Tag: 2 out of 4

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

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

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

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

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

That headline is certainly bold and emotion filling.

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

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

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

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

I didn’t watch The Magnificent Seven before now, because it is from one of the studios that I don’t get invites to. But despite that, I did WANT to see it, and then never got out to the theaters. And now it has been out for awhile and I still dicked around.

My bad. I wanted to see the movie because yes, I knew the story. It is a remake. But I liked a lot of the actors involved and wanted to give it a shot. A whole lot of shots. A village full of shots.

Basically now I just find myself in a gun mood, and want to watch fake cowboys shoot other fake cowboys. They have theme parks with that theme.

Let’s see…One…two…three…uhh, um…yeah seven. Looks like seven people here.

In the late 1800s, the town of Rose Creek is getting besieged! Or maybe just hoodwinked a little. A big time robber dude, Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), is trying to buy out an entire mining town for his own profits. He is not giving them a good deal, using threats and intimidation and actually killing to get his way.

So Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) and her friend (Luke Grimes) go out in search of help, eventually finding a warrant officer, Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington). He doesn’t want to until he hears about Bogue, which causes him to agree and start looking for other people to join his crew.

We got a gambler (Chris Pratt), a Mexican outlaw (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), a Comanche warrior (Martin Sensmeier), a tracker (Vincent D’Onofrio), a guy good with knifes (Byung-hun Lee), and of course a famed sharpshooter (Ethan Hawke).

Needless to say, they don’t have a lot of people. But they have some townsfolk, who are miners and farmers. Their lead villager (Matt Bomer) is pretty good too. If they set up defenses, put the towns people in easy areas to defend, they can probably stop a pretty big force of asshole outlaws from taking over. But it is a gun fight, so some people are going to get scared, and a lot of people are going to die.

Also starring Jonathan Joss in pretty intimidating role.

With lights that bright, there must be an angel or something in that corner.

The point of The Magnificent Seven is to watch some famous people act like cowboys, shoot each other, hopefully have some really cool skillful tactics, and be a bit enjoyable. And sure, it did feel pretty enjoyable.

I know I was hoping for a lot more to happen during the final siege. Or maybe a secondary skirmish after the initial one to give us more shenanigans. The big siege just didn’t live up to my expectations and hype. Some cool moments, sure, and I cared what happened to the characters, but it was just overall a little bit disappointed.

The good news is with a diverse cast of characters, it plays out like an RPG. Everyone has their own little bit of plot and characterization, it isn’t just 3 people and 4 “guys who shoot good” or anything. No, they said these seven people were magnificent, so they made them all really talented and different. Which is another major point of this film.

But you know what? It ended with a narrator describing their story and referring to them as magnificent, then credits. My eyes physically left my head to do a bigger roll at that moment. It is so…dumb. Just ugh.

Hopefully there is no sequel to this movie, but hey, just give me another reboot and do it better and I will be happy.

I can really get into a good shoot ´em up film. Ones with some plot, no plot, or a lot of plot (rare), I can really get behind losing most of the cast in a 90-120 minute time frame. I am willing to suspend my belief enough about the events that led to a long gun battle, and hope that the ¨main characters¨ end up actually dying in surprising fashions to make sure the genre keeps its unpredictability.

And I feel like Free Fire is the type of film that will fire in all cylinders to the parts of the brain that get me all jolly.

The cast is a real big reason for my excitement. Let´s just say that a lot of these actors I have been enjoying in almost every single one of their roles, yes even that shitty one, and always get excited to see them in a movie, even if it ends with disappointment.

Only one woman in the entire movie? I wonder who will probably “win” the fight?!

Never take a rock to a gun fight, unless that rock is Dwayne Johnson. But he isn’t here, so instead we got a few junkies and some Europeans who want to buy and sell guns.

On one side, we have Chris (Cillian Murphy) who needs some weapons for Ireland. He brought along his main muscle, the aging Frank (Michael Smiley), someone who helped set up the deal in Justine (Brie Larson), and a couple of stupid young guys to help make their crew look bigger and carry the boxes (Enzo Cilenti, Sam Riley).

They meet Ord (Armie Hammer), who makes sure the deal is on the up and up, another middle man type person, but basically a mercenary hired by the other side.

The other side is led by Vernon (Sharlto Copley), a South African, and his associate Martin (Babou Ceesay). Their muscle include Harry (Jack Reynor) and Gordon (Noah Taylor). But they brought a different type of rifle than agreed upon, so arguments start getting made, people are getting antsy.

The real argument comes from two of the lackies, unrelated to the deal, but once shots start firing and both sides start taking hits, all bets are off. It gets worse when two sharpshooters arrive (Patrick Bergin, Mark Monero), meaning someone was already looking to double cross someone else for some money.

Also featuring Tom Davis as a giant.

Generally, in the middle of gun fire, it is the best time to discuss pay raises.

I love Armie Hammer in everything. I am enjoying Jack Reynor’s up and coming career. I think Brie Larson is awesome. Sharlto Copley is the best part of a lot of bad movies, and the best part of some good movies.

But this film is another movie that I must have just overhyped in my brain. I knew that it was a short film, a one set location, and mostly about people shooting each other. There was the chance for a smart plot, but I didn’t expect one (and it obviously did not delivery one). But at the very least, I expected a lot of exciting deaths and amazing feats of showmanship.

Yet in the middle, it felt like it was dragging. They didn’t have a lot of people to start with, so the deaths had to be spread out and relatively slow. It just seems like every single one of them was a terrible shot. Most of them get injured relatively quickly, shots to the shoulder or leg, meaning everyone crawls for both cover and necessity. But it almost seemed bizarre just at how little people were actually shot versus the number of bullets used.

Maybe it was a realism thing, maybe it was because they didn’t know where to take it. But at least the movie is relatively funny. Hearing the quips in the background and the angst these people started to have with each other were pretty great. And now, whenever I hear Annie’s Song by John Denver, I will think of this movie fondly. Not as fondly as as I had hoped, but still a bit fondly.

To be gifted in academia, it can mean a lot of things. It does NOT, however, have to mean you are immediately great at math or science. You can be gifted at drawing, music, analytical thinking, synesthesia, you name it. It is a common misconception that gifted students have to be good at common school subjects.

When I was in NC, it was called AG then AIG, Academically Intellectually Gifted, but apparently in Texas it is just GT, for Gifted and Talented. The same key word is there, and it is supposed to give you a harder program to really test your limits and get more out of your education. For the most part, it is really just slightly harder material and doesn’t do a lot of training.

Being a gifted student and now teaching gifted students, I was very interested with what the hell the movie Gifted would be about. Would it be accurate? Would it show the appropriate struggles? Would the main character wear glasses?

Oh thank goodness, no glasses.

Our story is about Mary Adler (Mckenna Grace). She is 7 years old and about to enter the first grade. She doesn’t want to go, though, because she has been living with her Uncle Frank (Chris Evans) most of her life and she has been home schooled. Not fancy tutors, just good old fashioned books and practice. Sure they live in a small trailer, in a poor area, with Frank working as a boat repairman, but they are happy.

But she doesn’t want to go into a regular school. It will be too slow for her! And when she does advanced multiplication in her head to her new teacher, Ms. Stevenson (Jenny Slate), they know something is up.

Turns out she is the daughter of Pat Golding (Julie Ann Emery), a very famous young mathematician, who was close to solving the Navier–Stokes equations. It is part of the Millennium Prize Problems (Not Yu-Gi-Oh related), a series of problems that will help revolutionize math if anyone ever can prove them. And Pat killed herself when Mary was 6 months old, leaving her in Frank’s house.

But it turns out that Franks family is kind of crazy. Notably, his mom (Lindsay Duncan), who attempts to gain custody of Mary once she finds out how gifted she is. Frank doesn’t want to put her in a fancy academy school for high level training, he wants her to grow up normal, with friends her age. And thus, a nice legal battle is actually the main focus of the film. Woo, lawyers!

And Octavia Spencer is in here too, of course, as wise next door neighbor and friend.

Now picture the lady who starred in Obvious Child as an elementary school teacher. Yeah, I can’t either.

Gifted is okay, in almost every front. The acting, the story, the feels. I only cried once, which is surprising, given it being about a dad like figure with a young daughter. There was an incredibly cute scene where the girl was having a crisis, thinking that she was never wanted by anyone in her family and her mom, so Frank took her to a hospital to see baby announcements post births. To show happy families and to relate how it made them feel as well. It was touching and powerful.

But this film isn’t great at the same time.

We have handfuls of math problem montages, close ups of symbols and numbers that I guess most people won’t understand, close up of the girl’s face, and back and forth, with some nice chipper music. The worst was when she was doing an advanced math packet in her first grade class. Because that montage included Jenny Slate looking longingly at her while she sat at her desk.

And it still had some nice jokes though. Jokes about math teachers and beards. Jokes about how less civilized people will use the word irregardless. Those cracked me up, which made the movie a bit more bearable.

Gifted is a relatively simple film about an extraordinary, fictional character. Watching a first graded do differential equations isn’t exciting, because this is a movie and the actress could be doing anything. In real life, if this was a real story, it would be amazing. Oh well!

Even though it is February, I still barely have any films from 2017.

So finally, here is something that came out in January 2017 that I am reviewing after the fact, so that I can get more than 1 or 2 new a week only. That’s right, now I can begin catching up to the year we are in. And normally, watching January movies means only one thing: shit.

Split is a film that broke that mold. And I have been told by many people that The Autopsy of Jane Doe is also worth the effort and won’t be a shit.

So here’s to hoping it isn’t shit. And some parts of me are hoping it just a really in depth look on how autopsies are performed.

Taking out body parts, looking for weird shit, creepy dead bodies, that is what I need.

Tommy Tilden (Brian Cox) is an autopsy-mitrist, getting old, but still quite excellent at his job. His son, Austin (Emile Hirsch), he is training to take over. Austin is getting pretty good at it too, but he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life hanging out with dead bodies.

He has a girlfriend (Ophelia Lovibond) and they plan on moving away together, leaving his dad behind. He hasn’t told him yet of course, but eventually he totally will!

Then the Sheriff (Michael McElhatton) brings in a new body, a young girl. She was found partially buried in a house with no identifying marks, so she is just called Jane Doe (Olwen Catherine Kelly). There were more bodies in the house, but it looks like they were killed trying to leave. The sheriff says this body is a priority, they need to know the cause of death by the morning, so it is going to be a long night for the Tilden’s.

Of course, while performing the autopsy, they find a lot of weird shit. Abnormalities in her body, strange features. Then, of course, bad stuff starts to happen to them in the laboratory. Power flickers, radio goes haywire, next thing they know, they are locked inside and it is not looking good for any of them.

“What did you say?”

The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a film that wants to keep things very simple. We have a small set, a small cast, and a simple plot line. No added in exorcisms or anything, just a dead body terrorizing a few people. Something to make you feel claustrophobic and a bit worried about dead people.

Perfect for horror enthusiasts. For me? A regular guy? I thought it was a bit dull. I wouldn’t say anything is bad, but given the space and foreshadowing, most of it just makes sense. I didn’t find myself surprised let alone scared.

It is still a good effort. The problems are more with me than the film itself. It isn’t like it has bad acting or shitty camera work. It just didn’t end up being the film for me.

Clearly it just didn’t have enough autopsy jargon.

Would You Rather came out a few years ago, and is pretty strange title to randomly show up on my reviews. I mean, I have been pretty consistent doing things from the current year or year before, and rarely two years prior. But Would You Rather came out in 2012, straight up 5 years ago, which is theoretically the end of my always shifting bar for reviews.

And honestly, I watched it because I really wanted to. I needed a psychological horror, and I discovered this one with plenty of actors I knew. I don’t know if this went into theaters, or straight to DVD, or what, but it exists and I really haven’t heard people every talk about it.

So watching it was for an itch. Reviewing it? Well, it was worth talking about. And I am weirded out that the title doesn’t have a question mark. Even though sure, the three words are the beginning of a question and not an entire question, it still feels strange without it.

“Kind of like a dinner with only three courses,” – Rich version of myself.

Iris (Brittany Snow) lives alone with her younger brother, Raleigh (Logan Miller), who also is dying. He needs good insurance and a blood marrow match for a big surgery, or you know, he is going to die. And Iris can’t even get a job to help maybe pay for it. Life sucks. But Iris’ doctor, Dr. Barden (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.), knows something that might help.

You see, there is a rich dude, Shepard Lambrick (Jeffrey Combs) who runs a charitable foundation. They want to invite Iris to a dinner, and afterwards there will be a game. The game will have one winner, and the winner will get what they need monetary wise for everything to be wonderful again. And she is desperate, so she goes without giving her brother the specifics.

Long story short, they have to play a game of Would You Rather. But not only do they have to choose (and have to choose in 15 to 30 seconds), but they have to do the task. And they involve violence, and pain, and have a good chance of killing people. Oh joy. And if they try to back out, they die. Only one winner, and one survivor.

Iris quickly makes two friends in Cal (Eddie Steeples) and Lucas (Enver Gjokaj). The other contestants include Peter (Robb Wells), a gambler from Vegas, Linda (June Squibb), a woman in a wheel chair, Travis (Charlie Hofheimer), an Iraq war vet, Conway (John Heard), a skeptical old man and former alcoholic, and Amy (Sasha Grey), an evil looking hot girl.

Also featuring Bevans (Jonny Coyne), a very skilled manservant, and Julian (Robin Lord Taylor), the sun of Shepard.

This party is poppin’!

I wanted a psychological thriller, and really, I got only a bit of one. The first round was relatively lame, but still, it started off the game immediately with pain. Less on the mind game side, more on the torture side. The second round was…well, also just various torture, with more death potential, and more focused on being mean. The third round there was no subtly, but basically a task for every person that could kill them. And the fourth round had some mind games, thankfully.

What I am getting at is that this film scratched the surface of a good film, but couldn’t really deliver. Too many of the eight people died “outside of the game.” The would you rathers were never really that fun or exciting. The characters themselves excited me a bit, but never enough to fully love the film.

And let me just say that there was a moment that had me somewhat shouting at the screen, because it was going to be terrifying and gross. My wife had to come and check on me to make sure everything was okay, causing me to quickly shout at her to not look, it would be terrible. And then the film didn’t even show the terrible act, it cut away, no CGI or props or anything. It would have been a defining moment.

The film also had a weird subplot with the doctor character, and I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE PURPOSE WAS. I might have missed it, but I think it went nowhere. The ending was also pretty predictable.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter, if you check it out on IMDB, says it came out first in 2015. Shit, it must have been in the festival game for a long time.

Because today (March 31, 2017) is its actual release date, at least in this area. Maybe part of it is that it is a foreign film, from Canada! And you know it is indie, because it has a VOD release on the same day as its theatrical release.

But I digress. The real important thing I want to talk about is that this film used to be called February. The Blackcoat’s Daughter is definitely a better title, so if anything, it has props for that. And naming it after a month, and releasing it in a different month is super weird.

These poor girls have been waiting patiently for this movie to release for almost 2 months thanks to the title confusion!

This story is about a few girls and a really nice Catholic school. We have Kat (Kiernan Shipka) who is having weird dreams of car crashes, and Rose (Lucy Boynton), an older girl who is afraid she might be pregnant. On an extended break in February, both girls find themselves stuck at the school, neither having a ride home from their parents.

Kat has no idea where her parents are (but assumes they are dead). Rose admits that she “accidentally” told them the wrong date, because she wants to tell her boyfriend about the pregnancy first if she is indeed pregnant. So they are sent to stay with caretakers near the school, because they cannot just live there forever. Rose doesn’t take good care of Kat though, leaving her alone and telling her ghost stories.

But we also have to talk about Joan (Emma Roberts)! She is a weird girl, alone, seemingly homeless. And she gets a ride from strangers because of how cold it is out. Linda (Lauren Holly) and Bill (James Remar) decide to pick her up because Bill says she reminds her of someone. What is her mysterious story and how is she connected?!

Also, demons!

And she is screaming into bloody hands. Or eating bloody stuff. Or maybe some spicy cheetos?

First of all, let’s just say I don’t have any clue why this movie is called The Blackcoat’s Daughter. I might have missed it. It could have been in a story Rose told. But I don’t know. I would have understood why it was called February at least.

The film itself is very tense and slow. It takes awhile to realize how the girls are connected and the why, but it has some great reveals. The death scenes, unfortunately, feel very realistic. They are not glorified in violence, but they are graphic and still shocking. I was definitely at the edge of my seat by the end.

At the same time, it still was a bit confusing. It was also a little bit too slow at points in the middle. It has an okay story and some decent frights, it just takes awhile to get there.

Roberts/Boynton aren’t the strong suits here, even though I watched it for them. Shipka does really shine in creepiness. It must be those intense Mad Men eyes of hers.

Overall, The Blackcoat’s Daughter has a small scale story, but it offers some real thrills. It just didn’t overall do it for me as a movie and had me lost in a few places.

Like most people, I too was a big Power Rangers fan. Not only did I see Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie in theaters when I was a wee lad, but I watched basically every episode. I kept up with the evolving story line over the various versions. I was still super into the show when it was Power Rangers In Space, because it was all connected. That is when I was able to get a lot of the toys as well.

Power Rangers Lost Galaxies is where I started to lose interest, and now of course, watching the newer versions make me cringe. But technically, watching the older shows also make me cringe. Power Rangers is NOT a good show. It is creative as fuck, piecing together the Japanese TV shows and some American actors to make something somewhat coherent. Good on them for trying. But it is of course repetitive, silly, and a bit shitty.

And that is okay. Not everything nostalgic needs to actually be great. We just have to admit it to ourselves.

Now? Let’s get back to now. Now we have a reboot. A grittier version, of course. Power Rangers. New teenagers with more attitude, because they are going to use swear words. And as it is a reboot we are going to get a few references or meta jokes, because film is dead and meaningless in the year 2017.

Hey, space man!

The film starts with the end of the dinosaurs! And also aliens, fighting. One of those Aliens is Zordon (Bryan Cranston), who dies covering up some interesting looking coins, from some repulsive looking alien lady. And after a meteor hits, we switch to modern day. Our hero, Jason (Dacre Montgomery), just got arrested for vandalizing school property, and private property, and operating a motor vehicle like an asshat.

So that means he gets to have Saturday detention forever. And that is where he meets Kimberly (Naomi Scott) and Billy (RJ Cyler), who we all know later also become rangers. Long story short, those three and two other people, Zack (Ludi Lin) and Trini (Becky G). Blah blah blah, coins, Zordon, Alpha-5 (Bill Hader), and more!

(Record scratch)! But if these kids think being Power Rangers is going to be easy, they don’t know what they are getting into. They can’t even morph! And Rita (Elizabeth Banks) is going to take over everything in just a little over a week! Uh oh!

Also starring David Denman as Jason’s dad.

It’s a bold idea, to do this review and not show any power ranger.

Let’s get straight to the point. This reboot tried to do everything, and thus fell short at everything. It wanted gritty and serious. It also wanted nostalgic references. It also wanted elements of corny, but those were few and far between. The original show was very corny, and a bit self aware. I am not saying this remake has to be exactly like the show to be successful. I have already said that the show is kind of terrible. But it needs to make an identity and stick with it.

Making references and quotes from the original series is cheap and easy. But they break us out of the movie. The one time they say “It’s morphin’ time!” feels incredibly lackluster. The Alpha-5 “Aye-aye-aye” isn’t terrible. The new version of the old theme plays over the zoid entrance really quick, but it feels like an amateur just pasted it on top of the film and feels out of place.

And the references can get really distracting too! There was a scene between Zordon and Alpha-5, sort of freaking out about the fact that the new rangers were just teenagers. It was just begging for him to say something about how they had attitude as well, and it didn’t, so it was just an awkward moment in the theater.

This is a lot of detail on technically a small aspect, but it frames the entire film. The only entertaining Ranger is of course Billy, because they made him nice, caring, and interesting. RJ Cyler is still killing it, just like when he played Earl in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. The camera work felt too teenage angsty and HD. It reminded me of I Am Number Four and other similar tone movies, where the whole thing just feels fake and rushed. And the megazord moment just is overly long and…well, awkward.

Despite all the complaints, the movie is still at least okay. The plot isn’t the worst, they add a lot of mythology to the story and give us storylines to work on in the future. Zordon was a huge dick, so it was just nice to see him with a personality. And how they connected Rita to the Rangers made some sense as well. Although, Banks didn’t feel right for the role. She looked like she was trying to act like Parker Posey, and now, I really just want the role to magically have been given to her instead.

This is not a movie you have to GoGo to see right away. It will be on Netflix before the end of the year, guaranteed.

Goat is apparently a movie about a frat and about hazing. And honestly, there is only one reason I watched this movie.

To find out if someone fucks a goat.

College? Hazing? Goat as the title? Someone has to fuck a goat right? Right? But they don’t let us know in the description. It is vague. Why the fuck is it called goat, unless someone fucks a goat?

And that is all I needed to convince me to see the film. A 90~ minute run time also helped.

And some men screaming without shirts.

The film doesn’t start with hazing, just a party, where Brad (Ben Schnetzer) ends up leaving early. A dude from the party asks for a ride for him and his friend. He lets them in, not wanting to be a dickweed, and they totally kick his ass and steal his car as a result. Should have been a dickweed!

Fast forward some time, and Brad is now going to the same college as his older brother Brett (Nick Jonas). Brett gets Brad to pledge to his fraternity! Now they can be fake brothers along with real brothers, hooray!

And then hell week happens. Hazing, drinking, humiliation, degradation, and the worst fucking torture ever. This doesn’t seem to bring them closer together, and the hazing might be worse than normal. Hell, people are getting hurt. And before I get too much further, they call the pledges Goats.

Now, that doesn’t mean there is any goat fucking. But it doesn’t mean there isn’t any goat fucking either. I just won’t tell you, because that is the only reason I wanted to see this movie. To see if someone had to fuck a goat.

Also starring a lot of bros, of course! People like Brock Yurich, Will Pullen, Austin Lyon, Eric Staves, Danny Flaherty, Jake Picking, Gus Halper, and a little bit of James Franco.

That goat literally has the word fuck on him!

War Dogs came and went and no one cared. And you know what that is?

Jonah Hill is back to being fat in it. Not only is he fat, but he looks uncomfortably rapey. Everyone thought that skinny Jonah would not be funny, but he totally is! And then from then on, Fat Jonah was put in shitty movies. Like The Sitter.

Needless to say, the Fat Jonah theory is definitely one of the main reasons I stayed away, and it sounds like a lot of people in America stayed away as well. I can only hope it is for the same reason.

Fuck, they don’t even make him reasonable to look at when they put him in a suit.

This is partially a story about David Packouz (Miles Teller), a man in love and who cannot find good work. He has spent a lot of money on some high quality sheets to sell discounted to retirement homes, but the retirement homes don’t want nice sheets for people going to die soon. His only real income is giving massages which is not his ideal job either.

His lady Iz (Ana de Armas) is taking care of them. Until he runs into an old buddy from high school, Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill), who eventually invites him to join his company. The company, AEY (which stands for nothing), is a sort of middle man company, who sells arms to the US government for the ongoing War in Iraq.

How did he get into that business? Long story, it is shady, but they are making their money by getting weapons from other countries and bringing them to Iraq, sometimes physically on their own. And once they get paid and people like what they get, they get more government contracts and start to live like fat cats. These are the deals that big contractors don’t bother with, but will still make them millions.

But eventually the money gets to their head, and the pursuit of more and more money. This leads to problems. This leads to threats.

Also featuring Patrick St. Esprit, Kevin Pollak, and Bradley Cooper.

Making money off of war. There is a word for that I think.

It was hard to get a lot out of War Dogs. Just from the basic color scheme of the film they go out of their and way to make it unpleasant looking.

Just look at our main characters. They didn’t even try to accurately look like the people they portrayed. Nothing. Alike. At all. They are only similar in that they are men. Normally in these things they try and make them at least look similar. The casting director here gave no fucks, went for who they wanted, and in addition to it, decided to make Hill as ugly as they possibly could to drive home a point.

What was that point? That the charcter was a scumbag. Of course this is all based on testimony of the other guy, who wrote a book and got less prison time. Of course he will make himself seem not too bad.

Somehow despite everything I still found it an okay watch. They rushed through a lot of things and the entire thing seemed to hurt my eyes, but in there somewhere is an okay story with a decent lesson.

Fuck bitches, get money. Or else I think that is what the lesson was.