Tag: 1 out of 4

I won’t make a sad intro about the death of Robin Williams. I have already had to talk about that with World’s Greatest Dad and Night At The Museum 3.

No, let’s talk about how Boulevard, good or bad, is going to be his last official film that was released. Actors don’t always leave with the best of films. Recently, James Gandolfini gave us Enough Said, but also The Drop! Philip Seymour Hoffman gave us Mockingjay Part 1. Yuck.

I think I accidentally made this intro sad again. And now that I have stars at the top of the review, you can see where this score is going.

And fuck, right there, there it is. A sad Robin Williams.

This is a story about a man who has lived a very simple life. Nolan Mack (Williams) has worked in the same bank for the last few decades and no, he doesn’t even own the place. After work he goes home to his wife, Joy (Kathy Baker), and they sit around and do old people things. They actually sleep in separate beds now. There is no sexual chemistry between them and they just seem to exist in each others company. Hell, Nolan’s only outlet on life seems to be hanging out with his friend, Winston (Bob Odenkirk), but that is only occasionally.

Things change when his dad (Gary Gardner) goes into cardiac arrest. This is a life changer for Nolan. He realizes he is getting up there in age and isn’t doing a whole lot with his life.

So he actually goes down a shady…boulevard, and ends up meeting a male prostitute. He gives Leo (Roberto Aguire) a lift, but with no real idea of what he is doing. Eventually he takes him into a hotel room and they talk. They just talk and hang out. Nothing sexual, and sure, Nolan will pay him for his time. Nolan seems to just want someone to listen to him, someone he can listen to as well. Nolan wants someone he can help out and buy things for and try to fix. And yes, Nolan too is totally gay. Has been his whole life. He just could never accept who he really was deep down.

Also featuring Giles Matthey as a bad guy pimp!

“Get out of the streets, and into my car. Get in the front seat Leo, get into my car!”

Boulevard has a simple message about a relatively simple man. It is never too late to truly be you. If you have been hiding your whole life and are 70 years old, you can still express yourself and come out, so to speak. And it doesn’t have to be just about being gay or transgendered, it could just be doing what you have always wanted to do before it is too late. Boulevard says you can teach an Old Dog new tricks.

That’s a nice message. Probably a good story. It did not feel as good in the actual movie.

That is because the movie is extremely slow. Most likely deliberately, but still, slow. I don’t end up caring about Nolan’s personal journey, or Leo’s life. I kind of just felt bad for his wife the whole time. I am not saying Nolan should have kept lying. But it was just awkward and uncomfortable, the whole situation.

The acting isn’t that great, the atmosphere is melancholy, and just…well, damn. This might be a great inspirational movie for some. But to me, it is just a bad film and thankfully won’t be the lasting impression on William’s legacy.

I am happy to say that before I watched The D Train, I knew absolutely nothing about it. I had only briefly seen the poster/DVD cover. Enough to recognize the two leads.

I actually thought this was a war movie. Again, quick glance at the cover, I thought the arm in the background was like, a gun strapped to the back. I thought they had just won a war!

Or you know, a movie about trains or something. A lonely New York meet up that turns into friendship. Fuck it, let’s just go into it.

Quit yelling. I’m trying to relax on my couch, far away from war and trains.

Dan Landsman (Jack Black) is a weird dude. But we will get into that. First let us talk about his normal tendencies.

Dan has a wife (Kathryn Hahn), a 15 year old boy (Russell Posner) and a baby girl. He has a boring job doing something and has been there for awhile. It isn’t particularly rewarding, but it pays the bills. His boss (Jeffrey Tambor) is an older guy who doesn’t like new technology and is generally swell.

And he is the self-appointed head of the Alumni committee for his high school class. The others (Kyle Bornheimer, Henry Zebrowski, more) don’t agree with a head, but whatever, they have a 20 year old reunion to prep for. No one seems to give a shit and turn out is looking low. Things turn around when Dan finds out that the coolest kid in school, Oliver Lawless (James Marsden), has finally made it after all this time. He was an actor and wanted to be a big star and now he is in a national television commercial about sun block!

OH MAN SO COOL. He thinks if he can convince Oliver to come to the reunion, more people will show up, and he will be a hero! He just needs to fly out to LA to convince him in person. So he lies about it as a business trip to his boss and wife, just to hang out and party with Oliver.

And Oliver is a great dude. They get drunk, they get happy, they dance, they flirt with women and Dan is able to convince Oliver to show up!

And also, something very different happens. Something that has never happened to Dan before. Something that will make his trip home and subsequent weeks leading up to the reunion very weird and uncomfortable.

Enough to drive a mediocre middle aged man to drinking? You betcha!

From the description, it looks like The D Train can be a very uncomfortable movie from start to finish. An average dude in a boring life, put into a super liberal party setting, with a man he has strangely idealized for decades. He has always wanted to live vicariously though him, but now he has the opportunity to seem cool and actually celebrate with the man. Life is wonderful!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t an uncomfortable movie, just a boring one. Sure, there was that one scene. And like, a good scene at the reunion, and maybe another good joke. And that is it.

The best thing really about this movie is that it was a different sort of character for Jack Black. Not different like Bernie, but more just regular dude. So good job Jack, diversifying your resume. That will be good help in the future assuming you need it. Marsden unfortunately adds nothing to the film. Hahn does a pretty good exasperated housewife though, sick of her husband’s shit.

The plot isn’t even that bad. With some work, better dialogues, and better…just scenes in general, it could have been a solid movie. Instead this movie is about a nickname and a dream gone wrong, and is completely forgettable.

Surprise, surprise. That was my emotion when I left The Maze Runner movie last year. Going into it, I thought I would hate it. I thought it would just be another terrible young adult movie adaptation that a company wanted to film to get that sweet post-Twilight money. It had a laughably bad trailer with some cringe dialogue, but I left it excited and wanting more.

Sure, I knew that whatever happened, there should be no more mazes after the first one, so calling it Maze Runner anything afterwards doesn’t make a lot of sense. Blame that on the author not coming up with a better series name.

This time, for Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (dropping the “The” was a solid choice), I am going in basically blind. I haven’t seen trailers for it or TV spots. I just want it to surprise me with whatever else is going to happen. This review is also so late because I wasn’t able to attend the press screening for the film, because I instead saw The Visit. Regardless of what has happened, this franchise has gotten some money out of me.

They don’t have to tie me up like these poor saps. Besides, I don’t carry loose change.

Remember where we left off? We got out of the fucking maze, that’s what. The evil Corporation WCKD (Wicked) who was testing on them have been killed and resistance group has saved them. Yay!

Or are they really the good guys? The first film already implied they were bad, so things shouldn’t be too weird to assume they are indeed bad. Even though they are being taken care of by the wonderful Janson (Aidan Gillen). The surviving crew is immediately debriefed, checked up physically, and welcomed into the facility. Forget who we have? Well, there is our main dude Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), the certifiable GOAT Minho (Ki Hong Lee), the minority, Frypan (Dexter Darden), and the sweet one, Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster). Yeah, I too am surprised at how few of them made it out. I really thought there was more.

Oh yeah, and then there is the woman, Teresa (Kaya Scodelario). She doesn’t have a lot of personality so I forget about her.

Needless to say, bad things happen at the new facility, so Thomas and Crew end up escaping. They gain the help of Aris (Jacob Lofland) and Winston (Alexander Flores), who helm them realize this place isn’t good. They are collecting kids from all over these mazes for some …wicked…reason.

Now they have to go into The Scorch, the name for the desert, and survive against the elements. And against the Cranks, which are like the infected humans that they are immune to. Basically zombies. Then they basically go from area to pre-established area, each with their own notable leader, who have their own new world agendas. They are kind of like a fleeting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Along the way they will meet Rosa Salazar, Giancarlo Esposito, Alan Tudyk, Barry Pepper, Lili Taylor, and of course, Patricia Clarkson.

But first, they are going to get sand in every nook and cranny.

At over two hours, The Scorch Trials thankfully tries to fit as much as possible onto the screen for us viewers. So much that it is hard to imagine the film as a whole. I’d rather break it down, which means I am going to make another Likes and Dislikes list. Last time I did this was with Avengers: Age of Ultron!

Likes:

• Right off the bat, things get tense and there is quite a lot of action in this movie.
• The soundtrack can keep you mostly on the edge of your seat!
• The Cranks/zombies are an interesting add on to the series. They are fast zombies basically and it was totally unexpected. Some of there scenes were quite terrifying, helping blend this into a more hardcore Dystopian future film.
• For the most part, beautifully shot with great camera work.

Dislikes:

• The intelligence of the characters would not be consistent. They would do something really smart, but then something terribly stupid just so the plot could lazily move forward. The standing around during the sewer scene is a prime example.
• There continues to be very cringeworthy dialogue.
• The film feels like it doesn’t have a cohesive story to follow. Just a bunch of small barely connected parts. And like I said, the main characters don’t feel special, they just feel like they are meandering in the middle of something way bigger than themselves and they are insignificant.
• One scene in particular where a character does a “Noble Suicide” because he is going to turn into a Crank. How? By shooting himself in the head and telling everyone to leave him alone an keep walking. Not only was I pretty sure they were out of bullets by then, but also what the fuck, you are about to die, you don’t need to keep the gun. Just kill yourself so they can get the gun back. There are fucking zombies out there.
• The glass breaking window scene was as nonsensical as they come.
• Teresa was so useless. She was like an emotionless blog used to move the plot forward, usually thanks to Thomas trying to do something for her.

This may read as being a bit nitpicky, but in all honesty, there were a lot of cool moments, and a lot of bad minor or stupid moments. After a second movie I feel like I should actually know more about what happened on this planet. If there is one movie left I feel like I should know more about their overall end goal by now, instead of running around like headless chickens.

I was pretty sure I would have given this film a 2 when I started writing it, because at least I was entertained in the film and I was even scared at points. But a disappointing finale, along with a lot of scenes that made me tilt my head in confusion, leads me to realize this is poorly put together. When your film starts to break down once you think back on events and plot points, that is never a good sign.

Hell, this is the same reason why the last Transformers movie got a 1 instead of a 2. Plot doesn’t hold up. Hopefully the third movie can restore some sort of awe and greatness to this franchise. And, you know, not just be a spray painted golden turd.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {DVD}.

Movies in 2014 brought us some incredibly new and wonderful experiences. Boyhood took 12 years to film, doing a little bit each year to watch the actors grow old. Birdman was edited in a fine way to make it seem like just one long continuous shot. Both fantastic films, my 1 and 2 from the year.

But there was another movie that was unique last year that interested me. The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby. On its own, it doesn’t seem like that innovative of a film. However, it is collectively three films in one.

On the surface it is just about a relationship. Specifically, the three versions are called Him, Her, and Them. Him is the plot from mainly the guy’s point of view and Her is the girl’s point of view. Them is a more typically told story, telling bits and pieces of their sides and is a much more standard film.

And I wanted to see it all of 2014. I wanted to watch it as soon as it hit Blu-Ray. It has been on Netflix for months, all three parts! Welcome to Day 3 of my Fucking Finally week.

First comes love…

Conor (James McAvoy) and Eleanor (Jessica Chastain) have had a long relationship. They even married! Serious stuff. But no one would describe their lives as remarkable. Eleanor came from an academic family, but left her PhD program in Anthropology, when she got pregnant. Conor is the son of a restaurant God in NYC, who also has bad relationships, and is now attempting to run his own restaurant without his dad’s help.

But then one of the worst things happen. They lost their baby boy, really young. Their grief came in different ways, driving a wedge between them. After a few months, Eleanor wants to take a brake from their relationship, frustrated where things are going, and that is really where our story begins.

In Him, we mostly get to see Conor flailing about trying to deal with his emotions by repressing them like a motherfucker. They still come out in bursts, like when he has attacked unruly customers. His best friend and chef (Bill Hader) is even getting sick of his shit.

Conor sort of starts to stalk Eleanor a little bit as well, following her around but never having the courage to talk to her until he resorts back to a kid in middle school and passes her a note, quite creepily. His story also features Ciaran Hinds as his father, and Nina Arianda as an employee who has feelings for him.

Then comes stalking after heartbreak and sadness…

In Her, we don’t even see Conor for the until the awkward scene above. James McAvoy is barely in this film and it is definitely all about Eleanor.

It starts with her injury and then her going on her own to the hospital. Eleanor decides to go home with her parents and sister. The mom (Isabelle Huppert) is French through and through, always seen with a glass of wine. Her dad (William Hurt) is still a psychologist at the local university, and her younger sister (Jess Weixler) has a little boy of her own, but no man or boyfriend in her life. She was already living with the parents still. Her family tries to get her help, but can’t seem to provide enough help on their own, the awkwardness of the whole situation. Some psychology degree, am I right?

So she does go to the local college to take a few classes. There she develops a nice bond with another psychology professor (Viola Davis), who is able to talk to her like a real person about normal things, since she knows nothing about Eleanor’s last few months. Her time alone allows Eleanor an attempt to find herself, and interact with Conor on her own terms in her own ways. Slowly, surely, and eventually full of hope.

In Them, it is the longest of the films at just over 2 hours. However, it is literally just everything you seen before. You still get the scenes between them, but this time you also get some of their individual scenes.

Them is packaged in a way so that it can be their complete story in a regular time frame for a regular movie. A movie about sadness and grief and how two different people cope. Technically, some of the scenes between them we see from a few different angles, but it is just a cram packed version with less individual detail on each character. Although, when watching it, it still felt like it featured a lot more of Her than Him.

Then comes alcohol to end all of the sadness!

Five hours, twelve minutes. That is how long watching these three movies took overall. That is if you want the full experience. The good news? You don’t have to see all three for the full experience!

In fact, you shouldn’t watch all three, and definitely not in the same week. You should only watch Him and Her, or Them, not all three. If you just watch the first two, you will get a very unique experience and you will get it in three hours, nine minutes. A much more reasonable amount of time. If you are feeling lazy or want a very regular saddish drama, then just go for Them. Its like a not very effective cliff notes.

Now, I watched them in Him, Her, and Them order because it just seemed to make sense. I knew the films were about the woman leaving, so it makes since to keep some mystery and watch Him before Her. Doing so allowed the film to answer questions are different times and felt like the best experience.

This only matters if you care about my recommendation of course. The best experience would just be Him and Her, no Them, because it is mostly repetitive. It sucks that I cannot wipe Him/Her from my memory before Them to give an unbiased review of it. But Them on its own didn’t feel like a great movie. Obviously I had the issues of it being full of scenes I had already seen (does that sound weird?), but it also cut out a lot of other scenes that I felt were necessary.

That’s right. Watching the condensed two hour version felt lacking. Shocking discovery, I know.

Them is Shit. Him and Her combined are a good experience. If you were going to watch just one of Him and Her, it won’t be good. It would just be odd and you don’t want to be odd.

Oh yeah, for whatever reason, the movies end differently. I have no idea why this happens, but Her has the best ending, in my ever so humble movie reviewer opinion.

Video game movies are big these days, said no movie executive ever. There has never been a more consistently bad source to generate movie ideas from. And to think, just eight years ago, a movie studio already made that bad choice for this franchise. In 2007, Hitman came out and everyone ignored it. I know I did. It is an average to good game series, depending on your creativity, but anyone could look at it and tell it wouldn’t make a great movie that also was truly representative of the game itself.

That is not saying that you can’t make a movie about Hitmen. They are pretty frequent actually. It is just this hitman in particular and his story that no one would care about in a film.

But now we have Hitman: Agent 47. The only reason I can imagine this existing is because the actually Hitman game series has a new release this year as well, and they are trying to do this big worldwide assassination network, and this movie might give them positive buzz before that comes out in December.

These are the type of people who like to say that there is no such thing as bad PR. Technically true, but also fuck you, don’t make shitty headlines.

This shooting style makes more sense when you realize the third eye on the back of his head.

If you listen to the narrator, you may learn that back in the mid 1900’s, some dude made a special science serum thing that could turn people into wonderful killing machines! It made them emotionless, not worrying about fear or guilt or any of that silly stuff that prevent people from killing people. Oh and of course it made them stronger, faster, the whole nine yards. It was awesome. But then Dr. Litvenko (Ciarán Hinds) runs away. He gets the hell out of there. Moral reasons, or something. Who knows. Now he is missing and no one has any knowledge on how to recreate his formulas, basically ending the “Agent” program then and there.

UNTIL NOW OF COURSE. Syndicate International, totally not an evil sounding organization, is close to finalizing everything and they need to find Litvenko to figure it out completely. Sure, they have parts finished, but they will never be as great as a real, pure, Agent. So SI realized they might be able to find him if they can find his daughter, Katia (Hannah Ware), instead. Brilliant! Especially if she knew where he was. She has been searching most of her life too.

What’s that? Dude in a suit and red tie (Rupert Friend) is trying to kill her as well? And some big bushy eyed John Smith (Zachary Quito) fellow is protecting her and telling her crazy stories about assassins and agents? This is all probably incredibly confusing for her, just now being introduced to the concept and what those types of men are looking for.

And yeah. A lot of people die. Angelababy plays the handler of Agent 47 and Thomas Kretschmann is the head of the Syndicate.

“Emotionless lethal killer is after me? But I love Hayden Christensen!”

Hitman is a movie that should be all about “dat sweet action,” but for some reason, tries to give a detailed and complex plot to go with the action. There is nothing wrong with plot. Plot is fantastic. I love plot. I also love my plot to be a bit sensical. A narrator does its best job to just throw information out of the screen, right away, to catch you up on all this backstory. Why have backstory at all? Who knows, because it is a stand alone film, there has to be better ways of creating a plot than over a minute of computerized awkward exposition to start the movie. The bigger problem with that narration is that because it went very quickly, it wasn’t even that helpful. It told a few facts about things that happened, but barely explained any of the why, and it just left me confused first few minutes into the film.

And things didn’t make any real sense until about a half hour (Guessing) into the film, once all the twists and turns were finally settled. After that they did a good job of mostly focusing on the action, because the remaining plot was quite simple after that point. But if anything, watching a very simple action movie should not leave the confused. Confused at how a few people can fall and land on train tracks made of wood and metal and surrounded by lots of rocks? Sure. Science shenanigans. But not confused as to why every single character with a name is acting the way they do.

That is the main problem. A shit plot. Because a lot of the action scenes are quite entertaining. There are obvious throw backs to the game, including outfit changes, sneaking objects, and the multitude of weapons.

But even our main character, who played the scoundrel Mr. Wickham in Pride and Prejudice, doesn’t seem to be a great fit either. He technically has the look, aka a bald head and suit. Somehow his emotionless acting doesn’t seem to fit for a character that is supposed to lack emotions. Every time he speaks, it just sounds like a scrawny young adult in this situation, never a bad ass killing machine.

Hear that Hollywood? Plot isn’t always the most important part of a movie. Sexy action is. So keep it simple, keep it elegant, keep it extreme. And then we can give you money for entertaining us.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {DVD}.

I feel like I am constantly fighting a losing battle. Right now I only go to one pre-screening a week (two if a special occasion) and rarely see new things in theaters, unless I have a super strong desire. It seems like when given a choice every week, I will end up picking the serious drama or action movie, skipping the comedy. I have actually skipped a lot of comedies. They just don’t have the same strong pull from them to see them on the big screen. They are things that I can easily wait for a DVD release to rent at home and watch alone with ice cream.

Anyways, every time I think I am about to catch up on the last few comedies, a few more come out. I skip those in theaters and this endless cycle continues as always.

Hot Pursuit is not the end of my journey. Since then this summer, there are at least two other major comedies that came out that I am waiting to be released. Oh well, I will sally forth and hopefully giggle a bit.

A movie with two female leads and they aren’t shoving sexuality in my face? I’m not mad, just surprised really!

Rose Cooper (Reese Witherspoon) is the kind of person everyone will collectively hate. She is focused on only one thing, her career, and it enters all aspects of her life. You see, her dad used to be a cop and was the best on the force. So she grew up with just him and went on a lot of ride alongs. She learned the lingo, learned everything, she just didn’t learn how to be social. Now she is an adult and in the evidence room because she is apparently also slightly retarded despite the fact that she should be a super cop.

But now she has a field mission! Her and a US Marshall (Richard T. Jones) have to head down to South Texas to pick up two people for the witness protection program. Felipe (Vincent Laresca) and Daniella Riva (Sofia Vergara) are going to witness against the cartel leader Vincente Cortez (Joaquin Cosio)! Scary! It is very time sensative, they need to be at the courthouse the next day to testify. If they go too early, they might get hitmen after them or something! Cooper gets to go, because if there is a female witness, there needs to be a female officer. Oh well, she will take anything.

Of course, after they show up, some armed intruders break in and kill Felipe and the Marshall, leaving Cooper all alone with Daniella. She can’t trust anyone, because who knows who is on Cortez’s payroll. So she has to figure out how to get her to the trial on her own, in one piece, with multiple sides now coming against us. Basically, a great first real field assignment.

Also featuring a bunch more dudes, including: Matthew Del Negro, Michael Mosley, Robert Kazinsky, Jim Gaffigan, John Carroll Lynch, Michael Ray Escamilla, and Benny Nieves.

Oh good. Slightly better outfits for the pervs out there.

To continue with the trend I mentioned earlier, unsurprisingly, Hot Pursuit was not that funny. Honestly. One actually great scene, which is the main reason the review gets a 1. It involved cocaine and characters on said drug. Fantastic. Comedy gold. Everything else was just a slow, dull bore.

There were plot twists! They weren’t good. There were jokes in English and Spanish! They weren’t good. Witherspoon’s character was so uptight, by the book, and yet dumb! That wasn’t funny. Vergara kept trying to run away! Wasn’t funny. Maybe a scene where they badly try to act like lesbians to get out of a jam? Nope, still not funny.

Sorry for spoiling most of the movie.

But damn. If I had to give the movie any credit, Witherspoon was definitely acting like a different person. She had a strange accent and everything.

Hot Pursuit is a hot mess from start to finish and is not worthy of anyone’s time or attention.

2015 has been a weak ass year for musicals. Basically we have a film or two that feature Anna Kendrick singing, a shitty terrible no good animated jukebox musical, and a made for TV mess. And the future doesn’t look bright either.

So I was a bit excited to hear about Lucky Stiff, a musical movie based off a real musical that was done in a theater. Because by golly, that means we are going to get something a bit unique with real singing in it. Not some quick to DVD jukebox musical that takes zero effort to produce.

There is still hope that a singing film without Kendrick this year is worth a watch.

This one lacks Kendrick, but its most famous actor in it is this guy so…fuck.

Harry Witherspoon (Dominic Marsh) is a poor, down on his luck, shoe salesman. He is the kind of guy who no one would care about. I don’t even care about him and we just met! But then he gets a telegram. Crazy right? Why would Harry get a telegram? Who would pay money to send him a message? Harry’s Landlady (Jayne Houdyshell) and I agree about this. It is bizarre.

Turns out he had an American uncle, Tony (Don Amendolia), who died and had his hands on some money. He is going to leave Harry, his last surviving relative, 6 million dollars in cash, but only if agrees to a few terms first. You know, like taking Uncle Tony to Monte Carlo and having a very detailed fun week of living life up to the max, which is something Tony always wanted to do. And don’t worry. His body has been prepared nicely by a taxidermist, so he won’t smell or be super gross. He will just be in a wheel chair and ready to party. So he has to Weekend at Bernie’s the whole situation.

But of course there is a catch. If he doesn’t follow the instructions to a letter, all of the money will instead go to a dog charity. For real dogs. Man what a waste! The humans in charge are interested in the money though, so they send Annabel Glick (Nikki M. James) to spy on them and potentially sabotage them to get that sweet cash.

That is still too easy. Which is why we have Rita LaPorta (Pamela Shaw), who claims to be the one who shot Tony accidentally, given that she is legally blind. They had an affair going on and her husband go jealous, but they also embezzled six million dollars of which he hid. So she wants it, and she wants her optometrist brother (Jason Alexander) to go with her.

There. Now we have a proper clusterfuck.

What? You want more? Fine. Let’s throw in Dennis Farina, Kate Shindle, and Kent Avenido, who was totally on like, three episodes of Glee, in which he was excellent.

“I’m too drunk to taste this chicken!” – I assume the Colonel Sanders looking motherfucker said this at least once.

Lucky Stiff was a weird movie. I sincerely hope you got that from the description. Very weird, bizarre at times, and technically because occasionally a character will break out in song makes it even stranger.

The average movie goer would look at this film and potentially quit halfway just because of how awkward it is, but thankfully I like strange films. I cannot say the acting is great. I can’t say all of the songs are enjoyable, nor can I say that any of them really stuck with me after the movie was over. In fact, the musical-ness was an afterthought. Everything was overacted (I believe intentionally) just to give this extreme zany atmosphere, I’d imagine it like a Mad TV sketch gone on too long.

But it was slightly entertaining, in the smallest ways, just because it was weird.

I should also note that the female lead, Nikki M. James, is actually a fantastic singer, and played the main female role in The Book of Mormon, winning the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical. You should see her acceptance speech, because it made me tear up. And then it made me realize how sad it is that someone can win something like a Tony, but not be able to still necessarily make it as a great actress.

Because for what it is worth, this film is technically terrible. The weirdness element could only carry me so far, but by the end I was just waiting for it to end. Oh well. Hopefully some smaller good musicals pop up by the end of the year. Pleaseee.

When I was a very young kid, I was in a dark place. But then it was my birthday and since then my life has been nothing but light! I might take this joke out before I publish this review.

A few things intrigued me about Dark Places. One, the pretty heavy cast. A lot of people I like to see pretending to be other people in movies and television are in this movie!

And two, it is based on the book written by Gillian Flynn. No, I have never read any of her books before, but I have seen Gone Girl, which was based on her book. Gone Girl was CRAZY good too. If you missed the movie, you need to time travel back to 2014 and hit that thing up right now. Or find it through regular mortal beings.

If the author has the same awesome level of mystery and great dialogue, this film can be just as great. Even without Affleck.

Jeez, even more people who don’t know what to do with their hands.

Little Libby Day (Sterling Jerins) was the only surviving member of a massacre at her home. He mother (Christina Hendricks) and two older sisters were killed through various means. Her brother, Ben (Tye Sheridan) was accused of murdering his family and part of the reason for his sentencing is that Libby testified saying she saw her brother do it. But that was a lie. Libby Day began to live through the government and was given a nice fund by generous donations to help her live in the future.

Well, the future is now, and adult Libby (Charlize Theron) is practically out of money. She can’t jut ask for more, because no one cares about her. She is old news, and there are girls everyday surviving tragedies who actually need help. Libby has been extremely apathetic about everything in life so she has never gained any skills or actually gotten a job in her life.

But she has a letter from a fan, Lyle Wirth (Nicholas Hoult) who wants her to come down to tell her story and get paid. She tends to avoid these sorts of things because she doesn’t like to revisit her past. It is kind of a…dark…place…for her. Turns out Lyle is a member of a group called The Kill Club. They are a bit obsessed with murder stories and like to examine the evidence, clues, whatever to determine if the real murderer was caught. And some of them are creepy reinactors, but we don’t talk to them.

Desperate for cash, Libby agrees to go along with their questions and help talk to people for their investigation. They believe Ben (Corey Stoll) to be innocent despite him never choosing to appeal the details of the case! But that can’t be. Mysteries and shit.

Also featuring Andrea Roth, Chloe Grace Moretz, Denise Williamson, Jeff Chase, and Sean Bridgers.

Hendricks in something set in the past? New territory for her!

Have you ever been to a sweet restaurant and have the best time, only to return a second time where they burn your food and don’t even care enough to fix it? That is what watching Dark Places felt like. It is possibly unfair to compare this so much to Gone Girl, but the same person wrote both books that the films were based off of. Here are some notable differences though. Gone Girl was directed by David Fincher who is a fantastic director, while Dark Places was directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner who is not well known. He did the movie Sarah’s Key, which I thought was okay. The screenplay for Gone Girl was also actually written by Gillian Flynn, while the screenplay for Dark Places was written by…Gilles Paquet-Brenner, again.

So hey, maybe the reason this movie was so damn boring was the director/writer himself. But for all I know, the source material was also shit and Gone Girl is her own good book. Hard to say, but the talent behind the camera in this movie was not as great as Gone Girl.

But yeah, boring. Dark Places successfully created an overall dark atmosphere for the whole film, both in the past and present. But it never felt like it used these settings appropriately. It felt long and drawn out. The actual mystery was not only a let down, but kind of shit as well. It didn’t make a lot of sense and there wasn’t a real ability to figure it out from clues before the end, which is usually a nice feature for a mystery.

The let down the viewer will receive once all of the truth comes out it a complete bummer. More so in that it means the other 90% of the film you sat through with only the occasional interesting scene was also a bit of a waste. Dark Places put me in a dark place and made me not even want to write this review.

I have been actively stalling watching The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It used to be so easy, all I had to do was say, “Oh sorry Cathy. I haven’t seen the first one yet, that would be improper!” Cathy isn’t a real person, but the point is real. I was golden.

And then I fucking did it. I watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Part of me was feeling sentimental and I wanted to see Dev Patel since The Newsroom was over. And since Chappie disappointed, that was my easiest solution.

You may not remember, but both Chappie and TSBEMH came out to theaters on the exact same date, both featuring Patel. So logically, one would assume there is no way both of his movies on the same day would be a disappointment. Right?

At least the dancing is already better in this one than Chappie.

Since the last film, there are two major updates worth noting.

One, Sonny (Patel) is finally getting married to Sunaina (Tina Desai), yay!

Two, the hotel wants to expand! They want to make a second hotel, they just need investors. Muriel (Maggie Smith) is basically co-running the hotel at this point too, so she is involved with that. The main investor is going to send an undercover guest to see how the run their ship before bringing the cash, so they have to be on guard and make sure everything runs swell. What’s that? Two people randomly coming to stay out of nowhere (Richard Gere, Tamsin Greig). Gee, I wonder who could be the undercover person!

Back to the marriage plot, because Sonny is apparently a spastic piece of shit, he is way too over hyped to make the new guest feel amazing, to get the deal, that he ignores his wife and wedding preparations. Even worse, he lashes out on Kushal (Shazad Latif), who is back in town, because he thinks Kushal sucks and actually thinks he is trying to take his fiance away from him. Not that he does a damn thing about it but mope uncontrollably.

Ahem, we also have a bunch of returning people as well. We have Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie, Ronald Pickup, and Diana Hardcastle. I could tell you their plots as well, but then you would be drowned in information and well, not everything should be explained.

Including Gere probably doubled the entire movie budget.

Now that I have the nifty stars on top of the review, you can already tell I am disappointed in this movie. Which is a shame, because I gave an average rating to the first film and definitely believed in my head that the second movie would do better. It was like an origins story for a superhero. A lot of times the second film can be better, because we don’t have to deal with the character before they are a hero, they can be a hero the whole film!

No instead we got a couple main plot lines that just were not good. As I already mentioned, I hated Sonny in this film. In the first, he was a stubborn, lovable, idiot. In this film, he is obsessed, jealous, and a fool. He almost does nothing right. I have to say almost, because by the end of the film he does a few right things, because is the type of film to end on a happy note, not one that will end in failure and defeat. It is obvious going into it.

However these plot lines are just so dull, outside of Sonny’s character ruining it. As for the other stars, none of their plots are compelling either. Someone cheating, someone deciding on who to love, someone who can’t remember scripts, and someone who wants to make sure he doesn’t accidentally hire an assassin. Okay, that last bit was a little bit amusing, but that was it.

TSBEMH was a completely forgettable movie. I hope they don’t make a third, and I hope Patel gets better movies soon.

I know, I know, I’ve been reviewing too many movies lately. And I know, I know, recently I reviewed Teen Beach 2, a Disney Channel original movie, but that was for a special occasion. It and its predecessor were milestone reviews, and thus, weird things were acceptable. Add in High School Musical and you will see the only Disney Channel Original movies I have reviewed have been musicals.

So why Descendants? Is it just to confuse my readers who might it get confused with the amazing The Descendants? Nope. It is because I used to watch these movies all the time. Not to show my age, but the new monthly movie used to be something special. (WARNING! WARNING! NOSTALGIA APPROACHING!) I was able to see things like Zenon, The Luck of the Irish, Motorcrossed, Cadet Kelly and more. I am not including Halloweentown, because Halloweentown sucked.

And you know what, those films are probably terrible now. But maybe Descendants is just like them. The plot has potential for an adult to enjoy. Maybe it is better than them. Maybe they can make a decent film that involves no music.

Alternatively, someone should review every single one of these films, while drunk. I am sure your website would get way more visitors than my own.

Not a scene from the film, but damn it, too many important characters to ignore.

JUST KIDDING IT IS TOTALLY A MUSICAL TOO, I WAS WRONG.

Ahem. Ben (Mitchell Hope) is the son of the Beast (Dan Payne) and Belle (Keegan Connor Tracy, who is also in Once Upon A Time), and wants to make his first proclamation as almost king! You see, a long time ago, after his parents got married, they brought all the kingdoms together under one rule, which apparently is a bunch of Disney stuff. They then took all the bad people and left them on a magical island to live out their days all sad and shit.

Those bad people also had kids, so Ben wants to give a few of them a chance and bring them over to rich people awesome boarding school. He only wants the worst of them for now, for a trial run. And apparently the four worst on the island are…

Mel (Dove Cameron), daughter of Maleficent (Kristin Chenoweth), Evie (Sofia Carson), daughter of The Evil Queen (Kathy Najimy), Jay (Booboo Stewart), son of Jafar (Maz Jobrani), and Carlos (Cameron Boyce), son of Cruella de Vil (Wendy Raquel Robinson).

Great! Now their kids can carry on their parents wishes. Mel needs to steal a wand to free them from the island, Evie needs to find a prince to marry to take over his castle, Carlos needs to…I dunno, kill a puppy or something, and Jay needs to just steal stuff like a criminal street rat.

So it should be easy! They just need to also deal with, you guessed it, high school life. Girls, boys, class, sports, balls, homework, mutts. All of this wonderful stuff. And hey, a big plot line involves them using magic to make the hair of some of the girls at school prettier. Actually, that is a big plot line. Like, top 3.

Of course this asks the question, do you have to be like your parents, or can you sing yourself into a better position?

The rest of the cast is basically made up of people just to name drop. Like Mulan’s dauhgter, Lonnie (Dianne Doan), Aurora’s daughter, Audrey (Sarah Jeffery), Chad Charming (Jedidiah Goodacre), the Fairy Godmother (Melanie Paxson) and her daughter (Brenna D’Amico), and Doug! (Zachary Gibson), son of…Dopey. Sure. Whatever.

Yeah, no one likes Beast when he goes human. Booo. Hiss.

Somehow before this point, I have already reached 600 words in the review. Shame, because I have a bunch more to go!

I was definitely surprised to hear music in this film, kind of came out of nowhere. It was mostly okay. Some songs were bad. The Song “If Only” was decent, however it featured the worst lip singing from Mel and featured a lot of flashbacks from the movie during it. The movie isn’t that long and the song happened halfway through the film, so there wasn’t really much to flashback, or a need at all.

It also had too many central characters, not knowing what to do with them. Carlos was afraid of dogs at the start, and then liked them? Okay, boring. Jay just…stole things for a little bit then played sports and also was sent to the background. Jafar probably had two whole lines and waste wasted. Cruella de Vil was turned into a crazy lady.

Speaking of de Vil, how in the fuck is that the best they have to work with? Not only does 101 Dalmations not even remotely fit in timeline wise with the rest of them (And Aladdin is a huge stretch), it is a lady who wanted to kill some dogs for their fur. They say she is one of the top evil people there, and that is just bananas. I cannot even begin to let that be any amount of believable.

The villains all live together in one house too. And literally no one is married outside of Belle/Beast. Each of these kids only knows about their evil parent, the other member just completely gone.

Descendants is an average to good concept for fiction, it truly is. But it seems they half-assed the whole film. If they kept it to just Mel/Evie, it could probably be a stronger film (but the male demographic!!). Too much wasted potential. They are apparently going to turn it into animated series later this year, which is a great place for it. With a cartoon some of these characters can actual gain some depth and not just background pieces to Mel.