Tag: 3 out of 4

A couple years ago, I saw an ad for 7 Days in Hell while using HBO and I was instantly drawn in. I had to watch that movie RIGHT AWAY and review it ASAP. It looked magicial, and really, it was.

I didn’t know it was so short, only 40 minutes. I didn’t know it was to poke fun at the ESPN documentary series. But I went in, it was short, but I still called it a film and had an okay review.

And now years later, I saw an ad for Tour De Pharmacy. This time I was older, a bit wiser, a bit smarter, and a bit less repetitive. I knew what I was getting in to, and thus I was excited. Why can’t lightning hit twice?

And look, we have more athletes now than a single tennis match!

Tour De Pharmacy tells the story of the 1982 Tour De France, and all of the bizarre happenings that occurred during the race. Including the first time that someone died on the race!

Due to plot reasons, a lot of bicyclists in the race ended up getting eliminated really early on, as it turned out they paid bribes in order to avoid being drug tested. Like, a lot, a lot. As in, only five bikers remained.

We had Slim Robinson (Daveed Diggs / Danny Glover), nephew of Jackie Robinson, who wanted to be the first black athlete in some sport, so he was the first black athlete to compete in the Tour De France! There was Adriana Baton (Freddie Highmore / Julia Ormond), the first woman to compete in the race, but no one knew it at the time, as she pretended to be a man in order to qualify. There is also Marty Hass (Andy Samberg / Jeff Goldbloom), who is actually the first African to compete in the race. Yes he is white, and was an aristocrat, and it pisses off a lot of people that he has taken that first away.

The other two members of the pack were Juju Pepe (Orlando Bloom), a native Frenchman and actual famous bike rider, and Gustav Ditters (John Cena / Dolph Lundgren), a giant muscle man who didn’t fit the normal physiques that one would expect from a bicyclist. Along for the ride is Rex Honeycut (James Marsden), a journalist who will bike alongside the pack, in order to give in person interviews as the race happens!

This also features a slew of other actors, some playing themselves, to tell the story of the 1982 Tour De France: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kevin Bacon, Lance Armstrong, Maya Rudolph, Mike Tyson, Will Forte, and narrated by Jon Hamm.

The more arm muscles have, the faster you go on a bike. It’s fucking science!

If you liked 7 Days in Hell, you will like this movie! If you didn’t, you won’t. Pretty simple. Of course, a whole mess of you might not have seen the first one, so I still have to talk.

Honestly, this is just an absurd parody movie, I love it. It is short, so some of their jokes and moments don’t ever get to go into depth, and that is probably where it excels. After all, there is only so much stupid stuff they can throw in it before a viewer might get tired of it all. I think it was just the right length and zany to amuse the shit out of me, possible amuse the shit out of me over multiple viewings.

Now, despite that? Yeah, there are still some dull parts as well. The film even comments on it, as there were long boring stretches in the actual race that caused viewership to drop tremendously, in the fictional recounting. Making it meta and commenting on the progressiveness however, still didn’t do it for me.

Also, well fucking done Lance Armstrong. His role as hidden informant was a joke that just kept on giving, it surprisingly never got stale. All of the cameos were pretty funny.

Tour De Pharmacy is a relatively smart and quick laugh thrill ride, with only a few moments of slowed traffic to catch your breath.

Third times the charm?

Well, that is a weird phrase to apply to this situation. But it is one I have heard quite a lot.

After all, this is our third Spider-Man actor in 18 years. The problem with that phrase is that it implies the other times were not charming. But damn it, most people still talk highly about Spider-Man 1 and Spider-Man 2, especially the sequel. Just because the third one was a dud doesn’t taint the whole.

And for The Amazing Spider-Man? Shit, I liked the first one, and the sequel was disappointing, but Andrew Garfield was still pretty good as a Spider-Man.

People have just really wanted Spider-Man to go back under some amount of control to Marvel, so that we can see him interact with other heroes. Which is fair. But I want Spider-Man: Homecoming to be just a great movie on its own right, not flashy with in universe references.

I also hope this Spider-Man can just hold everything together.

This film begins with the events of Captain America: Civil War, from Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) perspective. To see how he got to Europe, his sweet suit, and his life afterwards. His life is to be put on hold, waiting for a new “assignment” from Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), with Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) as his go to man to report any issues or problems.

And this keeps Peter busy. He patrols the streets of Queens in the afternoon/evenings after school, under the guise of a Stark Internship, so that his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) doesn’t get too concerned. This does put a strain on his social life however. He cancels most of his extracurricular activites, hangs out with his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) less, and he is even about to miss parts of the Academic Decathlon! Besides being smart and enjoying it, it annoys him more because it is run by Liz (Laura Harrier). But don’t worry, Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori) still picks on him.

Speaking of busy, eventually he runs into some thugs who are selling alien technology weapons they made! Turns out when NYC was fucked over by aliens those 8 years ago, a lot of alien tech was lying about the city. Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) was in the salvage business, but Tony Stark in an effort to help the city made his own special Damage Control division that won a government contract to clean up any superhero mess. This puts Toomes out of business and enraged about the rich getting richer. So he decides to keep some of the tech, and with his small band of workers and tinkerer friend Phineas Mason (Michael Chernus), they decide to take salvage and turn it into cash in the form of new, high tech weapons. Hooray for capitalism!

Spider-Man cannot let this happen on his streets, as innocents will get hurt, and apparently this is not a problem that the avengers have to worry about. Oh well, I am sure he can handle some thugs and alien weapon technology and gear no sweat!

Also, unsurprisingly, starring a whole lot of other people! We got a whole lot of classmates (Zendaya, Abraham Attah, Angourie Rice, Tiffany Espensen, Michael Barbieri, Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), Thugs (Bokeem Woodbine, Logan Marshall-Green, Michael Mando), and others (Donald Glover, Kenneth Choi, Hannibal Buress, Martin Starr, Jennifer Connelly).

If you think that list is big, wait til you see Keaton’s personal trainer list!

There are a lot of praises I could sing for Spider-Man, and a lot of them come from story and plot decisions. It isn’t an origin story, because he already exists and we already know it. It does not mean that we don’t get Spider-Man doing things for the first time.

For instance, his first real villain in The Vulture, outside of just petty criminal stuff. We find out that he is not the wall crawler swinging through Manhattan like previous films, but mostly in the much smaller building complexes of Queens. So we have his first time at extreme heights, and we get to see how he handles fighting crime in a suburb, without the ability to swing around with ease.

Speaking of villains, they knocked it out of the park with The Vulture. We get a backstory for Toomes, reasons for his life of crime, reasons for why he feels he is in the right, morally gray shit, we got it all. They gave us what we have been wanting, and it is an excellent villain.

Holland is still good as Spider-Man, but we already knew that from Civil War. The large swaths of side characters fill their niches and no one really feels wasted.

And finally this Spider-Man tries to be very different from the previous iterations. No Gwen Stacy or MJ right away to get you all romantically fluttered, we get LIZ. We get a diverse looking school. We get nerds and a neighborhood that feels like a goddamn neighborhood. And a lot of the characters are new just for this film, with plans to take this film in its own direction, regardless of comics. I give it props.

But strangely enough, I barely laughed in the film. I did a few times, but I was alone. The movie theater was silent, it was no where close to being as wise cracking as I’d imagine a Spider-Man movie to be. I also think it relied too heavily on Iron Man/Happy characters to make sure everyone knew it was fitting in.

And Spider-Man’s suit? Well, it was a bit annoying. Turns out it is super high tech, and most of the known Spider-Man powers aren’t actually his, but suit based. Like Spider-Senses. I am not sure what powers he actually got. Some super strength and acrobatics skills, with some sticking to walls?

It is a decent film, just again, not as great as I had hoped it would be.

I didn’t know a whole lot about Okja going in, but I did see a few posters and just knew, just knew, I had to see it. Like, as soon as possible.

I also definitely thought it was a horror film, a foreign South Korean horror film. About a beast? I don’t know, the name and poster sort of scared me.

But then the advertisements got a bit more flashy, and I realized this was going to be a film bigger than itself. I also heard that it was directed by Joon-ho Bong, an established director who I have only seen one film of before, Snowpiercer. Yeah, I bet you saw Snowpiercer as well. One of the better indie “Have to see this movie!” campaigns over the last few years.

And this time, his film is right away on Netflix, allowing that same sort of campaign to happen, but for even more people.

But come on, we all came for the gratuitous sexual overtones.

Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton), new CEO of Mirando Corporation, has taken over from her father, a controversial man. It is a meat factory, and she is introducing a new superpig that they have bred/discovered/something like that. And over 20 of these pigs are being sent around the world to various farms, to see who could raise the biggest and best super pig in 10 years time, with the winner being crowned in a giant event.

And now, ten years later, we get to meet Okja, a superpig, living in the mountains of South Korea. Okja is being raised my Mija (Seo-Hyun Ahn) and her grandfather (Hee-Bong Byun) alone and really don’t want to let Okja go. But they come, they love Okja, and take him away. They even brought Johnny Wilcox (Jake Gyllenhaal), famed TV animal show guy, but that doesn’t soften the blow.

So despite their best attempts, Okja is still taken, so Mija decides to chase after them. Fuck the corporate people taking her friend over the last decade. It turns out she isn’t the only one after Okja either. So is the Animal Liberation Front, an animal rights group, who apparently tries to practice non violent behavior. They want to free Okja and bring down Mirando Corp.

Oh joy, caught between animal rights groups and a meat company, Mija just wants to be alone and happy with her family and friend.

Also starring Giancarlo Esposito, Paula Dano, Steven Yeun, Shirley Henderson, Daniel Henshall, Lily Collins, and Devon Bostick.

I’m glad they told me this was a pig, because if not, I would have assumed…well, lets go with hippo dog.

Okja, for a lack of better words, is an experience. The very first scene is so bright, vivid, and Tilda Swinton, that you are immediately wondering just what sort of film you have gotten yourself into. But it will drive your curiosity and you will find yourself needing to sit through to see where the fuck it is going.

And then after the opening, we get quaint wilderness, giant pigs, and subtitles, so immediately a lot of people may be turned off. A whole lot of this film is subtitles, along with English language, because it is set in the real world and it wants to be authentic. Also because the director is of course Joon-ho Bong and he probably wants to represent his country in the movies he is making.

The characters in Okja, besides Mija and her family, are downright zany. They go to the extreme and bring characters outside of their normal roles. Gyllenhaal is super weird and has a higher pitched voice, it is a bit bizarre to imagine him the star of a successful animal reality show. Like a gone stupid version of Steve Irwin maybe. And Dano? He normally plays the eccentric strange character, but compared to other members, his Animal Liberation Front frontman seemed a bit…ordinary. A guy who would go to great lengths to get what he wants, sure, but relatively normal.

The CGI for the beast was pretty good, but it was still pretty awkward at times. Watching random characters badly interact with Okja as it is stomping and running around leaves a lot of room for error. But it never took me out of the experience.

Okja is a dark film at times, a light film at other times, and balls to the wall in a few other parts. It is probably one of the best Netflix Original films ever made, it just doesn’t feel like one of the best films I have ever seen. But a very strong film regardless and one that a lot of different ages and groups would enjoy.

I wouldn’t say I am the best cook. Nor am I the best individual to make sure everything in my fridge stays fresh until it is used. We have thrown out plenty of leftovers, and vegetables, who never had a chance to shine. (Because vegetables suck!)

What I am trying to get at is I understand when food gets bad, and it does right before I want to use it.

As for people, I don’t know when people get bad, but Breaking Bad tried to examine that. The Bad Batch is both about bad people, and about bad food. I think you can understand what I am talking about with that.

Stop staring at her winking ass, I am talking about eating people NOT…the other thing.

In the future, The United States sucks a bit more than normal, and there is a section of Texas they have decided to just cut out from the rest of the country. Texas. It makes sense. Beyond those gates is a desert wasteland, claimed by no country, so the people who inhabit it have no rights or laws. This is a prison. People from the US are sent here and called The Bad Batch. They are the freaks and unwanted members of society, or those who cannot fit in. And they are sent to the wasteland to die or thrive, they don’t care, they just need them gone.

And when Arlen (Suki Waterhouse), Bad Batch #5040, is dropped off, she finds herself lost, confused, and immediately captured by a group of cannibals. Now don’t worry, she is able to escape this muscle clad community back into the desert, but not before losing her right hand and right foot.

Thankfully a lone wanderer finds her and dumps her off at a community called Comfort, where she is able to get back on her feet, well, foot, to try and make ends meat of this new society she has been thrust into. And what she wants is revenge.

She apparently goes into the wasteland with a gun, searching for crows for food, and hoping to find someone from that community to kill. But this time she finds a little girl (Jayda Fink), born in the wasteland, forced to live as a cannibal. And now Arlen’s life will really begin to change.

Starring Jason Mamoa as the Miami Man, Keanu Reeves as The Dream, Giovanni Ribisi as The Screamer, Yolonda Ross, Diego Luna, and Jim Carrey as a Hermit.

Don’t worry, it is hard to tell even without the glasses that this is Jim Fucking Carrey. I didn’t know until the credits.

When The Bad Batch exceeds at a mark, it exceeds at a very high level. In terms of world building, it created a post apocalyptic society without having to make an actual apocalypse occur, which is pretty awesome. It goes fully into creating a believable enough atmosphere for the characters to live, thrive, and interact with. It only had a few communities in the film, so it isn’t as expansive as something like Fallout, but it gets the job done for a feature film.

The other thing this film excels at is its cinematography. Barren wastelands hardly are sexy to look at, and it is still true with this movie. But the camera work gives an addition to the characters isolation and thirst, by forcing it on the audience. The colors in Comfort are also vibrant at night to explain their drug fueled, care free attitude towards life. It is a visual spectacle.

The Bad Batch does have some issues with pacing. Despite a rough plot being given, it was really hard to figure out at times just where the movie was headed. It was unpredictable with character actions, so it wasn’t obvious just what the hell was the point. It also dragged heavily in the middle.

A lot of people are likely to be upset at the ending as well, including me. Based on the plot, I couldn’t tell where it was heading of course, but still found myself left down based on where it ended up.

If anything The Bad Batch is a visual spectacle (and not in the CGI infused version of that word), with an amazing world and some weird shit going down. But it is easy to get a little bit bored and have your mind wander off at points.

Studies have shown that reviews that feature “Lake” in the title end up being better than expected when writing said review.

Of course, my only review before this was the movie Flakes, which was, I admit, better than I imagined it would be. It was quirky, off beat.

Shimmer Lake, it has plenty of quirky actors in it, but I am not sure how off beat it will end up being. I did go in with low expectations, despite the Lake theory, and as you can see, hey, it was better than I imagined.

There was less sexual tension in this movie than I imagined as well. Look at that gap between police officers!

Shimmer Lake is also a story told in reverse. Similar to Memento, sure, but it is on a day by day basis. We start our story on Friday, and we see how the entirety of Friday plays out, then we see Thursday, all the way to Tuesday.

Because you see, on Tuesday, there was a bank robbery. And this is a small town, Shimmer Lake, so everybody knows everybody, and heck, a lot of them are related. Like or Sheriff Zeke (Benjamin Walker), whose brother, Andy (Rainn Wilson), a lawyer, just helped rob a bank on Tuesday. Andy worked with two other locals (Wyatt Russell, Mark Rendall) robbed a bank when it had a well known surplus, and Zeke was shot in the theft.

And now they are still about the town, Zeke is sure of it.

We just have to figure out how all the players are involved, which of course is revealed slowly while telling us backwards. We also have a judge (John Michael Higgins), a couple of FBI helpers (Rob Corddry, Ron Livingston), the deputy (Adam Pally), and the wife of a robber (Stephanie Sigman), and somehow one or more of them are involved.

And don’t worry, the lake is not the answer to the mystery.

Blueprints and alcohol are the best items to help with a bank robbery.

About three fourths of the way into this movie, I wondered why it was being told in reverse. It didn’t seem to be adding really anything extra to the story. It seemed to be Memento-ing because people liked Memento.

But of course by the end it all became a bit more clear. And yes, Shimmer Lake is a film that will be better the second go around. I don’t know if I will ever really watch it a second time, but I would like to see what clues give it all away and make this story tick.

It was a bit hard to label this movie, because there are a lot of actors who are mostly in comedy films filling out the roster, and I think that adds a strange aesthetic to the whole film. I am calling it a Dark Comedy in that regard, because it is normally comic actors acting serious, in events that are larger than life.

Shimmer Lake isn’t a film that is reinventing the wheel or adding something entirely new to the industry. But it does try to stand out and, as I implied earlier, ends up being a better ride than expected.

Holy shit, it is finally here, the Universal Monsters Movie Franchise! Or Dark Universe, as it is going to be called. And this is for real!

Yeah yeah, you heard it was going to start so long ago, but with less buzz, with The Wolfman, But nope. And you were super seriously sure it was starting with Dracula Untold (because they said so), but apparently they changed their mind. They changed their mind DESPITE the ending taking place in modern day, clearly being ready for the Dark Universe.

So this time it is real. They have a name for the franchise. They have photos with actors in it. They have bigger names.

And you thought my intro to The Mummy would just be talking about the last Mummy Franchise? Well, you’re also right. I really enjoyed The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. The third one sucked, besides some yetis. The Scorpion King was fine, its sequels are bad. And I expect this movie to be NOTHING like the previous iteration, so I won’t really compare them.

The main difference is wanting to make this Mummy sexier.

Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) is in the military, or some subset of their intelligence. But he is a bit of a rebel. He has taken his underling, Chris Vail (Jake Johnson), to a completely different area of Iraq where he believes there is some sweet buried treasure that they can sell on the black market. They are supposed to be 100 miles away on a basic scouting mission, so they kind of are really big jerks here.

And sure enough, there is a goddamn hidden pit/tomb thing here, Egyptian made, despite Iraq being decently far away from Egypt. Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), an Egyptian Archaeologist, believes that there was a Pharaoh princess written out of the records due to shenanigans and this might be her resting place.

Speaking of this princess, Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) lived a long time ago. She was going to be the new Pharaoh when her dad died, and then despite her older, ready age, he went and had another child, a boy. And there went her hopes and dreams. So she made a deal with Set, got all demonic, killed them all and was about to bring Set into the world when she was mummified while alive (kind of BS) and you know, imprisoned far away and for ever.

Ah yes, the plot of the movie. This sounds like a lot, but honestly, this is all the beginning of the movie. What follows including death, destruction, magic shit, mummy curses, the dead rising, jokes, and a whole lot of other mysterious allusions to monsters. All in two hours!

Starring Courtney B. Vance as a general, Marwan Kenzari as a bodyguard, and Russell Crowe as a mysterious doctor dude and sometimes narrator.

This may look like a romantic moment, but that bitch is about to get sucked out of a plane OMG

I have FAR MORE to talk about with this movie than I had possibly imagined before viewing. There is a lot going on, possibly to its own detriment, certainly that is a negative a lot of people are pointing out. Because it is the first film in this universe (Of which Dark Universe was given its own big logo right after Universal) it has to give a complete film and tease out the future. All without an after credit scene to help them either.

A lot of the film can be described as messy. It jumps across genres in a bad way, it decides to describe the entire mummy backstory through exposition out of nowhere. A poor decision. We also get a bit TOO much teasing of the future. Another character that is relevant to the films appears and does a bit more appearing than I wanted. I wished they teased him more out and didn’t go full on monster so early in this franchise.

And the ending? Well, it puts the film and the universe in an interesting place. But at that point it didn’t go strong enough and didn’t seem to match really what was being built.

But despite all this, I still had a lot of fun. It had a real adventurous feel throughout it. The Mummy was straight up scary at points, raising her own undead army to get some shit done. It wasn’t campy throughout, but there was still some camp. Some of the stunts from Cruise were of course amazing, and just, I am excited for more. I really am.

Oh, less Jake Johnson would have been nice. They really don’t need him in future films. Alas.

Oh goodness, Wonder Woman. At this point, the DCEU has been just shit.

Man of Steel was disappointing, BvS was extremely disappointing, and Suicide Squad was in all ways a bad movie. But my favorite part of BvS WAS Wonder Woman, despite her small appearance. Or maybe her small appearance is what made it better.

Regardless, this is another film that is going to be hard to review. Regardless of quality, it has been hailed online by everyone for being the first modern female centric super hero movie, with a woman director! So they need it to be good and hyped up, because it if fails “Hollywood” will use it as evidence against women super hero movies and we will be stuck with just the status quo.

At the same time, I can still feel be extremely worried, because this film being actually great would mean the fourth time is the charm. That isn’t a saying though for a reason. So I am just skeptical of anything I heard online, just based on the need for it to be good, while other people will be tearing it down just for being anti-DC.

And that is why this review is so late after the film came out. Because it allows time for reflection, away from the biased information on either side.

Never mind, costume is great, movie A+!

Ares is a dick, that is the real moral of the story. He decided to introduce war to humans, Zeus’ creations! And then they fight, rah rah rah. So then the Amazons are created, to help bring peace to the world. All the gods fuck each other up, basically dying, except for Ares who is weakened into hiding. Zeus gives the Amazons a hidden island from the outside world, and a weapon to defeat a god, on the day that Ares returns to bring destruction to the world.

And then there is Diana (Gal Gadot, but little Diana is Lilly Aspell), the only Amazonian child, made from clay from her mother, Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen). She has a huge drive and wants to be a warrior to help protect the world, and eventually she reluctantly lets her train under Diana’s aunt, Antiope (Robin Wright).

And yeah, Diana grows up and kicks ass! Ready to fuck up Ares as soon as the world goes to war. Oh hey, a plane has crashed in their sea area, what the fuck is a plane? Diana saves the person in it, a MAN, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine). But behind him are a lot of boats and guns. Holy shit, a war, on their shore? No more!

Needless to say, some people die, some information is gained, and Diana finds herself going into the world, near the end of World War I, to look for Ares and put an end to this madness.

Are main bad guys are of course German, Ludendorff (Danny Huston) and Dr. Poison (Elena Anaya). We also have Steve’s secretary (Lucy Davis), a helpful British politician who wants peace (David Thewlis), and a ragtag group of people to help (Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock, Saïd Taghmaoui).

It looks like all the spirals are part of the sword, that would be a sweet cross guard.

The best news out of this whole movie business is that yes, Wonder Woman is the best film in the DCEU. It didn’t have any real competition, and The Dark Knight trilogy isn’t part of the DCEU so shut up about that.

But it still didn’t make it into 4 out of 4 territory for me. And I know, again, a lot of people would put it super high thanks to feelings it made them feel and what it stands for. But the good news is that a movie can be good for various causes, have a message, be the first to do a few things, while still having issues we should be able to address and talk about.

There is a lot of good! Gadot wrecked it. The Amazonian world was awesome. Their warrior spirit was strong. Several stand out scenes including the island beach scene (for badass action), the boat scene (For humor), the village fight scene (for more badass action), generally every time Gadot interacted with the human world in weird ways. It had a lot of rah rah action going that was easy to cheer along with, because hey, the Germans are the bad guys again and we know what to do there.

However, it had points that felt rehashed from other films. And it sucks to hear it, but it has more than a few similiarties with Captain America: The First Avenger. World War I instead of II, a super heroed person helps end the war with a rag tag group of soldiers each with their own very specific strengths. They are fighting an organization on the German side who want to continue fighting at all costs and are developing super weapons before they get stopped.

I hated the Wonder Woman extra group of soldiers. They didn’t add anything to the movie, except add more dudes to take away from the strong woman. They annoyed me, they sucked. I also really disliked the final fight scene with Ares. At some point it just turned into this giant fire and lightning explosion fest that reminded me a lot of…the end of Batman Vs Superman. Oh just gotta get that super CGI destruction in there, regardless of setting. Boom, pow, blah!

I will end this note talking about Chris Pine, because I am a guy and it is expected of me. I thought he was getting cast as the “pretty romance character for the hero” character, like so many women in super hero movies, but then they had to go and make him really great and have a good character arc. So they made him more than just a romance character, what jerks.

Wonder Woman is a great movie and will hopefully lead to SOME big change with the DCEU to stop also forcing so much crap down our throats. A lot can be learned, but remember, a lot can always be improved as well.

I know that War Machine has been a term for a long time. I mean, Black Sabbath sang the song War Pigs which uses that term, so it had to exist probably at least since the 1960’s as a sort of protest term maybe during Vietnam? Normally, I might look that up, but I am just spitballing here.

Clearly the Netflix original film War Machine is referring to it in this way, about modern conflicts and maybe war profiteers.

But as you all are aware, there is War Machine of the Iron Man/Marvel movies, and he is probably big enough to have taken over that title. Maybe they picked the title to just piggy back off of that Marvel money. That Disney money.

Like war profiteers.

The face you make when you have been a heartthrob for decades and now have to play a role with gray hair.

General Glen McMahon (Brad Pitt) is a leader in the United States Armed Forces, and has dedicated his life to his career. He was born on an army base, coming from several soldiers. He graduated from West Point, like all eventual war leaders, and so on. He likes to get shit done, he has his close crew of soldiers he can trust, and he doesn’t appreciate things getting in his way.

This is set a few years ago, with Obama still as president, and he wants to end the war in Afghanistan. They are now dealing with insurgents, making it an impossible to win fight, but damn it, he was put in charge and he will put it to a close. He has to make assessments and come up with a plan of attack, everyone in the government is hoping for the best. But McMahon doesn’t do what is heavily suggested, he is going to do what he knows is right to defeat the bad guys and save our troops.

However, as command of the troops, he is finding a lot more of the job involves not warring, but instead dealing with incompetent or annoying world leaders, including his own. The politics of war is unnerving and getting to him, preventing him from doing his job. It seems like he is put into that place entirely to be targeted by newspapers, the media, other countries, protesters, blaming him for a war he didn’t start and is just trying to finish.

And as it is a war movie, there are a shit ton of people involved, so here a lot of of the more important ones. Alan Ruck, Anthony Hayes, Anthony Michael Hall, Aymen Hamdouchi, Ben Kingsley, Daniel Betts, Emory Cohen, John Magaro, Josh Stewart, Meg Tilly, RJ Cyler, Scoot McNairy, Tilda Swinton, Topher Grace, and Russell Crowe.

Photo ops allow people to dress up fancy, show their medals, wear cool hats, and apparently drink tea.

Satire films are hard to pull off, especially if you want to avoid the now ugly valley called parody. War Machine does a decent job of maintaining its satire status without dipping down to any sort of parody territory. What it doesn’t do a good job of is being an amazing satire film.

For satire to work, everyone has to be able to get it, understand the real world events and how the art is flipping it on its head. It would be hard for someone to not know about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the film does go into a level of detail that would require more than the layman’s knowledge. Not a whole lot, just some, so that could be considered a negative to a lot of viewers.

I loved Pitt in our leading role here. He gave such an honest performance and was fully in that character. It never felt like the character was intentionally trying to be the butt of a joke, always very serious in ways that became amusing just to an outsider perspective. It just had a lot of truth to it, a wonderful thing for Pitt to have accomplished in this movie.

I wouldn’t say this is a perfect or extraordinary film. It was a decent watch, one I won’t probably ever go running for again. I will also like to point out how amazing Swinton was in this film. She had only one scene and her character is named German Politician, so someone you would assume is just a dumb cameo, but she killed it and added a lot of gravity to the general’s situation.

2017 is the year of the wall.

Jokes about the president, blah blah. But we already got The Great Wall earlier this year. And now we have The Wall? I guess this wall isn’t as awesome as the previous wall. But The Great Wall was just an okay movie. If this movie has a lesser sized wall, will that mean the movie is also not as okay?

I don’t know. But I hope there is a movie even later in the year just called Wall. Or maybe The Wa. I could go either way with my dreams.

Not picture: Any goddamn wall.

Set in 2007, we are in Iraq, after the war was “won” with a dead Saddam Hussein and all. But we still have troops there, to help clean things up, transition, whatever.

And we have Sergeant Allen Issac (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Staff Sergeant Shane Matthews (John Cena) who are a sniper pair. They have been watching a site for about 22 hours now where an ambush took place. Well, maybe an ambush, maybe an enemy sniper. But there are a few dead bodies, a broken wall and some trucks. But after 22 hours, they have to assume whoever or whatever did all of this has gone by now as they have seen no movement.

So they decide to call it. Matthews heads down to investigate knowing that they are safe, with Issac watching from above, still playing it safe. And then, Matthews gets shot.

Fuck. There is an enemy sniper here. A real professional. And now they are caught in his trap, with a small tiny wall protecting them. He is even on their radio frequency (voiced by Laith Nakli). And he wants to talk.

Wall so small, not in this picture either.

Doug Liman is the director of The Wall and he is an interesting dude. From Swingers and Go, to Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Edge of Tomorrow, he has been all over the map. If you look at his producing credits, he has a ton more action movies. But from what I can tell, he isn’t super heavy on the horror/thriller aspects, which is sort of how this movie plays out.

It is a short movie, about 80 minutes, and it plays out entirely in one location. It is more dramatic/thriller than horror, but it really could have gone either way based on the sniper character. Since they were able to communicate with radio, they could have made him down right horror villain. Thankfully they went the smarter, more realistic way, and made the sniper a compelling person with his own reasons for doing what he did.

Now, I will admit, they did make him a bit too powerful. Our soldiers 100% believed they were in the clear for good reason. But this guy is super human. He is a super soldier and he hits his mark, apparently. I would have liked it if they made him a bit more believable in those aspects.

But The Wall was tense, and the whole thing basically rested on the arms of of Taylor-Johnson giving an impressive and physical performance, which he did. Not a bad way to spend under 90 minutes and another film that talks about the real tolls of war without glorifying anything.

And with my review of Tatara Samurai, I will say that this is my final review of films from WorldFest in Houston. I watched over 20 films that were at the festival, and a handful of shorts, and still only reviewed like, 6-7 of those films.

But I was excited for Tatara Samurai. It was the only film from Japan and the description and picture associated with it just seemed to scream out quality. And to be honest, I would much rather have a samurai film come out of Japan than a Hollywood film trying to tell the same story. There will be a different amount of respect for the source material.

Most of all, we should get a lot of authenticity. Both in terms of location, story, and materials used. It could be as authentic as The Witch if they wanted it to be!

That horse looks authentic as fuck.

Set somewhere in the 16th Century Japan, we have feudal warlords feuding, and a lot of poor villagers get caught up in the crossfire. And I do mean crossfire! Because guns are starting to be a thing, and guns kill people hard. Harder than a sword, I guess.

Speaking of swords, the majority of this film takes place in the village of Tatara. A small community, somewhere in the mountains (slight joke, most of Japan is mountains). Gosuke (Sho Aoyagi) is our main character with a lot of legacy behind him. You see, he is destined to be a Murage. A Murage is someone who takes the local ores from their area and turns it into steel. The steel is then sent elsewhere to be turned into swords, swords that are more durable and powerful than any other local steel. They are the cream of the crop. The prada. The gucci. You know.

And Gosuke’s dad (Masahiro Komoto) just became the new Murage after his grandfather (Choei Takahashi) retired, meaning Gosuke’s training is about to increase ten fold. However, Gosuke has also been training in his sword fighting. He has dreams of becoming a samurai, but that is unheard of from people in small villages. Until they hear of Lord Oda Nobunaga, who will take any soldier and if they are good enough, make them a samurai.

His dreams could come true. But he would have to leave home, throw away his family destiny, and go on a voyage. And if he does leave, what will he truly be leaving behind at home, and how will they change without him?

Also starring Naoki Kobayashi, Akira, Toru Shinagawa, Yoshiko Miyazaki, Anna Ishii, Tomoko Tabata, Denden, and Shun Sugata.

He was so poor, he had to train in a flooded valley with a stick.

Tartara Samurai was not what I expected, in a good way. I expected a lot of action. I expected extreme fight scenes. What I got was a period drama, set in a war, about a small community not sure of what to do.

And I also got a shit ton of authenticity, like I talked to at the start. I am not an expert in 16th century Japan, let alone how they make steel, but I HAVE to assume, based on how delicately they showed the process that it was all 100% real. It was astounding to see the number of people involved and how many hours it must have took just to melt it all down. On the same level of authenticity, there was a small scene with a boat. But there is no way that boat was CGI. It was a straight up, 400 year old style boat they either built or borrowed for this film. It was maybe on screen for a minute and it was so gorgeous.

Everything else is fine too. The plot doesn’t go the way I expected, but the characters behave as one would expect, a lot of respect for families, custom, and all that stereotypical Japanese shit. The acting is fine, the small amount of conflict there is is nicely choreographed.

This is not a film for those expecting a lot of action. But a nice period piece made with a lot of passion behind the project, and you will end up loving it.