Tag: 3 out of 4

Confession time. I did not do my due diligence. But I did almost just say “do do”. If I am ever going to watch a movie part of a pre-existing franchise, I always make sure I have seen all the previous films before it. Just recently I had to watch all the Alvin and Chipmunks before Alvin and the Chipmunk: The Road Trip. I did it with Madagascar 3 and I did it with Ice Age 4.

The theme for all of these are kid movies, but I have to do something similar when Resident Evil: The Final Chapter comes out. Kid movies are easy to do, and honestly, can multi task like a beast through them.

But I did not see Ip Man or Ip Man 2. I have known about them for at least 3 years and heard good things, but never sat down to see them. Getting to review Ip Man 3 was kind of last minute, the kind of last minute that didn’t allow me to put a lot of time into two whole movies full of subtitles. But I read pretty excellent plot outlines on them (Wikipedia), and hey, if I like this one, they are certainly going to be watched within a few months!

Oh I know that guy. This is now familiar and I am no longer afraid.

Alright, Hong Kong! Did you know that something from Hong Kong was called Hong Konese, not Hong Kongian? The more you know.

Ip Man (Donnie Yen) is living with is wife (Lynn Hung) and youngest son, and he is now a successful martial arts teacher. He is a Master at a big school, where masters work together and have their own disciples, including Master Tin (Ka-Yan Leung).

Despite the police force in Hong Kong, crime is still rampant with many street gangs. An American developer, Frank (Mike Tyson) is trying to muscle in his way to HK and is using locals to do the work for him. He hires a former student of Master Tin, Ma King-Sang (Patrick Tam) to force a school to sell its prime real estate to him. Thankfully, Ip Man’s son goes to that school, and he helps guard the school from the vandals.

But that is not all! No, there is also a Cheung Tin-chi (Jin Zhang), who also studied under the same master as Ip Man. However, he claims to be the better martial artist. Apprently Ip Man teaches a modified version of Wing Chun while Cheung knows and teaches the official way. He wants to challenge for title of Grand master, but first he has to earn money (with the bad guys!) despite morals, and make his own gym a big deal.

Also featuring some wife drama. And featuring Karena Ng as Miss Wong a teacher, Kent Cheng returning as Fatso, and Kwok-Kwan Chan playing a young Bruce Lee, whom Ip Man most famously trained.

I want to wear all of the cool outfits, but have no energy to become a grandmaster. 🙁

I had to take some serious notes throughout the film to make sure I wouldn’t get confused, given my unfamiliarity with the back ground. But thankfully, Wikipedia’s plot outline for the third film is also pretty detailed. It just has a big spoiler in the first few sentences, which is stupid.

I loved the fight scenes in the film. They ranged from elegant (the fight scene between the two Wing Chun masters) to extreme (Ip Man taking on what felt like 1,000 fighters, workers, gang members while protecting his son). And they were all so very good. I enjoy the crap out of a fight scene where I can actually tell what is going on. The actors and stunt fighters (if there are any?) did a wonderful job and every jab, punch and strike is visible and well choreographed. In particular, I also really enjoyed a fight scene down a stair case with a lot of interesting angles.

The biggest problem with the movie is that the whole thing seems messy. I was worried about describing the plot, because it seemed to go so many different ways. It wasn’t one nice and easy to follow story, which I believe the other films might have been. Maybe none of the plots were big enough for a film, or they had all these things they wanted to say and only wanted to do them in a single movie for budget reasons. Who knows. But it is quite crowded and at times it meanders.

Yen has a lot of charm as our lead character and watching him definitely made me want to watch the other films. He is extremely charismatic, but in a quiet way, and it is nice having an honest good person to cheer for in the movies. Too many anti-heroes nowadays. Ip Man is a saint.

I almost watched The Grandmaster a few years ago, but the US release was delayed for some reason. And because of that, I forgot about the film, but it is about the same man. I have to believe he was the coolest dude to have this many movies about his life.

Ip Man 3 was the exact thing to get me back into watching martial arts film. I was planning on re-watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the first time since I was 11 before the sequel is released, and I think I finally have the energy to do it.

Now that I have a new baby, my wife and I are trying to figure out what her future will be. You know, will she be good at sports or school? Will she be a gymnast or a singer? Will she like bugs or kitties? You know, the normal things. Because if a parent can do anything, it is force their own ideas and beliefs onto their baby and shape them how they want, right? I think that is right.

So I definitely wanted to see the documentary Trophy Kids. I figured it would teach me how to make my child into a future super star. That way she can earn millions of dollars doing sports stuff (Even though no women outside of like 5 make millions I think) and I can retire early because of it. That sure would be swell.

But of course that is not what this documentary is about. Hell, it isn’t about athletes who were Trophy Kids or Trophy Kids currently in training. Nope, it is about the parents. It is about the lengths they will go to for their child to succeed. And by lengths, I mean how dickish, angry, and abusive will these adults be to their kids in order for them to be scared into doing things correctly.

After all, yelling at your kid five feet away from them, in the stands, and on the side line will totally improve their performance. It is easy to listen to your parents shrieking voices with all the other sports distractions around you.

In Trophy Kids, we examine several different sports and aged kids, and how all their parents are more or less the same.

There is no crying in baseball, but there is crying in golf.

The one parent who is slightly different from the rest was a very religious mom with twin boys, who was training them to be future Doubles Tennis champions. She talked a lot about Jesus and their path, and they were all freakishly nice. That one wasn’t too bad I guess.

Everyone else? A guy who divorced his wife and forced their kid to move with him in high school to focus on his football training. After all, his wife is making him too feminine. Pictured above is a dad with a golf prodigy daughter who could put and hit at 3 years old. She doesn’t like him as her caddy.

And the other main story is dealing with two dads who have sons in high school basketball. Since their youth, they have had personal trainers, height training, and of course actual basketball training. Basically a full time job. And their dads get to go and yell a lot during high school match ups and get coaches fired. Thanks dads!

The documentary starts off a bit slow but ramps up after a halfway mark. Hell, if they could have just spread out a lot more of the intensity, this might have ended up as a 4 for me. There is one extremely powerful scene with the football dad in a car ride. It starts off simple and then suddenly everything is switched to 11, and suddenly, child abuse. It was surprisingly how long that scene in particular was and how messed up in the head the dad actually ended up being.

But really, shit, I just feel bad for the kids. They all want to do good and live up to their parents expectations, but of course the expectations always get raised and they are never satisfied. It is sad for them and when we get to see where a few of them place after the fact, it is just sad. Damn documentaries, making me feel emotions.

Animated can be a weird thing to define. Sure, hand drawn and colored films are animation. Classic example. Sure.

CGI films? They are new an exciting, but technically like, all films have CGI in them now. How much CGI needs to be in the film in order to count as animation? Apparently 75% according to the Academy*. Technically 300 might qualify.

So what about stop motion? Anomalisa is a film done with puppets, like Team America: World Police. Except instead of being puppets on strings walking around, it was stop motion, like The Boxtrolls. I still feel strange calling puppets stop motion animated, but for some other reason, claymation seems perfectly fine as animation.

This hurts my head. Let’s get this movie going!

The puppets tell me to burn things.

Michael Stone (David Thewlis) is a lonely man. He is an author, a self acclaimed expert on customer service. So yes, he writes books telling people how to be great with customers. So now he is on the road, doing a few conferences, giving speeches, selling books.

Now Michael is on the last leg of his tour. Cincinnati. According to the cab driver (Tom Noonan) there is a nice zoo sized zoo there. But he doesn’t care. He just wants to be lonely in his hotel room. He tries to contact an old flame for sex (Tom Noonan) but it doesn’t go so well. Crap, back to his shitty room.

That is until he hears a voice. Someone different. Someone that isn’t spouting the same bullshit. Her name is Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh). He could listen to her talk all day. Or all night, if he can manage it.

Sure he has a wife (Tom Noonan) and kid (Tom Noonan) at home, but they are naggy and annoying. Lisa could change his life if he could convince her to run away with him.

Because she is different. She doesn’t sound like everyone else. Get it? Get it?! Tom. Noonan.

The Knights Who Say Tom Noonan run the world now.

It has been seven years since Charlie Kaufman has released a film he has written, and this time he was also co-director! He has written some great films, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Being John Malkovich. You know, he really likes the human mind.

So it is unique for him to want to do a story with puppets to convey more human emotion on screen, but it really works out. I know I made it obvious, but having only three unique voices in the film really drove the point home. Some could call it heavy handed, I would just call it smart.

Basically life sucks and depression sucks. The end.

Yes, there is more to it than that. The conversations seem real and the situations are incredibly awkward. I think my only real complaint about the movie is how long it really took for me to get going. I also wasn’t a big fan of the dream sequence.

I am most interested in the fact that this was actually a play first that was performed with real people in London. It is basically the same as this movie, including only three people throughout it. It sounds like an exciting** version of this story.

Great movie, but I still like Inside Out more.

* – I heard this once before and I am not checking my sources. Suck it.

** – This isn’t sarcastic, despite the fact that exciting doesn’t explain the film at all.

It is a law older than time itself. If you find it, you can keep it. If you lose it, you can weep it. Possession is 9/10 of the law. Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?

These rules get even more set in stone once an item is purchased. Obviously if you find it and buy it before someone else, it is definitely yours.

So Finders Keepers is a documentary that takes that concept to its most extreme. If you are American, you are familiar with Storage Wars and other shit reality TV. People who don’t pay their rent on their storage units can have it taken away from them and the contents sold to the highest bidder. Sometimes it is individual items, sometimes it is the whole unit, and you usually don’t have time to inspect.

If someone spent $50 and inside one of the boxes was $1,000 it would be a sweet buy. If it had a unique rare item they could sell, it would be a sweet buy. IF it had naked pictures of their own mother, it would be the worst money ever spent.

Well, Shannon Whisnant bought a grill. He loves buying things cheaply and reselling them for a profit. So he figured he could clean it up and make some nice bank. Instead, Whisnant finds a severed human foot.

Yeah! A real human foot! Clearly he would go back and return it and find the owner and talk about how awkward it was. But Whisnant wants to make money. So he calls the police, sure, but he wants the news to know too. And he can charge people money to see the foot, earn that sweet cash. But the cops confiscate it, not sure what to do. Fucking pigs man.

Fucking America though, right?

The foot belongs to John Wood, who lost it in an airplane crash. His dad was taking his family for a spin when they had to crash land, killing his dad and obviously losing his foot. Well, Wood wanted to be buried a full skeleton, so he was able to smuggle his leg out of the hospital.

Don’t worry, it isn’t completely gross. It was preserved in some way. But Wood was a druggie and after a big series of changes, he found himself not paying for the storage unit and he lost the leg.

This was apparently a big media frenzy, with both sides arguing for the leg. Whisnant clearly had solid ground to stand on, while the specifics of body parts in this way has never been put down in law before, so one can easily see why Wood should get it back.

And in the end, what I really learned from this documentary, that tells of their story throughout the whole time line, the resolution, and aftermath, is that Judge Mathis is fucking awesome. Yes, some reality show arbitration is used, but the Judge goes above and beyond in his ruling and makes me think he is awesome.

I am left thinking that Wood and Whisnant might be jerks, while also happy/sad what happened to them, but that Mathis is a bro in the best way.

The documentary itself is funny and sad. I am a bit confused as to why I had never heard of any of this happening, especially when I used to live in North Carolina where the foot was found. Maybe it was only a big deal in the western part of the state and not actually national news. But the story is a good one without a simple conclusion.

One of the more unique documentaries in a year full of bio-docs, and with a very reasonable running time of under 90 minutes.

Quentin Tarantino is a crazy sunuvabitch.

He has passion, you gotta agree with that. He loves movies and wants movies to be real. Christopher Nolan and him are some of the only reasons film is even relevant anymore.

Tarantino had a lot of problems leading up to The Hateful Eight. Like when his script was leaked before they even began filming, causing him to cancel it completely. After awhile, he apparently changed some things and did it eventually.

He also wanted to film the whole thing on 70mm film, but barely anyone had a projector that could play it. So he decided to just provide free cameras to almost a hundred movie theaters across America, just so people everywhere could see his film in the vision he had in his mind. I can respect that, but I also think he is a single man on a mission to move a mounain. So we will see if his lunacy gets us anywhere. Until then. H8FULL8.

“Replace more parts of words with numbers, I dare you.”

Set a few years after the end of the Civil War, and thus, after Lincoln’s assassination, The Hateful Eight is about a group of would be killers, maybe killing each other.

Namely, John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell), rocking the same facial hair he had in Bone Tomahawk, is bringing a bounty to Red Rock to get executed. Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is a very bad murderer and she has a $10,000 bounty on her head, dead or alive. Well, Ruth brings them in alive, because they deserve to have justice done to them. By hanging. Hanging justice. He is nicknamed The Hangman.

Unfortunately, they are currently racing against a mighty big blizzard and his driver, O.B. (James Park) is hoping to get him to Minnie’s Haberdashery before it hits so they can have a place to stay until it all melts. Along the way though, he runs into Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a bounty hunter with his own set of bodies heading to the same place. He is able to get a ride. But they also run into Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), son a Rebel leader who claims he is going to be the new Sheriff of Red Rock!

But when they got to Minnie’s, Minnie wasn’t there. She apparently was away to visit relatives and left Señor Bob (Demir Bichir) was left in charge. Other patrons included Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), a British literal Hangman, Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a cow puncher visiting his mom, and General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), from the Rebel side looking to bury his son.

Ruth thinks someone is lying. He thinks someone here is not who they say they are and looking to free Daisy and kill all the witnesses. People are lying, and now everyone might die because of it.

Also featuring some less hateful people, Dana Gourrier, Gene Jones, Zoë Bell, and Channing Tatum.

Tim Roth is actually just playing the real life Christoph Waltz.

The Hateful Eight feels like a play, and I love plays. It is definitely the best part of the film and it is why I might want to watch it over and over. The action is of course another big part, graphic and very violent once it gets going. Not as violent or crazy as his previous films, but it is still pretty up there.

The 70 mm version of the film, which is what this is based off of, did not feel too long at over 3 hours. It went quickly because there was rarely a dull moment. And hell, an intermission meant I could buy a drink and not torture myself for two hours refusing to leave my seat. The overture was a nice touch and of course the music throughout.

The film is tonally different over its two halves and I wasn’t as excited during the second half. The whole thing is set up as a mystery as to who is a liar and a cheat. Without spoiling, let’s just say the whole thing let me down. It was unexpected surely, but not in a good way. There were still some great acting moments in it, and some of the scenes were very tense, but damn, it just wasn’t that sexy of a reveal.

I cannot say for certain of the 70 mm actually added a lot to the film, it’d be hard to without seeing both versions. I believe the digital version is about 20 minutes shorter including the intermission, but I have no idea what they’d cut out of it.

Not Tarantino’s best work, and worst of his most recent films, but still quite memorable and worthy of multiple viewings.

Drugs are bad, mmkay. They put people in jail, they cost billions of dollars, they can lead to death via shootouts and they fund terrorist organizations. Sure, they can harm your body, but who cares about that? That shouldn’t be an issue.

In fact, if they were made legal, a lot of issues would go away. Shootouts will go down, jails would be emptied, they wouldn’t cost as much, and it wouldn’t help terrorist organizations. If the US just changed their mind and made it all government sanctioned, it would help a lot of crime ridden areas of the world.

Like Mexico. A lot of drugs are grown or manufactured there and brought over the border to be sold in America. They can use this money for weapons and political power, meaning drug cartels control large areas, both physically and through bribes. And that is what Cartel Land is about. Groups of people using force to win back their homes from the evils that threaten it.

And this man even has a doctorate.

The trick here is I said groups of people. We have a group in Michoacán, led by Dr. Jose Mireles, a small town doctor, who made a group named Autodefensas. They are just groups of locals who want to get the cartel, a group who calls themselves the Templars, out! They are all volunteers, still holding their normal jobs and lifestyles, but they also have shifts to keep perimeter checks after they forced the group out. Even better, they then take their work ethic and guns, go to nearby cities and villages, get the cartel out, and help the citizens set up their own Autodefensas group.

Then they leave. They aren’t looking to take over the whole area and rule it over their own corrupt national government.

On the other side of the coin and border, we also have Tim “Nailer” Foley, an American veteran in Arizona who sees illegal immigrants crossing the border all the time. He helped set up a small paramilitary group to patrol the border and stop being from bringing drugs across the border. Both groups don’t like the drug war and what it is doing to their countries. And both are hated by various groups and government officials.

The best part of Cartel Land is how much access the documentary director had. He had to go to Mexico to work with Mireles and his Autodefensas, see them gain control back in an area, teach others, still live their lives with families, and also face extreme pressures from the Mexican government to stop.

Cartel Land is also mostly unbiased, letting the people tell their own stories and not offering judgments or concerns. It was a stark and real look at current affairs in Arizona and Mexico and is useful to help understand the plights of average citizens.

I am so full of Happy Happy Joy Joy. After all, it is the Christmas season, and you know what that means?

That’s right! It’s time for a David O. Russell movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper.

I can’t even remember a time when Christmas was without these two somehow in my life. And for the most part, I have enjoyed it each and every year.

Wait, what’s that? 2014 didn’t give us our JLaw BCoop reunion movie? Oh that’s right. That year was supposed to be Serena. But it got shifted around and wasn’t a good movie. Let’s forget 2014. Those were dark times. Probably because someone other than David tried to use them. That must be it.

I assumed this was a revenge action flick based on only seeing this picture pre watching.

Joy (Jennifer Lawrence) used to have it all when she was a kid. She had a loving mom (Virginia Madsen), a dad (Robert De Niro), and step or half sister Peggy (Elisabeth Röhm). It might be a step sister, I don’t know. She loved to invent and create and let her mind flow. Then their parents got divorced. She now had a mom who stayed in all day to watch Soap Operas, and her sister went full time with the dad, who she only saw some of the time.

Now she had to take care of her mom and her head can no longer float in the crowds.

Seventeen years after the fact, things were going to change. Yes, she had two kids. Yes, she was divorced with her ex, Tony (Edgar Ramirez) was living in her basement. The only sane one in her life was her grandmother (Diane Ladd) and our lovely narrator! And of course her best friend is still around to help, Jackie (Dascha Polanco).

Let’s cut to the chase. This story is actually about Joy Mangano, a real person. She invented the mop that was super absorbant, able to be thrown in the washer, and with the handle to twist and wring water out of it. How she got there, and how she became the queen of HSN? Well, that is this story.

Also featuring Bradley Cooper as a QVC exec, Isabella Rossellini as a rich widow, and Isabella Crovetti-Cramp as Young Joy. And no, she didn’t get there by killing her competition.

Although every good picture for the movie wants to confirm the revenge killing spree thing it seems.

Joy was a lot more different than Russell’s previous few movies. It started slow and took a long time for “the point” of the film to be shown. Again, going in blind, it just seems like this Joy girl has a messed up family and people are mean to her. But she is nice, so people continue their meanness.

Literally. If you like seeing unfortunate things happen to Jennifer Lawrence for 45 minutes or so, you will love the intro. But when Cooper appears, things seem to change. Yes, she still gets shit on occassionally, but not as much. Hell, a scene near the end had me filled with controllable rage over her circumstances. So in that sense, yes, Joy elicits emotions out of you and you might get pissed off.

But at least we know there is a happy ending, because she is super famous and well off now. Journeys can suck though.

This film felt full of women power. All the men kind of suck in some way, with only two male characters actually being helpful in the end. But most of the men just try to screw her over along the way. But Joy prevails.

During the film, Cooper’s character makes a big deal about a person’s hands. With hands working on TV, it is easier for the viewer to imagine the hands as their own. Once they imagine using the product, they are more willing to buy it. That is when a viewer will realize that throughout the film, before and after the scene, they do a lot of close ups of hands before we find out about the person themselves. Some subtle point there, and honestly, I am not sure what it is. But it was definitely interesting.

Joy is different. Joy is weird. Joy is overall entertaining, it just takes awhile for the hook to really sink in.

As it happens every year, this year I find myself lacking in the Best Actress potential nominee department. Somehow these films with strong lady leads allude me, it is probably cause I am a man.

But damn it, this year I got to see Carol before they announced Oscar nominations. Sure, it might presumptuous for me to assume that it will get nominated for anything, but it literally received two nominations for Best Actress for the Spirit Awards. One film, two spots of the five. That is pretty damn good. I admire that they didn’t try to shoe horn one of their leads into a supporting actress role, like plenty of films attempt depending on how crowded a potential category is. And after all, competing against yourself must feel a bit awkward. But for 40% of the nominees to be for Carol, I’d have to imagine at least one of them be given some love for the Academy Awards.

Not that strong independent women need to be shown anything at all, technically. Fuck, feminism is hard. What do I say? Just start the review? Okay okay.

See? I am so feminist, I won’t even mention that thing that is on Carol’s head.

Film is called Carol? Fine, I will talk about Therese (Rooney Mara) first then. Therese is young and living in her own apartment in NYC in 1949-51, I couldn’t figure out the year. She works part time at a department store for the Christmas holidays, selling dolls and trains. She has a cheap camera for taking photos, thinking she might be a photographer one day. She is dating a fine young boy, Richard Semco (Jake Lacy), who wants to marry her and taker he on vacations to Europe.

But then she meets Carol (Cate Blanchett). Carol is older and richer and lives out in New Jersey. She has a husband, Harge (Kyle Chandler) but they are getting a divorced, and a young daughter (played by Sadie Heim and Kk Heim. Yes twins, and no, Kk is not her official real name). Why divorce? Well, the love is gone. And Carol might have had “a thing” with the godmother, Abby (Sarah Paulson), Carol’s childhood friend. Yes, a thing means a romantic relationship, when she was already married, to a woman.

Well, due to reasons, Carol and Therese become friends, Therese never really knowing she could find a woman desirable. But this was set 65 years ago and that would not fly. In fact, it is very bad news for Carol’s divorce, as her husband is using her past moral indiscretions as reasons to file for full custody of their daughter, not joint. This wedge is meant to bring her back into the fold, but Carol would rather flee the North east to be away from him, to be herself, until the trial where hopefully it would all just be heresay. But she wants Therese to go with her. Travel west, see the country side. Enjoy each others company. You know. Regular road trip stuff.

Some other guys are in the movie, but they aren’t lesbians, so fuck them. John Magaro, Cory Michael Smith, and Nik Pajic.

I would be appalled as well dancing with Chandler.
You just know he is constantly whispering “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose” in her ear.

Carol was intricate, intimate, and insanely detailed [Editor’s Note: Yes, that was already covered by intricate.] Carol seems like the type of film that must be based on real events, with the actresses involved recreating the scenes word for word, smile for smile, as it happened in real life. From the first frame, you will begin to feel that old timey movie atmosphere wash over you. It feels like a film that literally came out of the 1950’s, but with the cameras used and credit style. Of course my own viewings of 1950’s cinema is excruciatingly low, so I am not a complete authority on that. But damn it, it still made me feel that way.

Since my rating is already obvious, my only real complaint about this film is that it took me quite a long time to get really involved with it. The beginning is slow, mostly the scenes of Therese without Carol where she is hanging out with her boyfriend and his friends. Yes it is important to establish her life outside of the future romance and not make her a love sick puppy, but they dragged on. Potentially on purpose, to show the boredom that had crept into her life.

But the scenes between Carol and Therese? Everything was golden. Their eyes, their body language, their tones. Fuck, I could stare at Rooney Mara starring at Cate Blanchett all day. It was that real. These two women were complete power houses in their own right. I can see them both being nominated for Best Actress for the Oscars as well, not just Blanchett for playing the titular role.

Carol will probably be in the running for Best Director as well. I think this is a heavy category this year, with Spotlight and The Revenant, but Todd Haynes completely dominated this film. Everything was on spot and meticulously planned. He is the type of guy who has great attention to detail, but isn’t insane about it like Wes Anderson.

Finally, if I wanted to be vague, I could describe this film as “Cate Blanchett has a mid life crisis, leaves her husband, and travels west” and you might think I was talking about Blue Jasmine. What’s that? Blanchett won Best Actress for that film? You don’t say.

Here is what I can tell you:

This review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be super unbiased. Why? Because I am not a hardcore fan boy of the series like most critics I know. I didn’t watch the original trilogy over and over as a kid, and didn’t even see them as an adult. Each film of the original trilogy I have only seen once, and honestly, I get why they were popular then, but think most of it is just nostalgia a la Tron love. Tron is technically terrible, it just did something no other film did before it, so it was a big deal and loved for that reason. If I saw Star Wars as a kid, I might be hooked as well.

I am not saying I hate Star Wars, as that would still be biased. I am just very neutral and ambivalent towards it. I liked KOTOR as a game, so that is one thing I enjoyed. And yes, Episode III might be my favorite Star Wars film, solely for the ending magma battle and shouting.

Here is one more thing I can tell you:

No, I don’t think this review will have a ton of spoilers. I didn’t watch any trailers myself to keep it completely fresh in my mind. I waited days after its released and walked through the internet like a minefield to keep my take on it fresh, despite the news stories of its success. I wanted to wait, so I could watch it in an enjoyable way with a small crowd to not sway my opinion one way or another. Will I reveal basic plot points? Of course, but if that is a spoiler, then fuck me, everything is a spoiler.

This is how I be dodging spoilers on the internet.

Set 30 years after Return of the Jedi, shit has once again hit the fan. Remember Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill)? Yeah, he was a big deal. He has been missing for a long time now though and might just be the last Jedi. Turns out there are still bad people. They aren’t the Empire anymore, they are the First Order. And they are looking for him.

So are the Resistance, which is of course led by Leia (Carrie Fisher), a General now. You can’t really call yourself a Princess anymore when your only claim to royalty blew up in the first half of A New Hope.

Either way, she sends her best pilot down to Jakku on hearing that there is a clue to his whereabouts. You’re thinking Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbaccca (Peter Mayhew)? Hell no! We’re talkin’ Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac)! He is like the new Han Solo, I guess.

And that is the plot outline basically given to us by the rolling credits to start the film. Since I don’t want to freak anyone out. First Order bad. Luke is gone. And more question marks.

But there are still new characters! Rey (Daisy Ridley) is the new Luke and Finn (John Boyega) was a storm trooper, and also New Luke. I guess. Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is new Darth Vader and General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) is new Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin.

Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong’o) is new Yoda, Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) is new Palpatine, and Anthony Daniels is still C3P0. Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) is a silver storm trooper commander, and I guess she is just a new thing completely. But she has almost no real reason to be in this film, to be honest.

Princess Leia really let it all go for this film.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is an entertaining film. It has likable characters. The new people seem to mostly be the focus, determined to tell their own story, and not let a bunch of old people steal their spotlight. What I might have loved the most was that it felt a lot more “realer” than the prequels. It didn’t feel like a giant CGI fest. It involved actors really running through sand. Real sand!

And sure, I liked Rey. This series will catapult Ridley into super stardom, I can feel it. I liked the Poe and Finn bromance. I really liked Poe. I liked Poe a lot more than I would imagine for someone who is just a pilot. Damn you irresistible Oscar Isaac. Even the new R2D2 was cool.

I didn’t like Kylo Ren when he took off the mask though. No offense to Adam Driver, who I tend to enjoy in his other films, but the look he had with the long hair made him just feel so un-intimidating. His characteristics, technically realistic, but not currently as BAMF as I had hoped. The storm troopers themselves were better. They had personalities, they could hit targets, they had various weapons, and obviously, one of them gained a conscious.

He does have the most sensical lightsaber at least.

But then. Then there are other things. Things not as good as those first things.

Of course a common complaint is this whole thing just feels like a rehash of events from the original trilogy. Some people would argue they are just a homage or mirror of events. Others will just call it lazy fan service / heavy winking. I am on the latter. This didn’t feel like a completely new movie. I mean, fuck, they already did two Death Stars. This time we have a really really really big Death Star, with similar dumb weak points with even more who gives a shitness.

Not everything is well acted. Some scenes are cringey, some seem forced. The worst scene for me to watch was unfortunately a scene between Fischer and Ford, talking about their old love. Neither seemed to be really into it at that moment (Fisher was unfortunately aloof for every one of her scenes), and it didn’t provide the power that it was striving for.

I think what I hated even more about this film is that it didn’t feel like a complete story. Yes, it is part of a trilogy. Yes, trilogies should have an over arcing plot and goal that is being worked towards. But each film in a trilogy needs to have its own beginning, middle, and end, and not leave us with almost literal cliffhangers. The ending to TFA reminded me of the ending of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which pissed me off so much I still haven’t seen At World’s End. Will I see Episode VIII? I have to, it is my job, but I will go in on a slightly sour note.

In case I wasn’t clear, this film felt like it wanted to set up the trilogy and only hint at what is to come, instead of letting that come naturally through its own story.

TFA is an entertaining movie and one people can enjoy again and again, but it is not movie of the year material when it comes down to all of the bigger elements. I have hope for the future films.

As a side note, I enjoyed a few other things. Like Fisher’s daughter having a small role, and you may recognize her from Scream Queens. It is hilarious that Isaac and Driver are both in this film, when they were last together they sung with Justin Timberlake about not wanting to go to Outer Space. I hope JT is given future consideration for a small role.

And finally, there was a mother fucking reference to Clerks. Clerks, which made many references to Star Wars. Randall was wrong. He said that the average storm trooper does not know how to install a toilet, and that they’d have to hire independent contractors to make the Death Star. But damn it. Those storm troopers do have jobs. (Spoiler)? Finn worked in fucking sanitation!

Nacho Libre. Napoleon Dynamite. Gentlemen Broncos.

Two of these films are well known. Both of them are universally hated or loved, with barely any room for middle ground. And Gentlemen Broncos was unfortunately never widely known on the radar, despite it being the strongest movie of the three for me. I also hated Dynamite, and loved Libre.

Well, now Jared Hess the director is back after a six year directing absence. Don Verdean. Bringing back a few actors he directed in Broncos.

And honestly, this should be enough information to give it a shot regardless of what it is about. Just for the experience. Just for the really quotable lines.

Surveillance does. I hate those

Don Verdean (Sam Rockwell) is a world famous Biblical archaeologist. He made his fame finding actual places and items from the Bible, helping Americans ignore faith and base their religion on facts! Like the scissors that cut Samson’s hair!

I should have said “was” instead of “is” because times are hard now. He is mostly now just selling books and touring churches around the US, with his assistant Carol (Amy Ryan). That is until Tony Lazarus (Danny McBride) a pastor self proclaimed back from the dead, with his reformed stripper wife (Leslie Bibb), want to finance Don Verdean!

You see, they are losing followers and they need something big and splashy in order to get people back into the faith. So they will pay for his next expedition, the wife of Lot! But that is just the tip of the ice berg.

Either way, Verdean has the right frame of mind. He wants to help people, even if it involves lying. Then he gets too involved in his lies, and one of his Israeli workers (Jemaine Clement) finds out the truth, extorting Verdean. At the same time, a local priest, who used to be a Satanist (Will Forte) and his scientist friend (Sky Elobar) don’t believe any of it. They want to prove he is a faker.

Also featuring Steve Park as a rich Chinese Christian man who also wants to get in on the action.

McBride seen here is of course discussing the size of Goliath’s dick.

This is the type of movie where you should know exactly what you are going to get. If you saw any of the last three, it is very similar in terms of exaggerated characters and ridiculous lines. And for the most part, I loved it.

I was cackling to myself as I watched it, both due to the “clever” lines and the “clever” situations. Just seeing McBride as a pastor makes me laugh, because the casting choice is that brilliant. I was surprised by Ryan’s character, because she did the timid/obedient Christian thing very well, and honestly, she rarely has big roles in what she works.

Clement made me laugh the most. It might be the first time a New Zealander has played an Israeli, taking his already strong accent and morphing it into an even stranger Israeli accent. It as so think, basically everything was comical. Rockwell did a fine job in the leading role, although I feel like his motivations were shaky throughout. I couldn’t tell if he was intentionally lying every time or not.

My biggest gripe with the movie is unfortunately the ending. When things became more chaotic and things began to unravel, it just didn’t feel like the same movie. It started to lose a bit of my interest and seemed to focus less on the funny characters and more on the “action.” Quotes of course, because there isn’t actually a lot of action, but it was still higher stakes and running and a couple of gun shots.