Tag: 2 out of 4

By and large, the trailer for Draft Day is one of the worst I have ever seen. If you haven’t seen it, give it a watch. It is two and a half minutes. It is almost mythical the way they made that trailer. It is both a trailer that gives us the entire movie while also giving us absolutely nothing at all. It is truly marvelous to comprehend that achievement.

I guess that is a negative. A terrible vague yet overly detailed trailer. It also was advertised a lot, so I got to see the same identical thing over and over again. The concept became slightly infuriating. Basically, it had a huge uphill battle to prove itself an amazing movie in my mind.

Look at how fucking laid back they are about this movie. Clearly they don’t care what I think!

A lot is going on in Sonny Weaver Jr.’s (Kevin Costner) life right now. His dad died a few days ago, one of the more famous coaches of the Browns. Ali (Jennifer Garner) runs their salary cap number stuff, and it turns out she is now pregnant with his kid. It is also 12 hours til the NFL draft, and as the GM Sonny is told he has to make a big splash tonight at the draft or his job might be done. So sayeth the owner (Frank Langella).

Good. He has the 7th pick though. Right now his choice is between a running back that fits his teams system, Ray Jennings (Arian Foster), that is also the son of a former Browns player Earl Jennings (Terry Crews). So Browns royalty, the obvious pick. But Sonny really likes this defensive guy Vontae Mack (Chadwick Boseman), good at sacks, can stop many great players, just might have some emotional issues.

But thanks to all of the pressure he is facing, he ends up trading for the number one overall pick for his first round picks this year and the next two. Shit. Now he can get Bo Callahan (Josh Pence), a great looking franchise QB. Their current QB (Tom Welling) has bad knees and got injured early on their last season. This pisses off the coach (Denis Leary) who feels his job is on the line thanks to Sonny’s boneheaded decision.

Yeah, then a lot more drama happens. OH WHAT WILL SONNY DO? Ellen Burstyn plays the mother, Sean Combs plays Bo’s agent, and Griffin Newman plays an intern.

Didn’t you know there was constant arguing and drama right before a draft pick?

If you hadn’t noticed, there are no real NFL players or coaches or GMs talked about in this movie. All of the plot points related to the Browns are of course made up. Which is why seeing Crews/Foster there was a bit weird. Oh wait, 98% of this is made up. But they also mention Andrew Luck, and that is probably the only mistake they do I guess.

Garner’s character didn’t really seem to fit the normal stereotypes of a woman in her situation. She was really calm, which is generally not how I see her in most roles. It was strange.

What they ended up doing by the end was a bit clever, but not really too realistic either. Basically, there is no reason for a certain other GM to have done what he did and that is the only main issue with it.

So overall, it is an okay movie. I am surprised it came out in April, since it is clearly just a giant commercial for the NFL, romanticizing the whole thing. The NFL is next month, so I figured they’d make it basically the same day. Most of the teams mentioned were bad, maybe to drum up support, outside of the Seahawks. I also liked Boseman in this movie. Pretty crazy. I have seen him as a famous baseball player, now a made up football player, and later this year, a famous musician. Pretty exciting film roles for this guy is all I gotta say about that.

Alright, cool, Spelling Bees are still a thing. I never got into spelling correctly. You probably knew that from my reviews. But to be fair, I have enough problems with the English language as it is, which is why I kind of hate spelling bees. I just consider most of those words made up, basically.

So we have Bad Words, which for whatever reason got a limited release as if it was some po-duck indie movie. Took it a few weeks to come out in my town, up against Captain America: The Winter Soldier, so clearly they didn’t expect anyone to come see it.

I don’t know if the words are bad, but the sportsmanship definitely looks bad.

Guy Trilby (Jason Bateman) seems to be an unreasonable asshole. He is mean, condescending, doesn’t want to talk to interact with others and is extremely vague. He also has been entered into the Golden Quill national spelling bee.

Making his way through the ranks, pissing people off along the way, he is finally going to nationals. He had found loop holes in their guidelines, and since he never finished the eight grade, he is eligible. Hell, he even has a sponsor, an online news paper who has lawyers at their disposal to help fix any issues. Jenny (Kathryn Hahn) is his personal reporter, who gets to have the exclusive interview/article after it is all over and done with the hopes of finding out just why this man needs to do this.

Is he just really bitter? Did he fail at spelling bees as a kid? Rough upbringing? Does he hate children? Well, you won’t know until the last third or so.

But there is a cute kid character of course, Chaitanya Chopra (Rohan Chand) who seems to lack a caring home. So sad.

Also starring Philip Baker Hall as the president of the Golden Quill, Allison Janney as the also high up member of the organization, Ben Falcone as a reporter, and Steve Witting as the proctor.

If you missed it, he literally pisses everyone off.

If anything, I can definitely say that Bad Words was different. It was Bateman’s first time at the directing chair for a movie, so presumably he put a lot of himself into this movie and really made it his way. It was pretty short, less than 90 minutes, going for a simpler story to tell.

But there were times when I still felt like it was a bit too long. Strange, I know. They had a lot of him hanging out with the kid, doing crazier and crazier things, and I was just sitting there wanting the next stage of the competition.

There were definitely times I laughed a lot, but technically all of the jokes were the same. It was Guy Trilby being an asshole to the people around him. He was good at insulting, but there was literally no other outlet for humor which just kind of annoyed me.

The ending was chaos, had some technical issues from what I could see, but still ended basically the way I would have expected.

I guess aspects of this movie were a bit on the Black Comedy route, but they didn’t go too far with that either. Overall, I think the movie was just okay. Had some laugh out loud moments, a lot of technical errors or goofs, and just something that probably wouldn’t interest me the second time I tried to watch it.

Yay! Finally, we are getting a movie version of the Beastie Boy’s song Sabotage. I am also immediately killing that joke before it gets too stupid. I don’t even like that song. Too hard for me, I guess.

The actual movie Sabotage is the next attempt for Arnold Schwarzenegger to get back into action. I think I saw the trailer once before a month or two ago, so going into it, I really didn’t remember at all what I was about to watch. That was a good feeling. I did learn right before that the director also directed and wrote End Of Watch, which I loved so I did get all sorts of excited. A great underrated movie from two years ago.

Aw shit. Here is them with presumably the bad guy. I guess they all win, spoilers!

The story is about a special operations DEA team who are really good at getting the job done. They are lead by Breacher (Schwarzenegger) and they all get snazzy nicknames too, because they are cool. They also have Tripod (Kevin Vance), Monster (Sam Worthington), Grinder (Joe Manganiello), Neck (Josh Holloway), Sugar (Terrence Howard), Pyro (Max Martini) and Lizzie (Mireille Enos). She doesn’t get a nickname presumably because she is a woman.

Oh, they might be a little bit dirty too. Not The Shield levels of dirty, but a little bit dirty. The story begins with them taking down a huge drug lord, but also stealing a measly ten million from the pile and stashing it to split amongst the team later. Well, someone dies during their operation, and later the money is gone as well, so it the drug bust was a bust. Especially when they all go under the microscope, with the ten million reported missing.

Well, eventually they all survive and since no one trusts Breacher in the department that much, they just let him have his team back for special missions. Then, one of their own dies.

Shit. Then another. Turns out someone is trying to take them out. But why? They have tons of enemies, it could be anyone. But local cop people (Olivia Williams, Harold Perrineau) are on the case, so I am sure they will stop the bad guys.

Many guns. Both the actual weapons and these gentleman arms.

Pew pew pew! Action and death. This film really earns that R rating with the amount of graphic violence (extreme deaths), language, and nudity in it. Some of it was indeed really gross too.

On the same note, the story itself was interesting. Yeah, I said it. I liked the plot of this movie. It wasn’t a simple story, it had some layers, and characters had motivations. At the same time, some characters had absolutely no motivations and even by the end, I am not sure why they did what they did.

In fact, the climactic ending complete with a chase scene and finding out who the bad guys are was very disappointing. It doesn’t match the tone of the rest of the movie. It was drawn out and suddenly no one knew how to aim, despite being tactical and military elites.

So that is that. It has some cool stuff. But the ending is pretty lame. There ya go.

Woo, a completely random movie! Not even remotely new. Looks at least 1-2 years old. Lloyd the Conqueror. You see, the first half of it, is a lame name for a person. Then we have The Conqueror. That sounds badass!

Ah, but then you realize this is a movie about Larping. Not many movies are about this subject and arguably is only a small portion of Role Models.

I guess I can just hope for a lot of intense role playing. Maybe a lightning bolt or two? Yeah, you know what I am saying.

And this is the man who is the bringer of the lightning bolts.

Alright, so this movie is about a guy named Lloyd (Evan Williams) and his two slacker roommates Patrick (Jesse Reid) and Oswald (Scott Patey). They get by in community college, rocking that C average, allowing them to get student aid. They play a lot of video games and not a lot more.

Well, their slacking gets them in trouble. They put together a last second report on Beowulf and it bombs. Derek (Mike Smith, of Trailer Park Boys Bubbles fame) fails them and it will ruin their average. They agree to do ANYTHING to give them a better grade. Anything. So they make a figurative deal with the devil.

You see, Derek is a LARPer. And a great one at that. He plays on the dark side, as an evil mage, and has gotten so good at LARPing that his army has grown strong. Too strong for the forces of light. Not enough good guys are signing up, so they are canceling the tournament this year, and he wants to win as he does every year. So if those three agree to sign up, he will give them a better grade should they beat him. He will give them an A.

What? LARPing is lame! They don’t want to. They won’t stand a chance at all. Unless Andy, the Good White level 80 Wizard (Brian Posehn) will come out of retirement to train them. They need more muscle too. So they also end up recruiting the local woman’s self defense class teacher, Cassandra (Tegan Moss) to join their side. Can the forces of light overcome the forces of darkness?

Is Harland Williams‘ cameo actually that funny? Is this most accurate depiction of a Unicorn ever featured in a live action movie?

Yes and fuck yes.

Let’s get this straight. This definitely is a low budget movie. Pretty B-movie status, without being super cheesy. Yet the characters are relatable, Posehn and Smith are great, and, as I said, Harland Williams had an amazing cameo.

There is a lot of LARPing in this movie, and a lot of it is inconsistent from what I can tell. But some of the elements are there. Some of them. Even if they are brought to extreme levels to make a more entertaining movie.

But really, that is what this movie ends up being. Really nerdy, with some entertainment thrown in. If I had to compare it to something as nerdy, I would say the movie Noobz, even though I hated Noobz. About the same level of quality and level of nerd-dom, but this one at least felt entertaining.

For what it is? It is decent! I mean. LOOK AT THAT UNICORN! SO MAJESTIC AND STALLION-ESQUE!

Divergent, or as I like to call it, the next fucking recent young adult sci-fi/fantasy series to have taken off, has been turned into a movie. Weeee.

A lot of these lately have been terrible. Did you see The Mortal Instruments: The City of Bones? I did, it was ghastly. So was Vampire Academy. The only recent successful one of these was The Hunger Games, which had a dystopian aspect, just like Divergent, and just like this random other movie The Maze Runner later this year.

So, will it actually be a nice parallel of society? Or will it just be made to make teens feel special? That’s the important question with these adaptions.

And here is the main characters ass as promotional material.

Beatrice (Shailene Woodley) is an Abnegation tribe member. What? Okay. This story takes place in Chicago in the future, after a big war, they have built a big wall around the city. They have split members into big tribes, each having a trait. Abnegation people are selfless, run the government, wear grey, simple lives. The Amity are peaceful, hippies, farmers. Not really talked about in this movie. Candor wear white, are honest, and just say whats on their mind. Yeah, another kind of pointless tribe I guess. Erudite are the smart people, doing smart stuff and wearing blue, the smart colors. Dauntless wear black and leather, the brave, the cities police force and protectors.

Well, Beatrice is about to go to her choosing ceremony, where she picks her faction she will live in from then on. Her parents (Ashley Judd, Tony Goldwyn) are big in Abnegation, and want her and her brother (Ansel Elgort) to stay in their area. Well, during her test to see who she actually fits in with most, her results are inconclusive, equally selfless, brave, and smart. It is called being Divergent, and it should be secretive, because people don’t like free thinkers?

Well, Beatrice, now Tris, chooses Dauntless, as she always liked them. Now she has new friends (Zoe Kravitz), and has found out that just because she chose Dauntless doesn’t mean they have picked her. Of the recruiting class of like 40-50 students, half will be cut after weeks of training based on physical skill, and then another half will be cut after emotional/mental training. So only like, 10 or so people will actually make it. Yep. This movie is mostly a training movie. Ha ha! Fooled you guys!

This gives us characters like Four (Theo James), her main trainer and probably love interest. Or Eric (Jai Courtney) a much meaner training guy. Kate Winslet is a mean smart woman, Miles Teller is a mean new Dauntless recruit, and Ray Stevenson is a mean Abnegation leader.

And shit, this movie has ninjas too!

So I felt like again, if I had read the book, parts of this movie would make a lot more sense. Just like every other damn young adult adaption. Here are brief thoughts about my ramblings, that as far as I can tell didn’t get answered in the movie. Some are just world building questions that would have been very helpful.

How often does this choosing ceremony take place? Multiple times a year? How old are you when it happens? I guess the main character and her brother are not twins, but born close enough that they have to choose the same year? Does every faction have a long ass training process for when people join? I wonder how strict it is to train to be a hippie. Why did Tris not learn about what a Divergent is until her test, and only because she was one, but as soon as she does, it seems to be common knowledge for every other person what it is? With all the cuts the Dauntless people made, they literally only gained like what, ten recruits? How the fuck is that helpful? Did the plot really need to wait for the ten new recruits for something other than training to start taking place?

If the point of the faction system is to keep people in their place and get rid of human nature, why even let them choose what faction they live in after some random age? It seems like it’d be better to have the false notion of a choice, but in general, make everyone stay where they came from. Honestly, how does early life in other factions like Dauntless even work? Are there any parent type people there at all? It seems very messy to have people trained in a faction type for blah many years, and switch to a different faction, giving them awkward skill sets, that clearly they never lose after switching factions.

Really, this movie is literally just a high school movie, put into a Sci-Fi setting. We have cliques: jocks, nerds, hippies, normal people, and I guess gossipers or something. We have a high school girl, Tris, who feels like she doesn’t fit in with just the normal people, so she tries sports. She tries to also be smart. So she is a nonconformists, and all the conformists want to get her for being different. Or something like that. That is what the movie boils down to.

It was a cool concept, but I also feel like the writer has no idea what the fuck she is doing. Just making an interesting story and hoping it works out. There is a good chance the second movie is better, given that it will take place outside of Chicago. Wait, why is Chicago now bad? They beat the main bad guys? It should be easy to fix now? Eh, whatever.

I guess I should also note the trailer is pretty misleading. It makes it look like because she is Divergent, she joins some group of underground fighters who train her and then they attack the government or something. Nah. Well, she gets trained, but the Divergent-ness seems to be mostly pretty pointless overall.

Hours! What is it, and why did I need to watch it as soon as I could?

Well, it is the first movie to be released after the death of Paul Walker, that stars Paul Walker. Well, technically Fast & Furious 6 did like, a week or two later, but I am going to ignore that. This is a smaller budget movie that most people would have ignored, but I guarantee you it increased its sales due to the circumstances of its main actor.

I mean, shit, that is why I am watching it. There has to be at least, one or two people who thought like I did. Right? I am not a unique snowflake.

Aww, this movie will have a sad Paul Walker in it. I don’t want to imagine him sad.

This movie takes place in August, 2005, in New Orleans, Louisiana. For those modern historians, you have no figured out what this movie is about. For everyone else, I will keep it a secret for a little bit longer.

Nolan Hayes and the love of his life are about to have a baby. In fact, right now, this shit is happening. So they go to the hospital, she goes in labor, and Nolan just…waits. Because it is a movie, complications happen, and of course the pregnancy goes badly and he loses his wife. Shit. I guess complications are to be expected when labor is induced five weeks before the due date. Sad times.

So the baby is now hooked up to a bunch of machines and on life support. After a while, hopefully, it will be okay.

The bigger bad news department is that the storm outside is getting worse. Like, hurricane bad. Oh no, the hurricane has turned into a category five and people are evacuating. Patients and all, but Nolan can’t leave. His baby needs to stay on life support, and the staff as ensured him they will stay with him.

Psyche! Next thing we know, Nolan is in a hospital, maybe alone. And bad things start happening, with the back up generator, the battery for the contraption, the special fluids that need to go in, and of course staying awake 24/7 with people raiding shit to survive. This will be a long day and a half or so for Nolan. But can he save his daughter where he failed to save his wife? That’s not fair, he had no way to save her. But still, can he carry on her life through his daughters? Yeah, he is going to do his best to protect dat baby.

No, Paul Walker didn’t earn his Doctorate the traditional way. Paul Walker earned it through instant necessity.

Sure, there were other actors/actresses involved in this movie, but I didn’t feel like tagging them. Most of them had small enough parts that they wouldn’t matter in a normal movie. Since the entire point for most of this is just how alone the main character feels, everyone else he ends up interacting with doesn’t really matter as much.

By itself, I ended up actually liking the story. I did see some good moments from Walker, mostly in the emotionally breaking down / crying / yelling range that I hadn’t seen before, which of course just makes me sad again.

The movie also had a lot of slower moments, which I guess makes sense given the situation, but still made it boring. I did like it when he opened up to his baby and tried to tell it about the mother, but when they went full flashback, I lost my interest again.

Kind of infuriating. An actual decent plot (despite my initial thoughts on it), but not as good due to pacing and flashbacks.

Wooo, Oldboy remake! I watched the original a few days before Oldboy came out to theaters, then…surprise! They changed their mind to make it limited release on Thanksgiving week, and of course, it didn’t come close to my area. Fuck those guys. Damn it, damn it.

So now it is March, and I can finally see it. I still saw the original, just like 4-5 months ago instead of right before hand. Oh well, whatever. Based on the trailers, it looks like they might have changed some of the main elements around, so it shouldn’t be a complete copy.

This time, the hammer is actually his hammer, and not his penis. `

Basic jist, Joe Doucett (Josh Brolin) is an asshole. He was married and had a child, but they got divorced, and now he is a scumbag ex who doesn’t pay child support and lives sale to sale. One night, after a sale, he goes to visit his friend Chucky (Michael Imperioli), he gets abducted! He thinks it is a hotel room for sex, next thing he knows, the scenery outside is fake, and he is stuck in this small room with a TV.

Twenty years go by with him in that room, getting fed 3 meals a day and occasionally getting gassed for random reasons. He finds out soon after he was captured that his wife was murdered and the blame fell directly on his life. Shit. Now his daughter, 3 years old, who barely knew him, is getting raised by another family.

So what happens after 20 years? He gets released. No questions asked. Huh. Okay. Why? I guess that is the question.

Also starring Elizabeth Olsen (A lot of her), Sharlto Copley, and Samuel L. Jackson.

That’s right, after all that, I just want to show you a very hairy Brolin.

To answer the question that people care about, no, not really. The question they were asking of course was “If I saw the original Korean version, should I watch the American remake?”

That is a bit unfortunate. A lot of it was the same, not scene for scene, but basically every step of the way is the same. Remember that long fight scene from the side in the original? It is back in this one, but…shorter I think, and with more cuts. Remember the ending? Of course you fucking remember the ending. Well, it is very similar. Arguably there is one big plot point different, but in the grand schemes, it is the basic same story.

So, on its own? It is okay. Definitely not as powerful as the first, and really, knowing the entire story kind of tames this one for me. Samuel L. Jackson didn’t feel as good as the Korean counterpart. Sharlto Copley played a villain and uhh, he has been a better villain in other movies. It was pretty meh. In general, the end has a “too many coincidences” vibe to it, so the ending doesn’t even give as much pay off as the Korean version.

I think I also expected a bit more from Brolin here, who I guess is officially a hit or miss actor. Sometimes he is on, sometimes he isn’t. Tis a shame.

Oldboy remake? Could have not been done. I would have expected more different from this type of movie, not a basic copy.

Remember when I hit 1000 reviews? Sure, that was fun. Kind of takes away a lot from hitting 1050. But damn it, I promised a larger review every 50, to keep things interested, and that is what I will keep doing!

Because 1050 is incredibly lackluster of a Milestone Review, I wanted to go for what appeared to be a completely lackluster movie. Another Disney Channel Original Movie.

The last milestones similar to this one were of course my High School Musicals review, and the spin-off, Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure.

So, besides Disney Channel Original Movie, it is similar in other ways. It has music, and it has an extremely generic name. I mean, High School Musical is technically about a high school musical, but the name also describes the movie…a musical set in a high school. Teen Beach Movie takes the generic-ness up a few levels and gives us Teen Beach Movie. Holy fuck, they aren’t even trying anymore.

Yeah, definitely looks like they have given up.

Upon even further remembrance, fuck, I already reviewed a different teach beach musical movie. From Justin To Kelly. Shit, there are a lot of these types of movies in my milestone reviews.

So this movie is about two kids, Brady (Ross Lynch) and McKenzie/Mack (Maia Mitchell). They are enjoying the summer before Junior year of high school. They are surfing having a blast and being all lovey dovey. Well, disaster strikes!

Mack’s aunt (Suzanne Cryer) is here to take her away! She agreed to go to a fancy boarding school her last two years, to get into a good college and start being awesome. Boo! Brady is sad! She is leaving before the big perfect condition waves tomorrow, too!

NO. NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR JAZZ HANDS. THIS IS SAD TIME!

Well, ever conflicted, she still goes on the waves missing her flight, but still planning to move. Unfortunately, the waves get SO CRAZY HUGE OMG! Brady goes to save her when she falls off her board, and when they emerge from the wave, they find themselves in the 1960s.

No, they haven’t just time traveled, they have become part of the very “famous” movie, Wet Side Story. Yes, a fictional movie, based on West Side Story, which is based on Romeo and Juliet. Basically, the only real similarities to West Side Story is singing/dancing rival gangs, and the love interest between the two.

This time the gangs are “bikers” vs surfers. Much fierce.

So, these kids are transported into a musical, where everything is happy go lucky and sunshine lollipops. The actual movie isn’t. Just the movie in the movie.

Ho. Ly. Fuck.

This movie is a mother fucking parody. A parody of not only West Side Story, but also I can sense a lot of Grease in here. But even more importantly, this movie is a parody on High School Musical. All of them. Disney Channel is parodying their own movie. They even have their own Zac Efron looking mother fucker.

And he’s fabulouuuuuuuuuuusssssss.

That’s not all. They have half the cast of High School Musical in here. Not actually, just people who remind me of them. That main chick Mack? She has some Vanessa Hudgens characteristics.

Anyways, their existence in the movie messes things up. The two romantic leads ends up falling in love with them instead of each other! Oh no! Now the rift between the two gangs will never be saved!

Lela (Grace Phipps) is the biker chick lover, brother of head biker dude Butchy (John DeLuca, who looks like Josh Peck).

Tanner (Garrett Clayton) is our Efron, main singer for the beach goers.

Aww, how are they going to fix this beach time love madness? Through song?!

Why does it matter? Well, stuff that belongs to the two main kids start to disappear. If they can’t fix the plot, the movie can’t finish and they might be stuck in it forever.

The good news is, because they are in a movie, they have things to work with, such as movie magic. So, scenes change easily, and costumes come freely. Mack has also decided to introduce woman’s rights while she is here, because all the girls only talk about boys. It is annoying to her.

“Bitch, I am still fabulous. Talk more about me!”

I dunno. Then some more stuff happens. Songs, love games. Oh, I guess there are also villains here. A Les Camembert (Steve Valentine) and Dr. Fusion (Kevin Chamberlin). They are building a machine to change the weather to chase those beach rats and bikers away from their homes. Mwhahaha!

I guess that is important. If the two groups don’t befriend each other, there is no way they will be able to stop them!

Science is the real enemy here.

Eh, there are other people in this movie too. Like Barry Bostwick, who plays Brady’s (dad? grandpa?). The only reason he deserves this note is that it is fucking Brad from Rocky Horror Picture Show, all old though. These sneaky Disney bastards, paying tribute to older musicals like this.

Chrissie Fit is also in this, as a biker head lady as well. And Jordan Fisher plays the best friend of not-Efron. And yes, he looks like the black guy from High School Musical, aka, Efron’s friend.

Seriously, this can’t be a coincidence right?

Alright, let’s look at this here movie.

I assumed it would be a train wreck. A terrible invention. The fact that I even knew it existed because it had some ads at the local movie theater, and it looked terrible.

But as a parody? A satire on the older musicals and lifestyles presented in them? Well, it works. I am not saying this is a fantastic movie, no, but it has its moments.

The songs are all incredibly cheesy, but again, it makes sense given the movie. There wasn’t one that was particularly atrocious, they were all at least okay minus the first one where I was still flabbergasted at what was happening. My favorite two songs would have to be Can’t Stop Singing, where are main two leads realize they can’t get out of the musical and are forced to sing and dance (while singing and dancing about it). And Like Me, which felt very Grease-y and was just overly ridiculous, and reminded me of the parody songs from the South Park episode Elementary School Musical.

It has obvious issues, yes. The graphics were horrible, and thus every surf scene was horrible. The singing was clearly done ahead of time, which is standard, but these no name actors did bad at lip syncing in my eyes. The acting itself was cringe worthy at times too, ignoring the on purpose cheese factors.

But fuck, it was a decent showing and parody.

Ah, love and former Buffy cast members.

Wait, back up. TiMER. That is what we are talking about. A science fiction romance movie, yeah!

This is a movie I have walked by plenty of times, definitely recognize the cover. Just never felt like watching it on my own. But hey, coworker really wanted me too, so I will, damn it!

Alright, back to former Buffy cast members. Emma Caulfield plays our main character Oona, and she is looking for love. Thankfully, at this point in human progression, there is a new technology that let’s people find their soul mates. I would go into how the science works, but I forgot all of that mumbo jumbo. Basically, it is something installed into your wrist, and it will countdown to the day when you will meet your soul mate! At midnight it will beep and the countdown will go away, and when you meet your soul mate for the first time, they will beep again.

Yay! There is a twist of course. Your wrist might not say a damn thing. It only works if both people have these attached to them. So you might see that your mate is years away, or might never know when it will pop up.

So what is a girl like Oona supposed to do, with a blank wrist? I guess try a lot of guys and make them get the technology! She doesn’t even have to bother with the men who have it installed, because clearly it isn’t true love. But after awhile, Oona says fuck it! She is going to sleep around.

Starring Michelle Borth as her best friend/sister who has years before she meets her man, John Patrick Amedori who plays the clerk, and Desmond Harrington another love potential. Also a few other people like these people: JoBeth Williams and Hayden McFarland.

To me, it never lived up to the premise. In fact, I thought the premise was ignored for about a third of the film when Oona went off the reservation and started banging the supermarket clerk.

The end was supposed to be this suspenseful thing, when we finally see who she meets, and they set it up that it might be between two different individuals. But, following the laws of the movie, only one person made any sense. The other wouldn’t work at all.

Emma Caulfield also just felt all over the place. I don’t think she is a good actress on her own anymore (if she was during Buffy? Hard to say, nostalgia and all).

However I didn’t hate the movie, just thought it was okay. For a few reasons! One, the concept was a great concept, just didn’t feel like it was explored enough. I loved the plot line with her younger brother and the getting of his implant. That was totally adorable and cute. The sister had some nice moments as well.

But in the end, TiMER felt just like a wasted concept. So sad.

How am I gonna be an optimist about this?

That is the question I ask myself, heading off to see Pompeii. But first, maybe some back story!

When I was an undergrad, I majored in Geology and History, with a focus on Ancient Rome. Clearly, the perfect crossover for research on both subjects would be in Pompeii, Italy, where Mt. Vesuvius exploded in 79 AD, wiping out an entire city and basically freezing them in place like statues. It is perhaps my FAVORITE historical event ever and I have been waiting forever for a movie version of it.

Unfortunately, Hollywood has churned out a few “historical” tales lately and they have been some of the worst movies I have ever seen. I am looking at you, The Legend Of Hercules! So, no, I don’t know how I will be an optimist about this.

Mr. Eko, why must you die in everything?

Hmm, where do we begin? The rubble or the sins? The sins of course! The rubble is the second half!

Pompeii is a strange movie in that we already know how it ends. Everyone dies right? Huge explosion. It is sort of like a disaster movie, but also a historical film. They have an advantage here too, where they can kind of just tell any story they want to and then end with everyone dying and no one can say they are wrong.

In this story, a Roman Senator, Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland) in 62 AD takes out an entire Celtic village who were showing resistance for a trade route, with his bodyguard Proculus (Sasha Roiz). Well, they missed a kid, who later gets caught my slavers, and 17 years later he is now a really good fighter. He was trained as a gladiator, because why not.

As luck would have it, this Celt, Milo (Kit Harrington) is packaged up from his small time market and sent to the bigger leagues in Pompeii! There a lot of coincidences happen, such as meeting the fair Cassia (Emily Browning), basically a Pompeian princess. Her parents (Jared Harris, Carrie-Anne Moss) want to expand Pompeii with Roman money, so they have to put on a show for a senator, which just so happens to be Corvus.

So, Milo is in the same city with the people who murdered his whole tribe! Too bad he has to also fight Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who is about to earn his freedom if he gets one last victory.

Oh, and of course, while all of the human stuff is happening, Mt. Vesuvius decides to get its boom boom on and explode for a ridiculously long time, causing a lot of destruction. During the climactic finale, the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we learned to love. There were great great clouds that rolled over the hills, bringing darkness from above.

Then a lot of people died.

Oh look, Kiefer is in a movie where shit is going down in less than a day. Huh.

I was left to my own devices to really analyze this movie.

So let’s start with the story! Gladiator redemption is always a nice story to choose, just like in Spartacus and Gladiator. Most of those movies give our heroes a lot more time to work with, in terms of training, and battles, and eventual redemption, so time was the real enemy here given the explosive finale. I think it did a decent job at conveying it all quickly, with the appropriate motivation for most of our main characters. The battle scenes themselves were generally pretty awesome, although some felt a little bit too close to Gladiator.

The effects from the volcano were also decent, not amazing, just decent. During the ending, it became more of a hindrance as there were possibly “too many effects” going on at once, that it all felt choppy and a bit blurry, so that was disappointing.

In terms of acting and dialogue, it kind of went all over the place. A few scenes felt repetitive and the quick love didn’t feel right to me. Sutherland appeared to actually be acting in this movie, so he stood out more than normal playing the pompous jerk.

I think it would have been a sexier movie if they added some other historical relevant material. Maybe a cameo involving the only real story we know associated with this eruption with Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger.

Overall, Pompeii didn’t blow me out of the water as much as I hoped it would. I am also grateful that it didn’t poop all over the walls either. I plan on visiting Pompeii in my life, hopefully sometime in the next year. When I get there, I hope I can just close my eyes and have it almost feel like I have been there before. But until then, I can only speculate and use this film as a source for how it might have felt.

Eh. Eh oh. Eh oh.