Tag: 2 out of 4

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.

I find it very odd to see a lot of hype for the movie Kong: Skull Island. King Kong has happened over and over in film’s history, and given everything I know about the internet, they hate reboots, reimaginings, and remakes of other films, so they shouldn’t care about this one.

But alas, here we are. I don’t have too many fucks to give about it of course, after King Kong 11 years ago. Overly long and it didn’t really do anything different.

I guess this one is bringing in some hardcore CGI and bigger acting names. Maybe that is it. Or people are freaking out over the potential of a Godzilla and Kong showdown in the future. Needless to say, if this film doesn’t do anything different, I will probably be mostly annoyed.

I don’t care about context, these two people are not dirty enough.

Kong: Skull Island makes sure you get to see a giant ape really early in the film, when two crashed World War II pilots land on the island, start to fight, and then he shows up. But this isn’t set during that war, this is actually set in 1973, during the end of the Vietnam war.

Bill Randa (John Goodman) is some sort of scientist, who believes there is a lot to discover on this skull island they have found in the South Pacific. Ancient civilizations have talked about it, there are constant storms that surround it, but he wants a mission to explore what has never been explored. Let’s call it a geologic mapping mission. With a military escort.

He is able to gather a team. He has his own crew, a geologist (Corey Hawkins) and a biologist (Tian Jing), along with some extra scientists from another company (John Ortiz, Marc Evan Jackson). They have a legendary British explorer to help explore the jungles, James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), who is in it for some money. A prize winning photojournalist, Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), who helped show the truth about Vietnam to the public. And of course a helicopter team lead by LTC Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) and Captain Jack Chapman (Toby Kebbell), straight out of ‘Nam.

Most of them assume it is just a real exploratory mission. But really, Randa has an agenda and believes to be giant monsters on this island, and he wants to bring an end to them. They’ve got weapons of many sizes. Unfortunately, when setting off seismic blasts to detect the crust, they wake up these beasts on the island, and they do not like having explosions all over the place. Spread out over the island, the crew has three days to make it to the north side before they can be rescued.

Also featuring John C. Reilly, and a whole lot of soldiers: Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Thomas Mann, and Eugene Cordero.

Turns out this Kong film has a lot of Japanese influence.

At its heart, Kong: Skull Island is an action adventure flick that wants to show us giant animals fighting some dudes with bombs. Which on its own could be enough for most of the people who want to see it. I will say there are some scenes that look a bit awkward based on CGI usage. It doesn’t always mesh well. But the more pure CGI scenes like Kong fighting with the giant lizards look amazing.

The film also doesn’t pussy foot around Kong. We get to see him in the first few minutes. Within 15 more we are on the island and Kong totally fucks up the helicopters putting our characters in a perilous situation. We get a lot of Kong and they don’t tease him out.

You know what we don’t get a lot of? Character development. Basically every character in this movie is weak on that level. There is no gain. They don’t change. Well, some of them die. We have exactly one character who people will care about and does change and that man is played by John C. Reilly. His character is wonderful, an amazing addition to the film, and worthy of praise.

But Kong: Skull Island is just going to be a interesting film that could have been a lot better. With its post credit scene trying its best to imitate The Avengers it leaves some hope for the future. But have to hope they improve the scripts first.

I am thankful that I waited to review The Accountant. If I reviewed it months ago when it came out, it would have been so less…relevant.

What? Reviewing a movie when it comes out in theaters is LESS relevant? How crazy.

But yes. Because now I can say that regardless of the films topic and plot, this film should actually be about the 2017 Oscars. The two men responsible for the envelopes, the accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers, have lived their lives up to that night probably in perfection. Never flubbing a number, never getting BBQ sauce on their beards, just perfection.

And then they fucked up at the biggest award and took a little bit of time to fix it. It wasn’t a smaller technical award (which would have been equally devastating for those involved), but the Best Picture, which affects large groups of people.

Just fucking insane. I want their story. But this one will have to do.

Ah good, numbers, now we know it is an intense mystery film.

A lot of threads in this film, so I will try to keep it simple and brief.

Ray King (J.K. Simmons), some head of a treasury department, is looking for this Accountant dude, who might behind all these various…accountant things. And crimes. He gets some underling, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), to look into it. Some blackmail was involved too.

Chris Wolff (Ben Affleck) is of course our Accountant in question. He is a high functioning autistic dude, so he is good with numbers, but he was also trained to fight and stuff as a kid by his dad, because why not.

He is called into some company to look up financial irregularities. Turns out a lot of shenanigans are going on, we get some action, we get some mystery.

Starring Andy Umberger, Alison Wright, Anna Kendrick, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Tambor, John Lithgow, and Jean Smart. The A’s and J’s of the Hollywood complex.

He punched those numbers so hard they turned into tiny booklets and the room emptied.

A couple of days after I watched The Accountant, I realized something powerful. I don’t remember a whole lot about The Accountant.

The experience while watching it had some okay moments, but for the most part, nothing anymore stands out. It is a completely forgettable film, and that is not a good thing at all. If I wrote this review right away after watching it, it would have still only been a 2 out of 4.

But at this point, a die hard Ben Affleck fan, I am just wondering what happened? Is it worth ever seeing again? Shit, should I even watch Live By Night? I feel like I am automatically going to get the exact same reception for that film, and I can’t handle that happening right now. Another recent movie is Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and I don’t think I can handle that much shitty Ben Affleck in a row. I cannot go back the early 2000’s. Gone Girl was supposed to help lead to better roles, not worse!

I am just worried about my friend. Most of his upcoming films involve DC and I don’t want him to lose his acting career. He is lucky he even has one after all those shitty movies in the before time, here is no way he can survive a second falling out.

The Accountant is a forgettable action thriller. It might have smart moments, but it is not anything that I will care about discussing in the future, unfortunately.

Some single word titled films have become iconic. You know, like Jaws. Jaws is so famous world wide, you would never expect to see a newer filmed called Jaws about a completely different topic.

But here we have Christine. Christine, about a real person named Christine. Not about a Satan controlled Car. Just a name here.

Seems like a bold choice. They will now forever be compared to a Stephen King movie, regardless of content. They have made googling harder. All over a name, which there is no law that says a movie has to be the main characters first name. But hey, I don’t make the big PR money.

I make the sitting alone at a table writing money.

Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall) (They should have named this film Chubbuck) is a woman in her late 20’s working for a news station in Sarasota, Florida. It is also set in the mid-1970’s. Christine has a segment about the community, problems they face, or good things that happen. People seem to enjoy it. But nice stuff doesn’t bring in the ratings.

So station manager (Tracy Letts) continues to encourage the team to get the more gritty stuff. After all, if it bleeds, it leads. Christine has a crush on George (Michael C. Hall), their lead anchor. And Christine is terrible at relationships. She lives alone, never has a long term love interest, and hangs out with her mom (J. Smith-Cameron) a lot of the time. And the other amounts of time, she hangs out by herself. She has one decent friend, Jean (Maria Dizzia), a camera woman, but that is it.

And then, the owner of the news show finds himself in town. Apparently he is scouting local talent. Apparently he is going to get a news station in Baltimore, a much bigger market, and he is looking for people to take. This puts Christine on her edge, trying to make her segments better, including succumbing to listening all night to police radio feeds.

Eventually? All of the pressures, stress, and unfair practices end up just getting to be too much. Based on a true story. And also starring Kim Shaw as a sports anchor.

Clearly the biggest issue is that no realizes that sex sells more than violence.

Honestly, most of Christine is forgettable. It is really just about one woman, going through hard times in her life, socially and at the work place, and trying to cope with it all. Alone mostly. Through depression, without medical help. Oh, and she does have a medical issue to, that limits her potential for children in the future. That news didn’t help either.

For those that don’t know how this story ends, ignore this paragraph. But this is a true story because it is about the real Christine, who in the 1970’s, attempted to end her life on live television. And so it should be obvious where the conclusion leads up to. This isn’t really a spoiler, because it is only about her for that one famous reason. And because of that knowledge, most of the film I just found myself waiting for the conclusion that we were all expecting.

Rebecca Hall gives a great performance. It isn’t over the top, but it is passionate. Everyone else doesn’t matter in this flick, so none of them really stand out at all.

This is not a film for an amazing story. It is just a character study, and it shines with a single performance, but the rest feels rather drab.

Timing is everything. And I don’t think that Yimou Zhang, director of The Great Wall, intended for his alternative fantasy epic to tie in at all to American Politics.

But here we are, soooo.

The Great Wall has nothing to do with America. Just an American stars in it, because the Chinese director wanted him. And again, it is an alternative universe, so it isn’t taking place in Modern current China. What I am really getting at is there are people angry about a white guy starring in a Chinese setting film. Well, the director is Chinese. And he is telling a story he wants to tell. And they are playing Europeans who end up in China. So there is no reason to cry afoul. Unless the movie is terrible.

Then? Then we can cry afoul together.

Boom, racism over.

Set somewhere before now and sometime after, I don’t know, the year 1,000, we are introduced to a few white Europeans. William (Matt Damon) and Tovar (Pedro Pascal), two mercenaries, working their way to China in hopes of acquiring some of this black powder they have heard about, a destructive weapon and powerful force. They are the only two remaining members of their group after a few set backs. And hey, they get attacked by some big green creature they have never seen before too.

While running from some locals, they find themselves at a wall. A GREAT WALL! With thousands upon thousands of Chinese soldiers. Now they find themselves prisoners and in a war they had no idea even existed.

But good news, there is another white guy! Ballard (Willem Dafoe), a monk looking guy, who came here decades ago also in search of the black powder, but was unable to leave based on what he learned. And he can fill them in on the stories. There is also a female general here, in wonderful blue armor, General Lin (Tian Jing), who helps fill in our story.

The Chinese are being attacked by the Tao Tie, a large swarm of monsters. Every sixty years they attack, evolving and learning tactics, in order to get through to the other side. There is a Queen that controls them all, with every beast working for her in order to feed her. If she eats enough, she will be able to create an army to take over the world, so they have to prevent her from getting to their capital. Easy enough!

But can two extra soldiers really help? Sure, if they have some new ideas and have fought in many wars before this. Like mercenaries. Hooray!

Also featuring Andy Lau, Hanyu Zhang, Kenny Lin, Eddie Peng, Xuan Huang, and Lu Han.

We straight up got the Chinese Power Rangers leading this army.

Th Great Wall is a weird movie. Bizarre, really. It is a film that stays true to its roots and gives us a unique story.

When I say it stays true to its roots, I mean that it definitely feels like a Chinese movie. It fits the directors style. It is not overly Hollywoodized despite the Western cast members and writers (of which there was six)! The dialogue is shit, some build up scenes are rushed, but most of the focus is on the action, the mythology, and the colors.

The colors Duke! The colors! I loved that the outfits were stylish and seemingly useful. Each faction of the army with specialized weapon styles and tasks had a colorful cloak and armor to tell them apart to help with formations and look spectacular on the screen. I am especially impressed with the Crane Corps, all female fighters wearing blue. Their speciality was exciting, and it reminded me fondly of a Final Fantasy class system.

The ending was unfortunately a bit rushed. Moving the climax of the film to a new location put a damper on it for me. The CGI felt a bit weaker then too, with a lot of strange character actions.

Most of the characters were pretty two dimensional. But the film is weird. And it is pretty. So it has its uses.

Life, Animated was recently nominated for an Oscar, and one of those films that was relatively easy to watch so I jumped right on it.

I knew it involved Disney in some way, I did not know the focus was on a specific individual, Owen Suskind. Based on a book written by his dad, Ron Suskind, it tells of Owen’s story growing up and his struggles.

You see, Owen was autistic. And around 2-3 years old he started to become very reserved. He didn’t talk as much as he used to, he had no real way to communicate with others. This was also at a time when autism was less understood and they assumed something terrible had taken over him.

But they noticed something. Owen loved Disney movies, he would watch them all the time, it was the only thing that made him seemingly happy. He would rewind certain scenes over and over again. And one time, while watching The Little Mermaid, during the Ursula song Poor, Unfortunate Souls, he eventually repeated a phrase “Just The Voice” and was the first sign of hope in a long long time.

They found out that he could learn the lines from the films and would use them in a correct context. And the first real conversation he had with his father is when he found an Iago puppet and talked to him from below his bed, using his best bird voice. And Owen was able to talk to Iago unlike his parents, including direct lines from the films as well.

This is pretty high up there on most parents lists of things they are willing to do for their kids.

The beginning of the documentary started out very powerful and put me in tears, twice. That is those fears coming to the forefront of my mind, given my own child is still under 2 years old and I worry about things like autism. The struggles the family went through and what Owen went through are powerful and probably similar to thousands of families across the world.

His backstory was shown intermittently with scenes of Owen growing up, about to graduate from a program before getting to live on his own in a condo. About finding a girlfriend, about getting a job, and about running his own Disney fan club and connecting with people all over the world. Hell, his story is so inspirational he was able to give speeches and meet some famous Disney voice actors.

But after the intro, my interest began to wane. I don’t think the documentary knew how to end. It just continued to show his life and doing things and then, yep, movie.

Owen has a powerful story, and listening to his parents talk about it is worth the price of admission. But the ending lacks the same luster and peters off until it just decides to end.

I am so disappointed in myself for taking so long to see Deepwater Horizon. I am a goddamn geophysicist. And teacher. And movie reviewer. But geophysicist first.

And you know what? The BP oil spill in the Gulf was bad, it was terrible, but at the same time, certain aspects were completely overblown, public opinion was driven from emotions and not from science, and blame was thrown around all over the place.

But reality isn’t simple, a lot of people were involved, and a lot of processes and safe guards went wrong or were ignored to allow it to happen. And yeah, it sucked. But still, it happened only six years ago and doesn’t seem like the type of film to warrant a movie at all. Some shit went wrong, and some environment got fucked up.

Are they going to celebrate it? Fear monger it? What is the message? These are the questions I will ask myself and why I want to even see the movie.

I can confirm from my many years as an alive person that this is indeed a drill.

The day began like every other day for Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg). Hours of passionate love making with his wife (Kate Hudson) and sausages for breakfast.

Just kidding, he woke up, talked to his kid, heard a report on oil drilling, then left to go to his job for the next three weeks. He is on a crew on the Deepwater Horizon which is working on a borehole in the Gulf of Mexico. His boss is Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell), head of safety supervisor guy, and he is angry when they land, as the Schlumberger crew is apparently heading home early. They didn’t do all the safety tests!

Apparently because they are behind schedule, BP is getting impatient, and the people they sent to check things out (John Malkovich and James DuMont) are getting antsy. Needless to say, things get rushed, bad things happen, and a few people die in the process.

Also featuring Jason Pine, Jason Kirkpatrick, Gina Rodriguez, Ethan Suplee, David Maldonado, Dylan O’Brien, Douglas M. Griffin, and Brad Leland.

Not to mention they get about 10% more dirty than normal.

It turns out that this movie had a few things they wanted to cover. That people died during this accident, and to honor them with this film. Also that the main crews who were working were not to blame and the entire thing is BP’s fault.

And there is where some of the major fault for this film lands. It is hard to not have biases against films based on real life, and this one decides to run with the bias that the average American has taken. It is not using the film to right wrongs or tell actual true events. It is just telling us events based on what people want to hear.

Unfortunately, those biases cannot get out of my head and the film ends up taking a ding for that.

On its own, the first half of the film is interesting enough. The beginning is a bit corny, but the lead up to the events, the characters, they felt like a bunch of real people not just potential victims. They had their own voices. It is what really helps sell the whole film.

Things start to fall apart in the film when things start to fall apart. The explosions, the saving, the pain, the people jumping into the sea and the rescue? They all just felt like noise, like filler. Given how recent the events were it felt like the film was almost celebrating the disaster by making it take half of the film.

Deepwater Horizon is a strange event to make a movie about, has its moments, but also has its biases and excessive flair.

This is a review of Gold, Jerry! Gold!

Gold is another film that sort of came out of nowhere for me. I might have heard about it once, but I never saw a trailer. The first real moment acknowledging its existence was when it went and got nominated for a Golden Globe award!

Not like, a really good one. Just Best Song, for a song named Gold in the movie Gold. And that on its own didn’t really matter, because everyone knew La La Land would crush that category, guaranteed.

But hey, I watched it anyways. Maybe it would secretly be great, since it is one of those 2016 films that decides to come out awkwardly in January 2017 for most of the American public.

Must have been some time zone confusion, what with them in an Asian jungle and all.

Technically Gold is inspired by a true story. I say that, because it isn’t at all like the true story. It is the idea of the true story, some parts true, but basically everything changed with some extra story in order to create a bigger complete story. Or at least that is what they want you to believe.

The film is about Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey), a man who runs a business about buying up land for its potential of minerals and selling it once they can confirm the minerals are there. His dad (Craig T. Nelson) started it, but after he suddenly passed, the last seven years Kenny has been bringing it down. Heck, the workers now basically make calls and sales over the phone in a bar now. His wife (Bryce Dallas Howard) has been keeping them afloat with her own job, not leaving him despite the promises of an amazing life.

Kenny is down to his last dollars. And he wants to bet it all on a hunch. He wants to talk to Michael Acosta (Edgar Ramirez), a famed geologist who found an incredibly big copper find. But since then, people still have not trusted his different way of thinking. They want to work together, to go to Indonesia, where Acosta believes they could find the biggest gold mine ever.

And when the results eventually start coming in, thinks start to sky rocket. But can their sudden success and amazing luck really all just be good news?

Also staring Toby Kebbell, Rachael Taylor, Bruce Greenwood, Corey Stoll, Bill Camp, and Stacy Keach.

They took beauty and the beast to a whole new level here.

(Potential spoilers)

Gold has the potential of being a really great film. But what they needed to do was try to take away the big twist in the latter half and spread it out more throughout the film. Because for the most part, this just feels like a rags to riches story. It has some set backs, they overcome it, some set backs, they overcome. And some back and forth business stuff.

But when we finally learn the twist officially, the whole thing feels sort of awkward. We aren’t given enough time to process it, and seeing more of the fallout from said twist would be a lot more entertaining and important than some of the minute details they put into getting the land and making sure they could secure it for a mine. The subplots kill the film and take away focus. Because damn it, the twist and scam IS the focus.

We only get the smallest of bits that it might be a scam for those going in blind based on eventually an FBI agent talking to Kenny, and realizing that Kenny is telling the story of the film. If the goal of the film is to tell the true-ish story of a real life scam, it is just odd to hide the fact that there even is a scam throughout most of the film.

It is just pulled in too many directions, where not enough of the pull is in the correct direction. The acting is fine, McConaughey looks disgusting, and there is a lot more geology in this film than I would have expected. But that alone is not enough for me to like it.