Tag: 2 out of 4

Westerns! According to Spielberg, Super Hero movies might soon go the way of the Western. Everywhere, and then rarely. K, thanks Spielberg.

All of this is irrelevant to Bone Tomahawk, which is a new western (definitely not a super hero movie). It was also independently released, you can tell, because it wasn’t even rated. Ooh, a Non Rated Western? That has to be intentional. There has to be some fucked up shit in there. You know, NC-17 rated stuff.

What will it be? Violence? Sex? The word “Cunt?” Who knows! Only the one with the best facial hair I imagine.

Fuck. I hope that is real and I hope all future movies let him keep it.

Set in the vague past, we need to talk about a small town out in the West with your standard group of people. We have Sheriff Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell), whom has lived a good life of protectin’ people and growing facial hair. He has a “Back Up Deputy”, Chicory (Richard Jenkins, who I didn’t recognize at all until writing this review), and older fella who likes to talk. Like old people.

They got a rich guy, John Brooder (Matthew Fox) with no family, a fear of Indians, and a lover of the ladies in the town. Arthur O’Dwyer (Patrick Wilson) is also relatively wealthy, but he has a broken leg, and is being tended by mostly from his wife, Samantha (Lili Simmons), who is basically a nurse.

But when a drifter (David Arquette) comes to their town, their life begins to get a bit rougher. They lock him in the local jail, not sure if they should trust him. Next thing they know, the drifter, Samantha, and Nick (Evan Jonigkeit) are missing. Apparently they were taken by an angry Indian tribe, nicknamed the Troglodytes, because they live in caves. No other tribes will interact with them because of their cruelty and cannibalism.

Well, not in Hunt’s town. He is able to gather a crew of men (the four mentioned!) to get them back, despite injuries and oldness. That is the only thing they can do, lest a wife and a friend get eaten up. That is not a pleasant way to go.

Also with one scene from Sid Haig.

There are rag tag groups, and then there is this group. Rejectag.

Bone Tomahawk is like a slow fuse. A long, slow fuse. Bone Tomahawk is 132 minutes long and the type of film that is in desperate need of a better editor. I can imagine at least 20 minutes of material being cut out to make the story just a smoother experience for everyone involved. I am not talking 20 minutes of beautiful scenic shots, I just mean actual character conversations.

The first scene is great, tense, gets you the mood. Then it takes a long time before people get kidnapped and their journey begins. An incredibly long time. Enough time for me to forget about the intro completely.

The journey itself was fine. The four actors provided nice conversations and good back stories, but still I figured more things would happen outside of the one or two issues they encountered pre-Troglodytes.

The action was very brutal however. A lot a talk about how one death scene was the craziest of the year, and I think most everyone who watches it will feel uncomfortable throughout it. Straight up medieval torture. The other shootouts are not long and drawn out, just real people blasting in holes in people where no one can really be a hero.

Bone Tomahawk could have been an excellent western. It just needs to trim a lot of fat first to get ready for bikini season.

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

Apparently UNC Chapel Hill is the center of everything when it comes to colleges. They had all the sports scandals, and thus, were highly featured in several sports documentaries.

And now they find themselves featured highly in The Hunting Ground, a documentary about rape in college campuses. This documentary was made due to the positive response that The Invisible War received, about rape in the armed forces.

In case you didn’t know, yes, I did go to UNC Chapel Hill, so regardless of topic, it is always jarring seeing people walk around places I have walked, telling their stories. Now, sexual assault in colleges is a real issue and definitely not something anyone should take lightly. It is a real issue everywhere. But why is it potentially more prevelant in college?

Well, in college, you have thousands of young adults, making mistakes high on hormones. Access to drugs, and alcohol, when they aren’t legally to drink it for the most part and therefore go to excess because freedom and shit. Fraternities that haze their pledges by making them harass women, and sororities having rules forcing them to party and drink at fraternity parties. A lot of bad things. And you know, dudes who believe that no doesn’t mean no.

It centers a bit on UNC because two women, who had their plights ignored by administration, decided to check in the legality of their lack of effort. They decided to pursue their cases through the Board of Education as a Title IX complaint, noting that they are not making their campuses safe. If the college is found breaking Title IX, they would lose all government funding.

That is kind of a big deal for most universities, especially the public ones.

This documentary is chilling. Hearing these personal stories, seeing the alledged reactions from administrations and police, it is shocking. Basically, colleges don’t like reporting sexual assault numbers, because no one wants to be the school where people get raped. So instead, rape happens everywhere and is swept under the rug. This is especially true for when it happens to star football and basketball players. They won’t get in trouble until after an upcoming season or tournament. They might get suspended for 1 day or during the summer. They might get expelled after graduation, which means nothing.

But unfortunately, this documentary also has controversy. There were some emails that made interviews look sketch, and one of their crew members edited Wikipedia pages to make the stories match the documentary. Oh, because apparently not all of the stories they told in the documentary are factual and they are leaving out specific information that might make some of these cases not so clear cut anymore. Yes the articles I linked are biased, but they were reported elsewhere as well.

That makes me worried. Hell, while watching I was just waiting to see if they’d make a big deal out of that mattress girl, who was doing that bizarre senior thesis / point thing about carrying around the mattress that she was raped on everywhere because the school did nothing about it. They only showed her for like, 5 seconds near the end, not a big central piece, which is good since it looks like from anyone else looking at it that there was only consensual sex involved.

I don’t mean to get political, but I do hate it when a documentary, in an attempt to drive a single point home, ignores everything that might weaken their point. There is biases, and there is lying.

Rape in colleges is a problem. It happens a lot and administrations are not doing enough to combat it or punish those who have done the deeds.

But being sketchy in your documentary about it doesn’t fucking help.

I mentioned just yesterday that I watched Mississippi Grind solely for the fact that it was nominated for an award. There are several other films nominated for Spirit Awards that I could have watched right away, and I picked Youth.

No, it wasn’t nominated for a Spirit Award. But it might be nominated for an Oscar. In some form or another. I don’t want to be too obvious with my movie choices, and Youth seemed like a nice out of no where film that no one would ever expect me to watch.

“I’m very very sneaky sirs.”

Youth, of course, stars two old people. Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) is supposed to be a baller as a fuck music composer. He is famous and people love his songs and work. But you know, he is old. So he is on at a resort in the Alps with his good buddy, a filmmaker, Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel). Mick is doing research for his next movie, which he believes will be his greatest work yet. He just has to figure out the ending.

Their vacation starts to get weird when an emissary of the Queen (Alex Macqueen), yes, the British one, visits Fred hoping he will conduct a symphony in honor of a big birthday celebration. Well, Fred, despite being his proper British self, says no. Huh. Rarely do people say no to the queen.

It should be noted that these two friends are also related now through marriage. Fred’s daughter (Rachel Weisz) married Mick’s son (Ed Stoppard). Except now Mick is leaving her for a pop star (Paloma Faith, apparently a real pop star?) for very shallow reasons.

There are other big names at this fancy as fuck resort. There is Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano) an actor who is well known for playing a robot, the most recent Miss Universe (Madalina Diana Ghenea), and even a fat…football player…dude. Or something. That one was weird.

Either way. Shit happens at the resort. Bad and good things. Also Jane Fonda.

And all the pictures for this film make them look really pervy.

Youth is directed by Paolo Sorrentino, a man who I know close to nothing about. He is Italian and mostly has Italian films, but his most recent one before Youth was The Great Beauty, which was also acclaimed and loved. But in all honesty, I don’t remember anything about it. At least the last two films (The only ones in English) seem to be about rich people living fancy lives, but you know, having issues.

The best part of Youth is the cinematography. The movie was shot on site of an actual “You Will Never Be Rich Enough To Go Here” resort, and it is probably better looking than you can imagine. Imaginative shots, montages, colors, almost every shot is wonderful. Youth is rated R for its Graphic Nudity, and by that, naked people everywhere. As it is the only way to stay at a resort.

Beautiful film, decent acting, and hard for me to relate to. I am probably wrong, but I guess the title refers to older people trying to reclaim their youth and show they aren’t old. They are making movies. They are enjoying life and the beautiful women around them. But at some point they have to realize that they are old, life is no longer as grand as it used to be, and they sometimes have to make difficult choices.

It is easy to get lost in this film and at points, I felt it was just too intellectual for me. Some of the imagery was out there and I kept losing track of what the film was even about. Naked people. Oh yes, it is about naked people.

In all honesty, when I first heard about the movie Trainwreck, I really really really thought that this movie would involve a train. A couple meets on a train and talk and get to know each other. And hilarious things happen. But that is basically Before Sunrise minus comedy. Trainwreck is nothing like Before Sunrise, unfortunately.

So, no train. Maybe that means it will be like Trainspotting. That had no train right? It has been awhile.

There is a train of pain in his arms though.

Amy (Amy Schumer, yes she plays herself or something), is the trainwreck in question. Why? Because she is promiscuous after sex doesn’t stick around. Oh no! Why is she like this? Because her father (Colin Quinn), when divorcing their mom, told them love isn’t real and to not trust it. Didn’t affect her younger sister, Kim (Brie Larson), though. She is in a nice relationship, married to a man (Mike Birbiglia) and helping to raise his son (Evan Brinkman). Ugh, stable relationships, yuck.

The only thing sort of stable is Amy’s relationship with Steven (John Cena), except that is getting a bit rocky too as Steven might want something deeper.

Anyways, Amy works at a shitty magazine, and her boss (Tilda Swinton) wants her to do an article about a guy named Aaron (Bill Hader), who is a sports injury surgeon. He is the best surgeon too, working with the best athletes to repair their legs and knees to get them back in the game. He is even BFF’s with LeBron James (LeBron James)! Too bad Amy hates sports.

But hey, dorky Aaron is a nice guy. She should sleep with him and dump him. But he is so endearing. Maybe she will date him. Yeah. Sounds good.

Also featuring smaller roles by Dave Attell as a bum, and Vanessa Bayer, Randall Park and Jon Glaser as coworkers, and Ezra Miller as an intern.

I didn’t know LeBron was that much of an actor, but he plays the fuck out of himself.

Trainwreck is directed by Judd Apatow and it feels very much like an Apatow movie. It is too long, it has long unfunny periods, and everyone is a bit awkward talking about real issues.

It is also written by Amy Schumer, and thus, the main characters name and I guess mostly her jokes? Hard to say, I haven’t seen her shows or stand up or anything really. But everything is about sex, making this an adult comedy about adult things. Get your big boy pants on.

Either way, the film on its own isn’t that great. The romance doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense and Hader’s character is legitimately boring. Schumer’s character gets old relatively quick, because it seems like it is just the same joke over and over again.

But cameos make this movie. Cena and LeBron are amazing. Ah maze ing. Cena didn’t have as many scenes, but he rocked it each time. LeBron is in this film a lot more, and does a great fake version of himself. His jokes are great, although also a bit repetitive.

Overall, the cameos makes it worth it. Despite the meh leads and overall length.

Think back to earlier in 2015. It was a scary time. So much was different in my own life for sure. But one thing has haunted me from earlier in the year. The Oscar category for Best Original Song. Because I got four of the five films pretty easily, but then there was “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” from Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me.

Wasn’t even nominated for Best Documentary! Just Best Original Song! You bastard!

Well, the good news is Netflix finally has it available so us regular people can see this technically obscure documentary. The good news is, he is still alive as of the time of this post. The bad news is, damn it, I have another documentary about an celebrity. Three weeks in a row, when will it end, when will it end?!

This whole thing is just a major troll, to make my list incomplete.

Glen Campbell is a famed musician. He got his start by playing as a studio band (See: The Wrecking Crew, Love & Mercy, both out this year). He is the most famous studio band member, who eventually became a ridciulously famous country star. Hell, the rest of The Wrecking Crew who matter even got parts in this documentary.

And now he has Alzheimer’s. But that won’t stop him from touring, making his own family his backing musicians, with new songs on what is most likely his final tour ever.

That is the whole basis for the documentary. A sad tale. A little bit of his history, a lot of performances from the tour, a lot of doctor visits, some Alzheimer’s awareness for cure research, and a whole lot of Campbell forgetting things.

And yet still, this is a documentary mainly for people who either A) Have relatives with Alzheimer’s, or B) Love Glen Campbell. I am willing to go on a limb and say it is for people older than myself. It is still touching at points, and his performance that got nominated was very good. Touching, full of montages, full of heart. But you know. Mostly a low key concert documentary, that could feel a bit more personal for some.

In all honesty, because he is real and I am not a super fan, I connect less to it. However, something like Still Alice, bringing a fictional Alzheimer’s account, makes it far easier for me to get emotional about it.

Feel free to listen to the song on the youtubes. But it has a much better impact after watching the entire documentary.

Pixar! What are you doing? This seems highly unusual!

They had Inside Out come out earlier in the year. The year being 2015. But this is another Pixar movie, The Good Dinosaur, coming out in the same year. Don’t they know that this will mean they are competing against themselves for animated film awards?

Oh well, that is because this Pixar film was supposed to come out in 2013. But delays occurred. Serious delays that pushed it back a year, and then another. The whole story had to be redone from what they initially thought about, as there were apparent serious problems with the script. Not only that, but the entire voice cast, except for Frances McDormand was replaced earlier this year. Some crazy shit went down into getting this film out.

Either way, this is the first time that Pixar has released two films in the same year. The next time they do this is in 2017, with the release of Coco and Cars 3. That year, however, they won’t be competing against themselves since they know that there is no way Cars 3 will win anything.

Oh no, there are 3 T-Rexs here. This just make me think of how bad Cars 3 will be, noo!

What if the asteroid that hit the earth 65 million years ago didn’t happen? Well, then the dinosaurs wouldn’t have been wiped out. And lots of other things would have happened, like we would never have had the rise of mammals, humans probably wouldn’t exist, and no one would be able to make lame Nickelback jokes anymore. But let’s ignore the many things that would change, assume they stay the same, but also dinosaurs still exist.

That way we can meet Poppa (Jeffrey Wright) and Momma (Frances McDormand), some sort of “long neck” dinosaur species (Apatosaurus). They have three eggs and they are about to hatch! We have little Libby (Maleah Nipay-Padilla, who I assume does the voice the whole time, not just the baby. Shitty IMDB stuff going on), strong Buck (Marcus Scribenr), and Arlo (Raymond Ochoa), the runt. Having kids is great, because they work a farm, and now they can expand their corn farm and get even more corn food to survive winters and have a wonderful home!

Let’s just say, eventually, some tragedies occur, due to the very explicit foreshadowing, so next thing we know, Arlo is far from home and on his own! Well, there is also this random human toddler, Spot (Jack Bright). See his name? He is basically a really smart dog.

They have to get back to the farm before it is too late. Before what is too late? Well, basically death. This area has a bit of volcanism, large bugs, scary winged dinosaurs, scary big mouthed dinosaurs, scary cryptic dinosaurs, and giant ass storms that make shit flood and get all sorts of scary. SCARY!

Also featuring the voices of Peter Sohn, Steve Zahn, A.J. Buckley, Anna Paquin, and of course, Sam Elliott.

Sam Elliot plays the whisper of the wind on the grass. Or at least that is how smooth his voice is in my mind.

Cutting to the chase, The Good Dinosaur is a very safe movie from the Pixar perspective. It was just a journey film between two unlikely entities. A buddy road trip movie. Sure they had their differences, but working together, their strengths were doubled and their weaknesses were, lets say cut down a small bit.

Early in the film was a bit dull, and I was worried it would finish with an average rating. Then we started to meet a few characters. The triceratops scene and the bad fruit scene were basically back to back and had me in stitches. Then we had the scary flying things (I don’t know if they were pterodactyls, so I won’t call them that). They were cool. But the T-Rex’s were just cowboys and a bit boring at that. Elliot voice be damned.

The Good Dinosaur had a few touching moments, but only made me barely cry just once. I was never able to connect to it emotionally like I could Inside Out. And hey, there was a death scene, and it was intense as fuck. About the same level of intensity as when Mufasa kicked the bucket in that one movie.

I was weary of the animation style, with cartoony dinosaurs/people and hyper realistic backgrounds, but it was amazing to watch it on the screen.

Again, The Good Dinosaur has some amazingly funny parts. The animation was great, but the story overall was very plain, not very original. Given their production problems, it is clear they just really wanted to do some dinosaur film. Through all the rewrites the film probably gradually became simpler and simpler, until we got the mostly unoriginal story line. It’s a shame, but at least we have Inside Out.

Hooray another franchise is over! After Harry Potter, I am grateful book series are still afraid to break from the trilogy format. Or else we’d get these yearly movies that drive up the box office and everyone freaks out about and so on.

You know, like Marvel movies. Or the upcoming Star Wars films. One a year. Fuck.

Of course, this time it is The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2. The studios will say over and over again it is because the last story needs all that time to tell the story, but it is just for money grabbing purposes. It is putting a pause in the plot, usually meaning neither half are a complete film and overdrawn.

Part 1 was the worst film of the franchise. It had about 30 minutes of plot spread out over two hours. And because of that, Part 2 is almost definitely going to suffer for similar reasons. Even if Part 2 is great, the fact that Part 1 exists and is bad, instead of one coherent picture, means both are weaker than they should be. Happened with the final two Twilights, happened with the final two Harry Potters, and will probably happen again here.

You know, Katniss, this is the last time I might get to dress you.” – Creepy Effie

Katniss Katniss Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence). Katniss found herself choked up over the fact that they saved Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) from the Capital, her emotions all over the place. She knows one thing now. She will help Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and the rebels in any way she knows how. The Capital and President Snow (Donald Sutherland) must fall! And die!

Got it? Good. I’m done with that point of view. Lets change it up.

My man, Finnick Odair (Sam Claflin) is still a bad ass mother fucker, cool spear trident weapon thing. No one can take him one on one. Except one girl. That’s right, Finnick is getting married. They will have ginger babies. Apparently they are all Irish, and Irish is a thing in this world, because their wedding has Irish violin music and jigs and shit. But that won’t stop him from putting his life on the line to take down the bad guys, YEAH!

Okay okay one more. Caesar Flickerman (StanleY Tucci) is the best host in all of the districts. He has flair, hair, and style. Unfortunately in this movie, he only has one scene as a shitty news anchor person. We don’t delve more into his life. Sad news.

Alright, everyone else in this movie are played by the same people you have seen before. Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Willow Shields, Elizabeth Banks, Mahershala Ali, Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright, Patina Miller, and of course, Elden Henson as the best video camera man in the world. Formally best at shooting the puck really hard.

“What are you going to do, just walk up to the door stop and kill him?”

I felt a bit silly typing up the plot outline for this film, as you may have guessed. They are finally doing that fight thing. No longer is this about the hunger games, it is about a revolution, damn it. They should really assume the viewers are smarter and just call it Mockingjay without THG.

Part 2 ended up being a lot better than Part 1, but not as good as the first movie or Catching Fire. The ending wasn’t full of epic moments, but just a slow fuse that slowly ran out of steam. And then a couple more scenes, and an epilogue. Hell, the ending was very confusing just in terms of time. I can’t be more specific without bigger spoilers, but the events being shown and that were talked shouldn’t have overlapped as such.

There were some decent action scenes in the middle though. The best was the sewer scene, although it was also confusing. Dark places means they don’t have to make coherent action, which might just be an allusion to the first film where they just changed the camera angles a lot and shook the camera. They threw in zombies out of no where, which is I guess the cool thing to do in a teen book franchises (see Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials). I am sure technically they are not zombies, but they came out of no where and never were really explained, so that is all I can really call them.

When I think back on the Hunger Games franchise in the future, I will just think about the first two movies. As long as you accept that Catching Fire ends with a crappy cliff hanger and doesn’t resolve anything, it will save you from the extremely mediocre two film filler after the fact. With only a handful amount of Finnick scenes to get you by.

2015 may be the year of documentaries about celebrities. I feel a bit bad that so many of mine for this year are about a single person, dead or alive. I mean, last week I did Amy. And I still have that Kurt Cobain one to do.

But today I talk about Brand: A Second Coming, about Russell Brand, a guy who is definitely still alive and kicking. Shit he kicks a lot.

This is about a documentary about how Brand came into fame, how he reached the top, how he fell, and whatever the fuck he is doing now. He is an actor, a stand up comic, sometimes a singer, and a political activist.

What? You only know him from Get Him To The Greek, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or Arthur? Well, where have you been? Someplace that isn’t England? Oh, that makes sense.

If you aren’t in England, you might never come across this guy. Or the Queen. Or the ghost of Winston Churchill.

Technically, part of this documentary is also showcasing Brand’s stand up tour, The Messiah Complex. You know, where he compares himself to Jesus is vulgar and funny ways. But only a few jokes/stories. Really, I think the main point of this review is to show how he went from acting celebrity, to political…activist…humorist…political something that he is today. Maybe consider him like Jon Stewart. But his show isn’t a big one on Comedy Central, it is instead a YouTube channel called The Trews (if the news had truth I think), where he went over how the news was reported the previous day, showing biases, lies, or whatever.

It is actually a really ambitious project and had actually gained me a lot of respect for him. All I knew about his politics was from that one Morning Joe clip that blew up on the internet a year or so ago. It is actually quite entertaining and shows he is smarter than some of his characters let him put on.

And hey, it was also interesting to see his side of the Katy Perry divorce story, as I only really heard about the why from Katy Perry: Part Of Me. How often do divorced couples each get their own documentary? Outside of presidents and their wives.

Overall, I’d call Brand: A Second Coming as merely interesting. It feels like it is going all over the place early on, and I did find myself wondering why he even had a documentary at this point in his career. Good for people who love Brand already, that is for sure. Probably the most profound sentence in any review I’ve written right there.

The 2010 Chilean mining accident is a wonderful topic for a movie. I am surprised it took them five years in fact.

It was a national event, it lasted months, it involved dozens of people (33 to be exact), and it had a happy ending.

Imagine if they opened the hole and it was a few guys surrounded by corpses. That’d be terrifying. That would be a different sort of movie, not at all uplifting.

So I am going into The 33 with optimism. I hope they get buried within like, the first 10 minutes too. Let them build up that scare factor just a bit.

Besides, the last movie I saw set in Chile that involved a huge disaster and trying to survive was Aftershock. That wasn’t uplifting, well, besides the tectonic plates.

Seeing all those sweaty food deprived bodies could also be considered uplifting.

12,000 miners die every year. That is a big number. But, at least 9 million kids under 5 die every year, and that is only one portion of minors. So it is much more dangerous to be a minor than a miner. I assume.

Well, in this case, the miners were going down on a normal day, just to get the copper and gold. They use relatively small crews, I guess to not upset the mountain too much with the drills and other equipment. This particular mountain has been mined heavily and they are very deep into it. Mario Sepúlveda (Antonio Banderas) needs some extra money, so he is working too, despite not originally on the schedule. And guess what? Not long after they are down there and working, the mountain begins to move. Now, a super rock is blocking their only exit and they are trapped in a relatively small area. They have a hall way or two, and thankfully they are in The Refuge, a room with some food and supplies. But still, it is quite dangerous and scary down there.

The food supplies are not plentiful. The company lied about a few safety measures as well, making escape impossible. And the company isn’t even going to do anything about it! They are a private company, so they are doing the bare minimum, but they aren’t even letting the friends and family members enter the area, as they are blocked off by gates and people with guns.

Thankfully, María Segovia (Juliette Binoche) is not having any of their shit. She is the sister of one of the miners and she basically helps frenzy them into a riot, creating pressure on the government and company to attempt the rescue mission. This brings the Minister of Mining, Laurence Golborne (Rodrigo Santoro) down to the scene. He is moved by everyone’s committment and he promises to do everything he can to rescue the miners, no matter the cost.

Sure they only have 3 days of food for 3 people and it would take at least a week to get a small hole somewhere into their area. And they also have no idea how to get to the right spot, due to the density of the stone being unknown and their drills will curve. But damn it, they gotta try, right?

Obviously with so many minors, we have a huge cast. But most of the minors have no talking roles. But the people they do showcase have families worried about them or other unusual characteristics. And a lot of people helping, including Bob Gunton playing President Piñera. These people are played by Mario Casas, Juan Pablo Raba, Oscar Nuñez, Tenoch Huerta, Marco Treviño, Jacob Vargas, Lou Diamond Phillips, James Brolin, Adriana Barraza, Kate del Castillo, Elizabeth De Razzo, Cote de Pablo, and Gabriel Byrne.

Count them. They don’t even try to make the number of characters accurate.

Did I cry? Of course I cried. They had beautiful tense moments of rescue. They had people who hadn’t seen each other for 69 days, who had assumed their loved ones died, reconnecting. Someone had a baby girl, and you know how they affect me. But just because I cried doesn’t mean it is an excellent film.

First of all, when your title is The 33 and it is a well known fact that there are 33 people, you should probably have all the many extras around who don’t talk when the whole group is together. That dinner scene is unacceptable. Didn’t even have people standing to the side having their own conversation.

Second of all, there is geology in this movie. Not a lot, technically. But there was the big “eureka” moment with how they would get the drill to the correct area. And it was terrible. I cannot believe that is how it really happened, because it would mean all of the drilling crews were inept.

But there were some nice moments of course. Banderas gives an excellent speech or two that really get me going. The scene where they imagined food was super weird. And they really felt like coworkers and a family by the end.

Slightly inspirational without shoving it in your face, and a nice tail. Just those inaccuracies.

Dun dun dunnnnn. Dun DUN DUNNNNNNN. That is my impression of the main Rocky theme, you’re welcome.

I first saw Rocky about 5 or 6 years ago. I was pretty late to the game. But I liked it for what it was. I didn’t see any of the other films until this summer, in preparation for Creed. And since I never had to review any of those films for the site, here are reviews of 2-6.

Rocky II was hilarious, because half of the movie was Sylvester Stallone rambling about whatever comes to his head. He clearly is showing he has severe brain damage and Adrian apparently thinks his mental handicap is cute.

Rocky III gave us Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. It was okay, gave us the best montage fun with Apollo and Rocky though.

Rocky IV was my most quoted film, while I had only seen the fight between Creed and the Russian. It had a fantastic ending, where Rocky single-handedly defeated Communism and Robot Boxers.

Rocky V was steaming shit. What a terrible movie. Why the fuck was this made?

Rocky Balboa was 16 years after Rocky V, a sadder tale about an old man coming out of retirement to prove he wasn’t a pushover. And well, I honestly didn’t like it at all. Was a very different tone and was night time half the film, and just mehhhh. What a waste.

Kind like my thoughts when I saw that MJB was starring in the new Fantastic Four. What a waste.

And now there is Creed. They might have called it Rocky VII, but that one if it ever exists will have to be called Adrian’s Revenge.

Turns out Apollo wasn’t faithful. He had an affair out of wedlock and Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) was born. However, he wasn’t born until after Apollo died in the ring, so he never had a chance to meet his father. His mother died when he was young, so he was passed around the foster care and juvie system, always getting into fights, until about 10 or 11. That is when Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad) found him. She, somehow, found out about the affair and the kid, and since she heard the news, she wanted to adopt him so he can learn about his father and grow up in the proper lifestyle.

Now years later, Adonis is fighting in Tijuana, Mexico, trying to be a boxer like his dad, but in secret. Fuck real jobs, real responsibilities. He just wants to punch people in the face.

He wants to punch people so badly, but no one will give him a chance in LA. So he heads to Philadelphia. He goes to see Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone). Rocky is old, managing a restaurant, with no real family to worry about. He doesn’t want to. But he realizes that he might be the only real father figure that Adonis will ever have.

Even better, he doesn’t want people to know he is Creed’s son. He wants to become a fighter on his own, not by legacy. That’s good news. Fuck it. Let’s train the kid.

Oh and Adonis of course meets a lady. Bianca (Tessa Thompson), a soulful musician who is also slowly losing her hearing.

Also featuring Ritchie Coster, Tony Bellew, Graham McTavish and Wood Harris as various fighters/coaches. And a dude who looks a hell of a lot like Edward James Olmos. I have no idea who he is, but he was in the movie a lot as their team doctor guy, had no lines, but I couldn’t find out who he was on the IMDB page, because it was very badly laid out order wise. It might be Olmos. It might be a weird cameo.

You might be able to tell by his shorts that someone eventually let’s the name secret out of the bag.

Creed featured four montages. FOUR. Three of them training, and one a fight montage. All of that exists, but we don’t see Michael B. Jordan splashing the dying corpse of Sylvester Stallone. A shame. More movies need playful beach splashing.

In terms of themes and atmosphere, Creed is a bit closer to Rocky Balboa, but it is also a lot more entertaining. The best shot moment was during the “mid film” fight, where the entire thing was one long shot. Multiple rounds, corner talk, the whole shebang. It was wonderful. I figured they would do that for the final fight as well, but we had to settle with the walk from the waiting room to the ring to be the one long shot.

With Creed, they clearly want to turn it into a new franchise, since Stallone can’t possibly un-retire from boxing for the 50th time and the son route didn’t work out. Creed had some nice moments in the fights and I felt appropriate at the ending, but I don’t like a lot of elements as well.

For whatever reason, Rocky himself doesn’t have as much brain damage as he did in Rocky II, and they are making him progressively more and more normal. You wouldn’t expect that with age. SLIGHT SPOILER, but they make it so that Rocky also has a health concern. I won’t say what, I will say that it, again, has nothing to do with brain damage. It feels like an incredibly bull shit side plot, when they have perfectly reasonable and obvious health issues they could have instead brought in.

The back story for Adonis felt a bit shitty too. It seemed like they had to jump through hoops to get the backstory they wanted, again, over complicating it. The story was also incredibly inconsistent with Adonis’ feelings. He wanted to make it big without using the Creed name to get him by, but instead be a good fighter on his own. Mary Anne also had the same feelings, but apparently they both just figured they should get over it and embrace it, making some of his earlier journey feel a bit dishonest.

Oh well. Some good fights. And Michael B. Jordan was great in it. This should fix his career back up again quite nicely.