Tag: 2 out of 4

The Divergent series has the honor of being the next Hunger Games series, movie wise. Even if The Hunger Games still has one more movie yet to come out. You know. Successful trilogy, third one split into two boring as fuck movies to milk more money out of teenagers. Whatever.

I wanted to like Divergent a lot more than I did. But, TL;DR, it wasn’t a completely original dystopian plot line like it made it look like. It was kind of nonsensical at points, left a lot of questions, and it ended up just being a damn high school clique movie, in its most basic form.

HOWEVER. Insurgent can be something completely different. If the ending of Divergent is any indication, Insurgent shouldn’t be a shitty high school clique movie. It should be a smarter sci-fi dystopian action movie. Class warfare shouldn’t be an issue. Just rebels vs the government. Good. This one can be a huge improvement.

Pls don’t let me down. Plsssss.

I was just as surprised as everyone else over the erotic lunch based three way scene.

The last movie ended with our heroes, Tris (Shailene Woodley), Four (Theo James), Peter (Miles Teller) and Caleb (Ansel Elgort) escaping out of Chicago and heading past the wall into the magical world of the unknown. After all, the wall was put up to protect them from the dangerous outside that had monsters and bad people and shit.

Wait a minute. Sorry. No. They just go into the forests outside of the city? Not outside of the wall? Oh…well then…okay. I guess they are just hiding out from the hippies, trying to figure out what the hell Jeanine (Kate Winslet) wants to do, now that she took out all the working class selfless people. That’s right, only four factions now fuckers. The nerds, the jocks (which are scattered and small), the student government, and the hippies. Because it is still a high school in Chicago. Speaking of those factions, we get to see things from the hippies and the student government finally. The hippies are lead by Johanna (Octavia Spencer) and the SGA is lead by Jack Kang (Daniel Dae Kim, of Lost fame!).

Either way, the plot of this movie is our heroes on the run. Not physically, because apparently it is super easy to hide from almost everyone in Chicago, despite them only using like 5 buildings for most of the population. Their GPS systems must all be out of wack. Also, Jeanine found this mystical box under Tris’ old house that her parents were hiding. That is why she killed them by the way, looking for the box. Didn’t you know that they wanted it from the first movie? (I literally don’t remember it, but it may have been hinted or mentioned). The thing is, this box has a message in it, written by the founders of the caste system. It will let them know how to deal with all these Divergent assfaces. They just need a really strong divergent to open it. Hmm, wonder who that could be…

This movie has a huge number of other people of course. We get the return of Jai Courtney, Mekhi Phifer, Ray Stevenson, Maggie Q, Ashley Judd, Tony Goldwyn, and Zoe Kravitz. But we also have new people, like Naomi Watts and Keiynan Lonsdale! Woo~

Oh, and didn’t you hear that this one featured Bieber?*

As soon as I finished this movie, I was immediately asked by people what I thought about it. And I shrugged. I didn’t know. It took me a long time to figure out exactly what I liked, disliked, and how I thought about the film as a whole.

Here is one thing I know for certain: Insurgent is better than Divergent. For sure. I had a lot to complain about Divergent. You might have heard about me doing so in my review of Divergent. But I still thought it was at least okay. So here is another thing I know: Insurgent is not good enough for me to give it a 3 out of 5, the like it category. It is a 2 out of 4 like Divergent, just a better 2 out of 4.

I was able to see this movie in IMAX, only my second movie to do so after Edge of Tomorrow, and it did feel good on the gigantic 3D screen. It had a lot of CGI based special effects going through these tests or whatever they were called and for the most part the looked pretty decent. It had more action than the first film. Real action, not bullshit “dangerous training”.

On the other hand, the plot was pretty basic. It was very predictable, especially when it came to reality versus simulation. The only wild card was Miles teller. We mostly just had teenage angst carrying the rest of the plot, so it was pretty linear. Major plot points seemed like they were added on as an afterthought (read: that box thing that wasn’t mentioned in the first film at all). And of course, this film still doesn’t feature outside Chicago, which to every one that isn’t a book reader, was pretty sure how this one would start. But whatever.

The film also still features a huge amount of confusing plot decisions and material. Maybe reading the books would fill the gaps, maybe they are shitty in the book too. Who knows. I know this is still entertaining enough to warrant a watch, but not enough for me to want to buy any of the series still or read the books. And the last movie being another shitty two parter means the franchise is probably at its high point right now. So sad. Please go back to Spiderman, Shailene.

* – Bieber jokes are still funny, right?

I would like to think I have my finger on the pulse of the movie community, being pretty aware of when movies are coming out and what I need to see and when.

But I feel like Big Eyes was grossly under advertised. We have people who have been nominated for Academy Awards in the lead and winners as well! Our female, nominated five times, and our male, nominated, I dunno, two? But he won both of them. And it is directed by Tim Burton WITHOUT Johnny Depp. This seems like something people would talk wildly about.

I mean. Shit. It won a Golden Globe or two (I really just don’t remember).

But instead we get it as a sort of limited/secret/whatever Christmas release, all while my TV was filled with ads for Unbroken.

SHIT THAT CAT IS ON DRUGS!

Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) left her husband before it was cool. She just up and divorced and left with her daughter (Delaney Raye or Madeleine Arthur, you know, depends on when during the movie). She wasn’t Margaret Keane at this point, but I don’t remember her maiden/first marriage name.

She left to become an artist, and started doing quick sketches of kids or families at festivals for super cheap just to get by. She couldn’t sell her work for a lot because people didn’t care for women artists.

Well, there she met a man. A Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) (psst, now you know they get married), who does mostly scenic landscape pictures from France. He is a skilled artist in his own right and really likes her work. Well, things get moving, and partially out of love of art and of each other (and a need to be secure financially or else she loses her daughter maybe), they get hitched!

They even sell work that they did. Well, Walter sells the work. He is a natural salesman, able to hype anything up. He accidentally claims that one of his wife’s paintings is his too! Because you know, he wanted to close the deal, and buyers always like to meet the artist. She isn’t a great seller herself. She hates this. Like. A lot. But goes along with it because it brings them money early on.

Oh and hey. Then he does it intentionally. And after they get to be super successful, he basically blackmails her into continuing along with it, taking no credit. Because hey, now they have committed fraud, and if she were to tell everyone, they’d lose everything. Sucks to be a sort of slave in your own home getting no credit.

Did I mention this is a true story?

And then, you know, also people like Jason Schwartzman, Danny Huston, and Krysten Ritter as Margaret’s best friend!

I think the main conflict in this picture is the war between big eyes and shifty eyes.

Big Eyes was such a quaint, nice feeling movie. I liked that it was set in the mid 1900s, but also, I wasn’t given some shitty filter over the whole thing so that I knew it was set in the past. No, it was just given nice regular camera work and the whole thing looked crisp. It wasn’t dark and broody, so it was something very un-Burton like, which was another nice surprise.

Another unexpected treat was Mr. Waltz. He didn’t have the same character as his Tarantino roles. And the only other role I can think of is Water for Elephants, which isn’t like this either. He was a villain, obviously, and a smooth talker, but a lot less stable than his past roles.

Amy Adams also did a solid job.

The thing is, this movie didn’t have enough plot for me. At one point it just felt like I was getting more of the same over and over again. She is still sad about her paintings and feels bad about lying. He still sucks and has schemes to keep her artwork being bought. On and on and on. The eventual court room scene was kind of fun. But still, I thought something was lacking throughout the whole film. Acting was fine, story wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped, but it was still a well shot and pretty movie.

I think Burton picked it accidentally. He saw the title Big Eyes and since he loves eyes so much, he assumed it would involve just giant floating eyeballs playing tricks on kids or something. Yeah, that makes sense in my head.

I don’t even know what to say about Run All Night. This movie kind of came out of nowhere for me. I had at least heard about things like Non-Stop or A Walk Among The Tombstones

Like, months of notice. This one just in the last few weeks before coming out.

Is this guy even trying anymore? Does he do any serious drama anymore? Who keeps giving him these paychecks for these types of movie? Is it like…is he the next Mr. Cage? After all, he will take literally anything.

I think there must be a robot similar to AWESOME-O doing this. But instead of Adam Sandler movies, it keeps popping out generic Neeson movies. Has to be the only logical solution to what in the hell is going on.

Tag Teaming with pre-accident RoboCop.

Good news! Jimmy Conlon (Liam Neeson) is an asshole and not an anti-hero! He was a hitman for many years, to his good friend Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris). Shawn ran the ports of NYC, a pretty big task, got stupid wealthy, and lives a nice life now. Jimmy the Grave Digger? Well, he is a drunk who has a bad relationship with his son, Mike (Joel Kinnaman). Mike knows of Jimmy’s past. He doesn’t want that around his wife (Genesis Rodriguez) and kids.

Fair enough.

Well, Mike gets into some trouble. Due to no fault of his own, while driving a limo, Shawn’s son, Danny (Boyd Holbrook) wants to kill him. Danny ignores everyone and tries it anywhere, forcing Jimmy to protect his own son. Well, now we got a dead son of a gangster. That isn’t allowed. So Jimmy and his son have to go into hiding. They have to Run All Night, until Jimmy can figure this whole mess out. How to protect his family, how to get rid of his guilt, and how to…well, not suck.

Including Vincent D’Onofrio as a detective who was never able to bring Jimmy Conlon to justice, and Common as a hitman hired to get Jimmy and Mike. Yes, you read that correctly. COMMON is playing a “bad guy”, not a cop on the good guy side. This is truly a historic moment.

Not as historic as this restaurant, that is clearly dedicating itself fully to the color red.

Run All Night has a terrible title. I feel like I should mention that, as titles I haven’t been bringing up as often. It sounds just super generic. Not Fighting generic, but real close.

Speaking of this movie, it wasn’t as terrible as I had thought. First of all, I am stoked again that Liam Neeson doesn’t play a good guy or an anti-hero. He plays definitely a bad guy who tries to redeem himself for his son. So he kills bad people, and has been a bad dude all his life, thus his alcohol/depression. Great. I prefer this.

The action wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great. The plot was pretty predictable, and it even started with a scene near the ending, just so you can make sure you know where the whole thing is going towards. Genesis Rodriguez was wasted in this movie, barely having any lines, and not even being able to freak out about her husbands sudden life of crime. She was passive as fuck.

I liked that they featured the NY Rangers and a hockey game pretty heavily, but as you will see from one of my FB posts here, they also butchered the whole thing up.

What I am getting at is that this movie could drag, but also entertain. It is a storybook 2 out of 4. I am mostly happy that it just wasn’t super terrible though.

Watch out, this is one of those creepy documentaries. I have watched a couple of these before, most relevant is Killer Legends. It talked about four urban legends, where they came from, the truth behind them, the real trials, and movies that they inspired.

It was fantastic and a bit scary.

Cropsey is very similar, but instead of four, we are given the full length to talk about just one. This Cropsey story is something that may have spread lots of places, but was focused mainly in New York and the Staten Island area. This was your standard tale. Don’t play alone in the woods as a kid, or Cropsey will grab you, especially if you are naughty, and you won’t be seen again.

But this Staten Island area also had an abandoned mental facility. That was still there. That was reported on by Geraldo Fucking Rivera, so you know it is serious. It was shut down. That building plus some tunnels in the area were said to be home to some homeless and leftover mental people.

And hey, there was also missing kids!

The most famous story was Jennifer, a girl with Down syndrome, who went missing in 1987. The whole community came together to find the missing girl, with their only facts pointing to Andre Rand, an older homeless man who used to be a janitor at the mental institution and was kind of awkward.

We assume they searched out of the goodness of the heart. No other reason.

So, a lot of people didn’t trust him, and because he was reported being with the girl, a witch hunt began. He was put on trial and of course found guilty. However, there was more than just that girl missing. There were quite a few missing children from that area, and four were notable in that the Law people figured that maybe Rand had something to do with them too.

And with that, we get rushed into modern day. A trial, a re-opening of Rand’s case, and seeing if they can incorporate evidence for a few other disappearing kids. Murder or who knows what. Maybe they can find out where the fuck they are or why they are gone or anything?

Because rumors are rampant. Cults, satanists, sadistic people with disabilities, who knows.

And I think the trial stuff is where this documentary starts to lose it. Early on it was exciting and scary. When they go into theories, it is a lot more interesting. The truth seems a lot less exciting, especially when we realize how little we know. I was a bit disappointed with the ending of the documentary.

Maybe I just wanted it to be a bit more creepier. Yeah, probably.

I am probably just angry with a lack of answers and am left with implied reality. But that is on me. It is an interesting documentary, just one that seemed to flicker out by the end.

Alright, fine. Disney is going full money grab. Disney Princess line is a success. Frozen has made multiple billions from sales and merchandise. They have bought Marvel and Star Wars. They want all the money on the planet, that is the only way to describe them right now.

Because if they keep making live action movies of their animated classics, they get to print even more stacks of cash out, keep up any copyrights they have (totally researched argument, this could be a false statement), and re design the character as see fit. After all, most of the early princesses are pretty passive people and terrible role models for women. They can make all of these women stronger independent ladies. They can make the movies more exciting or just tell a better story.

The first attempt was Maleficent, which I thought was terrible. The changes they made (all of it) were terrible, and instead of getting a bamf villain, we got a misunderstood fairy who spent a third of the movie just watching a girl grow up. We are getting Beauty and the Beast which I already have issues with casting wise, but I will tease and not talk about it until that review comes out in 2016 or whenever.

So now we have Cinderella, which for the most part, looks to be the exact same story. Maybe some more details, but exactly the same story with all of the same songs. Wait, what, no songs?

We are just getting fancy dancing? WHO WILL SERENADE ME?

Ah little Ella (Lily James). Living on her slightly big house with servants and shit. A loving family. Her dad (Ben Chaplin) is a merchant w ho goes on trips a lot, leaving her with just her mother. Did I say mother? Just kidding. She died. She told her to always be good and nice to people, because that was her gift.

Eventually the dad was feeling a bit lonely and he also wanted to be nice. So he heard about a lady who needed help, who was also now a Widow with two daughters. He wanted to marry her and move them in so that Ella would have friends and a family again.

Hah. Just kidding. New mother is a bitch (Cate Blanchett). New sisters are whiny bitches (Sophie McShera, Holliday Grainger). And of course her dad kicks the bucket too while he is out on a trip. Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

So they are poor now. They have to let go all their workers leaving just poor old Ella to make the food, clean the dishes, and help her “family” have some sort of luxury. She is too gosh darned nice.

So when the local Prince (Richard Madden) is going to have a ball to find a wife before the King (Derek Jacobi) croaks. Of course Ella can’t go because of bitches. Then we have a fairy godmother (Helena Bonham Carter), transformations, glass slippers, running, big search, and maybe some more shenanigans you don’t even know about.

Also with Stellan Skarsgård as a Duke and Nonso Anozie as a captain! Wait, no, his name is officially Captain it looks like.

Yep, none of them are blonde, therefore they are all evil.

It turns out, Cinderella doesn’t have a lot going on with its plot. I mean, in its basic form, girl is living with step family, doesn’t get to have fun. Some magic happens, she gets to have fun, and a Prince saves her and they live happily ever after. Not a whole lot going on for Ella. She just cleans a lot and is really nice. Fuck, so many times watching the movie, I was just thinking that she should just lock her fucking house doors when they go out to town and be done with it all.

But her niceness meant she just had to get shit on for years or months or however long the time line happened? Man. What a beta.

Okay, boring character aside. Boring plot aside. They don’t really change anything at all from a story sixty five years ago. They have a bit more back story and some more late game scheming, but literally nothing new and so it isn’t a surprise.

The only people who seem to have any amount of personality are the bad guys!

But despite all of it, is is indeed a pretty movie. Visually stunning, outside of one terrible CGI scene involving the pumpkin to carriage (it was gross and the humans looked fake during it), it was just an incredibly beautiful film. They really did great work in the costume and make up department, so you can expect an Oscar nomination there. Overall though, just too much filler and time wasting, especially at the ball.

Also, I feel uncomfortable with Skarsgård having a biggish role in a PG movie after seeing Nymphomaniac.

Horrible Bosses 2 came to theaters in November, and I didn’t get to go to a screening because I went to see Rosewater instead.

I actually wanted to see this one more, but I opened it up to a vote, and it was something ridiculous, like 15-1 in favor of Rosewater. Too bad Rosewater wasn’t that special.

I really liked the first Horrible Bosses, despite its ridiculousness. But I also liked at least 2 of the 3 main actors, so it made a bit of sense. However, when I heard about this sequel, I definitely thought that it didn’t make a lot of sense. They had a potential of making it like The Hangover 2, where they told a very similar story and it just felt like a bad rehash. But at the same time, if it has nothing to do with with Bosses being Horrible, then why is there a sequel at all?

And can they make everything sexier this go around? I doubt it.

Nothing sexier than showcasing your package in a business meeting. I’ve heard…

Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis), and Dale (Charlie Day) are now in a business together! They made some sort of Shower Buddy item, that not only is a new nozzle for your water to come out of, but also automatically dispenses the shampoo and conditioning when with a timer or something. Yeah it sucks.

Either way, a big company has took notice. Rex Hanson (Chris Pine), CEO or something, wants to buy it all from them for a lump sum. But they don’t want to sell their company. He is a dick to them. Then his dad shows up, Bert Hanson (Christoph Waltz), and offers instead to buy 100,000 units, they just have to get their company off the ground. Hire workers, make the product, and they have a deadline.

And guess what, they do it! But of course shenanigans occur, and they might lose their whole business for nothing instead and get screwed out of all their product. What dicks, these pseudo bosses have been! So they eventually get a plan. Kidnap the son, ransom him for a ton of cash to the rich as fuck dad, save the company, and get away with a new crime. Yay!

Oh hey, and of course, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Spacey, and Jamie Foxx return as their old characters too. For various humor intended reasons. And Jonathan Banks as the FBI guy trying to solve the crime! Life has been decent to him post Breaking Bad.

I assume the telescope is innuendo.

I think Horrible Bosses 2 found a nice balance between keeping to the theme of the series, but also giving us something new. Last time they all had different people that they wanted to “kill”. This time, they are united against the same two guys and they don’t want them to die. Killing is scary business. So instead a very complicated plan with many moving parts is the real ideal.

I will admit I haven’t seen the first Terrible Supervisors film since it came out, but I think I enjoyed that one more than the sequel. This one wasn’t necessarily bad, as it definitely had quite a few hilarious moments, but I also think it didn’t as great of a plot behind it. There were scenes that produced no laughs at all.

But the most important aspect of a buddy comedy is the chemistry, and it is pretty darn good between these guys. I have talked before about Bateman fatigue, but even he wasn’t too terrible, although it was clearly Sudeikis/Day’s movie for the maximum lols. You might not trust my word on that, because I love almost everything Sudeikis does. I think he’s the best part of SNL the last few years.

Also, I practically died laughing every time they used their fake voices. Just it is probably more forgettable unlike the first movie where they did the…things. And stuff.

This Is Where I Leave You is one of those movies that I really didn’t care about seeing right away. I knew I could wait for it, despite liking quite a few members of the cast.

What was my beef? I call it Jason Bateman fatigue. A lot of people in this movie, but his character gets to be the main character, and for the most part, his last several years of roles have been very very similar. The Switch, The Change-Up, Identity Thief, Bad Words, Horrible Bosses. He is generally an asshole character who likes to make fun of others and has bad things happen to him. Sure he is a dick, but people are usually bigger dicks, so his dick-ness is justified.

Either way, I am super tired of him because he always gets lead guy status, thanks to Arrested Development I guess (which is also the same character).

I am tired of what feels like him lazily acting on the screen. It was fine the first few times, but now I really don’t know why I expected anything other than the dead dove.

But we have female on male violence, so I guess it can’t be too bad.

Can we look at that image closer? I think I got a stunt double in here or something, because man, that looks nothing like Tina Fey or what I would imagine Tina Fey looks like mid punch.

Mort Altman is dead. He is survived by his wife (Jane Fonda) and four kids. He was an athiest, but apparently he wanted a Jewish ceremony at his death and have his family sit shiva. That is an older tradition where the family literally sits for a week (outside of food/sleep/etc) to talk and honor the dead. People are meant to visit them throughout the week as well, to allow the stories to be said in a more natural way and to pass on the legacy of the individual. I learned about it at first from Weeds.

So we have Judd (Bateman) who is about to get separated from his wife (Abigail Spencer) because he found her in bed with his boss (Dax Shepard). Wendy (Tina Fey) is upset over her husband (Aaron Lazar) for being too busy with work, not able to stay, but also having to deal with kids and former lovers. Paul (Corey Stoll), the oldest, who wants to take over the family business cannot seem to get his wife (Kathryn Hahn) pregnant. And Phillip (Adam Driver) is younger, reckless, and dating a much older woman, a psychiatrist (Connie Britton), who actually was inspired by their family to go into her field.

What? Oh yeah, their family was written about by their mother in a book, so people know all about their lives. In a way, this makes it very similar to Peep World, but no one watched Peep World.

And yeah. Shenanigans. Also with Ben Schwartz, Debra Monk, Rose Byrne and Timothy Olyphant.

Shenanigans I say!

Overall, This Is Where I Leave You is a typical dysfunctional family comedy film. Maybe with more physical punches between and from siblings, but nonetheless, a lot of this is pretty typical.

TIWILY does attempt to do some things differently. With Bateman’s story line, there are unexpected elements behind it and they were a bit refreshing. But Driver’s plot was incredibly standard, Fey’s seemed like filler, and Stoll’s was underdeveloped.

The best part of the film is actually Jane Fonda! Her character is hilarious and really helps mesh the whole movie together. If you needed a reason to check this movie out at some point, Jane would be your reason.

A lot of it is predictable, a lot of it is okay. Overall, it just feels like too much. None of it feels realistic, to have so many things happen this way in a week, so it is hard to relate to any of the characters, at least from my point of view.

Shh. Go away. Review is over~.

“Love is Strange? What the heck is this? I thought you were doing Oscar Related movies this week!”

Well, I was, I swear! But. Uhh. I ran out. I didn’t finish the list. I couldn’t. I officially couldn’t get see three of the Best Foreign Films, one of the Best Animated, one of the Best Documentary, one of the Best Original Song, and of course, 14 of the 15 Shorts. Doh.

But I didn’t pick this one randomly. Oh no, this was actually nominated for a Spirit Award for Best Picture. The Spirit Awards are for indie movies and they take place this weekend as well. And look at that, this was the one film I was missing from the main Best Picture category for them.

Boo yah. I am now Hipster.

And what is more hipster than watching an Independent Movie about Gay Marriage.

Speaking of marriage, Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) are getting married! They have been together for over thirty years and are obviously quite old. But NY allows it, and by golly, they wanna get on that.

Good times, happy day, everyone is happy for them!

Then George gets fired. He taught piano and other music classes at a private school, and yeah, they took his marriage as something he wasn’t allowed to do in his contract, even if they knew he was gay. So this is bad because it was their stable income, which means they cannot pay their rent, which means they have to move. But shit, Ben’s income is erratic as he is a painter and George might need to take some time to get a new gig.

So they have to go live with their family and friends. They also want to live in the city still, because that is where they can find work and maintain a NYC presence.

Ben is living with his nephew (Darren E. Burrows), his nephew’s wife (Marisa Tomei) and their son Joey (Charlie Tahan). Ben might get on their nerves.

George is living with their former old neighbors (Cheyenne Jackson, Manny Perez), a younger gay couple who are both cops. They are a lot active than George is.

Issues, annoyances, and a bad start to a new marriage.

But not as bad as his start to that painting. You can’t erase water colors.

John Lithgow is really enjoying his acting these days. From his brilliant arc on Dexter to his cameos on HIMYM, he is just doing anything he wants at this point.

Acting wise, both leads do a great job. Their love is believable and their chemistry is nice.

I just find the plot of this movie to have a mostly blah concept. So they both go separate places, one becomes an annoyance on the place he lives, the other mostly just gets annoyed by what is going on around him. And their life goes on.

In that way, this movie has a very indie feel. A small concept script with not a lot going on. And I can’t help but feel cheated of a lot of potential plot to tell a more entertaining story. Some interesting things happen, it is very realistic, and the acting is good. But darn it, I just want a bit more in my stories.

Four out of five! Four out of five! I am getting so close. As an update in my attempts to watch all five of the documentaries nominated for Best Oscar, my other three have been Virunga, Citizenfour, and Finding Vivian Maier. That is because I never watch these things, I always watch shitty food documentaries and other crap. BUT HERE I AM WITH FOUR OF THE FIVE.

Man. Only one thing can beat this feeling. Like, an unlimited stack of pancakes. Or all five. But also pancakes. We will see. I don’t think I can make it.

Now we have Last Days In Vietnam! PBS put it on their website for free for a few days just so people like me can watch it. Was awfully kind of them. And the title isn’t vague at all. I instantly know what it is about. The last days in Vietnam! For America!

Here are people pushing freedom over into Vietnam.

I don’t want to get into a history lesson, but after Nixon ceremoniously left the office, Vietnam was in shambles. North Korea was fucking things up, South Korea was in trouble. Next thing you knew, America wanted out, but at the same time, a giant North Korea army was marching down and nothing could stand in its way! The USA had to evacuate, but at the same time, didn’t want to let everyone get slaughtered. There were attempts to get people to safety, to America, to wait until the army was right up on the capital gates.

Things were hectic, things were scary, and thankfully it wasn’t too long ago for everyone to be dead. A lot of major players, both in Vietnam and at home, are featured in this documentary to tell the stories. We have stories from Soldiers to Citizens, from Henry Kissinger to refugee. Overall it paints a pretty decent picture of what went down. A subject, I can freely admit I wasn’t super knowledgeable about before this documentary.

But also. I don’t feel super knowledgeable about it after the fact either. It is a strange feeling. I was listening and loving the information. But all of it seems to have gone in one ear and out the other. It is probably just a me situation, and not the same for everyone. But this is my review, not yours, so get your own website, jerks.

Either way. Good information, but at the same time, I guess it feels like something that they used to show on the History channel. You know, before the incident.

What is this Unbroken thing? It isn’t Unbreakable or Unstoppable or Unthinkable. It is Unbroken? What does that even mean? I didn’t even know there was a word to describe something as not-broken. I just assumed it was the general state unless otherwise noted as broken.

English is weird.

My first thought seeing the trailer was Oscar Bait. My second thought was, wait, haven’t I already seen this movie? It was also based on a true story, during WW2, prisoner of war who got abused by a Japanese man but never gave up and overcame great struggle? Yeah. That was The Railway Man. This is just the same movie but a bigger budget and more CGI right?

Oh. That one was British and this is American. That’s the difference.

Yep, just replace him with a lad instead of a boy and it’s the same scenes.

Unbroken is the “true story” of Louie Zamperini (Jack O’Connell), an Italian-American hero or something like that. As a kid he got picked on for his nationality, so he had to run away a lot. Well, he got fast at running, noticed by his better brother Pete (Alex Russell). Next thing you know, he is on the track team, breaking records, and hey, even going to run for the Olympics.

Then boom, World War II. Next thing you know, Olympics are canceled, and Louie now a good boy wants to join the war effort. He gets to fly in planes, and protect us from Japan!

Then his plane gets shot down and they crash land in the Pacific. Fuck. A couple dudes, some sharks, no food, and nothing that can save them. Just like the Life of Pi, basically. And of course, as the trailers tell you, they eventually get found after a long ass time. Just by Japanese soldiers. So it is off to prisoner work camps for them, far from home, to be abused and treated like animals!

Boo animals!

Also featuring Domhnall Gleeson, Garrett Hedlund, Jai Courtney, Finn Wittrock and of course Takamasa Ishihara!

Run like no one is watching.

Look, I know Angelina Jolie directed it. And I know parts of it were written by the Coen brothers. But man, there was some questionable choices throughout this film for me.

First of all, the what felt like terrible CGI when they had the plane scenes bugged me. The film had some overall filter on it that got on my nerves. Was a subtle annoyance.

But also it had a lot of good things. Jack O’Connell was pretty good, although his accent could have used work. I enjoyed the scene where everyone beat the crap out of him. The backstory pre-war was entertaining for me. Some emotional stuff in the middle.

However, I think overall I liked The Railway Man more, because that confrontation between the the prisoner and his torturer were intense and a great build up. It was a bit more boring, technically, but it felt a bit more real and a lot less cheesy. This one didn’t have a great build up, but instead just your typical worse and worse until they are in a terrible camp, not just a bad camp.

In particular, near the end when main character finds extra strength despite being a beaten prisoner so that he can lift up wood high? That might as well have had cheese falling out of everyone’s ears. It made me cringe and think it was some ridiculous American power fantasy. I didn’t find it inspirational, I found it laugh able. Because up to that point too, the movie felt enjoyable enough for a 3 maybe. Even with all that time spent on the boat.

But then they went full Oscar bait or something. And I just had to shake my head.