Tag: Comedy

The movie Max had a sequel. Max was a middle of the year release a few years ago, a movie about a boy and a trained dog, and it sucked. They just messed it all up, and it was a stinker.

I am surprised I actually gave it a 1 star, to be honest. Thought I hated it more.

And with this review you are finding out that yes, that film somehow got a sequel. Max 2: White House Hero, because hey, movies at the White House are fun. This movie was released straight to DVD thought, with a new cast and a new story. Apparently the “Max” brand name was strong enough that it warranted using it for the sequel, and not just a stand alone story.

Also, I realize some of you may have forgotten that Max even existed, so I apologize for bringing it back up.

Now that Trump is president, why not have Lochlyn Munro give it a shot?

TJ Bennett (Zane Austin) is the son of the president, and he hates it. He has a security detail at all times, the kids at his school hate him for it, and he is just lonely really. One of the only people who seems to get to know him is Chef Coop (Bradley Stryker), who makes a mean grilled cheese sandwich.

But his dad (Lochlyn Munro) and mom (Carrie Genzel) say he has to help entertain a new guest, the Russian President Bragov (Andrew Kavadas) and his child Alex. They are coming for an important visit for both countries. He reluctantly agrees of course, because he really has no choice. But wait, Alex is a girl (Francesca Capaldi)!

Well things are weird now, and when they get to Camp David, they will have to find ways to keep themselves busy, the stake of the world is on it!

Ohhhhhhhh. And yeah, Max, the same one from the first movie, is in this one. He is loan to the Secret Service to help with the mission, because their normal dog had puppies. And Max befriends TJ and listens to him, so TJ finally has a friend closer to his age.

Also starring Reese Alexander, Kathryn Kirkpatrick, and Bruce Blain.

WILL MAX SAVE THE DAY?

Oh, spoilers.

Max 2 features everything you’d want in a movie. Assuming that movie premiered for the first time on the Disney Channel, because that is how it feels. The only thing missing from my experience was 40 minutes of commercial breaks as well.

It wasn’t entirely shit, but I was indeed bored throughout it. It featured jokes and excitement that only a child could enjoy, unable to make it a family movie that everyone could want to see it. Strangely enough the only character who felt good in their roll was little Francesca Capaldi, playing a Russian president’s very young daughter. She got that accent down and gave that harsh level of authority we are now used to from Russia.

Dog stunts, kids running around, adults not listening to kids, just normal things in a film of this nature. It doesn’t offer really anything new or exciting, nor does it really have its moments. It is just a time filler.

The show Chuck had a magnificent run of five seasons. It is incredible, because it had piss poor live ratings, despite a thriving fan community. It was a nerdy action comedy, a genre that doesn’t get a whole lot of love, especially on the TV.

I am glad it didn’t end too soon, but it is good to see it finally getting a movie as an add on.

Oh wait, shit. This movie, Chuck, is about something completely unrelated. And it was originally called The Bleeder. Well fuck, that sounds like a better title, and a title that wont get me super pumped up on Zachary Levi first. And it is a true story.

Well, I assume whoever this Chuck guy is, he better not secretly also be a spy.

I wonder why it might have been called The Bleeder.

Chuck Wepner (Liev Schreiber) from Bayonne, New Jersey, was a boxer, but it didn’t pay the bills. He had odd jobs, and selling liquor. But he was still a boxer first, he was known for surviving a long time in fights. He could really take a punch to the head. He was also nicknamed the Bayonne Bleeder, on account of how easy it was for his head to bleed, but he hated that nickname. He had fought against George Foreman and other notables, but he was finally getting on a hot streak.

Another person getting on a hot streak was Muhammad Ali (Pooch Hall), who just won the heavyweight champion title against the odds. And against even more odds, Don King wanted Ali to fight a white man, and Wepner was the highest ranked white heavyweight white man, so he got the gig. He was getting paid a lot less than Ali, but it was a lot of money from a bloke from Jersey, and he finally got to train full time.

But his bout with Ali was just the beginning. After that, he became a pseudo celebrity. And he even had a movie made about him. You may have heard about it? It was called Rocky, don’t cha know.

Ron Perlman played his manager/trainer, Elisabeth Moss was Wepner’s wife, Jim Gaffigan was his best friend, and Naomi Watts was his life. Also Jason Jones as another friend and Morgan Spector as young Sylvester Stallone.

“Eeyyy yo, Chuckie! I made some money!”

Chuck Wepner seems like a really interesting person. You gotta be built a certain way to just take a lot of punches and he used that to his advantage. He has a good story, and the story we were given broke the mold a bit. Because this is a boxing movie with arguably, not a lot of boxing. The fight with Ali was done with about 2/3 of the movie left to go, and the fight wasn’t done to showcase the excitement of boxing. It was just another part of the film.

No the real story of the movie is his life before and after the fight. And it got a little bit meta feeling, which I understand is the wrong word, when Rocky came out and how that changed Wepner’s life. I mean, we had a guy playing Stallone in this film, the production of Rocky 2 and more. We got to see his hard times, his bad personal life, and more. So it was bio drama first, then boxing movie second.

The first third of the movie was great, if not pretty standard. I will note after the Ali fight the film seemed to drag a bit more and I had no idea where it was going throughout it. Some okay moments, but they harped on a few of them just way too long. But the acting was fine, and they did a good job of trying to make everyone uglier to better represent New Jersey.

And overall, seeing Schreiber in this role felt really good. But what this movie really made me wonder is when the fuck will Goon: Last of the Enforcers come to America?

Soft reboots are hard. And usually they involve comic book heroes.

But for Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, we have replaced every single character with new characters! Sure the last one of these was five years ago and people get older, but why not keep the parents?

I have reviews of the original films, the first, the second, and the third. And the last one was the worst one, so maybe they decided the cast was washed up and they needed fresh talent.

Whatever the reason is, this one is a movie I have to judge off the previous films. Or, what I barely remember off the previous films. I mostly remember really enjoying the older brother. And the main kid was probably annoying.

The initials of the main book series is DOAWK, or DO AWK. And this boy is sure doing awk.

The wimpy kid has a name, and that name is Greg (Jason Drucker). You may also know him as Diaper Hands, thanks to an unfortunate event at a family buffet where a few actions of his went viral on the internet. Oh great, this poor kid of undisclosed age is now going to get it from everyone.

But he can’t do anything to fix it, because his family is going on a road trip. They have to go visit their MeeMaw’s 90th birthday and it is about 48 hours of driving. Despite having a mother (Alicia Silverstone) and a father (Tom Everett Scott), two highly functioning people, they are going to take four days just to get there because they need to both sleep in a hotel at night, I guess. He also has his older brother Rodrick (Charlie Wright) and a like, 2-3 year old brother. It is a kid who is definitely too old for a pacifier.

Oh, and the mom has instituted a ban of technology on the road trip. No cell phones for anyone, including the dad who apparently has to secretly do his job while also road tripping.

No phone means Greg cannot restore his internet identity. However, he has a plan. Near where his MeeMaw lives will be a gaming convention, and his idol, Mac Digby (Joshua Hoover, basically PewDiePie like person) will be there. If he can meet him and be on one of his videos, he will be famous in a new way and kill his diaper hands code name. He just has to get there and survive the road.

Oh, and there is also Chris Coppola playing a bearded family nemesis and Owen Asztalos as Rowley for a little bit of screen time.

In this frame, our mom almost looks younger than the older brother.

I struggled just finding what rating I would end up giving this film and my mind went back and forth, just back and forth between a 1 and 2. In no way is this film objectively good, outside of some camera work maybe. I haven’t seen a DOAWK film in five years or so, but I think most of the characters are a downgrade. I really can’t remember much about Greg, but the older brother isn’t as believable in this one, that dad is more boring, and the best friend is barely in it to compare. The baby kid was clearly way too old, having the ability to have full conversations, but also barely counting? And pacifiers?

Out of improvements, this one is probably better with Silverstone, who seemed to master this heartful nagging tone throughout the movie. What the fuck? And just 20 years she was so clueless at everything.

This film tried to stand on its own feet by amplifying everything. All the bad things that occurred on the trip just seemed to go straight to 11. The family should have died so many times on the road based on what happened while driving (and not pulling over to just deal with it). The entire Berdo family plot line was terrible, with each escalation never really making much sense. I felt bad for Beardo more than anything, really.

Greg’s plan was shit, but I can’t fault the movie for that. Because kids make shit ideas. What I can fault this movie for is having so much destruction and spending that it just never becomes relatable. This family, despite one working parent (who might get fired on this trip?) is apparently rich as fuck, based on how much they have to spend during it to fix their issues. And yes, money fixes most of their issues. I ain’t got time for these rich people problems.

But the “baby kid” plot lines were still cute despite everything. And there ended up being a pig eventually, I loved that pig plot. The pig plot was cute, along with a few other cute moments that didn’t make the movie completely suck, just mostly suck.

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.

Hey everyone! Remember Guardians of the Galaxy? No!? Then what the hell are you doing here for?

People loved GotG and claimed it to be one of the best films for Marvel. Clearly they didn’t see Captain America: The Winter Soldier that same year. But despite how fresh and funny it was, it had terribly weak villains, more so than most other Marvel films in my opinion.

But the soundtrack was dope. It revitalized old classics, and had the sweet finale of a new mixtape. Before going into Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 I refused to check out the soundtrack released a few weeks ago. In the first film, it was glorious discovering the music that went along and frankly, I feel like it is almost spoiler territory for this film.

Man, I hope this new mix is just as banging. And the movie should be good too, as well.

Like how Russell is banging that old dude look. Rock on!

Set only a few months after the first film, so we have to travel back in time to the year 2014. You know, that way Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) is still a baby for a movie for cuteness reasons. The crew is still together: Starlord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), and Rocket (Bradley Cooper). And guess what! They have also pissed off an entire race of golden perfect people, led by Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki), while also capturing Nebula (Karen Gillan) to turn her in for a bounty. Family bonds? Fuck ’em.

There is still a lot of angst between the members, not knowing how much of their crew is a family, or how much of it is just for the convenience and money. In addition to the golden people, they also have to deal with Yondu’s (Michael Rooker) crew, trying to bring them in again for a bounty.

Oh and remember Starlord’s daddy issues? Well, the timing is wonderful for this film, because apparently some mysterious alien man named Ego (Kurt Russell) is his daddy! He has proof and all, they just have to go back to his own personal planet, to help Starlord realize his heritage, his past, and his destiny. Sounds exciting for Starlord, and no real issues will probably rise from that. Ego has a companion, Mantis (Pom Klementieff), who can read anyone’s feelings and sometimes calm them down. Alien powers!

Also starring two scenes with Sylvester Stallone as another ravager, Chris Sullivan as someone who likes mutinies with silly names, and Sean Gunn. Like, a shit ton of Sean Gunn. I expected to just get a quick cameo, maybe a line or two, but fuck, Sean Gunn is all up in this movie with a major-ish role.

He might even have more screen time than the chick with the antlers.

A lot of your time is busy, deciding what movie to watch, so I will get to the point. In terms of Marvel films, this one felt really disappointing. The first film had issues that a lot of people seemed to gloss over, and the sequel is not as good as the first in so many levels. So I left the theater feeling extremely disappointed. GotG2 is not a BAD movie, but it just had the potential to be so much more.

For our positives, I did laugh quite frequently still. Drax is now my favorite for sure, while there was a toss up in the first film, because they made his personality so extreme in this one. It is also very visually exquisite. One scene near the end with a body reforming in particular stood out, along with colorful explosions and alien landscapes. And Yondu was elevated in this film and given the best scene(s?!) with the best song, so that becomes a standout moment.

And now, the rest. Remember how Drax was my favorite? I said so sentences ago. He is my favorite thanks to the humor, BUT, I am pretty sure he did jack shit the whole film. Outside of the opening fight scene, which is one we can ignore for this point, he did only one real battle/fight scene at all. He is supposed to be Drax the Destroyer, and he is just there for the most part, making quips, and that is it. It was like they forgot his main purpose.

The Gamora/Nebula side plot dragged. Gamora is barely given personality, and Nebula has never been really any good at all, so to see the argument play out and conclude in this film, it just feels like an incredible waste. Starlord/Ego had some interesting moments, but again, the plot just felt very messy. Not really hard to follow, but lacking significant details and just feeling rushed.

This is the third film Rooker has been in with Stan Lee, because people tend to forget about Mallrats.

Yondu was bad ass, but just like in the first film, the made his arrow thing extremely overfuckingpowered. Why they never had him just go up to Thanos and kill they never really stated. His “backstory” and sadness in this film isn’t explored well at all either.

And it hurts me to say this, it really does. Because my own baby was Baby Groot for Halloween to my Rocket Raccoon when she was just four months old. But Baby Groot, although cute, was again, just a distraction. He got a bit annoying with his antics and it gave me scary flashbacks to the Minions in Despicable Me, taking an okay idea and running it into the ground. Rocket was cool though. They gave him a lot to do, some anger, some great humor, and he was definitely highlighted well.

Volume 2 had a few decent song choices, and the ones that work end up working REALLY WELL. A lot of the songs though also became pretty forgettable after the fact, although they did a good job incorporating the music into this movie, by also making the characters more aware of the songs.

Volume 2 is okay. It is. It just isn’t really super. It is flashy, funny, but it just lacks a lot more substance. The type of things you go into expecting in a sequel now that the “origin story” has been told.

The reason I picked Yellow Fever over my original choice at WorldFest was the main reason anyone picks any movie. Star Appeal. You know, recognizing an actor that you know or like, and hey, let’s watch their new thing.

Also I wanted to laugh. It was a comedy, and everything else was a drama at that time slot. Easy choice.

Besides, I could use more reviews of films that are diverse. Like an Asian-American lead actress. However, highlighting this fact out, basically undermines the whole point of the film. Whoops.

My wife would be upset if I didn’t super highlight that this guy was on Gilmore Girls.

Asia Bradford (Jenna Ushkowitz) is Korean, and yes she has the name Asia. Okay, let me first take a step back. Asia was adopted from Korea when she was a baby by a very white couple in New York City. Her mom, Li (Nahanni Johnstone) is a home maker, and her father, Michael (Michael Lowry) is in some sort of business job. He makes the money, he works a lot. Asia has basically lived in America her whole life, she doesn’t know Korean or anything about it.

And now people still call her Korean. They ask where she is from. They want to define her based on her race, not her own unique personality. Recently 18, she has an attitude about everything, and let’s the world know through her online blog called Yellow Fever.

Their world gets a little bit of upheaval though, when an old family friend is back in NYC to sell his recently deceased mother’s home. John (Scott Patterson) is a middle aged white dude, who has been living in Korea, loves Korean things and of course knows Korean. Basically the opposite entity of Asia. His return brings back the idea of lost friendships, romances, and adds a whole lot of confusion to Asia’s growing mind.

And she has a younger brother. That is slightly important.

“Teach me how to be Korean, white man!”

Yellow Fever took awhile to get going, but when it finally “got there”, I was still disappointed.

Yellow Fever is about more than the Asia character, but also the entire family. The boy has a very small plot line and is used mostly just to bring the characters to air their grievances together. A lot of the issues came out just due to poor communication and apparently the parents having no clue how to interact with each other. It was clear the wife was going crazy wondering about her husband, who had a totally good secret, and any normal person would just let them know and everything would be peachy.

None of the characters really felt relatable or believable. Ushkowitz is so much older than her role and looks nothing like an 18 year old girl, it is distracting. It was cringe after cringe.

As for its comedy elements, most of the jokes fall flat. It ended up being a movie about a few miserable people doing miserable people things. Although, sure, Patterson was pretty good at his part.

How many times do I have to watch JFK get shot? I mean, I am a young guy, so not as many times as some people who were alive back in the early ’60’s. But just last year we had Jackie, Parkland was about his death, and he probably died in The Butler.

And now we have a film about a president, who has been in other films recently, like Selma, All The Way, and uhhh, The Butler, again. But usually he is a smaller part. This movie, LBJ, is about LBJ and only LBJ.

Just kidding, a lot of it is about JFK getting shot, because it is super important to him getting presidency. Sucks to not be the 100% star of your own film. But LBJ would look at this and probably say something like “Doesn’t matter, Had Presidency.”

Blood still on the coat.

In Dallas, JFK (Jeffrey Donovan, Mr. Burn Notice himself), is shot and soon dead in a hospital. His wife (Kim Allen) is in shock, his brother Bobby (Michael Stahl-David) has become withdrawn, and a nation is on the edge of their seats wondering what will happen next.

And in walks Lyndon Baines Johnson (Woody Harrelson), vice president, Texan, to swear himself in during a tumultuous time. And not just because of an assassination. Civil Rights riots are at an all time high, and the Southern Democrats are not willing to let the equal rights act go through. But it was one of JFK’s visions, and the best way to honor him would be to get his vision into reality.

But Johnson isn’t just some goddamn JFK puppet. He is a doer, not a talker. He ran the Senate well and made sure things happened. So even though he was never voted the president, he is going to rock that White House, pass some bills, and try and make America better.

Also starring Bill Pullman, Brian Stepanek, C. Thomas Howell, Michael Mosley, Rich Sommer, Wallace Langham, Richard Jenkins, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Ladybird.

“You know presidents, bunch of bitchy little girls” – Bruce Campbell, probably.

LBJ is not a linear film nor does it actually begin with his death. We get to see parts of Johnson’s life before he decided to run for president as Senate majority leader, losing to Kennedy in the primaries, agreeing to accept the VP position, attempting to bring about the Civil Rights Bill as VP, then the president dying, taking over his duties, and trying to be president. Technically, just a few years of his life, and a lot of it is focused on his relationship with the Kennedy brothers.

And again, that is all out of order, telling the story of the last president to voluntarily not run for a second term.

In terms of acting, Harrelson knocked it out of the park. He still had a bit of his woody crude streak going on, but for all I know, maybe LBJ was just like that. The make up work done to him was incredible and he really transformed into this president, I quickly forgot it was actually Harrelson. A very well done performance. Jenkins and Stahl-David also do relatively good performances, and I am still on the fence as Donovan as JFK. It is one that is just very hard to see.

The story is the weaker aspect of the film. It is a very standard feeling biography. It is only on the most important years of his life, it hits upon a very big current issue, and it puts a weird spin on it with him just wanting to be loved. Apparently. I don’t know how much of it is true, but it comes across as false. Thankfully the film is only a little bit more than 90 minutes, which almost seems strange to have it so short despite being a presidential bio film.

For LBJ, stay for the acting, but maybe read up on a history lesson to get a more complete view of the man that isn’t bogged down on specific themes.

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.

Netflix has been on a role with its comedies and drama films coming out basically weekly. So after the last month or so, I was excited to see Win It All.

Joe Swanberg, the director, has done a lot of indie pictures, and honestly, a lot of them I have felt have only been okay. Teamed up with Jake Johnson though, who helped write this script, there was potential for greatness. (Yes, I know that he already directed him in Drinking Buddies and I didn’t care for that film). Despite that though, Jake Johnson was in Safety Not Guaranteed, which was wonderful! So I had hope, especially given the Netflix trend.

Although it is about gambling and a lot of gambling films seem to go in the same direction. Hopefully this one can surprise me.

Fat stacks of cash are not surprising. Where is my gambling for pennies film?

Eddie (Jake Johnson) likes the thrill of gambling. He is an expert on Texas Hold ‘Em, except for when he loses. At this point in his life, he has a small house that he rents, he works helping cars park correctly at large events, and spends most of his money at the table. Yes, he is addicted, but he stopped going to those shitty meetings.

And then his neighbor (José Antonio García) asks him a favor. He has to go to jail for about nine months, so he needs Eddie to store a bag in his place, no touching or looking at it, and when he gets back he will give him $10,000. Pretty sweet deal.

It doesn’t take long before Eddie opens the bag though and yeah, it is stocked with cash and other items. If he just borrows a little bit of the money as seed money, $500, he can win some major cash, pay it back, and start being a success again at life. I think you know where he is going with this.

Now down a shit ton of money, Eddie is fearing for his life. He has to get his life back on track, and fast. He will go work for his brother (Joe Lo Truglio), while also impressing a new girl (Aislinn Derbez), and trying his hardest to not gamble his life away.

Also starring Keegan-Michael Key as his sponsor, Steve Berg, Cliff Chamberlain, and Nicky Excitement.

When my legs are spread out, it is to show I am definitely paying attention.

I thought Win It All would be different, I hoped and hoped. I mean, a lot of gambling films are about the thrills of winning and losing it all, but the people in them rarely have “problems” with addiction. They go and say that our main character does, he goes to meetings, and then he fucks over his entire life thanks to gambling.

There is no way that he will save the day and win the girl through gambling. Absolutely impossible. That would be entirely unthinkable and a terrible message to send to those who have problems with gambling. And it fucking happens.

Major spoilers incoming. After getting even further and further into his hole, with the deadline of fixing it moving up, Eddie’s sponsor introduces him to a table where the stakes are incredibly high. And he gets even further in the whole. But sure enough, he puts the last of his money in and gets ahead, way way ahead. And he was going to keep going after getting far ahead. The only reason he stopped was because he had a heart attack, so he had to go to the hospital, and yay the day is saved! He even fixed things with the girl.

End movie.

Fucking what? How goddamn irresponsible. It could have been a complete shit storm where the film ended him dead after getting shot by the guy back from prison, and it would have been better. He could have not regressed and continued to work at his job and paid it off in installments, and it would have been better. But this ending feels incredibly poor tasting in my mouth, and ruins what was a completely average film.

Colossal is one of those films that I knew I couldn’t wait to see from the first trailer and concept leak. The idea sounded original, and originality in films is a rarity.

But it also had two of my favorite people! Anne Hathaway, who has been making a lot of stronger choices lately in her career, and Jason Sudeikis, who is normally pushed off as a side character and still rarely given his chance to shine.

So why not shine with giant monsters attacking South Korea? Who is excited? Just me?

This guy is totally excited!

Gloria’s (Anne Hathaway) life is shit. She got out of her small town to live in a big city, but she lost her sweet writing job and hasn’t found work in a year. She has been living with her boyfriend, Tim (Dan Stevens) who has had a stable job and a stable life. But Gloria has decided to spend most of her days sleeping, because she is up all night with some friends drinking, getting nothing done. Thanks to her lack of willingness to change and lies, she gets kicked out of the apartment and finds herself broke and alone.

So of course she heads back to her old home town, that she left so long ago. She can stay at her parents old place, because they still own it and it is empty. But hey, she will get an inflatable mattress and figure it out.

It doesn’t take long for her to run into an old friend, Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), who gives her a place to hang out (his bar), some house supplies, and a part time job. Heck, she gets some new friends in “crazy man” Garth (Tim Blake Nelson) and Joel (Austin Stowell).

And after a night of drinking and sleeping all morning, she wakes up to find that Seoul, South Korea got totally fucked up by a giant monster. And after few nights of attacks, she starts to notice that its mannerisms seem familiar. Could…could she be controlling the monster? But why? How? Those hundreds of dead people…

It is hard to reconcile your emotions when you know you wiped out hundreds, but no idea how.

If you watch a trailer for Colossal, it will look like a Comedy with some Sci-Fi elements, but it is so much more than that. As far as I can tell and hope, no trailer really just spoils the whole thing, but they all give the same sort of vibe.

Apparently this is the year of genre-bending films blowing me away, as this is only my 4th 4 out of 4 on the website from 2017 films, and 3 of them don’t get easily defined by one genre. Split, Get Out, and now this, all have multiple elements and tonal shifts that keep you on your feet and help reflect a grander film experience. Some would dock points off of Colossal for that, by being “scatterbrained” but that is only an issue if the film does not succeed on the multiple levels it tries to reach. But Colossal handles the later film drama extremely well, and the early film comedy/awkwardness/mystery elements.

Acting is top notch for our leads of Hathaway and Sudeikis. Hathaway made me hate her character, until it didn’t anymore (growth!), but I always hated her hair. Sudeikis had a lot more subtle great moments early on, before rising up to a level I have not seen before with him by the end.

Colossal is a film that is better the less you know about it, and I ensure you, I barely talked about any of the many intricacies of the plot. But spoilers be out there, so go out and swiftly see this film which deals with important subject matters in a rather unique way.