Tag: 3 out of 4

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.

One of my final reviews from WorldFest, I decided to watch What’s The Big Deal? (Che Vuoi Che Sia?) on a foreign double header. First a Spanish historical drama, and now an Italian comedy. Two different extremes, but I wanted to end my night on a good note.

And after I watched it, I realized I don’t think I have seen a single “Italian” film for realsies on this website. Except for Tale of Tales, a fantastic movie from last year, but one that is also in English so it is hard to remember it is foreign.

Either way, for someone who is such an Ancient Rome fanatic as I am, I figured I would have hit plenty of Italian films before this.

The globe is showing the Americas. Shit, is this actually American too?

Sex. Cold hot sex. Sex for all ages. And porn. Emotionless and distant porn. Porn people are too attractive.

People have a lot of feelings about these words, but for Claduio (Edoardo Leo) and Anna (Anna Foglietta), it doesn’t really come up. Their lack of money comes up. Their want to start a family comes up. But they think they can’t afford it yet. She is a teacher without the Italian version of tenure so she can’t take time off and keep her job. He fixes computers for people who mostly download viruses thanks to too much porn.

But Claudio has an idea for a website. He thinks it will be the next best thing, he just needs some initial funds. But his crowdsourcing goes nowhere, so they drunkenly post a video saying they will post a video of them having sex if they reach their goal, because after all, that is all people care about online.

And it works. It goes viral. And when his wife finds out they won’t let him delete it until the period ends, then he can just deny the money. But the euros keep rolling in, and maybe, just maybe, they might share their bedroom with thousands of people to change their lives.

Also starring Rocco Papaleo as Uncle Franco, who lives with them and encourages them, and Marina Massironi, Franco’s wife who wants them to separate for awhile to rekindle their marriage.

“To get these fuckers to give us money, we have to BECOME these fuckers!”

So the film is of course in Italian, but the screening I went played the first ten minutes without subtitles and I mostly got the gist! Don’t worry, it restarted the whole thing. But it was a comedy, and knowing the basic plot it still made plenty of sense, which is a good sign.

The couple felt really believable, and they had a lot of chemistry. They teased each other and felt like really open people. The fact that they were atheist was mentioned, but not really relevant to the plot it seemed. But they weren’t married for that reason at least.

The film had humor and it had believably. The way it showed their spiral into fame wasn’t as believable, but maybe it would be believable in Italy. I know in America, no one would give a shit and move on with their days.

And finally, the ending. Well, I didn’t really get the ending. Of course the couple was arguing a lot as it built up to the night, but their argument last second didn’t seem to make sense in context of their characters. I could be wrong, but it seems like they kept switching their sides in the argument as well.

The ending just felt odd in comparison to the rest of the film. People are complicated, the film tried to show that, but it went to a few extremes in the end for the sake of drama over a good story.

Alvin’s Harmonious World of Opposites has a lot of things going for it right off the bat.

One: It has an amazing title. We immediately know who the main character is, and we know that there will be some fucked up shit in this movie.

Two: It is the first film I saw for WorldFest here in Houston, in an actual theater. I saw 16 of them before the festival started, but they were in chairs in my homes and at work and on my phone, not in theaters.

Three: The promo image for the movie (seen below) has a large assortment of pandas. So many goddamn pandas. Stuffed, cute, pandas. I actually have 5 stuffed panda toys in my house right now! I am not as obsessed as this main character, but I can certainly, and will happily, relate.

Squeeeeeeeeeee!

Alvin (Teik Kim Pok) is a bit agoraphobic, and he hasn’t left his small apartment in about 18 months. He talks with his friend (Nitin Vengurlekar) on Skype, his job is translating manuals into Japanese with a boss (Ailís Logan) who thinks he is at an office, and he orders everything online. His groceries, a shit ton of knickknacks, and of course panda themed items. He is a bit obsessed, but he doesn’t notice that of course.

Most of his face to face interaction is with his neighbor, Virginia (Vashti Hughes), a vile mouthed racist who blames everything on everyone else and cares not about her volume. Oh, and there is an attractive girl who lives below him, whom he has never talked to, but he has a peep hole in his floor into her bedroom. Erm.

Problem’s begin to really arise when Alvin finds some black substance leaking from the attic into his room. He has some neat freak tendencies, and it is entirely too gross, so he goes to check on it. And what he finds up in his attic he would have never guessed in a million, panda billion, years.

Also featuring Tina Andrews and Dessy Fitri.

If he doesn’t watch it, his foul mouthed neighbor might accidentally eat him.

Alvin’s blahblah is a short film, only about 70 minutes with a handful of characters. Mostly just Alvin and his neighbor, along with the weird lady who lives in her attic. In case you are not ready for the film, the first scenes quickly give us the neighbor on a “cunt” fueled rant to wake up the viewer.

Personally, my favorite scenes were just Alvin hanging out in his Apartment, working, living his life. As advertised, the attic magical “adventure” that he went on was sure, yeah, quite weird. It had gibberish language and a lot of silence. It was bizarre and a complete tonal shift from the rest of the film.

With some thought, you can sort of figure out the purpose of his trip and what it means for his character, it is certainly not given to you on a platter. At the same time, I have no reason to suspect my own interpretation of events are correct at all, and I can easily be reading it wrong.

If this movie was entirely about a man who had slowly turned into a hoarder who never left his small room, I probably would have enjoyed it more. The attic makes the entire thing unique and stand out, but it is just so extreme. It was still quite well done given the subject matter and time.

This same week I had a review of Win It All, and noted my disappointment that Netflix had dropped their ball on their original films finally. And no, I have not seen Sandy Wexler yet. But we all know that it doesn’t count against them.

Needless to say, I was still excited about Sand Castle, much like how I am excited about War Machine. By all means Netflix, start producing war movies, a new genre for you unless you count Beasts of No Nation.

At this point this review is just name dropping films. I better get to the point before I get sued or accidentally make money on advertisements.

“You know what would make this war better? Some ice cold Mountain Dew.”

This Afghanistan war is going to be from the point of view of Matt Ocre (Nicholas Hoult). He is a smart guy, but he enlisted only because his dad and grandfather did before him. He would certainly rather not shoot people, and he tried to get sent home by having a hand injury that he he used on himself.

But alas, it does not work, it heals “enough” and he is sent out with his unit. Staff Sergeant Harper (Logan Marshall-Green) is their leader, with other recruits like Sergeant Dylan Chutsky (Glen Powell), Sergeant Burton (Beau Knapp), Coporal Enzo (Neil Brown Jr.), and 1st LT Anthony (Sam Spruell).

After a hard and successful shooting mission, their small crew is asked to help with a nearby village. Their water supply was cut off, thanks to an accidental attack from the Americans. So they need water and need it bad. They are tasked with daily driving a giant tank (I mean like the kind that holds water) to a site 3 hours away to fill up, and back, while also helping to oversee the engineers fix the problem for the city.

You know, with people trying to kill them and steal water and things like that. Weeee!

Also starring Sammy Sheik, Tommy Flanagan, and Henry Cavill.

“This smoke is annoying, but later I am going to hit the shower, wash off the blood, and bathe in Dew. Mountain Dew, the fresh blood remover.”

My favorite war films are the ones that have higher amounts of drama elements versus action elements. Most war films in a real setting try to give us some sort of realism, so films that deal with the the heavy emotional toll, the human sacrifices, the citizens who get swept up in it all, the politics, those are my favorite. I could care less about all the bang bang shoot em ups.

And given that this film is mostly about a special operation mission, it has a lot of the above elements, filling me with moderate amounts of joy. Hoult being our main lead in a war film is pretty new territory for him. Sure, for whatever reason he keeps getting put into action films, usually with fantasy elements, but he isn’t a big buff dude war hero. (Oh man! Maybe that explains why he smart instead in this film! Shock!) But he does a good job of balancing war emotions with not wanting to get shot or kill innocent people.

The other members of their crew feel like a real tight knit community. I am always impressed with the bond the soldiers seem to have in a lot of these films, like the soldiers in Fury as a recent example.

My biggest issues come from the end, where thanks to PLOT, our group does have to go on a big action war effort. And it is at night, there are explosions, dead bodies, and lots of guns. Very typical war fare, but a scene that just bored me to tears after the excellent drama and skirmishes I had before. Dark scenes don’t make things feel tense for me, instead they just make me annoyed at what I cannot see and force my brain to fill in the blanks.

Overall a pretty decent effort, good acting from the main actors involved, and a decent story to go with the war.

Two main things popped in my brain while prepping for and watching The Lost City of Z. First of all, cool title, really exciting, went in without looking up a trailer or description.

The first thing I realized? This was not a zombie movie. Sorry, a Z on its own just kind of screams that out. (Doesn’t help that Brad Pitt was a producer on both this film and World War Z).

Secondly, I had been pronouncing it wrong for two weeks. And if I pronounced it correctly, I wouldn’t think it was about zombies. That is because it isn’t an American Z, it is a Canadian Z, or a “Zed”. So before you look like me, silly as a goat, it is The Lost City of Zed.

These guys also look foolish, with spears in their faces. Just not as foolish as me.

Our story is about Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), a real man, with a real story, and real interesting facial hair. He is a British officer, but he has no medals to speak of, mostly training troops in case there is a big war (This is 10-15 years before WWI). His dad did some bad stuff, so he has to try and reclaim his family name to help elevate his new family. You know, his wife (Sienna Miller), and their little boy.

Percy is eventually chosen to go on a dangerous movie to Bolivia in South America. The Royal Geographical Society is going to have him lead a mission to follow a river, map out the area, and find its source. It is important for peace in the region and making money. Percy reluctantly goes on a multi year journey, leaving his pregnant wife behind, with danger and mystery in his future.

He gets a right hand man, Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson), who is rocking a killer beard. What he really discovers is that the savages there are not so savage, and there might be an older ancient culture hiding in those woods, he just has to find it to prove it to the world.

Also starring Clive Francis, Ian McDiarmid, Tom Holland, Angus Macfadyen, and Edward Ashley.

At least they have guns, the best invention for scary potentially zombie infested ruins.

Right off the bat, I disliked The Lost City of Z. It had a filter applied to it to make it look time period specific, which movies love, and it just distracts me. Seriously. The entire film it just distracts me. It makes the whole thing look odd, but I am apparently the only one who gets annoyed by these things.

The Lost City of Z is pretty long, over 2 hours. It is extremely thorough, impressively so at times, and I learned a lot about this man who did some pretty exciting things in South American exploration. The Costin character is also pretty exciting. But I actually learned the most about James Murray, an Antarctic explorer who also went on a mission and was kind of a dumb ass. Which isn’t fair, because this story about Fawcett would be super biased.

Outside of filter issues, I do believe this movie has a bit too much going on. Although World War I ends up becoming an important change in his life, it feels so weird to spend so much time on that front (heh), when we have already had two expeditions and know that a third one is coming before the movie ends. And at the same time, I wish they explored a bit more of his relationship with his kids and wife. The ending also takes some liberties with what happened to Fawcett, because the truth is a lot more unclear than that.

And all of these points are still pretty minor. It is a well crafted film about a non well known subject, and one that will interest many sects of people.

Who is The Most Hated Woman In America? Is this another documentary about Hillary Clinton? Shit, I can’t tell from the title if it is a pro or anti Clinton film.

Maybe you could tell from some of my Christian film reviews, but I identify as an Atheist and honestly, there are not a lot of films about atheists where it is important to their identity. Well, in this movie, it is the entire identity.

So this film, another random Netflix beauty, tells a story that is extremely relevant to my life, while also being an important part of American history.

And as a bonus, it is about a goddamn woman who did it all. A double win.

I just wonder where they got the title from.

Madalyn Murray O’Hair (Melissa Leo), a woman who is very proud of her name and doesn’t want that bad boy shortened. She has had some troubles in her life, but she is making it as a single mother. And yes, she is living with her parents, but it doesn’t mean her life is bad. She cannot find a man to provide, so she just decides to work on her own.

And she is educated. She wants her boy to be educated too, even if it means disagreements with her family. And one time she has to take her son to school because he missed the bus, and lo and behold, she hears the classroom reciting The Lord’s Prayer. She tries to make a fuss to the teacher, but she says it is part of their job to have a devotion period, and refuses to listen.

So she takes her argument to the top. And that means the Supreme Court. And in an almost unanimous decision, her argument holds and prayer is taken out of school. And thus, the hatred.

Now, O’Hair doesn’t stop there. She does go after the Pledge of Allegiance too, or at least the “Under God” line. That doesn’t end up as successful, but she does found American Atheists, an organization to give them a voice. And sure, she makes some money along the line.

But O’Hair’s life is anything but normal, and this story goes into a lot of the weirder and more unfortunate parts.

Starring Brandon Mychal Smith, Juno Temple, Michael Chernus, Rory Cochrane, Alex Frost, José Zúñiga, Josh Lucas, Vincent Kartheiser, and Adam Scott.

Yep, this film goes into a lot of clearly hilarious places.

This film does not follow a linear path to tell its story. In fact, right away, we are met with an old lady getting kidnapped in Texas. Yes, Texas, the state that certainly loves its Jesus. The kidnapping case ended up becoming widely known at the time, partially because of how long it took before anyone cared to find her, given how much she was despised by the local community.

This woman was a one-lady powerhouse, who knew how to argue, knew what she wanted and was willing to fight for it. She wasn’t pleasant though. She was (apparently) manipulative of others, including her family, to make sure her and her legacy made it on top. She even dilly dallied with some of the men of the cloth to get some sweet profits, going on a debate tour over the USA.

And that ending? Man, that ending is rough. I almost had to classify this as a Dark Comedy, but only a small shocking bit does not make it into that territory. It took me awhile to really comprehend it, but that is because sometimes the truth is not pretty and it they can’t just ignore her downfall.

The Most Hated Woman in America is informative about an important legal matter in our countries history, and it is always good to learn a little bit about your heroes you did not know existed. A bit sloppy, some slower moments though means it is still not in the elite territory.

Netflix has decided to go hardcore with 2017. They are releasing movies every week. New shows. A fucking comedy special every week. New content all the time, and new fodder for me to review with relative ease.

Had I ever seen a poster or trailer or anything for The Discovery? Fuck no. But it is new, has people I like in it, and was available for me to watch while laying down in my bed. Thank you technology.

As long as they keep churning out original content that will interest me, I will keep on reviewing them. Most recently I checked out I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, and I am sure I missed at least 2-3 other films since then.

Netflix is not paying me for this introduction.

But they did threaten to steal my brain energies if I don’t visit them daily.

Set in the not so distant future, in this world, science has made a major discovery. Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford) has discovered with near certainty with science and shit that there IS an afterlife. He didn’t figure out what kind of afterlife, but that some part of the conscious moves on to another plane. It could be terrible, it could be amazing, it could be boring as fuck. No one knows, but we do now know that SOMETHING is out there.

And unfortunately that news has hit the world hard, and suicide rates over the last year have skyrocketed. Now that people know they will go somewhere, they are more likely to end it all and take the quick release. The world is a sadder place, more funerals and so much shit.

Will (Jason Segel) is on a ferry to his home, where he meets Isla (Rooney Mara). They have their different opinions on what the research means, but it is really all that anyone talks about now. Turns out Will is the son of the scientist, and he doesn’t like what it has done and does’t trust it. Isla is just a woman about to commit suicide, who he saves.

The doctor is about to announce a new discovery though. One that adds on to his previous discovery, hopefully able to answer specifically where the subconscious goes.

Also starring Jesse Plemons and Riley Keough.

The beach almost has enough screen time to be a cast member as well.

The Discovery was a slower film, but one with a great concept. Add in some high tier actors, and you got a low budget film with quite a story to tell. An exciting story, but still one that doesn’t push the afterlife or religion certainty in your face.

Segel and Mara are strong in this film. Segel continues to give very strong dramatic performances when you never expect it, like The End of the Tour and Jeff, Who Lives At Home. Mara is rarely ever off of her dramatic game, so that comes to no surprise here either. Redford doesn’t have as much to work with, but does okay in his role.

The middle is long and drawn out, and it takes awhile to figure out just where the story is going. And because of that, the ending feels a bit rushed. Which is a shame, because the ending reveals are quite wonderful. The ideas presented are definitely science fiction in nature, but an exciting idea and one that doesn’t get explored enough in a serious tone.

I personally really enjoyed the film, despite its faults. I hope it leads to more serious sci-fi films on Netflix. And no, it is nowhere close to being as good as Arrival.