals as a police force. One person maybe recanted his testimony, but the police had five other people who saw the crime and agreed it was Porter. The guy they got to convince to the murder did so under duress. A private investigator was called in and he coerced the plea, much like a cop would do at their own building.

So they employed similar tactics that the police did, but this time they put an innocent man in jail to prove a point. Well, if their point was to get rid of the death penalty, they succeeded at that, and did a great thing. But the tactics used were deceitful.

A community could no longer trust their local police force. More lawsuits were held over this, and eventually, the “Real killer” was put free too thanks to all the fucked up shit that was behind the scenes. In the end, the criminal justice system was made helpless as one of their good arrests put doubt into the program and made the crime now completely untouchable due to all the shit that went down.

The documentary highlights an interesting story, but it does feel like a made for TV special. It was on Showtime originally, but the production quality just doesn’t feel like it is there. It presents the facts and tells a story, one that makes you want to question every criminal report you see from now on. And people who argue against it.

This same week I had a review of Win It All, and noted my disappointment that Netflix had dropped their ball on their original films finally. And no, I have not seen Sandy Wexler yet. But we all know that it doesn’t count against them.

Needless to say, I was still excited about Sand Castle, much like how I am excited about War Machine. By all means Netflix, start producing war movies, a new genre for you unless you count Beasts of No Nation.

At this point this review is just name dropping films. I better get to the point before I get sued or accidentally make money on advertisements.

“You know what would make this war better? Some ice cold Mountain Dew.”

This Afghanistan war is going to be from the point of view of Matt Ocre (Nicholas Hoult). He is a smart guy, but he enlisted only because his dad and grandfather did before him. He would certainly rather not shoot people, and he tried to get sent home by having a hand injury that he he used on himself.

But alas, it does not work, it heals “enough” and he is sent out with his unit. Staff Sergeant Harper (Logan Marshall-Green) is their leader, with other recruits like Sergeant Dylan Chutsky (Glen Powell), Sergeant Burton (Beau Knapp), Coporal Enzo (Neil Brown Jr.), and 1st LT Anthony (Sam Spruell).

After a hard and successful shooting mission, their small crew is asked to help with a nearby village. Their water supply was cut off, thanks to an accidental attack from the Americans. So they need water and need it bad. They are tasked with daily driving a giant tank (I mean like the kind that holds water) to a site 3 hours away to fill up, and back, while also helping to oversee the engineers fix the problem for the city.

You know, with people trying to kill them and steal water and things like that. Weeee!

Also starring Sammy Sheik, Tommy Flanagan, and Henry Cavill.

“This smoke is annoying, but later I am going to hit the shower, wash off the blood, and bathe in Dew. Mountain Dew, the fresh blood remover.”

My favorite war films are the ones that have higher amounts of drama elements versus action elements. Most war films in a real setting try to give us some sort of realism, so films that deal with the the heavy emotional toll, the human sacrifices, the citizens who get swept up in it all, the politics, those are my favorite. I could care less about all the bang bang shoot em ups.

And given that this film is mostly about a special operation mission, it has a lot of the above elements, filling me with moderate amounts of joy. Hoult being our main lead in a war film is pretty new territory for him. Sure, for whatever reason he keeps getting put into action films, usually with fantasy elements, but he isn’t a big buff dude war hero. (Oh man! Maybe that explains why he smart instead in this film! Shock!) But he does a good job of balancing war emotions with not wanting to get shot or kill innocent people.

The other members of their crew feel like a real tight knit community. I am always impressed with the bond the soldiers seem to have in a lot of these films, like the soldiers in Fury as a recent example.

My biggest issues come from the end, where thanks to PLOT, our group does have to go on a big action war effort. And it is at night, there are explosions, dead bodies, and lots of guns. Very typical war fare, but a scene that just bored me to tears after the excellent drama and skirmishes I had before. Dark scenes don’t make things feel tense for me, instead they just make me annoyed at what I cannot see and force my brain to fill in the blanks.

Overall a pretty decent effort, good acting from the main actors involved, and a decent story to go with the war.

Netflix has been on a role with its comedies and drama films coming out basically weekly. So after the last month or so, I was excited to see Win It All.

Joe Swanberg, the director, has done a lot of indie pictures, and honestly, a lot of them I have felt have only been okay. Teamed up with Jake Johnson though, who helped write this script, there was potential for greatness. (Yes, I know that he already directed him in Drinking Buddies and I didn’t care for that film). Despite that though, Jake Johnson was in Safety Not Guaranteed, which was wonderful! So I had hope, especially given the Netflix trend.

Although it is about gambling and a lot of gambling films seem to go in the same direction. Hopefully this one can surprise me.

Fat stacks of cash are not surprising. Where is my gambling for pennies film?

Eddie (Jake Johnson) likes the thrill of gambling. He is an expert on Texas Hold ‘Em, except for when he loses. At this point in his life, he has a small house that he rents, he works helping cars park correctly at large events, and spends most of his money at the table. Yes, he is addicted, but he stopped going to those shitty meetings.

And then his neighbor (José Antonio García) asks him a favor. He has to go to jail for about nine months, so he needs Eddie to store a bag in his place, no touching or looking at it, and when he gets back he will give him $10,000. Pretty sweet deal.

It doesn’t take long before Eddie opens the bag though and yeah, it is stocked with cash and other items. If he just borrows a little bit of the money as seed money, $500, he can win some major cash, pay it back, and start being a success again at life. I think you know where he is going with this.

Now down a shit ton of money, Eddie is fearing for his life. He has to get his life back on track, and fast. He will go work for his brother (Joe Lo Truglio), while also impressing a new girl (Aislinn Derbez), and trying his hardest to not gamble his life away.

Also starring Keegan-Michael Key as his sponsor, Steve Berg, Cliff Chamberlain, and Nicky Excitement.

When my legs are spread out, it is to show I am definitely paying attention.

I thought Win It All would be different, I hoped and hoped. I mean, a lot of gambling films are about the thrills of winning and losing it all, but the people in them rarely have “problems” with addiction. They go and say that our main character does, he goes to meetings, and then he fucks over his entire life thanks to gambling.

There is no way that he will save the day and win the girl through gambling. Absolutely impossible. That would be entirely unthinkable and a terrible message to send to those who have problems with gambling. And it fucking happens.

Major spoilers incoming. After getting even further and further into his hole, with the deadline of fixing it moving up, Eddie’s sponsor introduces him to a table where the stakes are incredibly high. And he gets even further in the whole. But sure enough, he puts the last of his money in and gets ahead, way way ahead. And he was going to keep going after getting far ahead. The only reason he stopped was because he had a heart attack, so he had to go to the hospital, and yay the day is saved! He even fixed things with the girl.

End movie.

Fucking what? How goddamn irresponsible. It could have been a complete shit storm where the film ended him dead after getting shot by the guy back from prison, and it would have been better. He could have not regressed and continued to work at his job and paid it off in installments, and it would have been better. But this ending feels incredibly poor tasting in my mouth, and ruins what was a completely average film.

Colossal is one of those films that I knew I couldn’t wait to see from the first trailer and concept leak. The idea sounded original, and originality in films is a rarity.

But it also had two of my favorite people! Anne Hathaway, who has been making a lot of stronger choices lately in her career, and Jason Sudeikis, who is normally pushed off as a side character and still rarely given his chance to shine.

So why not shine with giant monsters attacking South Korea? Who is excited? Just me?

This guy is totally excited!

Gloria’s (Anne Hathaway) life is shit. She got out of her small town to live in a big city, but she lost her sweet writing job and hasn’t found work in a year. She has been living with her boyfriend, Tim (Dan Stevens) who has had a stable job and a stable life. But Gloria has decided to spend most of her days sleeping, because she is up all night with some friends drinking, getting nothing done. Thanks to her lack of willingness to change and lies, she gets kicked out of the apartment and finds herself broke and alone.

So of course she heads back to her old home town, that she left so long ago. She can stay at her parents old place, because they still own it and it is empty. But hey, she will get an inflatable mattress and figure it out.

It doesn’t take long for her to run into an old friend, Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), who gives her a place to hang out (his bar), some house supplies, and a part time job. Heck, she gets some new friends in “crazy man” Garth (Tim Blake Nelson) and Joel (Austin Stowell).

And after a night of drinking and sleeping all morning, she wakes up to find that Seoul, South Korea got totally fucked up by a giant monster. And after few nights of attacks, she starts to notice that its mannerisms seem familiar. Could…could she be controlling the monster? But why? How? Those hundreds of dead people…

It is hard to reconcile your emotions when you know you wiped out hundreds, but no idea how.

If you watch a trailer for Colossal, it will look like a Comedy with some Sci-Fi elements, but it is so much more than that. As far as I can tell and hope, no trailer really just spoils the whole thing, but they all give the same sort of vibe.

Apparently this is the year of genre-bending films blowing me away, as this is only my 4th 4 out of 4 on the website from 2017 films, and 3 of them don’t get easily defined by one genre. Split, Get Out, and now this, all have multiple elements and tonal shifts that keep you on your feet and help reflect a grander film experience. Some would dock points off of Colossal for that, by being “scatterbrained” but that is only an issue if the film does not succeed on the multiple levels it tries to reach. But Colossal handles the later film drama extremely well, and the early film comedy/awkwardness/mystery elements.

Acting is top notch for our leads of Hathaway and Sudeikis. Hathaway made me hate her character, until it didn’t anymore (growth!), but I always hated her hair. Sudeikis had a lot more subtle great moments early on, before rising up to a level I have not seen before with him by the end.

Colossal is a film that is better the less you know about it, and I ensure you, I barely talked about any of the many intricacies of the plot. But spoilers be out there, so go out and swiftly see this film which deals with important subject matters in a rather unique way.

Two main things popped in my brain while prepping for and watching The Lost City of Z. First of all, cool title, really exciting, went in without looking up a trailer or description.

The first thing I realized? This was not a zombie movie. Sorry, a Z on its own just kind of screams that out. (Doesn’t help that Brad Pitt was a producer on both this film and World War Z).

Secondly, I had been pronouncing it wrong for two weeks. And if I pronounced it correctly, I wouldn’t think it was about zombies. That is because it isn’t an American Z, it is a Canadian Z, or a “Zed”. So before you look like me, silly as a goat, it is The Lost City of Zed.

These guys also look foolish, with spears in their faces. Just not as foolish as me.

Our story is about Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), a real man, with a real story, and real interesting facial hair. He is a British officer, but he has no medals to speak of, mostly training troops in case there is a big war (This is 10-15 years before WWI). His dad did some bad stuff, so he has to try and reclaim his family name to help elevate his new family. You know, his wife (Sienna Miller), and their little boy.

Percy is eventually chosen to go on a dangerous movie to Bolivia in South America. The Royal Geographical Society is going to have him lead a mission to follow a river, map out the area, and find its source. It is important for peace in the region and making money. Percy reluctantly goes on a multi year journey, leaving his pregnant wife behind, with danger and mystery in his future.

He gets a right hand man, Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson), who is rocking a killer beard. What he really discovers is that the savages there are not so savage, and there might be an older ancient culture hiding in those woods, he just has to find it to prove it to the world.

Also starring Clive Francis, Ian McDiarmid, Tom Holland, Angus Macfadyen, and Edward Ashley.

At least they have guns, the best invention for scary potentially zombie infested ruins.

Right off the bat, I disliked The Lost City of Z. It had a filter applied to it to make it look time period specific, which movies love, and it just distracts me. Seriously. The entire film it just distracts me. It makes the whole thing look odd, but I am apparently the only one who gets annoyed by these things.

The Lost City of Z is pretty long, over 2 hours. It is extremely thorough, impressively so at times, and I learned a lot about this man who did some pretty exciting things in South American exploration. The Costin character is also pretty exciting. But I actually learned the most about James Murray, an Antarctic explorer who also went on a mission and was kind of a dumb ass. Which isn’t fair, because this story about Fawcett would be super biased.

Outside of filter issues, I do believe this movie has a bit too much going on. Although World War I ends up becoming an important change in his life, it feels so weird to spend so much time on that front (heh), when we have already had two expeditions and know that a third one is coming before the movie ends. And at the same time, I wish they explored a bit more of his relationship with his kids and wife. The ending also takes some liberties with what happened to Fawcett, because the truth is a lot more unclear than that.

And all of these points are still pretty minor. It is a well crafted film about a non well known subject, and one that will interest many sects of people.