Tag: 2 out of 4

A long time ago, in the before time, the summer of 2015, I saw a poster for The Gift. I was a bit intrigued, not because of the box, or the title, or the cast.

I was intrigued because it was written and directed by Joel Edgerton, who is totally an actor, and hasn’t written nor directed anything before this. Well, I take some of that back. He has directed some shorts I haven’t seen, and written some shorts I haven’t seen. Oh, and he helped write the story for The Rover with the actual director. I guess that is something. Needless to say, he isn’t just jumping in cold because he can do it as a famous Hollywood actor. He has some minor experience and this is his first attempt to show he can do things on his own.

And no matter what bad career decisions Edgerton makes, I will still like him as an actor for the feelings he made me feel with Warrior.

And for those excellent nachos he brought over for dinner one time.

Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) have just moved to one of the many suburbs around LA and are loving life and each other! They had a misscarriage. That sucks. But Simon has a sweet high paying job, Robyn doesn’t have to work, their house is basically a mansion, and oh hey look, there is Gordo (Edgerton).

Gordo apparently went to school with Simon, although Simon doesn’t really remember him. But Gordo says he really looked up to Simon. Simon was the bee’s knees and the cat’s pajamas. So as a welcome gift, Gordo gives them things. Some gifts, if you will. Robyn likes it, but Simon finds it weird, and doesn’t even like it when they have him over for dinner. Turns out Simon did remember Gordo, and they used to call him Gordo the Weirdo. Nicknames are hard, okay.

Either way, they find out that Gordo’s house is super big but he is alone as well. He has rooms with women’s clothes and kid stuff. Apparently he is going through a divorce and it is a tough time for him. Despite all this, Simon decides to call it off. He wants Gordo out of their life, it is too awkward everything that is happening and shit needs to stop.

Well, after this, they find out that he totally lied about that house. It wasn’t his. And their dog is missing. And Simon AND Gordo are lying about their past together. Anyways, all of this gets Robyn pretty discombobulated and their picture perfect life is going to start falling apart real quick.

The reason we invented big open windows is so we could do creepy things, right?

The Gift is a movie that needs to be unwrapped slowly. If you unwrap it too fast, it will all fall apart, so it requires a slow unwrapping to allow everything to fall into place. Of course, you the viewer don’t get to decide watch speed, so you have to accept the slower nature of the film. I was a bit surprised with how much happened early on. I only tagged 3 people because everything else was pretty damn unnecessary. Unfortunately, after the first act of fast moving plot line, the 2nd act goes pretty slow, while the third is mostly slow until finally the end.

The Gift is a drama based around a mystery. What happened between Gordo and Simon? What is Gordo trying to do now? Does he have a plan or is he just doing whatever weird shit pops up in his mind? Once we get the final reveal, it is a bit sickening and terrible at the same time. I can appreciate the results, but when I look back on the how, I get pretty annoyed. It is one of those perfect Rube Goldberg machines going on, but instead of random shit on your floor, dealing with people’s emotions and expected actions. It requires the level of brilliance of a person that is really hard to accept.

So an okay drama in the end. Clearly Edgerton had the idea for the twists he wanted to do and based a movie around that. Nothing wrong with that approach. It just really drags in the second act, with only a few scenes worth it after the fact.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {http://amzn.to/1GMHfsc}.

I have not seen a lot of actual horror films made by Eli Roth. He is supposed to be a big name, but when I looked at his directed list I had seen…well, zero. I thought he had directed Aftershock, but I was wrong about that.

But I am sure I will watch Knock Knock at some point! That is some sort of Thriller and it is on VOD exactly when it was supposed to be. Apparently The Green Inferno was not as lucky. Made in 2013, it was supposed to come out in 2014, but shit hit the fan, and it got delayed over a year. Which is why Eli Roth even has two movies coming out only roughly a month apart.

Speaking of intro small talk, the film was clearly inspired by Cannibal Holocaust. That is a film from the 1980’s which introduced found footage before it was even a thing. It was very gruesome, realistic, and basically the same plot of some white people heading to the rain forest to get eaten. In fact, people insisted at the time that it must have been a snuff film! The title itself was the name of the movie that was being made in Cannibal Holocaust.

“Ooooh hair, my favorite.”

Being an activist in college is one of the easiest things to do with your free time. Once you walk through a quad or a pit or a hallway, you will find dozens of protests happening all around you. Every day. Guaranteed. All you have to do is stand around, do a chant, and maybe (maybe!) hold a sign.

Justine (Lorenza Izzo) is just a bright eyed and bushy tailed freshmen in NYC. She gets interested in the activism, but her roommate (Sky Ferreira) thinks the local group on campus is too crazy. They plan to go to Peru! There is a logging company who is illegally taking out trees and threatening to remove local tribes from their homes! They will dress up like loggers, tie themselves to trees and record their actions straight onto the internet. That should stop them from hurting them and get people to care about their group and hate on the one company. Sweet. That goes fine enough. Outside of spoiler stuff.

The real issue occurs when they drive to leave the jungle. Something goes wrong with their plane, killing half of the crew as it crash lands back into the jungle. This is where they are quickly found by the local friendly natives. Just kidding, they are all painted red and totally scary. They tranq those college students and capture them to bring them back to their village.

And guess what? You already know what. They eat people! Yay!

Now they have to figure out how to survive the tribe, run away, survive in the jungle, and get back to America as soon as they can. And guess what, again! They ruined their best chance of escape by making the logging company stop their illegal actions. Life is a bitch some times.

Starring Ramon Llao and Antonieta Pari as the main two village people. As for our other activists, we have Aaron Burns, Nicolas Martinez, Magda Apanowicz, Daryl Sabara, Kirby Bliss Blanton, and Ariel Levy as our leader.

“What? Tribal mom got your tongue?”

I have heard some of Roth’s movies have been very graphic and hard to watch. Why the fuck would I ever want to go back and watch Hostel if that is true? The first major torture porn right, outside of some Saw movies? Well, The Green Inferno, if you didn’t already guess it, was very graphic and hard to watch.

I had to look away numerous times throughout the movie, my stomach unwilling to negotiate with the eye terrorists on the screen. Eating people it turns out can be pretty gross. Unfortunate, if everyone was simply just eaten, that’d be a boring and just gross film. They do a good job of keeping more of the deaths diverse so that it doesn’t get stagnant. Although watching that boy from the Spy Kid movies felt very weird for me.

As a horror film, it did its job in terms of grossing/creeping out the viewer. It definitely isn’t boring, outside of some of the earlier moments before they make it to the other country. It is super violent and should make you uncomfortable.

But it feels all very cheap at the same time. Overall the film lacks a lot of substance. It is trying to make a statement about social justice types, or America butting into things, or…something else. It just does it in a terrible way. “Don’t do this, or you will get eaten by the natives.” Cultural exploitation aside (which I do not care about), it isn’t a strong link and ruins any message it was trying to make.

For those who like gross stuff, this is your movie. If you want anything besides that, well…uh, not this movie then.

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

It turns out there are more than just popular wide released horrors happening this year. Yes, they are the ones we all hear about and have been mostly disappointing. But there is indie stuff out there, and the indie stuff ends up being the best.

You know, like The Babadook, It Follows, and Goodnight Mommy. All from this year or last year. So when I found out about The Boy I decided to wait a couple of months to make sure I could review this around Halloween instead. That’s the level of dedication we provide here at Gorgon Reviews. Delaying reviews to fit silly little themes.

The only worry with indie horrors is that sometimes they can go a bit too slow. Usually they build up for an amazing payoff, but if the journey isn’t worth it, then payout be damned, no one will care.

As long as the movie has a good early hook, the rest should be fine.

Life as an only child can be boring. Especially if you live in a small town. Wait. No. Near a small town. You actually live in a hotel by a small mountain highway road. Sometimes people stay there, but usually it is dead and boring as shit.

It doesn’t get any worse for Ted (Jared Breeze). His mom left some years ago with a client who stayed in their hotel frequently, leaving just his dad (David Morse), an empty shell of a man. So he just works in the hotel and finds things to do with his time. Some of these things are bad or questionable, but since he is alone so often, who will care?

Sure people still do occasionally come to the hotel. Like William Colby (Rainn Wilson), who just so happens to get into a crash right outside the hotel and, being a secretive man, doesn’t want to go to the hospital to rest. Or that other family with the little boy, who after staying a night, find that their car no longer works.

Man. Both of those things sure are strange. I hope Ted isn’t behind all of this and, if so, I hope he doesn’t do anything worse.

I, uhh. I got nothing.

As expected, The Boy, like a lot of indie films of this genre, had a slow built up, all culminating towards a huge ending. So, starting from the end, I can say man, that shit was crazy. Imagine me making a gang pose while I said that. Maybe even while covering my mouth and saying “Ohhhh.” It had some very intense moments and the use of visuals and music were excellent with it.

And throughout the film, there were several moments of teetering on evil and not so evil, so that I never really knew when, if, and how often he would snap. They filled their purpose and had me worried.

However, this film is far better defined as a Drama Thriller, not a horror. I would argue a lot of the film is slow and harder to get through (/easier to zone out during). There already wasn’t a large cast of characters, but the mystery about Wilson’s character really started to make me feel indifferent. I no longer cared about the pay out, and started looking for other plot lines to get me interested.

The Boy is not the film for everyone. But if the director turns it into a trilogy (source: another reviewer audibly telling me), then it might have some better moments in the future.

So last week I tried to find a scary documentary, I failed to find something in a few minutes and settled on Gideon’s Army, which ended up not scary at all. So I had to change my criteria a bit. I am still planning on trying to review more current and newer documentaries. But fuck it, they are documentaries. I can review older ones of these, most of you don’t just sit around watching documentaries, so you probably haven’t heard of the older ones either right?

Yep. Everything is available now. Or else it stays too hard to find good documentary content.

Thanks to this, I can talk about serial killers. Maybe, yeah. H. H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer. Definitely an eye catching subject matter about a dude I have never heard about before! I quickly learned this is definitely someone who I should have heard about before today, and a crazy interesting subject.

Holmes was like the perfect killer. He got his doctorate, studied anatomy and chemistry and got a bit rich. In the late 1800’s, after all the Jack the Ripper stuff going on in London, Holmes was living in Chicago and he wanted to kill.

Psychopath isn’t a detailed enough word to describe this man. To get to the crux of his insanity, you have to realize that he built what was called a “Mansion” in the middle of Chicago with many floors, that he used as a sort of hotel. At least, the third floor was definitely a hotel. But the 2nd floor was a labrynth of rooms twisting hallways, with fake staircases and more. And the basement was even worse.

That is where he kept his mustache comb collection.

Needless to say, he killed a lot of people, but the numbers are unknown. Hell, there are two books out there suggestion that Holmes was also Jack the Ripper before heading back to the USA, but without reading them, I don’t believe them. Seems too “movie” and not enough “Reality.”

Oh hey, back to this documentary. It is only a little over an hour long. And yeah, it is kind of poor quality. The only thing making it a bit average is that the story is actually a pretty sweet one, which goes into his mistakes and how he got caught, his eventual trial and execution. But it is filled with old timey black and white clips to showcase people in old horrors being scared, and it is incredibly cheesy.

It felt like they only talked to 2-3 historical experts to tell the tale, with the majority of the story coming from the narrator, Tony Jay. It was a poorly done documentary on the subject, but it is the only one we have.

What it did was get me interested on the subject. I want to now read (or audiobook) the main story on the subject, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. Even better news is that this is totally being turned into a real movie, so watching this documentary ended up being me just doing some basic amounts of research. Do you want to see Leonardo DiCaprio with that stashe and killing people, directed by Scorsese? I know I do.

For some reason, Happy Madison is developing a bad rep. Adam Sandler‘s production company has been around for awhile and has brought in such classics like, Jack and Jill and Grown Ups 2! Hell, just this year we already got Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser.

With such a rich pedigree, how does a company like that get hated on? Hell if I know.

And then there was Pixels, their third film of this year, and one I thought would be completely animated given the posters. Whoops. I obviously figured it out before I watched it, but damn, I don’t think I have ever been fooled like that before. Sure, it could be loosely based off of a Futurama episode, but that was a cartoon, so everything is fair game.

Unless they wanted a giant Mickey Mouse here, then they’d have been fucked.

Brenner (Sandler) was a big deal, in 1982. He was the master of the local arcade, able to see the patterns in the games, creating high score after high score. Hell, he entered into the national arcade tournament and made it all the way to the finals. He lost though to Eddie (Peter Dinklage), a cocky son of a bitch though, because Donkey Kong has some real random elements to it, so he can’t quite figure it out. Oh well, it didn’t ruin his life.

After all, 33 years later, he is working for what constitutes a Geek Squad like company, installing technology in rich big houses. Oh hey, and his best friend, Cooper (Kevin James) ended up as president (married to Jane Krakowski too). But he is seen as a buffoon. Who gives a shit though, because Aliens are about to attack!

Oh yeah, there was a third friend, Ludlow (Josh Gad), who was pretty good at games too, but became a conspiracy nut. And looks like he was write about aliens at least!

The strange thing about these aliens is they are attacking using what looks like arcade games from the early days. You see, after the tournament, they sent digital copies of the games and a lot of pop culture items into a time capsule into space. And alien race took the games as a challenge and built giant replicas of these games to attack the Earth. Each side will only have “three lives” so the first to “win” 3 of these attacks, wins overall. If Earth wins, they leave, if Earth loses, everyone dies. You know where this is going: losers from the 1980’s have to save the day!

Also starring Michelle Monaghan, Matt Lintz, Sean Bean, and Brian Cox.

I’ve had a nightmare like this before. I was playing a real life centipede, but I had no ammo.
Basically insects just fell on me from the sky.

Maybe its the nostalgia, maybe the cool effects, or maybe Dinklage giving his impression of the guy from King of Kong, but Pixels wasn’t super terrible. I know everyone around me said it was bad and they hated it, but I also know they went in ready to rage on it.

Pixels definitely had its moments, but the best parts were the clever ways they “fought” the various levels that totaled the many cities around the world. Having Pac-Man terrorize NYC as they chased him with cars? Come on, that’s clever.

There are unfortunately some lamer elements to the film. Having a cheating subplot? Waste of time, and ruined some of the fun. Q*bert? Fuck Q*bert. That mostly felt like an annoyance more than anything. Creepy suggestion that a woman can be a trophy? Well, you know.

But overall for the most part, Pixels was entertaining. It could have had more fun real life battles instead of an all out attack at the end to cameo in games. If we got even more in depth levels, it would have been great. It was like an advanced Nick Arcade. Just one that probably should have gone for the PG-13 rating, since it probably didn’t deserve PG at all with some of the jokes and language thrown in.

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

In preparation for Halloween, I looked up some ScArRrRrRyYyYy documentaries on the Netflix. I’ve done a few of these before, like The Imposter, the Nightmare on Elm Street one, and Killer Legends. They are all on Netflix, but I decided to use Killer Legends to try and find more scary ones for this month. So I used their “More Like This” feature and chose its top recommendation.

Gideon’s Army. As a reminder, Killer Legends is about the truth behind four popular urban legends, where they started, and why they became stories. Gideon’s Army is about public defenders doing their job and being severely understaffed.

Sure, I guess that is a scary situation. I don’t know if I could afford a lawyer if I got into some sort of legal trouble. I’d probably want some public defender. But after watching Gideon’s Army, maybe I shouldn’t. Also, I guess, after watching that episode of Last Week Tonight about Public Defenders. That one happened too. And it said a lot of the same things, with jokes, sarcasm, and only 15 minutes long. I guess technically, if you want to find out more, just watch that clip, you will save yourself time.

But you can go watch that clip on your own in time out, mister!

But really. You know about these guys? The guys who get paid by the government to take those people too poor to have their own lawyer? Well, they can have over a hundred active cases at a time. They can spend less than 7 minutes per client. Shit is a bit terrifying, It is supposed to be a system to make sure that wealth doesn’t protect you from the law and that justice is blind and everyone should get a fair chance in front o a judge. However, reality is never able to match the intent, and the same wealth issues that have plagued mankind since the BC time still affect us now.

Not to make any conclusions. I am just trying to stall my description and analysis. The documentary takes a look at three different public defenders, as they go about on several cases and face different struggles. Struggles including: bad clients, no money, not enough time, unfair judges, and more.

Did I mention the situation really sucks? Don’t try and imagine yourself in a similar situation, just do whatever you can to avoid the situation.

As for the documentary, I thought it told a decent story, but what it lacked was a solution. Public Defender pay, oversight, or something should probably change to improve the system that a lot of people take for granted, but it mostly told a few long anecdotes and that was the end of the story. These documentaries are important in that they highlight parts of society you may not realize, but I just want something more overall.

Just…make it seem way more important.

Lies have got to be very sturdy. Lies can make a foundation for buildings and relationships, so lies have a lot of use. The more you lie, the more weight it can hold, I guess.

After all, you can have a throne of lies. So they must be able to support your weight and be at least a little bit comfortable.

I just don’t know if I’d trust a bridge of lies. Bridges usually have to hold dozens of cars at once, including the things that cars hold. Those bitches need to be super sturdy.

I’d want more than lies. I’d want some cement too. And I dunno, a couple engineering and psychology students to supervise the mixing of cement and lies. And if that isn’t enough, the actual physical embodiment of lies, to make it mostly a Bridge of Spies. Then it becomes something I’d stand on to hang out and shit.

I wasn’t even considering weather. Snow can add a lot of weight to it all.

In the 1950’s, everyone was afraid there would be a Nuclear Holocaust across the globe thanks to the cold war. Hell, people (including me) still are hugely afraid of this occurring. But back then it was new and caused kids to cry and shit. The information age was rampant, so there were spies everywhere. We sent guys over there, they sent Keri Russell over to us.

They also allegedly sent to us Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance). He did some USSR spy stuff. He was also found by the US Government, so everyone in America collectively wanted him dead for being a traitor. But to prove we are better than them, we have to put him on trial with a real lawyer. They settle on James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks), an insurance lawyer who did some criminal stuff in the past. Thankfully, Donovan is a good man and he does the fuck out of his job to defend his client, even if all of America hates him for doing his patriotic duty.

Since this is a true story, allow me to go further. As Donovan is the only man that Abel is willing to trust after awhile, Donovan starts getting used as a pawn by the USA government. He is brought in to try and trade Abel for a captured US Soldier, Francis Powers (Austin Stowell). He has to go to East Germany right as the wall is being built, while the East Germans have captured a US college student, Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers). That is two FPs. I smell a conspiracy. And Donovan wants to get both of them back, and not leave one to torture or worse.

Man, what’s a scumbag insurance lawyer going to do? How bout be a hero! FOR AMERICA! And one Russian spy.

Amy Ryan plays his wife, Alan Alda his boss, and Sebastian Koch / Mikhail Gorevoy are his main negotiating partners. I was going to mention the main US Agent in East Germany too, but I can’t find him on the list at all. Generic white dude.

That perma-frown face, if turned upside down, somehow stays a frown.

Steven Spielberg is the main reason I wanted to see this film. He hadn’t directed a film in about three years, and damn it, I wanted more. Lincoln could only hold me off for two of those years. He is a magical little man that can make phenomenal movies.

With Bridge of Spies, he tried a little bit hard and didn’t come across as honest as some of his past films. Maybe done intentionally, given the subject matter. The filter to make the film look like it was “set in the past” generally bugs me, and this time was no different. Despite the color scheme, the film was beautifully shot. I especially enjoyed the rain scene.

The acting from the big names was acceptable, but Rylance stole the show. Quite a few realistic jokes and an unflinching sense of awareness that nothing he could do could change his situation. Nothing ethical, a least from his point of view. Hanks was pretty good too, but the last third of the film just featured him playing sick with coughing during negotiations. The character itself was annoying at that point, somehow making it seem like he both didn’t care about the exchange and cared more than anyone else.

My overall complaint with the film is that it just felt far too long. The true story subject is quite a long one, but it seemingly skimmed over areas I thought would be more prevalent (court scenes), and spent far too much time on other plot points(the US Pilot training to be a spy, in particular). Thankfully they didn’t also spend a lot of time trying to humanize the college student. The one scene before he gets arrested felt like it was too much already.

A decent movie, but one that only excels in smaller doses and doesn’t feel as grandiose as the subject matter deserves.

Oh hey, Vacation. A comedy series a lot of people look back with fond memories. Because it told the truth. Family vacations are terrible, but we all grin and bear it because that is just what you gotta do.

It is a concept most people can related to, and with nostalgia being the strong bitch that it is, it makes sense for there to eventually be more Vacation movies. Movies that capture the true American spirit: cramped in a car with people you already hang out with too much. At the same time, people assume that if you make a new version of something old, the old one gets tarnished or something.

Those people are dumb.

Which is why I do declare I will not make comparisons to the first Vacation movie. I will judge this on its own merits as a new comedy, that may have references to a previous movie.

And my noble steed on this ride will be a small car.

Vacation is not a reboot or a remake, it is a sequel.

Rusty Griswald (Ed Helms) is now grown up and has a family of his own! He is a pretty good pilot, but works for a shitty airline that only does short domestic flights, so he can spend time with his family. His wife, Debbie (Christina Applegate) is a stay at home mom, raising the two boys. The older one, James (Skyler Gisondo) is almost done with high school, very sensitive, plays the guitar. He constantly gets picked on by his much smaller younger brother, Kevin (Steele Stebbins), who is a dick and is into wrestling.

Well, they normally go out every year to a cabin in the woods, but Rusty realizes that everyone finds it boring. So he decides to change it up. A cross country road trip from Chicago to California to go to Walley World! Yeah! Rusty had fond memories of the park as a kid, despite that one film where a bunch of bad things happened. This time it is going to go right and they are going to ride the best roller coaster in the country. Damn it.

Of course shit goes bad. Their car is weird and European, white water rafting, bad hot springs, crazy truckers, thieves, and more. They also make a pit stop to visit Rusty’s sister, Audrey (Leslie Mann), who finds the idea of a trip ridiculous. She is also super wealthy for marrying Stone Crandall (Chris Hemsworth), who is a super attractive weather man. The only other real plot line is James constantly running into Adena (Catherine Missal), a girl on another road trip.

Vacation also offers a lot of cameos. Of course we have Chevy Chase, but we also have Ron Livingston, Michael Pena, Kaitlin Olson, Nick Kroll, Tim Heidecker, Colin Hanks (Apparently), Norman Reedus, Keegan-Michael Key, and Charlie Day.

Most of my vacations ended up at a college strip fest as well.

Vacation ends up being different than its predecessor in many ways. For one, it is a modern comedy. So there is an industry regulated volume of a dick jokes that it needs to have in its film to make it to the big screen. This sort of thing isn’t always noticeable, because if they have a lot of varied other jokes, you usually don’t even notice all the dick jokes that are secretly hiding in the back ground. Unfortunately, if a movie is 95% dick jokes, they stand out like a sore…thumb. (You thought I’d say penis, heh heh heh).

So yes, it feels like Vacation is a one trick pony, where that trick is jumping over a bar that is floating about an inch over the ground. It would have been nice if they decided to raise that bar instead and make longer smarter jokes, but those are hard and require patience I guess.

Ed Helms just wasn’t interesting. A typical character in his wheelbarrow and it didn’t seem to offer anything new. There was some good interactions between the kids, and Applegate did a fine job.

Honestly, the reason I am giving this a passing rating is for two scenes. One, Four Corners monument scene was surprising and strangely funny. But more importantly, Charlie Fucking Day. This movie is borderline watchable for his scenes alone. Hysterical. High energy. Wet. Fantastic. Technically soon you can probably find the whole scene on Youtube, but I feel like the film should get some credit for featuring something so marvelous in its data innards.

Yep. Without Charlie Day this movie would have just been downright terrible. You don’t hear that phrased that often.

The internet can be a dark and scary place. And that is based only on my limited experience as a regular person. But in reality, I have only seen the surface of what the internet really offers. So I can sound cool, I will start using the lingo and refer to regular internet as Surface Web for that reason! I watched Dope, which means I know what I am about to talk about.

But there is a darker side of the internet. A deeper side. A Deep Web, if you will. This part of the internet has “non-indexed content”, or pages that cannot be found through simple searching. In this area, a lot of fun stuff can happen, including: anonymity. That is one of the biggest complaints about our lives. If we want to remain anonymous, we have to basically go off grid to do so. Everything tracks us, our phones, our search history, everything. But the deep web is where people can just do things that they want to do without worry.

Sure, some of those things might be very illegal activities, like hiring hit men or child pornography. But there is also less serious stuff, like simple selling of drugs or other contraband, and just a community of people who can be honest with one another. Deep Web is a documentary that explores just what is the Darknet and talks about Silk Road, a famous website for drugs and more, that went to trial recently. And interestingly enough, it was directed by Alex Winter, aka Bill from Bill and Ted. Admit it, you were wondering what he was doing with his life.

To make things even better, the documentary is narrated by Keanu Reeves himself.

Bill and Ted’s Darknet Journey!

Enough joking, this is SERIOUS BUSINESS. After all drugs are bad right? Well, not if you listen to like, 5 of the documentaries I have reviewed (And meant to review). Silk Road was a place founded to buy and sell goods with anyone around the world, using bitcoin, an untraceable (if you do it right), currency. It was the safest and best way to get drugs and is one of the biggest reasons Bitcoins became so valuable.

It then goes into the sites eventual take down by the FBI, how they did it, and how they captured the supposed creator or owner of the site, Dread Pirate Roberts aka Kirk Ulbricht.

Of course, naturally, it then goes into the trial, the investigation, shady things that happened and very shady things that happened. This trial ended this year, so it is recent. The point it makes is that the trial wasn’t fair, and the government did illegal things and broke a lot of real life privacy laws to do what it did. Is that guy really the Dread Pirate Roberts? Hell if I know. Probably. But doesn’t mean that I would be fine with the government stepping so far outside their laws to catch him.

It is just a snowball effect. If it is fine with one person, it is fine with everyone, and it is more fuel for the NSA to keep their sails on course.

Now, despite all of this, I still think the documentary went way too long on the trial information. Halfway through it, I was finding myself bored and more susceptible to distractions. A lot of pauses started to happen as I cared less and less. I can agree something sucks, and I can say it started out great, but I wanted a bit more information on Deep Web and other things going on there. Over 75% of this is actually just about the Silk Road and the trial, but damn it, the documentary wasn’t called Silk Road.

Circle Circle. Dot Dot. Everyone knows that is what you need to get your cootie shot. Except for my wife, who asked why I drew boobs on her arm.

No one wants Cooties. They are gross and carried by other gross kids. Fuck those asshats, trying to spread their germs on you. Or worse, COOTIES.

When I heard they were making a horror comedy about actual cooties and how the outbreak starts, I will admit I was interested. Zombie movies are trying very hard to be original now, so why not make a whole lot of kid zombies? That adds a new dynamic, morally and comedically, with lots of room for potential. It makes sense, if you think about it. Kids in general have potential, so Zombie Kids should have potential as well!

Although, with their shorter arms the whole thing just might be child’s play.

Clint (Elijah Wood) is a fancy book author who used to live in NYC. But times are tough, and he is living with his mother. It is the start of summer and he has lucked his way into a summer school teaching gig, as a substitute. Anything to pass the time, I guess. If anything it can get him out of his slump. He is trying to write a horror book about a possessed boat and he is only about a chapter in.

Needless to say, the kids at summer school are kind of dicks. But at least the teachers are mostly not dicks.

Well, Wade (Rainn Wilson), the athletic director is a dick. But everyone else is eccentric or fine. Oh hey, there is Lucy (Alison Pill), who he went to school with. She seems relatively normal.

Other teachers include people played by Jack McBrayer, Nasim Pedrad, and Leigh Whannell. And let’s not forget the crosswalk guard Jorge Garcia and the janitor Peter Kwong!

Anyways. Some sort of infected chicken nugget causes it all. Girl eats it, starts getting sick. She bites another kid, and soon, kids are running around the school, biting and attacking anyone in site. Fucking kid zombies.

As for some of the kids, we had Patriot (Cooper Roth), the biggest dick in the school, Dink (Miles Elliot), his lackie, Tamra (Morgan Lily), patient zero, and Calvin (Armani Jackson), a kid who didn’t get bit and gets to hang out with the adults! There was another girl that hung out with them, but I forget a name. And of course, Ian Brennan as the normally vice principal, but for summer, principal! He wrote the narrator of Glee.

Here’s what you missed last time on Cooties: Fuck these little fuckers!

Cooties ended up being a lot more graphic and violent than I expected. Horror Comedy usually means a lot more comedy and horror is more of a sub genre. Like, “Oh yeah, there are zombies, so there is a horror element, but we are all just hear for the laughs.” No, the zombie kids end up being a bit scary and definitely very gruesome in their attacks on the teachers and parents at Fort Chicken. Add in the booming loud noises department and I was constantly taken aback. Yes, they made loud noises to scare you, and yes, that is lame. But they were still unexpected.

I actually had a mostly enjoyable time with this film. The banter in particular between Wood and Wilson was the highlight of the film, along with one of the teachers being ridiculously smart in biology out of nowhere. A lot of it however falls apart with the ending. They just don’t stick it. It is as if the writer/director didn’t know where to take the story. With only 10 or so minutes left, our characters were in a new situation. No real time to fully appreciate the situation, just enough time to showcase something cool and end with a cliffhanger.

The movie is also afraid to kill off the teachers. Anyone who seems to have lines is encased with plot armor. The kids lose any real scare when they turn into just things that run at them just as doors are closing. At least early on there was mass chaos, kids chasing other kids, teachers getting fucked over who were outside, etc.

Despite everything, Cooties was entertaining in ways I didn’t expect, and pretty decent on the joke department. I would watch a sequel in the future, should it happen, with some amount of optimism. But in all honesty, despite unresolved story lines, I don’t think a sequel has anywhere it could go that would set it apart from other zombie films.