Tag: 2 out of 4

I am mostly certain I wouldn’t have seen All The Money in The World as soon as I did, if it wasn’t for the controversy.

At this point, telling me that Ridley Scott was the director doesn’t’ do anything for me. He has put out a lot of shit. Like The Counselor.

But Kevin Spacey was in the movie. His role was important, it was in trailers and on posters. He was basically the central villain. When it came out he was a central villain to people in real life though, his stock dropped significantly, and Scott decided to kick him out of the film. A month before it was being released. Without moving back the release date.

Instead, Christopher Plummer was brought in for the role. Everything was re-shot within a week, editing occurred, and we got the same release date. It also gained controversy over pay disparity from these reshoots, which is even more free PR.

Remember, there is no such thing as bad PR. Because the movie got award nominations – and we will never know if it is for the film itself, or the speed and craft of getting so much of the film done in just a week. Or maybe to give Spacey the finger.

I’m not fully convinced that he isn’t CGI’d into some of these scenes.

The story is a little bit about John Paul Getty (Plummer), who at the time was the richest person in the world. He was very meticulous with his money. He didn’t spend more than he had to, he always looked for deals, he got his fortune from oil in the middle east, and he was shrewd.

Gail Harris (Michelle Williams) was his daughter-in-law. She married her son and had a few kids, but the son became a drunk and a bad husband so they divorced. She divorced out of the family, taking none of the money, just full custody, wanting to distance themselves. But her son, John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) was still growing up with the richness of the world around him. He had access to money, he got to travel the world, and one day, in France, he was kidnapped.

The kidnappers knew who they had, they were basically celebrities! So they knew they could ask for a lot of money to get Getty to have his grandson back. But Getty was careful with his money. He said no, and that was it.

All The Money in The World tells the story of Harris, trying to get her son back, trying to convince her father in law to help, while her son’s life was seemingly on the line.

Also starring Mark Wahlberg, Romain Duris, Timothy Hutton, Andrew Buchan, Marco Leonardi, and Giuseppe Bonifati.

Oh. And the Paparazzi. They are all over this movie like…paparazzi.

Is this real story worth a film? Yeah, sure. It has drama, it has suspense, it has real dicks and real buttholes.

But this movie never really captivated me or drew me in to care about the characters involved. It never really felt real, but instead felt like a fast paced movie without a lot of thought behind it.

The movie starts off, time jumping back and forth across decades. We get some history of Getty, of the marriage, of the kids being younger kids. The time jumping goes too quickly and doesn’t really feel as helpful as they probably imagined. And of course, it was awkward that Plummer looked identical across 30 or so years. That’s an issue with the movie, and one you can’t just ignore by saying they did it in a week. Yeah. It shows at times.

Once the plot finally gets going, it relies heavily on Williams, Plummer, and sure, Wahlberg, to carry the story. I really enjoyed Williams as the mother. She was a strong character, constantly seeming like she was on her last wits end, but somehow keeping it all together. Wahlberg felt like a generic number two “Get it done” man, while Plummer just felt like a cranky old dude who gave no fucks. I don’t know if it is realistic, it is just true that his character didn’t have a lot going for him across the dimensions.

I knew close to nothing about the story, but it was quite clear what parts must have been embellished and what actually occurred. I don’t go to movies to see 100% factual events, but I do usually get annoyed when the truth is far more interesting than the film parts. I was notably annoyed at the end, when the rescue attempts were almost done. They kept switching back to Getty, and I had to role my eyes knowing that the timing of those events was just so stupid. And yeah, they existed just to make the movie seem more frantic.

This is a good story, with at least one great performance, that just feels rushed and overly dramatized. We can handle drama without the forced thriller parts. Just make sure everyone on board is giving it their all. I don’t know how much I dislike that can be blamed on the change of cast, but I do know I wouldn’t have given it any awards.

¨It only took twenty years, but we finally have a Jumanji sequel…” said no one ever about this movie, Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle.

Especially since everyone of course remembers that Zathura: A Space Adventure totally exists!

But also because when this movie was announced, a lot of people got pretty angry. Saying things like it would tarnish Robin Williams´ legacy, that it was changing too many things, that it didn´t feel like Jumanji, and everything else. People seem to think that movie studios were sitting on this idea for years, just waiting for Williams to fall over so they could move on. Williams did not own the rights to Jumanji.

When I saw the trailer initially I was actually a little bit excited. Getting sucked into a video game is not a new prompt. It has been done many times as one-off TV show episodes, entire shows have been based on them, and movies as well, but it feels like when it happens it is usually shit. And since I like a lot of these actors, I had a bit more hope for this one.

A diverse cast of characters in a jungle, WHAT YEAR IS IT?!

Don’t worry purists, this film takes place in the same universe as the first Jumanji film! As it starts in the mid 90’s, boardgame found on a beach. However, board games are lame, so the kid doesn’ play it and goes back to his video games. So what’s an evil sentient-esque game supposed to do but morph into a playing system? That is how they will get the kids hooked.

Flash forward to modern times, and we have four kids, very distinct histories and likes, who end up getting detention at the same time. Spencer (Alex Wolff) is our nerd/video game lover, we have The Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) who is good at sports, Bethany (Madison Iseman) a popular cute girl addicted to her phone, and Martha (Morgan Turner) who also is nerdy but more reclusive. They have a task of removing staplers from hundreds of magazines in a basement, hooray child labor! They of course instead find this old video game, all agree to play, because fuck work, and lo and behold, they get sucked into a video game!

Now, they are all the avatars they chose as their characters. Spencer is now Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), good at everything, while The Fridge is Mouse Finbar (Kevin Hart), the backpack guy sidekick, Martha is now Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan) a fighter good at fighting, and Bethany has become Professor Shelly Oberon (Jack Black), an overweight cartologist.

They must work together to balance their strengths and weaknesses in their new bodies to save the jungles of Jumanji, and also, get themselves back home.

Also starring Bobby Cannavale, Rhys Darby, Nick Jonas, Marc Evan Jackson, and Colin Hanks.

The Rock showing emotion, WHAT YEAR IS IT?

As previously mentioned, most “jump into video game movies” are poorly made. Just look at the third Spy Kids movie. The problem with all of these films or tv shows is they just never seem to “get” video games. They make them awkward puzzle based challenges, but mostly a lot of…non gaming things. The closest we have to a movie understanding video games has been Edge of Tomorrow.

If there is anything you can say about Jumanji 2, it is that it at least understands video games. Our characters have multiple lives, sharing lives, strengths and weaknesses, there are obvious levels, there are boundaries, there are goals, NPCs, weird interactions. It feels like people interacting with a video game world for the most part, that is wonderful.

It is wonderful, until they contradict themselves. For example, one of my biggest issues with this movie is Dr. Smolder Bravestone. He has no weaknesses, and his strengths include Fighting, Strength, Endurance, Speed, and being Fearless. Yeah, he has a bunch. And all the characters in avatar form obviously have strengths or weaknesses that are not normal. But hey, Ruby can actually fight despite being weak in real life. And Smolder can run fast, jump high, and all that.

Except for apparently his Fearless trait. Because a recurring plot point is watching Johnson scream at the slightest and smallest of animals, running in terror, over and over again. It causes one of his deaths. It is such a ridiculous oversight, it really bugs me because everything else was on point and this one felt glaring.

Overall, the movie is just okay still. The video game aspects are fine, the plot is really week. It doesn’t have an overall sense of awe or wonder like its predecessors. Everything is of course just extremely CGI’d and action scenes, with too many of the scenes focusing on human bad guys instead of swell animal problems. We don’t even get natural disasters, despite the several plant or weather based issues that Jumanji gave us.

A fine film, it just still could have been a lot better.

Initial thoughts about the documentary Human Flow is that it sounds a bit sexual. Don’t laugh, you thought so too.

I quickly realized (because I read a plot description) that is only sort of had to do with sex. You see, sex leads to pregnancies, and pregnancies usually lead to babies, and babies usually lead to adults. And sometimes there are too many adults. Sometimes these adults are mean, rude, or ruthless. Sometimes adults force other adults (and babies!) to leave their homes due to force, threats, or just general hysteria. These adults (that were made by sex) now find themselves homeless and on the move, looking for a place to call home as their previous home was torn apart by terrorists, warlords, and drones.

These adults, and tiny adults, and babies, are now refugees, and fleeing the world. However, with the amount of angry adults there are, the refugee amounts are growing at extreme levels. These refugees need places to go, and the places to go are filling up quickly. This is leading to stricter border control measures, more fences, and now refugees are finding themselves between countries. Sure, there may be countries available for these refugees to go to, but if they have no way to get there due to the other country walls, then it is as if they don’t exist at all.

So yes. In a way, Human Flow is a justified, sexual, title.

What would be sexier if a city planner got in on one of these tent cities.

The director, Ai Weiwei, goes to great pains to make sure this isn’t some exploitation documentary, where he would gain acclaim, fame, money, off of the suffering of hundreds of thousands of individuals. He seems to be a man who truly cares about their plight and is using this documentary to help get the world to understand what is going on in their lives.

In fact, we get to see Weiwei on camera, interacting with the refugees, getting some personal stories, exchanging passports even. That passport scene was absolutely heart wrenching for me, and it must have been terrible for the director and crew to be there. We have all of these people who want homes for their families, doctors for their new babies for vaccinations, things like soap, and in comes a crew of people making money and able to leave whenever they want. Of course they would latch onto that group, because hey, if there is a wall in their way, they will do whatever they can to protect their families.

Unfortunately, outside of a few select scenes of interest, the documentary felt incredibly boring. It was hard to get through, and still hard to be empathetic to their flight, maybe due to the sheer number of people and how numbed I am through the news. But it felt like a chore to get through, with an over 2 hour run time. It just dragged.

Basically, if it wants to get people involved with this thing, it has to get the common man more excited and riled up during it. They needed to make it sexier, at least the introduction or something. I spent a lot of time talking about how technically, this is a sexy topic. But when watching it, it feels entirely unsexy, and that is something they need to work on in the future.

Way back a long time ago, when I saw the movie Colossal, I had just learned about Neon Films, a distribution company run by Alamo Drafthouse. Colossal was amazing and everyone should see it. I believe Colossal was their first big release.

They had trailers for two other films specifically from them as well, Buster’s Mal Heart, and Ingrid Goes West. Both trailers were really well done, and I knew I wanted to see both of this films. I thought Neon was starting off really strong.

Well, Buster’s Mal Heart was indeed weird, but not something I could get behind. And Ingrid Goes West I decided to wait until it could be rented, because my wife was also really interested in it, especially since we were watching Parks and Rec at the time. Again, another delay, but that is okay, still hit it in 2017.

Did they both just conquer some natievs? Whats with the victory signs?

Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) just loves her friends, like, a lot. I mean, mostly she stays in her room, eating junk food, but thanks to social media she can keep up with their posts and going ons. She is one like away from joining in on the fun. But fun time is over, because Charlotte (Meredith Hagner) had the gall to get married, not invite Ingrid, and also imply all of her friends were with her on that special night. That bitch. So Ingrid heads over to the wedding to crash it and give her a piece of her name, putting her in a mental institution for awhile and giving her a restraining order.

Once Ingrid gets better, she heads home to an empty home, her mom now dead and gone. With Charlotte’s Instagram now set to private, Ingrid has to find a new BFF. And that is how she found Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen). A social media pseudo celebrity, the type with a ton of followers so she can make money by posting images of products. She lived a perfect life, one that Ingrid would like to become.

And since she has all this inheritance money, she upends her life, flies to California and hopes to find Taylor to become real life BFFs with her, not just internet pals. She can become popular and awesome too. She rents a small apartment owned by the neighbor, Dan Pinto (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and sets off to be friends with Taylor at any cost. At. Any. Cost.

Also featuring Wyatt Russell, Billy Magnussen, and Pom Klementieff.

Ice Cube’s son gets real warm with Aubrey Plaza.

Films that are about mental illnesses have a lot of weight to them. For example, a few years ago I watched the movie Young Adult, when my reviews were still poorly written but frequent. I used words like crazy to describe her and eventually realized that what I was doing was not okay to do. I didn’t get that movie.

Now, old (and as an intellectual~~), I understand more the right way and wrong way to speak about certain things, and other times I still don’t fucking care (hooray swearing in reviews). I just also know that if you are going to make a film about someone with a mental illness and their illness shouldn’t be the brunt of the jokes. Jokes can happen, but if you are just making fun of illnesses, that is bad. And honestly, at this point, I really can’t tell if it goes too far in Ingrid Goes West.

Ingrid is a tragic character, who gets obsessed with what she feels is perfection, until things go to ruin. We get to see her in an institution, and who knows why she is like that, or when her mom died and if it is related. Characters getting pissed off at Ingrid over her actions? Totally justifiable in the movie. But the movie makers made a choice and chose to not make their movie in a way that seems to understand that they can’t just call a character mentally unstable and run with it. There needs to be justification, a reason, some sort of closure, and not just a gag.

And again, since it seems like it is hard to tell if they really treated it with the appropriate gloves, it probably means they didn’t. I can see elements there, just not enough.

The film on its own wasn’t really that funny though. It took awhile to really get going, maybe they were going for realism. Jackson Jr. was hilarious though, every time he was on screen I ended up laughing, which is maybe the only reason this made it to a 2.

With a title like Majorie Prime, it in two words somehow perfectly describes the different aesthetics of this film. Despite prime really just being a math term, it also can conjure up Sci-Fi feelings, which is one of the two aspects. The other word, Majorie, is an old as fuck lady name. It hasn’t been used in forever. Old people aren’t in Sci-Fi movies, they are in dramas.

So we got ourselves an old person drama Sci-Fi. That means it is a Sci-Fi film about death, probably.

And yeah, knowing all of this, I figured it was an indie movie, and a Sci-Fi film, so it had the potential to be really great, without actually knowing anything about it.

“Let’s talk about our feelings and count this as a Sci-Fi!”

Learning to let go of loved ones can be a difficult thing. Thankfully, at this point in my life, I really don’t know that. In the near distant future, technology has grown enough along with artificial intelligence to make the transition feel a bit smoother.

You see, you can make a robot that looks and smells like you past loved one after their live. You will fill them with memories that you want them to know, and then you can just talk to them. You can tell them more stories, they will learn from you, adapt and grow with you. And better yet, they will be nostalgic with you to tell you stories that will make you feel better, ones that you originally told them, but from their point of view. It will feel real, it is kind of real. And best of all, you can get things off your chest for closure reasons if you never had a chance.

This is usually reserved for spouses. Like Majorie (Lois Smith), who is getting old and losing her memory. So her daughter Tess (Geena Davis) sets her up with one of these prime bots of Majorie’s husband, Walter (Jon Hamm) except she chooses a much younger version of him. It helps her a bit, but the memory loss is still there, so much that she even starts to forget her husband isn’t real.

But is it helpful for real? Does having a prime unit in your house actually help you? What about more than one, assuming you lose a lot of loved ones? Will it turn people into isolated recluses, will they feel better, or will it just lead to more issues in the future?

Also featuring Tim Robbins, Hannah Gross, and Stephanie Andujar.

Basically, it is a more dramatized (if that is possible) Blade Runner.

I love a good movie that is 95% dialogue, I really do. Locke was one of my favorite movies in whatever year Locke came out, thanks to the wonderful Tom Hardy. I knew that this film would be dialogue heavy, but I didn’t know the real reason behind it. This film was actually based on a play of the same name, so it took some effort to get pictures from the movie version.

Knowing it was a play makes so much more sense. Literally most of the film is usually two people just talking and recalling events, events we are really only sometimes aware of and can have a real context for.

And although the ending had a really cool moment, and this film featured at times some intense acting, it didn’t feel like the time was worth the payoff. I ended up describing the entirety of the film to my wife, only because the ending moment was interesting, but I knew that her time was more valuable than taking the 90 minutes to get to that point.

It deal with a few good concepts, about aging and what it means to be human. But it never feels like it goes hard enough. Oh well, when the end of the world comes due to the AI take over, we will know now that the robots will have old people names, like Walter and Majorie.

This film doesn’t even have to try, it’s always going to be a Good Time. Because that is its name. Carly Rae Jepsen agrees.

I am late into watching this movie. I wanted to see it months ago, but being a shithead, I got the date confused at when the screening was supposed to happen. So instead, I was in a theater and had to watch The Only Living Boy in New York, which is not at all similar to Good Time.

Thankfully, the film came back to the front of my mind lately, thanks to getting nominated for some Spirit Awards. Awards? Edward Cullen? Sign me up.

Painting the town red? No, paint YOURSELVES red.

What is the cost of having a good time? Maybe robbing a bank for some sweet sweet cash, so you have the bills to pay the…well, bills.

Connie Nikas (Robert Pattinson) and his brother, Nick Nikas (Benny Safdie) are trying to do that right now. Connie is the brains of the operation, Nick is the brawn, and only by the looks of it. He is a bit slower than a regular person, so he is just sort of there for the ride and to help out.

But the plan backfires a bit in that during the escape, everything goes wrong, and Nick gets caught by the police. They know he didn’t work alone and they know he isn’t the mastermind, but they will take what they can get while Connie goes into hiding. Connie wants to get his brother out of jail ASAP, since he is getting poorly mistreated by everyone on the inside. But when working with a bail bondsman, shit doesn’t work the way it had planned, and his friends with money are having their own personal issues.

That is when Connie finds out that his brother is in a local hospital after some new injuries from the slammer. Well, why worry about bonds when he can instead maybe break his brother out of the hospital and get them on the run? Yeah, that is the perfect plan.

Also featuring Barkhad Abdi, Buddy Duress, Eric Paykert, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Necro, Peter Verby, and Taliah Webster.

None of the photos from this film show people having an actual good time.

The best part of Good Time is the pulsing,constantly scene captivating soundtrack. The first twenty or so minutes feel so intense, as even the more mundane elements are pushed to 11 thanks to the soundtrack. As soon as I commented it to my wife about how the movie was making me anxious thanks to its music choices, it started to die down a bit and let things settle.

That is when the film also started to lose my own interest.

Good Time has a decent plot and story, and frankly great acting from the lead Pattinson. He is completely transformed for this role into a new person. It is a wonder to say.

The plot just starts to get erratic in the middle and near the end. Once it slows down, it just has a hard time picking back up. Basically, after the the breakout from the hospital it seems to pitter patter itself into a different, slower film. Slowness in a film isn’t a bad thing, it just doesn’t seem to match the earlier intensity and sounds of the beginning. They eventually bring it back, but at that point it is just too late.

Good Time would be a better time if it could just keep up the enthusiasm that it started with, instead of devolving into a complete mess in the middle.

Columbus makes me think of a few things off the bat, and none of them end up being true about this film. Not even Ohio, thankfully.

The only reason it is on my radar is it got nominated for a good number of Spirit awards and yes, that list is already out so get ready for a wave of these reviews. It had nominations for Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay, and Cinematography. It is going up against some big competition in Cinematography, but there is always a chance for the “first” awards. Those categories are very nice, because it puts all newbies against each other, not against some big shot indie director who has been here already for 10 years in a row.

But in further looking at the film, I enjoy the actors generally, so that is a plus. And if it is nominated for cinematography, you know there is a good chance it is pretty to look at it. That is another plus.

Wow, Columbus, we are starting off with two plusses before I really even get to know you.

This first picture looks like an advertisement for the local cult.

Columbus is a story about two people at very different stages of their lives, meeting and learning from one another. And it takes place in Columbus, Indiana! Not Ohio!

Jin (John Cho) is a Korean American who is in Columbus because his father is in the hospital. He hasn’t had the best relationship with his dad and had moved away a long time ago. His dad is a pretty famous architect and Jin, well, doesn’t care about architect for that reason. He has a job translating Korean texts into English, he lives alone, and right now, he lives alone in an apartment, hanging out occasionally with an old friend Eleanor (Parker Posey).

Casey (Haley Lu Richardson) is recently out of high school. And by recently, I mean a whole year earlier, but here she is, still hanging out in her town and not going to college. Casey is a smart girl by anyone’s standards, and everyone tells her this. She just has other things on her mind. Namely her mother, who happens to be a recovering addict, who is very close to relapsing time and time again. Her mom works as an overnight custodian, which keeps Casey up at weird hours, worried about her mom. But she did recently get a basic job a book store with a new friend, Gabriel (Rory Culkin). And she loves architecture, of course, because she grew up in Columbus, Indiana, which strangely has a lot of cool buildings in it or near it.

One day, Jin and Casey meet on a chance encounter. And they will begin to talk, and talk a lot, about everything, nothing, and of course, architecture.

Also starring Erin Allegretti.

“Shit is this whole movie just two people looking at buildings?” Well…

Columbus is only about 100 minutes long, but it certainly feels a lot longer than that. It drags on because nothing “showy” or ground shattering ever occurs. There are no big plot twists/reveals, no sudden changes in heart. Everything is organic, slow, and I guess developmentally sound. We have two stories, both with their own pretty much set in stone conclusions. We just have to get there for those two characters, and see how they decide their paths.

And how do we do that? Through dialogue. Having conversations about buildings and then about life. There is some awkward moments where you wonder if these two are going to develop an actual relationship or not, because of course. That seems to be the natural process of human beings, or at least those that appear in TV and film.

The dialogue is great in this movie. Cho and Richardson are also really good in their roles. It is definitely wonderful to look at, in sometimes quite subtle ways. It is just a film that is really hard to get into. It feels like it drags on, it is boring, and not something I would just ever recommend to anyone.

I bet Josh Radnor loves this movie though.

2017 has been a shit year for animation. That is basically how I begin everything for animation at the end of the year, by the way.

At this point the only films I gave okay ratings to were Coco and Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, which is saying a lot about my opinions on these films.

Well, Leap! was released at the end of last year in France and Europe, but didn’t make it to America until August. I had been waiting for a bit and waiting even more. When it finally came out, no one seemed to care, due to lack of advertising, and even I forgot about it.

It is one of those weird films that is already in English, but has a slightly different voice cast depending on the country. Not many changes were made, but the European version had Dane DeHaan as the boy lead. And honestly, without hearing it, it was probably a good change. We don’t need to hear 12 year olds with extra deep voices as if they are constantly pretending to be batman.

Now if DeHaan had voiced the lead? I would pay extra for that uncomfortable version.

Felicie (Elle Fanning) is an orphan in a small French town, in a Church. She doesn’t want to be there of course, she wants to escape and become a famous dancer! Partially because the only thing she has from her mother is a dancing figure in a music box, her main treasure. Her best friend, Victor (Nat Wolff) also wants to escape with her. He has dreams of being an inventor and is focusing a lot of his efforts on a flying machine.

Well, Victor finds a flyer for a famous ballet school in Paris, so they decide they should run away and make it there! And they do!

But they immediately get separated, so Felicie is on her own to achieve her dreams. She finds the dance hall, sees an amazing dancer, but gets found out by the groundskeeper and almost given to the police, but a cleaning lady saves her. Odette (Carly Rae Jepsen) walks with a cane, clearly having once been a dancer and had her life ruined by something or another. She stays in the guest house of a mansion, she just also has to clean it up as well. And the owner, Regine (Kate McKinnon), is a huge bitch.

She is rich though, so she can be a bitch. She has raised a bitch daughter too, Camille (Maddie Ziegler), who just so happens to be a dancer. And because she is a bitch, Felicie steals her invite to the dance school and pretends to be Camille to get a shot of her dream coming true. She just has to be good enough every day to not be the one person cut, so she can have a feature spot in the upcoming Nutcracker show.

Also featuring the voices of Shoshana Sperling and Mel Brooks.

Oh he is definitely in the “best friend for years until she loves me” role. Silly boy. This isn’t the 90’s anymore.

Leap! tells a very standard story about a girl and a boy running off to achieve their lofty ambitions, and do so, quite easily! How they both fall into their respective positions is meant to be quick and easy, which is part of the comedy and charm, so that is not an issue.

It has its moments, both funny and cute. The animation is fine, Victor makes a good comic relief, and Felicie a great go-getter lead! The film also had some Karate Kid moments, just to keep things interesting.

But the devil is in the details, and this film was a mess. I first noticed it on my own, after three very specific references happened, and I was curious if they all were around the same time. That would be, The Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, and Sherlock Holmes. The first Holmes story was in 1887, the Eiffel tower started being built in 1887, but the Statue of Liberty was already in America in 1886. So to show it barely built at the same time as the Eiffel Tower was barely built is just wrong. And it had the statue already green, which is also quite annoying.

So I figured it must be set in 1887 and they had one mistake, sure. But apparently the film was set in 1979, years before all of these things. In addition to those facts, the dancers were trying out for a part in The Nutcracker, which came out in 1892. I learned the last fact and more from IMDB’s goof section, after I already found out these inconsistencies. If they are going to set the film in a lively part of the world and go for a realistic story, then it just seems terrible to have so many references just wrong.

Another aspect that just consistantly threw me off was the soundtrack. There five or more pop songs used as montage music mostly, including songs from Sia and Jepsen, and these things took me out of the experience. They never quite melded well with the scenes behind it. Given the subject matter, actual ballet, opera, classical, anything music wise like that would have felt better for the story.

Despite being called Leap!, this film was unable to rise above other animated films this year. It just ended up okay like the rest of the best.

“I once was a dumbass,” could be the name of mine and many other people’s autobiographies. That is just a part about growing up. When An Inconvenient Truth came out, I didn’t watch it. I knew what it was about, but I didn’t care. After all, I was a senior in high school and I was pretty sure Global Warming was fake.

I wasn’t going to let some guy known for not wanting to give up an election tell me what to think. I had other people for that. Like Penn and Teller! And South Park, namely their quite famous and still amusing episode, ManBearPig. You see, that episode had Al Gore running around Colorado, talking about some mythical ManBearPig. He was super cereal about the whole thing, this threat that no one believed, and he did more damage than good.

I got it, I got the joke, I was super cool and I knew things. Then I eventually did know things, quickly changed my mind, realized that I was just being a stupid. It is especially dumb since I went into the Geology field, where of course we all know and agree that Climate Change is happening and it sucks. Even the oil companies.

But still, I did not see the documentary. At that point I didn’t need to. However, a sequel to that documentary? A new thing? An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power?

Yeah, I was going to jump on that moment.

And it looks like he has a lot of fans at the doors just happy to see him!

The sequel title calls itself inconvenient, because ideally the first one would have been enough for the world. But no, global warming was politicized, it became a Democrat versus Republican issue, despite being virtually 100% agreement amongst scientists. And plenty of easy to understand data for everyone else to get the main themes. The sequel title maybe should have added that they are pissed off they need to make another documentary.

Anyways, a lot of this documentary covers the efforts they have done since the last documentary. How their efforts have changed and grown since the documentary and Peace Prize. And how major storms have grown and impacted more and more areas, more often than ever before. Of course also, the dumbfucks who refuse to listen to any amount of reason, yet still get elected into the higher positions of power in the United States.

That is the entire documentary in a nutshell. It only had limited information based on Trump’s actions, since it takes time for this stuff to get out and shown in festivals, but it did highlight some of them.

And yet the main issue with this documentary is just how boring it made everything seem. Maybe it is due to the fact that I am so knowledgable now, I don’t know. But I could not get into this story at all. It just lacked a lot of passion (we got some at the end) throughout the film and I just didn’t care.

If you want people to like your documentary, you gotta get them interested in the topic, factual, and keep it interesting. Destruction of all mankind on its own isn’t enough for most of us, unfortunately. Just a dull, dull, documentary.

To be an effective satire, the audience has to understand what the film is satirizing. So if you told me I was going to be watching a movie that satirizes modern art, I might have changed my mindset going into The Square.

I don’t know shit about modern art, or modern art galleries, or modern tuxedo affairs, So I wouldn’t really understand when it was being made fun of. I mean, on the surface, one might just go and assume this is a normal art film about quirk art people, not going for some deeper meaning behind the whole thing.

Oh well, it is long, and it is Swedish, and I don’t have enough Swedish films on my site. I will take it.

Life is like piles of grains of sand.

Things are about to get weird for Christian (Claes Bang), who up to now has been living a modest, yet successful life in Sweden. He runs a modern art museum, meaning they have to constantly be on the cutting edge of new and modern art. They are constantly seeking new sources of funding, new ways to advertise, and ways to stay relevant in the modern world.

I mean, you’d think everyone in Sweden would care about art enough to just go to their place every new exhibit. But maybe they aren’t as hip as we thought.

Their newest exhibit is called, The Square, with the statement, “The Square is a sanctuary of trust and caring. Within it we all share equal rights and obligations.,” as its punchline. It is about being nice to strangers and the homeless. It is not sexy or controversial. So when it comes to a new advertising campaign, they decide to go with an outside group who decide that they need to turn this nice idea into a controversy. To make a viral video anyway possible.

And sure, that will backfire. But that is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problems with Christian.

Also starring Elisabeth Moss, Dominic Moore, Terry Notary, Christopher Læssø, and more.

This man most recently played Kong in Kong: Skull Island.

The Square was definitely an experience and a hard one to really describe. At almost 2.5 hours long, it was about a lot of things, and a bit about nothing at all. It was about a man who would have a lot of hard experiences, some seemingly ironic given his supposed stances on life. A story about getting harassed by a kid. A story of lost items. A story about trusting strangers who will turn on you in a heartbeat. And a story about art taken to an extreme and a public unwilling to break away from their comfort zone.

The biggest moment comes from the scene in the second picture, which would have played out like a horror story if it went on any further. You don’t have to understand modern art in order to understand what the director is saying about that scene, in relation to the message of The Square. However, it turns out it was based on modern art as well. It was based on Oleg Kulik, an eccentric artist (read, asshole?), who imitated a dog as part of art and bit people.

Bang does good as our lead, looking the part of a man who we want to root for, but who makes strange decisions that question our own goals. Is he an asshole, is he down on his luck, or is he really a good guy? It is really hard to tell, but he is definitely a coward.

The Square is an experience, it is not for everyone, and it will be remembered in the future as a really weird film.