Tag: 1 out of 4

Who would have thought that the little girl from The Nanny would become the most famous person on a movie cover?

Of course, Madeline Zima is no longer famous for that reason. It is for her bare all performance on the incredibly slow Californication. Regardless of why she is famous, she is now the reason I picked up Breaking The Girls to review today.

Also, the term “breaking” in the title has my imagination running wild.

Poor little old Sara (Agnes Brucker). She is a nice girl, she is. But because she pissed off the wrong classmate, Brooke (Shanna Collins), she is potentially getting expelled from class for doing something she didn’t do. But she has met Alex (Zima), and although she never fancied herself a lesbian, she apparently fell for her charm.

Next thing you know, they are living together. That sure did move fast. Alex is mad at her dad (John Stockwell), who is totally rich, but not letting her live her life the way she wants to. So drunkenly they decide to kill each other’s nemesis! They will both have alibis, and there is no way people could put them working together, if they live together! (Dumb).

Next thing you know, Alex actually goes through with the plan, much to the surprise of Sara. Alex also made it possible to blame Sara with the deed if she didn’t end up keeping her half of the bargain. Yep, you done messed with the wrong lady.

Also starring Shawn Ashmore…somehow, and Davenia McFadden as the main police person.

Oh, he is in the movie as guy who helps drunk ladies! That’s nice.

I was actually excited to watch this movie, and accept it as a thriller. I was ready for the twists and the turns. But the twists near the end didn’t make a whole lot of sense (When you compare them to actions earlier in the film), and the ending was pretty lame because of it.

The acting through out it was pretty poor, and really, I don’t why I keep talking. This part of the review is basically filler, because I have jack shit to say that’s really good about this movie. I guess it sort of had a Wild Things vibe going with it, so I am surprised it just isn’t another of its many bad sequels.

But by the time the movie is about to finish, they throw another twist your way. Unfortunately by that time, I stopped caring.

Last time, when I reviewed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I didn’t get to see it in the 48 FPS 3D version until about a week later. But this time, times are a changing, and I can talk a bit about that too. I ended up liking the super detailed high frame rate for the first film, so I am of course excited to see right away this time.

But I am also stoked for a second reason. Now I don’t have to watch The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug twice within a week in theaters. I don’t care how good it is. Ain’t got time or money for that now. I don’t like to watch these LOTR movies a lot anyways. Once in theaters, and once eventually an extended version.

This picture does not do justice to how BAMF he actually looked on screen, 3D, 48 fps.

Plot outlines for this seems dumb. I assume everyone knows the story?

This movie starts out with Bilbo (Martin Freeman), Gandalf (Ian McKellen), and the Dwarven friends (Ricahrd Armitage, Ken Stott, and more) on the run, orcs still chasing them. Some stuff happens, and Gandalf has to leave again to go figure out some necromancer stuff.

This causes the gang to get in lots of trouble. Trouble with spiders, and then the wood elves (Where we meet Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), who totally gets the hots for a Dwarf. Odd!). Some escapes happen, they eventually get to Laketown, meet Bard (Luke Evans), sort of help an uprising, and get their way to the mountain! After all, they only have so much time to get there, before the secret entrance is no longer revealed.

Then we finally meet a dragon, Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch), who just wants to get his sleep on, but bitches be burglin’, so he has to get his rage on.

“Damn it Bilbo, I will not draw you like a french girl. Stop asking!” – Smaug

The term desolation might not mean what it used to mean. With a title like that, and if you already know The Hobbit story, you then know when this movie is going to stop at.

But you’d be wrong.

After seeing this movie in theaters, I left with an overall bad taste in my mouth, definitely something I didn’t see coming, and rather unfortunate, due to the size and nature of this movie.

I should reiterate, I don’t care what the the book story is, and the sideplots they added from other source material to make these movies. More interesting plot lines never hurt anyone. But this movie is called The Hobbit and subtitled The Desolation of Smaug. A better, more descriptive title would have been Legolas Kicks Ass, and then they meet Smaug. Which is all this movie felt like to me.

Sure, there was a cool spider scene. The barrel escape was nifty. But plot line wise with this film, you would find a hard time figuring out what actually gets accomplished. Once they introduce Legolas, they almost forget about the other characters, and focus on how amazing he and Tauriel the other elf are at fighting. It becomes just a Legolas show when he is literally running around Laketown and taking out a whole Orc invasion pretty much on his own.

Smaug was very badass. That is very clear. He was a well made CGI creation, probably one of the better dragons I have ever seen in a CGI movie. The best scene in the movie for me was the initial encounter between Smaug and Bilbo, when Smaug toyed with Bilbo as he ran through the treasure piles. But eventually he felt like nothing more than a cheap cartoon villain, or something, once the Dwarves got involved and start to mess with him.

I understand that this movie is part of a series, but I felt like this one has done the worst job at still telling a complete and actual story. Each of the LOTR stories felt complete. Yes they had more to do, but they ended at appropriate points once the current biggest baddest climactic point was finished, the ones they were building up to for each film. An Unexpected Journey ends after a series of skirmishes, a close encounter with death, and the dwarves finally learning to accept Bilbo.

This movie LITERALLY ends right in the middle of a fight. What in the fuck. Is this Lost? Is this some show that needs cliffhangers? So instead of getting a complete story, I get part of a story. A 160 minute part of a story.

Here is a third picture, to give you a better scope of this movie.

So what is the main complaint? I guess, somehow, it is their change from 2 to 3 movies. A problem I didn’t have with the first one, but I believe in this one becomes very very apparent. This entire movie, save for a few scenes, felt like filler, working towards the third, probably more exciting and conclusive story.

I will reiterate, Smaug was great. The barrel scene was way better than I could have imagined. The spiders were interesting. But everything else just fell flat or felt repetitive. I felt no fear from the Orcs the entire movie. The appeared, they died, they kept appearing, they kept dying.

Peter Jackson might thing he is infallible now, given the original success, and other successes of stuff like The Adventures of TinTin, but for this film I think he reached too far.

Winnie Mandela? Who is that you might be asking.

Why, Nelson Mandela’s wife, of course!

Well, why does she get her own movie? Because she was an activist too, I guess. Why now? Most likely because the Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom movie just came out in theaters. It is trying to ride its success, like a cheap disney knock off.

But Winnie is still alive. What are her thoughts on this movie, that was made over 2 years ago and is just finally coming out now?

“I have absolutely nothing against Jennifer, but I have everything against the movie itself. I was not consulted. I am still alive, and I think that it is a total disrespect to come to South Africa, make a movie about my struggle, and call that movie some translation of a romantic life of Winnie Mandela.”

Those are all very fair points, Winnie!

Winnie does not approve of your shenanigans.

Winnie Mandela (Jennifer Hudson) was born in a strict rural poor area.

I feel like I should note that Jennifer Hudson is the third listed on the IMDB page. She is playing Winnie Mandela, in a movie called Winnie Mandela. But whatever.

Winnie is smart, she eventually gets to go to an American school, she is an activist, and she eventually, meets this lovely Nelson fellow (Terrence Howard).

TERRENCE HOWARD. PLAYING NELSON MANDELA.

Ahhhh!

Yeah, I am done describing this movie. Apartheid stuff. Betrayal, imprisonment, and eventual divorce due to pressure. But whatever. That is her awkward story, damn it.

Seriously. Look at him.

Much like the fears of the actual Winnie, the movie based on her life, doesn’t touch on a lot of her live, romanticizes things, and certainly isn’t a good film.

Poor woman. This is just another lesson that not everyone remotely famous needs a biographical movie. I can’t imagine this made any movie, and it is not a fantastic range of acting for any of the characters. Terrence does a nice Nelson voice, from what I can tell from other movies at least.

The movie starts with subtitles for everyone, but then switches to English later. Interesting. They do speak English in South Africa, but not 100%. So who knows what was going on there.

Anyways, I watched this hoping I could make fun of it for being horrible. It wasn’t horrible, just boring. So there aren’t really any good jokes to make. Minus Terrence Howard being Nelson Mandela. That is an observant based joke.

I have never really enjoyed stories about children and the Holocaust, mostly because I was flooded with them as required reading in middle school. The Diary of Anne Frank, Night, Number the Stars, and a whole lot more. Every single one of them just felt like the same story over and over again, with minor details changed. Repetition only bores me.

But The Book Thief is something different AND something new. The book came out within the last 10 years, and it is about a little German girl going through this experience, not someone sent to a concentration camp. It is a completely new point of view, with some other notable differences as well.

They hide someone below, not above. Brilliant!

You know, like the story being narrated by Death (Roger Allam). Yep, that is new!

But our main character is little Liesel (Sophie Nelisse). Her mother is giving her up for adoption for some reason, and en route, her brother dies mid trip. It is the late 1930s, she is around 12, and she is already used to death.

Her new mother, Rosa (Emily Watson), and father, Hans (Geoffrey Rush) take her on, for reasons not really ever touched on. Maybe they can’t have kids of their own? No idea.

Either way, with a new home, she has the same old problems. Hans realizes she can’t read and takes an interest in her education. Once she learns to read, she can’t stop. Not even when the Nazi party marches into town and holds a book burning event for…some reason. She likes books so much that she saves one from the pyre when no one is looking. That little thief.

Her life gets turned even more upside down when Max (Ben Schnetzer) comes knocking. Max is a Jewish man looking for a place to hide, coming to collect on a promise made by Hans during the first World War. Can Liesel keep a secret, and can she keep a low enough profile to make sure no one starts to suspect their ruse? Will she ever give in to the temptations of her very Aryan friend, Rudy (Nico Liersch)? Will the Nazis win the war? No. No they won’t.

Like. Really, really, really Aryan.

Well, it turns out just because something is new and different, it doesn’t mean it will be amazing.

One of my movie pet peeves happens when a film is set outside of America. When this happens, there are two routes movie makers can go with. They can either do the entire movie in the native language, and give us subtitles, or they can just do it in English. I always assume that when it is in English, they are obviously speaking their native language (in this case German), but we can fully understand the German.

But I hate it when they decide to do a bit of both. Usually this is English with some native language words thrown in to go for “Authenticity,” when really it just confuses my ear drums. The Book Thief goes this route, but also one step further. They have entire conversations and scenes in German with subtitles, before switching back to English which is the majority language of the movie. And honestly, it makes absolutely no sense why they keep switching to German. It is a bad directing move. To make matters worse, sometimes words are written in German, and sometimes English. No continuity whatsoever.

The Book Thief is a movie where the acting is pretty great from everyone involved, but it fails to tell a useful story. About 4/5 of the way into the film, I realized that I have no idea what this movie wanted to be about, the messages it wanted to convey, or where it wanted to go. There was some conflict, but outside of the “World War II” idea, there wasn’t a main conflict for the characters in the film to really overcome. It literally was just a story of a girl over a few years during World War II, and that was it. All of the potential major plotlines ended relatively quickly after they were brought up.

So the film lacks direction. As you could tell from the plot outline, a lot of the details seem to be missing. Throw on confusing speech patterns for the characters, and you got a lackluster film.

I feel like this could have been a great story, and it probably was in the book form, but the movie really failed to deliver. With such great acting, I am disappointed the story felt so flat.  If I read the book, the movie might have been a lot better, but I shouldn’t have to read a novel first to enjoy a movie.

I can’t believe I almost forgot about Homefront! Maybe because it doesn’t feel like a holiday movie? No idea. But this was the last movie I had on my mind when I went to go see movies coming out before Thanksgiving.

I guess what I am really saying is that a Red Dawn remake made a bit more sense than Homefront for the holidays.

Don’t stare too long. You will start assuming the smoke is some sort of strange facial hair.

Phil Broker (Jason Statham) is a former DEA agent. He is an excellently skilled fighter, in hand to hand combat and in gun shooting, sure, but really he was terrible at his job. The movie opens with him undercover in a Biker gang, four years of work. They are doing a drug bust finally, and from what I can tell as a movie viewer, he does everything wrong. Like reveal that he is undercover to the people he is bringing down, instead of pretending to get arrested too. He goes on a full on chase, and it ends with the death of the leader’s son, and the leader locked away.

So of course Phil goes into retirement and hiding. It is actually unclear if it was necessary, I guess. Because it isn’t witness protection, he just moves to a middle of no where place in Louisiana (which is somehow still in that same biker gang’s turf). So I don’t think he is hiding too hard.

Well, he lost his wife, and is now a single dad, with his daughter Maddy (Izabela Vidovic). He just wants to live a peaceful life, but there are rednecks here who hold grudges over the smallest things. Like when Maddy beats up a Bully, after warning him. So his parents (Kate Bosworth, Marcus Hester) hate Phil now.

So the brother in law, Gator (James Franco) gets involved, a local meth dealer boss here. So of course he knows people, has connections, blah blah blah. The tiny event turns big, and now the biker gang knows where he is, and people might die.

Annnd that’s about it. Winona Ryder plays a former crack whore (that’s the movie term, not mine), Omar Benson Miller a friend of Phil, and Clancy Brown the local sheriff.

Believe it or not, his character is not high right now.

So, right from the beginning, this movie began to disappoint. The undercover bust was one of the worst attempts at catching a criminal base that I ever saw. First, somehow their tactic included kill, not apprehend, as many of the gang members as possible. They took out the lights way before they were in position. The only prisoner they got was the leader, which is almost pointless. And of course Phil gave himself away at the first opportunity and didn’t even try to stay undercover.

I guess they had to find a bad way to get the movie started.

But after that, this was mostly a bad drama/action movie without a lot of the thriller moments implied from the trailer. With the trailer and the title being Homefront, they showed a lot of Statham in his house, preparing to defend it from a huge amount of attackers. A nice home invasion story, which would be the conclusion. Well, it wasn’t the conclusion, and he didn’t stay in the house. Right when they got there, he left the house, and then they did a bunch of shooting in the woods. The shooting itself went super quickly, and was in the dark, so we couldn’t see a lot of how it went down, depriving me of the action I deserve.

The drama components were bad. Too many scenes were tense for no reason. Statham was a huge dick to the local sheriff, who just wanted to know what was going on. Absolutely no reason.

He was a dick. And he wasn’t entertaining for me. That is all. Waste of potential of a movie. Franco was decent though.

Željko Ivanek.
Xander Berkeley.
Craig Fairbrass.
Bruce Davison.

These are all names that you may have seen before, but probably don’t recognize in big amounts. If you clicked their links and saw their pictures, you might recognize their face, but find that you can’t quite picture what you have seen them in before.

Timothy Omundson.
Mark Rolston.
Wade Williams.
J. C. MacKenzie.

Are you getting it now? These guys are those guys. Those character actor guys. The ones that make you go, oh yeah, That Guy…Who Was In That Thing.

These are the working actors, who don’t make million dollar blockbusters, and then can live at home with their family or months off not a worry in the world. These are the actors who aren’t doing it for the money, because their pay certainly isn’t a lot (unless they are a long running TV show maybe). These are the ones who love to act, who will do most any role, and sometimes even have to live paycheck to paycheck. These are the guys not going to be winning awards down the red carpet anytime soon. Nope. They can probably only get Emmys. Well that is not true, one of these guys was nominated for a Tony, but I forgot who.

It was one of these sixteen guys. Yeah. One of them.

Robert Joy.
Stanley Kamel.
Rick Worthy.
Paul Guilfoyle.

This documentary interviews all of these sixteen individuals and splices them together to tell a sort of story. We learn why they wanted to be an actor, what they were before acting, how their parents took the news, what their first big break was, what their favorite memories were, their regrets, the process into getting onto a new television show, what they have been doing lately, their interactions with fans when they have that “Oh shit, you are famous” moment, and their thoughts on fellow actors.

And that is about it.

Gregory Itzin.
W. Morgan Sheppard.
Zach Grenier.
Matt Malloy.

Honestly, early on, I was excited about this film. What a fun concept!

Then I got bored. Like, a third of the way in, I was already done. It seems like a good idea, to let us get to know these guys, and some of the stories were interesting. But I stopped caring pretty quickly. I don’t know if it is just the straight them talking format, and nothing else (because that is true), or what. But man. It turned into a snoozefest. I think it is only 80 minutes long, but it felt really really long.

Maybe the problem is that I just only knew like, half of these guys from things, and the rest felt like scrubs? Let’s go with that.

Either way. This documentary could have been a lot better.

I have been avoiding LUV for quite some time. Why?

Because it is fucking named LUV. What is that? That is dumb. I don’t like that.

But I do like reviewing things that I think will be stupid, so I guess I kind of have that going for me.

Oh, come on Common. You don’t look like you at all when you laugh.

Uncle Vincent (Common), I guess just Vincent, was locked up in prison for the last 8 years. But now he is out and he wants to make his life better. But first, he has a nephew, Woody (Michael Rainey Jr.). Vincent wants to open a high end crab shack, and Woody just wants to move from Baltimore to his mothers house in North Carolina (he was living with his grandmother).

Also including such fine actors such as Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton, Dennis Haysbert, Michael K. Williams, and Russell Hornsby.

You guys are doing it wrong. This looks nothing like the Abbey Road cover.

I STILL DON’T KNOW WHY THIS MOVIE IS NAMED LUV! Argh!

Well, it is an acronym, that I only knew existed once I saw the wikipedia page. Learning Uncle Vincent. The fuck? I mean, it makes sense, but why wasn’t that better advertised? LUV by itself is just silly.

Speaking of just silly, I liked the idea of this movie. It seemed like a good plot line for some nice drama, some crime, sure. Maybe even I would learn a life lesson or two. But it just didn’t deliver. Early on I was interested, but over time my apathy grew as what I felt looked like more and more ridiculous situations. I don’t mean ridiculous in the entertaining way either. Some sort of dramatic/crime ridiculousness, with a lot of guns, but without the excitement. It is hard to describe.

The ending was a bit of a dull too. I guess it was supposed to be surprising, but at that point, who gives a shit, right?

Learning Uncle Vincent, I don’t believe its a true story from the writer, in any way. Nope. But it is what it is, and I will go back to ignoring it.

In the end, The To-Do List will just be known for Aubrey Plaza‘s first lead role in a film, and nothing more.

Huh, that sentence would have made more sense at the end of the review, but I think it is too late now. Now the bias is set. Now you know where I am going with it. Oh well.

But I guess you already knew the movie might suck.

Brandy Klark (Aubrey Plaza) is your typical Boise, Idaho native. Her parents are pretty strict (Clark Gregg, Connie Britton), because her dad is a judge, so she was raised correctly. It is 1993, no internet to corrupt her, so she became Valedictorian of her graduating class. But she never really learned anything about sex or the human body. Only what she was told by her “slutty” friends (Alia Shawkat, Sarah Steele).

But after being forced into a college party, she sees someone. Rusty Waters (Scott Porter), an older guy, playing guitar. Oh em gee, so dreamy!

In fact, he almost has sex with her on accident. Oh snap! But he still doesn’t. She thinks it is because she isn’t an expert at sex, despite being an expert at everything else she does. So she makes a list of things to do over the summer, to elevate herself to sexual maturity, so that one day she can have sex with Rusty Waters. No matter who gets in the way.

Like her friend Cameron (Johnny Simmons) who clearly likes her. Also in the movie is Bill Hader as the pool owner, Rachel Bilson as the older more experienced sister, Donald Glover as a token black guy, and Andy Samberg as some local band guy.

See, there he is. At a House Party. Looking like Kid.

Really, just really, I got the feeling that no one really tried in this movie. Let me take a step back.

Aubrey Plaza does not act the same way she does in Parks and Rec, and other live interviews. That is presumably how she is. No, this character isn’t brooding, or sarcastic. It is just a overachieving girl, who wants a boy. So there is definitely acting in this movie.

It was definitely going for comedy, because it had a few amusing moments and a lot of shenanigans ended up happening. But nothing really struck a chord with me. IMDB tells me everyone is over 25 playing teens as part of the joke, but it isn’t a good joke. Why? Because that happens all the time. If they wanted to make that real joke, they should have gone even older. Make it super awkward.

Some situations were “Sex-awkward” which I guess is the main selling point. Virgins doing stuff! A nice girl being “slutty!” Oh the humanity. I will admit they were the most amusing part of the film, but even they fell short to me. But hey, Clark Gregg is in this movie. As a Conservative Judge! That sure is nifty.

In the end, The To-Do List will just be known for Aubrey Plaza’s first lead role in a film, and nothing more.

Sometimes life really sucks.

That is the case for Shane Crone. Shane is a gay man, and he has been wronged by the world, and this is a documentary to show what happened in his life.

I know for a fact I have read the story that happens in Bridegroom before, at least a year ago. It was a sad tale, and I didn’t know that it was the main plot of this movie.

Basically, Shane was in love. He was in a relationship with Thomas Bridegroom for about six years before a tragedy took his life. An unforeseen accident, that for all purposes should not have happened.

But what happened after was even more unseen and, well I won’t say more unfortunate, but still really bad.

I won’t harp on a lot of the details, but long story short: Thomas’ parents did not approve of his lifestyle, despite the fact that he was with Shane for six years. Because they couldn’t get married, Shane had no say in what happened to Thomas post death and was cut out of his life in more than just the one way. He could not see him in the hospital, he could not lay claim to any of their combined things, and he was threatened by members of the family in order to keep him away from the funeral, which he also had no say in.

And that sucks. Like a lot. Like I couldn’t imagine anything like that happening. There are some bad people out there at all.

But on the flip side…there is no good reason for this to be made into a full documentary. Because all it does it spend most of the time talking about their relationship and the good times they had together, then the last act of tragedy and bad things happening. It didn’t delve into government regulations or laws, or even demand change. It just told the story of a relationship that ended and had a lot of bad things happen to it.

I know why they talked so long about the relationship, but really, most of it didn’t matter. This feels like it would have just made more sense as a euology for Tom, and not a film meant to make people emotional. Because honestly, I thought the documentary did just an overall poor job of telling the story and making me feel anything. Sure, it could be because I heard the story before, but having all of that build up didn’t enhance the experience, it just made me more apathetic.

On its own, this documentary doesn’t say much and isn’t too important. I again think it sucks that it happened, and hey, everyone should be married. Will this movie help change laws? Maybe. But it isn’t made effectively to help try and do that. This would have worked a lot better if it was cut in half, and the bad parts were given more screen time, in my opinion. But at 80 minutes, it even feels too long.

Not every bad event needs a movie. I am worried the director of the movie came by and wanted to do this just to make a quick buck, outside of just being crushed by the story. It seems a bit forced, and I just didn’t like it.

Prince Avalanche has the distinction of being the only indie movie this week to come out and actually catch my interest. That interest is easily described coming from two factors.

One – It has a name of Prince Avalanche. What is going on there? I want to be a royal disaster, too!

Two – It has Paul Rudd in it. This might have helped my decision even more than note one.

Well, it is good that the people in this movie work hard.

Alvin (Rudd) and Lance (Emile Hirsch) are construction workers, more or less, working in a remote area. Super remote. Like, only tagging three actors overall remote. It is also set in the 1980s, so a lot of technological luxuries are not present. Just two guys and a truck. Monday through Friday, they work and camp out in the area, drawing lines on the high way, random other bullshit work, who really knows. But on the weekend they can continue with their social lives and interact with their loved ones.

Alvin has a girlfriend, and that girlfriend’s brother happens to be Lance. Aw. It is like they decided together to work this summer because they already knew each other kind of.

They are pretty different, Alvin is a lot more calm and stern, while Lance isn’t an exceptionally hard worker and not really self confident. So he is learning a lot from Alvin.

But things happen in their social lives, those things bringing back both positive and negative energy back to their work environment, making it potentially very difficult.

Also, there is a truck driver (Lance LeGault) who has some speaking lines more than once in this film. Hello truck driver man!

Oooh, they play hard as well!

I really do hate writing reviews out of movies that I get practically nothing out of.

Prince Avalanche is an indie comedy/drama, a pretty standard one at that. What do I mean? I mean not a lot happens in this movie, despite being the length of a normal movie. Realism is taken to the extreme, and we have two guys who work, play, and talk with each other, sometimes yell, and that is about it. Writing that plot description pained me because I really didn’t imagine writing more than two sentences. So if it sounded like stalling, yeah, it basically was.

Not a lot from this story grasped my interest in any way, so it really felt like a battle to get through. The acting? Sure, its okay. Pretty “regular” if anything.

I’d say avoid. It isn’t a complete piece of shit, just felt like a complete waste of time.