Tag: Comedy

I chose to watch Step Up: All In before The Hundred Foot Journey. Let that sink in. This is no longer true. I wrote this intro 2.5 weeks ago but then circumstances made it so I couldn’t see this movie for weeks. And I will be damned if I am going to change my intro.

That is because for the most part, I can enjoy a good dance movie. If the music is “Fresh” and the moves are “Dope”, I can be entertained. Especially if it feels a bit original and doesn’t fill it with too much badly acted drama. Hell, I had a whole week or two last year where I watched a bunch of dance movies I missed throughout the last few years, the obscure and straight to DVDs ones.

Step Up: All In is the first dance movie I will have seen since Battlefield America which was so bad and creepy it caused me to nope out of the genre completely. Which is a shame, because I still haven’t seen You Got Served (which I will now save for a Milestone Review).

A literal boxing ring, in case the dance off metaphor wasn’t strong enough for you.

Now that we have left the travesty that was Step Up: Revolution behind in Miami, we can focus on Los Angeles. Wait. Wait a minute. Is that Sean (Ryan Guzman)? Lead star of Step Up: Revolution? What the fuck? And wait, who is that, Eddy (Misha Gabriel Hamilton)? His best friend from the movie? Holy shit, the entire “The Mob”, their dance crew is here. What the fuck. Is this a direct sequel for real? No. This is something more.

The Mob is pissed off at LA, everyone except Sean. They are all broke and poor and returning home. Sean, also broke and poor, doesn’t care, he knows he can survive out here, so he says bad things to his friends and they leave. Sean finds Moose (Adam G. Sevani, who was in every Step Up movie but the first one), gets a job, and hears about this new competition called The Vortex. Lead by pop star Alexxa Brava (Izabella Miko), the best crews around the world will submit videos of them dancing. And then the top blah will go to a competition in Las Vegas, where the grand prize is a 3 year contract to perform there! Woo!

So Sean gets a new crew together, featuring Andie (Briana Evigan, from Step Up 2: The Streets), and a shit load of other people and they enter! But oh no, the rival crew that made fun of them earlier is also there, lead by Jasper (Stephen Stevo Jones) and shit, The Mob made it too.

I guess the real question is, can we really root for Sean who is going to be a dick to literally everyone in this movie, justified or not? Alyson Stoner reprises her role from the first and third movie. There a lot of other people in it, so I will just list them til I get bored.

Stephen Boss, David Shreibman, Mari Koda (Who has been in all the Moose movies), Christopher Scott, Luis Rosado, Facundo Lombard, Chadd Smith, Martin Lombard, Cyrus Spencer.

They fight fire with fire but not really how the saying meant it.

I recognize for the most part that dance movies have basically become a way to showcase the last winners of America’s Best Dance Crew and other similar TV shows. But that main one ended in 2012! Where do they get their talent from now?!

Oh. They get them from their past movies and re use them. What a concept!

First, I am glad to see so much of their effort was into actually trying to make the movies connected, versus a lame cameo here and there. Like most of the time, all the movies outside of the first film are connected. There is the small connection to the first film, but that’s all it is, small.

My problems lie heavily with the plot. The main character is a douche for 85% of the movie. And just because he sees the error by the end, I still don’t have a desire to cheer for him or his team, especially knowing how his character acted in the last film. They broke up almost everyone’s relationship (except for Moose) just to make new ones with this. Who cares if the last movie was mostly about gaining one of those relationships.

And the ending. Oh goodness. Guess what, a team was cheating. So what do they do about it? Cheat harder. Yep, that’s what I meant fighting fire with fire. They don’t rise above it and overcome it normally. No, they just cheat more. Ugh. I can’t even.

Some of the dancing was cool. I didn’t think the final “good guy” dance was actually that much better. Just felt like they were just throwing everything at a wall to see what sticks. Was a clusterfuck of annoyances.

There are better dance movies out there than this one. But at least…one or two characters are cool from this.

Let’s Be Cops. A movie that has been advertised for almost six months before coming out, despite for all intents and purposes, looking like a shitty cop comedy.

I mean. You saw the trailer. It just pumps loud rap music at you with scenes that aren’t really funny and situations that are so unbelievable that you glare. Well, maybe I am just talking from my experience.

But from the looks of it, it just looks like a collection of people from TV shows trying to get into a big movie. I also missed three different screenings before finally going to the fourth available one because of how little I cared.

This is clearly just a recreation of a scene from Tommy Boy.

Justin (Damon Wayans Jr.) has a dream job, a video game maker in L.A. And by that, he works at a company but no one cares about his opinion or his game, especially not his boss (Jonathan Lajoie), and he kind of gets shit on. Non literally. He lives with his best friend, Ryan (Jake Johnson), who played college football but didn’t go pro due to an injury. He has been living off of money he made from a commercial for a few years, no prospects. Life sucks for them.

It sucks even more when they go to a reunion party and everyone there is successful and they are losers. They also showed up wearing cop outfits thinking it was a costume party. But hey, it turns out regular people believe them to be actual cops, since their outfits are authentic. They get to boss people around and have fun. Shit, even the ladies like them.

Well, Ryan gets really into this idea. He is the bigger loser. He gets the used cop car. Lights. Super illegal. Justin hates the idea. He has a job. Doesn’t like it. But likes the perks of the cute girl Josie (Nina Dobrev) at the diner they frequent finally paying attention to him.

But things quickly get out of hand when they end up pissing off a local mob crime dude, Mossi (James D’Arcy), who thinks a few actual street cops are trying to clean up the turf. They can’t handle this shit. They don’t even have real guns!

Also there are roles for Rob Riggle, Keegan-Michael Key, Andy Garcia, Natasha Leggero and Joshua Ormond as Little Joey.

Don’t give me that disgusted look just because there is a kid in this movie. There are dozens of them!

As expected, a lot of the humor in this film is crude and I didn’t find a lot of it funny. But then, every once in awhile, something made me chuckle. Generally they came from Damon Wayans Jr., who has been making me laugh for years. He just has those dance moves, you know?

The moments that I actually found amusing were apparently enough to warrant the film into okay status. On top of that, James D’Arcy made a pretty interesting mob boss. Classic eye scar and all.

It still had quite a few annoying plot points, especially near the end, that cause characters to react only in ways to save our stars / make the movie move forward, instead of what their character would actually do. Like, you know, shoot someone.

Whatever happens, this movie definitely doesn’t deserve a sequel. So I do hope it fails enough financially for them to not even think about it. Watch on Netflix eventually, maybe.

One hundred feet is not a big deal, in most cases. One case where it is a super big deal is if that is the number and units of the pile in your living room. That’d be pretty gross.

Another time when it would be a hard distance to cross is if racism was involved. Which is one the The Hundred-Foot Journey seems to be about. Classic European Racism, cooking, and good old fashioned stereotypes.

Does it get any better than this?

Look! A big Indian family cramped in a van! Hilarious!

Papa (Om Puri) and his family used to have a nice restaurant in India. It was very popular and his wife taught one his sons, Hassan (Manish Dayal), all the secrets to spicing food right and how to cook. Unfortunately, I used the past tense and they lost the restaurant in some…voting riot thing? They also loss the mom and somehow out of this got a fat stack of cash to start a new life somewhere. Leaving Mumbai, they go to England but it sucks there. So instead they go to the main part of Europe, driving around, looking for good vegetables and a community to get a new house and start a new restaurant.

Well, their breaks kind of freak out near a small town, and that is where Papa is inspired. There is an abandoned building, complete with inner courtyard, perfect for Indian food. It is just right across the street from a One Michelin Star restaurant, led by Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren). These small town French people are not used to Indian food or culture, so it seems like a terrible idea, but the Papa insists to spend his money his way.

So they do that. It causes competition. The restaurants rage war. Some racism may occur. Dirty tactics are used. But Hassan just wants to fight. And f–, err, and befriend Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon), one of the sous chefs across the street. But even eventually Mallory won’t be able to deny Hassan’s talents, offering to teach him even more skills, so that one day he might even conquer the world.

Other family members of Hassan’s are played by Amit Shah, Farzana Dua Elahe, Aria Pandya, and Dillon Mitra. We also have Clement Sibony and Michel Blanc to add real french people to the mix.

This reminds me of that one scene in Ghost. You know the one. Yep.

The Hundred-Foot Journey aims to be a feel good movie about cooking and overcoming obstacles! However, everything feels so rushed (And thus, undetailed) that it plot of the movie seems to almost change every 20-30 minutes, leading to a lack of focus. That is my analysis in a nut shell.

Basically it starts off as the feuding between restaurants. Mirren sees the error of the ways and then they become all nice nice the rest of the film. Then it becomes Hassan learning from the nice restaurant and helping add his own styles to the cooking scene and helping them do good. Then he moves on from that as well and experiences life away from family and friends, doing even more innovative cooking on much grander scales.

Not a lot of that aspect is shown in the trailer. Basic plot description is too feuding restaurants. Despite being two hours, that and every other part feels rushed. In fact, after opening night of the Indian restaurant, they literally never show them having customers again. I guess they didn’t have issues or worries, even when they lost their main chef? Apparently they were doing okay and that didn’t matter anymore.

I also really hated the ending. It seemed to contradict what the first half of the movie was about. Clearly it was about not judging people/groups/foods by their cover and giving things a shot. That all methods of cooking are unique and special and worthy. Yet the end felt like it went against that message. It was really weird. I hated it and by achieving their own self morals, it just seemed fake and plastic at the end.

Also, for a movie about cooking, there is an awful lot of this movie without showing cool food dishes. An inspirational tale that doesn’t know what it wants to really inspire.

Yay disaster movies!

They are a very polarizing. For the most part, they will never really be scientifically accurate. They also have been getting further and further into B-Movie territory, thanks to The Asylum and SyFy making intentionally shitty disaster flicks. But for the most part, it is has been awhile since an actual disaster movie has been released.

Before Into The Storm, maybe 2012 was the last one? At least natural disasters based on natural occurrences. None of that zombie disaster movie shit. Just straight up angry weather and earth.

I will admit, for the pre-screening of Into The Storm, they did throw a little party together. Free food (and it was good), drinks (alcohol too), a lot of prizes for tweeting things, and a “4D” experience. Basically, they had a 2 minute scene from the movie turned into a video game thing, hooked up to an Oculus Rift, with fans blowing hard at you. And honestly, that was really cool. I would like to think this event didn’t effect my bias any, but throwing it out there just in case. And here is me looking cool in the booth.

I need some sort of sucks joke here. Scott, don’t forget to put a joke here.

Silverton, Oklahoma. A nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Not just because of what happens to it in this movie, but because it’s a made up town and I don’t want to live in LA-LA land.

On this tragic almost end of Tornado season, a high school graduation is taking place! This doesn’t effect our main family too much, in that the boys are in Junior and Sophomore years. Donnie (Max Deacon) is our closest thing to a main character, so let’s start with him. He is shy and nerdy, likes a girl Kaitlyn (Alycia Debnam Carey). Kaitlyn is freaking out about an internship, her video for it is corrupted, so she has to reshoot it TODAY. Donnie is supposed to record it with his brother Trey (Nathan Kress), because their dad is the vice principal (Richard Armitage). But hey, he has a chance to help a hot girl out. So hell yeah, abandoned old factory time.

We also have storm chasers!

Led by Pete (Matt Walsh), a storm documentary guy who has gone almost all season without a single tornado. Pete has made a tank on wheels, bulletproof glass, steel plating, braces that can help stabilize the vehicle up to 170 mph winds, and a 360 turret camera. His goal is to record the inside of a tornado. But his hired meteorologist, Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies) has been miss after miss. They have lost their funding, but he is willing to try one more. There are two storm fronts that seemed to have merged and Allison’s gut is telling her Silverton. They also have camera crew people / helpers with various personalities (Arlen Escarpeta, Jeremy Sumpter, Lee Whittaker).

But that isn’t enough comedy, damn it. So we have two local rednecks, one a self proclaimed dare devil (Kyle Davis) and his brother who forced that title upon him (Jon Reep). Yes I know what I just said. Fuck danger, they are going to be famous on YouTube.

“Johnson! How are we going to make this tornado movie more threatening?”
“I don’t know, make a tornado 1000x its normal size?”

Notice how I didn’t really mention that tornadoes fuck up some shit? Mostly because that is obvious. Figured telling you the plot, because this movie surprisingly has plot, would be way more informative.

I will say that I don’t think the type of things that happened in this film are scientifically accurate at all, but then again, I don’t study bitchy weather. If there had to be one big issue with the movie it is that it is rated PG-13. With that rating, the death count ended up being a lot smaller than one would expect. Now there were some pretty awesome and well shown deaths, don’t worry on that. Just. The number was small.

The film is also highly entertaining. Only about 90 minutes in length, but for the most part it is action packed. Outside of character introductions early on, and one particular touching moment from Max and Alycia mid movie (which yes, I might have shed a tear for), there was always some sort of panic/danger/tornado to cause some thrills and drama. And what more can I want from a disaster movie?

I will note that Richard Armitage is supposed to be a 65 year old man in this movie. What? He looks like he is 40 at most. Regardless, his career path is terrible if he is still just some high school VP.

Here is an additional note. A lot of people seem to complain about this style of film. Hand cameras and what not filming the entirety of the scenes. However, just because a movie is filmed that way does not make it Found Footage. Complaining that the footage is never found our pieced together afterwards is stupid, if the movie never claims to be a found footage movie. It is just a different style of film making that can be incredibly unique. Remember that.

I have been waiting years to review this movie. Years! Because as you probably already know, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been in production hell for years.

It all goes to the time before time, 2010, when Nickelodeon had the rights for TMNT and announced that a Michael Bay company would be in charge, with Bay as a producer. This scared a lot of people.

But nothing was to prepare the fans for March 2012. That is when it was presented that the movie would actually be called just Ninja Turtles and was setting out to change at least half of their origin story. One major point was of course making them Aliens from some Turtle planet. Shredder was also a government agent / alien that could grow blades from his body and a lot of the turtle personality traits were switched around and changed, seemingly unnecessarily.

Fans raged, internet was set on fire, former voice actors wrote nasty letters to Bay and needless to say, production was slowed and delayed. The release of this movie was kept getting pushed back, and that’s why it took almost six years after securing the rights for this movie to be released for the public.

A movie, for all intents and purposes, that should have been pretty easy to churn out.

Just like it should have been pretty easy to act out fainting, one would think.

Thankfully, the story takes place in modern NYC. There is a small gang war happening, where The Foot Clan is running amuck in the town, stealing shit, taking prisoners, being assholes. Basically a giant terrorist organization in NYC and for whatever reason just the local police force is doing something about it.

That and four mutated turtles in their teenage phase who have been trained as ninjas, that is. Leonardo (Pete Ploszek), the leader and Katana user, Donatello (Jeremy Howard), the smart one and Bo Staff wielder, Michelangelo (Noel Fisher), the joker/lover with the Dual Nunchaku, and of course Raphael (Alan Ritchson), the lone wolf and bad-ass with the Sai.

They are attempting to stop the Foot Clan in secret, after being trained by their Sensei Splinter (Danny Woodburn), an Adult Mutant Ninja Rat. And they would have been kept in secret too if it wasn’t for that troubling news reporter April O’Neal (Megan Fox) and her desire to get out of fluff news reporting. She discovers them and gets caught up much deeper into the war than she had wanted, especially since she knows no one will believe her. Not her boss (Whoopi Goldberg) or her camera man (Will Arnett, definitely not playing Casey Jones).

Also featuring non-science science, with a lab company lead by Eric Sachs (William Fichtner) who has a hand in the turtle creation without realizing it. Also featuring Johnny Knoxville and Tony Shalhoub as the voices of Leonardo and Splinter. What? Yes. For whatever reason, those two characters had different voice actors than the people playing them for real. Kind of odd.

Speaking of odd, The Shredder. I have no fucking clue who played him or who voiced him, if they are two different people. The internet seems to be void of that information despite being the big bad villain and all, and in the movie quite a fucking bit.

This face was made by Donatello when he couldn’t find out who was playing Shredder. Not knowing things hurts.

Again, thank goodness the internet rose up and demanded a better film. The turtles themselves are pretty loyal to the source material. Each turtle has his established personality traits and they all shine through nicely. As a team, they also seem to work really well together. Their chemistry was good and one of the better parts in the movie.

In fact, there are quite a few amusing/funny scenes scattered throughout. One “rap” scene in particular was well done (and no, not the Ninja Rap redone or whatever, that is just some bullshit credits thing). I also enjoyed a lot a mini-monologue by Raphael near the end. In terms of fight scenes, the most fleshed out fight scene is the going down the snow mountain one, which has a lot going on. All the fights before that are too dark and shadowy or feature too many quick changes. The final fight scene, with one cool moment, kind of just felt like how I play Soul Calibur. Since no one will get that joke, I ring out people like crazy.

Shredder was mostly in his ridiculous armor and never really showed off his actual skills, so that was annoying. I am mixed on whether or not I liked Splinter. Definitely unique.

A lot of fans are going to find the changes to the origin annoying, I predict. I am fine with the change, even though I like the original because then they can reference Dare Devil more. But it is fine.

Oh yeah. Fox? Not terrible, not great. Disappointed in Arnett’s role. He has a look for a guy that could be Casey Jones if he had longer hair, he just…is annoying in this one. I more or less hate how they look. Going for realism kind of make them just look gross. See the Donatello picture above.

Passable, okay, and maybe eventually forgettable.

Hooray! Another fifty reviews later, I am ready to introduce my next Milstone Review: number 1150 for my website!

Holy crap. If I thought 1050 was a shitty milestone, 1150 has to be way worse. But hey, fun reviews are fun.

Today I decided to look at Speed Racer, which I didn’t see when it came out six years ago due to all the hate I heard about it. I didn’t have the means or willpower to watch every movie six years ago, so I let the internet decide for me.

I also never really watched the Speed Racer cartoon growing up. I knew of the references, and by golly, I knew how to make fun of the anime style when it came up in conversations, but that is all I had going for me. So in a way, this is probably good, as I won’t have anything to compare it to.

I really only know one thing about the movie: COLOR!

This is the level of celebration I demand for hitting milestone 1150.

America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.

So it is pretty obvious that Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) would grow up wanting to race. Also because of his name. Also because of the family business. The dad Pops (John Goodman) runs a small auto shop to make race cars, and his older brother, Rex Racer (Scott Porter) is a professional racer!

He also has a mom (Susan Sarandon) and a younger brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) and the Chim Chim the monkey.

This is a clear example where nurture trumps nature.

The unfortunate thing is that Rex decided to leave home and join another company and not support his family anymore. And soon after, despite being one of the best, he started being a really dirty player, causing other players to get pushed off the tracks and maybe even…cheating! But then he died in a crash before charges could be pushed on him, bringing dishonor to the racer family.

Well, speed? Speed wants to win that honor. And boy howdy, can he fly. He almost beats his brother’s record on a local track, but holds off at the end to honor his brother. He knows he wasn’t a cheater. Now he is getting job offers, but he knows he wants to stay with his family and race on his own terms.

Where will you be when the Speed [Racer] kicks in?

Enter Mr. Royalton (Roger Allam)! Owner of a super large mega corporation, he has more money than there exists more or less, and he also likes to sponsor racers. His ideas are simple. Keep what works working, team chemistry, pit crews, whatever. He just wants to help out, help train and give lots of money.

Well, it turns out that Speed, after thinking about it, would rather stay with his family. He doesn’t want to hurt them like they were hurt before. He wants to do it the right way. On his own, with his Pops.

Mr. Royalton doesn’t like being turned down. Not by some punk asshat with the last name of Racer. The racing leagues in this world have been controlled by corporate interests for many decades now. Every race is fixed. Every race. Even that one. And that one. Speed doesn’t believe it, won’t believe it. Royalton tells Speed he will have his car crashed on the next race, and family sued for infringement. False claims, but bad news travels fast, so his families business will be in ruins.

They might have to eat the fatty with the monkey to get by.

Well shit, what is a Speed to do? Try to take down the mega-corporations? Sure!

Inspector Detector (Benno Furmann), head of the corporate crimes division. Racer Taejo Togokahn (Rain) has evidence to bring down Royalton, but needs help racing in a team event soon. He has enlisted the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox) also unassigned, and they need a third. If they can help them win, they can get out of Royalton’s hold and he’d help put a stop to the shenanigans.

Speed decides to not tell his family about it either. Just his girlfriend, Trixie (Christina Ricci), so she can be the entire pit crew and help them out with helicopter support.

Yeah. That’s the reason to bring her. Sure.

The multi nation race takes several days, so of course his family finds out and shows up for support. Which is great, because people are now getting sent to literally just kill him off the tracks, in his hotel room, elsewhere, they just want him dead. But now Speed has people to protect him! Hell, even Sparky (Kick Gurry) is there, the main pit crew guy who works for his dad, and the guy that has taken me this long to find a place to casually fit his mention in this review.

Needless to say, the good guys don’t get stabbed or shot, and the three win the race! Now they can take down the Royalton Corp!

Hah, just fucking kidding you there too. Taejo was just playing them too. Now that his corp won this big race, their stock is super high, and that is all they cared about. They didn’t have illegal information on Royalton. Suck it, Speed and X!

This of course pisses Speed off and he even takes it out on X who he thinks is his brother in disguise. Nope, just that guy from Lost. Shit.

“We’ve got to go back!…to the finish line! Because that’s how races work!”

Thankfully not everyone in the Togokahn family/corporation is a complete dick. Taejo’s sister Horuko (Nan Yu) steals the invitation to the Grand Prix from her brother and gives it to Speed. With it, can still enter the best of the best races. If he takes first, he will ruin Royalton financially and prove that they can beat the system where racing is supposedly fixed. It would be sweet if they could also some how prove that Royalton cheats. But let’s not get too crazy.

Somehow his family is able to make a new car from scratch in about 32 hours before the race, and Speed is then able to go and drive! Yay!

Well, lot of people come at him, he avoids a lot of them. Royalton cheats, he is able to break free from the cheat and also expose the cheat to the public at the same time.

Speed wins the race, and everyone goes home happy or to jail sad. Wooo, EAT IT CORPORATIONS!

But between all that plot was about five minutes straight of color and color on color.

Did Speed Racer GoGoGo? Maybe, in a way.

The CGI style was very hectic and it everything was constantly changing or talking. Characters flying across the screen, many transistions, and many many colors.

I am glad I watched it in Blu-Ray, but I wish there was a good 3D component as well to go with it. I feel like everything would have popped. It would have been like 135 minutes on LCD, I have been told.

A bit surprised by the complicatedness of the plot and the time they dedicate to setting up events in this film, given its PG nature. It seems like it would be very hard for kids to follow. Mostly because it was hard for myself to follow.

In terms of entertainment purposes, the biggest problem might be the large and complicated plot. It seems like the movie is trying to be two things, a big entertaining race spectacle that is colorful and full of wonder, and a corporate serious drama film. What I am left with is a long movie that goes to lengths to include both sides and I get a bit of a confusing mess. It isn’t that it is hard to keep up with, but in its already unique and eye popping style, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.

Also better acting could have helped.

I don’t know if this is the movie Speed Racer fans deserved, but it is probably the film they needed right now. It is overall okay, but one I would rather watch 90 minutes of instead of 135 minutes.

But they did announce that Speed Racer would appear in Fast & Furious 7, so that should be fun shenanigan wise.

Good news! The Marvel Cinematic Universe is finally taking bigger risks with its movies! No longer now is each film headlined by a big and famous cartoon character.

Sure, I thought their first risk would actually be Ant-Man, but who knows if that will ever happen now.

With Guardians of the Galaxy, we are given a franchise that will make a lot of casual comic fans go “Huh?” They are definitely not the biggest or baddest property Marvel still has, which is why it is surprising they are making this movie.

Unfortunately, that risk has come at a terrible price. Backed by Disney, they had a lot of money to throw around. All of this money went into advertisements. Since before Captain America: The Winter Soldier came out (of which I only saw two trailers for), I think I have seen a GotG trailer at least once a week for new releases. They advertised the fuck out of this movie. I kind of got sick of it.

It wasn’t just trailers though. TV spots, giveaways, extended looks. They even had one of the biggest bullshit things I had ever heard, showing 17 minutes of the movie, and advertising it like a special pre-screening. Who the fuck wants to watch 17 minutes of a movie?

They are over saturating the market to help ensure their risky gamble doesn’t fail. Which just pisses me off more. I am still excited for the movie, but honestly I also feel like I am more excited to stop seeing advertisements for it soon.

Except for the poster of this scene. It is hanging above my toilet.

Space. Like, Seriously deep space. Like far from Earth so don’t even pretend that we are dealing with any space shit you are aware of.

Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), aka Starlord, aka an Earthling thought is totally far away from Earth. He was picked up from the planet when he was just a boy, just randomly. And now he is a space pirate! Well, just a junk yard ravager more like it, but also pseudo outlaw-ish. But after going after a mysterious space ball, Peter has found himself in quite a stick situation. A lot of people want this ball and he is hiding it hard to sell.

For instance, Ronan (Lee Pace), the Kree warrior madman wants the ball for some reason, probably to destroy a planet he has some serious ancient beefs with. Gamora (Zoe Saldana), adopted daughter of Thanos is sent to retrieve the ball. Because Peter decided to abandon his ravager crew, the leader Yondu (Michael Rooker) puts a 40,000 bounty on his head. This causes Rocket (Bradley Cooper), totally not a raccoon but a raccoon, and his tree companion Groot (Vin Diesel) to seek him down for that sweet money.

Well, these four get caught up in shenanigans, and they are eventually introduced to Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), who would like to kill Ronan for killing his wife and daughter.

Oh swell! A group of rag tag anti-heroes who, through eventually working together, might have to do the right things.

Also featuring Karen Gillan as Nebula, another Thanos daughter, Djimon Hounsou, a high ranking general for Ronan, Benicio Del Toro as The Collector, Glenn Close as the head of NovaCorp and John C. Reilly as a Nova captain.

I’m a Groot, he’s a Groot, she’s a Groot, we’re all Groots, hey!

Ahhhh, excitement!

There is a lot that really works in this movie and combined, all of the elements make this one of the funniest Marvel movies yet. Let’s talk about individual characters. Starlord? Pratt knocked it out of the house. Felt like a real pseudo-leader and had some emotional moments as well. Gamora? Probably my favorite role that Zoe Saldana has done, felt a lot more believable than most of her characters. Rocket? Hell yes Rocket. Who wouldn’t like Rocket? I couldn’t even recognize Cooper’s voice. Groot? Everyone will also love Groot. He is powerful, sweet, and awesome. And Drax? I knew the least about Drax going in, as each regular trailer didn’t really do much for him outside of showing him as a big strong guy who likes to kill. But his character has a lot of depth and a lot of funnier moments, so he was the biggest surprise for me. Really loved Drax.

So all the characters are good? Great! Nice supporting people too. Unfortunately, my biggest issue with the film is the main man, Ronan, Lee Pace. He had…just no personality. He felt extremely one dimensional, and until over halfway through the movie, he was just all talk. They talked a lot about how evil and the bad stuff he had done, but they didn’t do a good way of showcasing it until closer til the end. The big baddie was a disappointment.

The Collector was also a bit wasted in this film to me.

But the graphics? The laughs? The plot? The soundtrack? The synergy? All of it worked so well together. The scenes with the main guardians just talking were some of the better conversational pieces I have heard all year.

Guardians of the Galaxy is a great movie, just not the best Marvel movie that has come out of their studios. I have a hard time believing anyone could leave the theater feeling disappointed.

I FUCKING LOVE RICHARD LINKLATER.

It is a real love too. A similar love is only felt like that by me towards my future wife, my cat, and my movie collection. I cannot thank him enough for the Before trilogy. Another recent movie was Bernie. This man is a genius director, for sure.

So when I heard about Boyhood? I dang near shat my pantaloons. There are a lot of films about male adolescence and the pains of growing up. But never before has a movie like this been attempted. The movie took TWELVE years to film. TWELVE. The boy in question was 5 at the beginning, and finished with him becoming an adult at 18. It isn’t a documentary that shows his life or anything like that, he is an actor. But the story is based around the kids own experiences, cutting no corners as we see him in every grade before college.

If your mind isn’t blown by the shear magnitude of this movie, then you might enjoy Planes.

This movie has more family fun, because it has families, and they have fun.

Mason (Ellar Coltrane). Mother fucking boy wonder. Five years old, he could be anything he wants. His whole life is in front of him. He has an older sister, Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) by one or two years, is a brat and smarter than him.

He’s got a mom (Patricia Arquette), single and trying to raise two kids. Her ex husband, his dad (Ethan Hawke) is working in Alaska, away from their lives and late on child support. But he wants to come back into it, because he likes the kids, but hates the mother.

12 Years is a long time and a lot of things change. There are friendships that come and go and loved ones that come and go. Heck, there are step brothers/sisters too at one point. The mom wants to go back to school and make a career, but it is really hard with kids and no support, so some other lovers come into the scene (Marco Perella, Elijah Smith (That may be the wrong person. Trying to figure out his name, no imdb picture.)). They also have at least one grandma (Libby Villari) to help.

And Mason is kind of just along for the ride.

Through his twelve years you will see him gain and lose relatioships, struggle and excel at school, deal with the assholes that his mom brings into their lives, deal with his dad changing through the years and never always being there when he needs them. And you know, other growing up experiences like college, graduations, birthdays, first jobs, first cars.

Young Ethan Hawke. We don’t miss you that much.

Shitty plot descriptions aside, Boyhood was everything I could have hoped and more. I mean, how do I describe watching a kid grow up and make it seem exciting.

Well, IT IS. Knowing that it was pieced out and planned in such a way does enhance it as well, as we get snapshots of a life through 12 years. But the movie is not merely a nostalgia trip (although it does a good job of that, making sure the music is set to the right year with other events/cultural references being relevant in the filming). It has something almost anyone who is over 18 can find a connection with. Not just boys either. For a long period of time, the sister is also in the movie with him, so while not the overall focus, there are relatable characteristics in her as well.

The movie also doesn’t go to enormous lengths to create additional drama. It shows us what we need to see, but not excessively, especially in the later chapters. There are quite a few tense moments when the audience collectively gasped, thinking a few bad things were about to happen. But you know what? In real life, bad things like that don’t happen as much, except for in the movies. It knows what we would expect, and it sometimes delivers, sometimes does not. In that regard, it made it incredibly realistic, and amusing after the fact that when “Oh yeah, that would be silly, wouldn’t it?” thoughts ran through our head.

It is hard to convey my emotions about this movie. Especially in that it wasn’t one that made me cry a lot. I only almost came to tears once. But it was still quite emotional throughout the entire journey.

I mean. Shit. We got to know these characters for a long period of time in our lives. We got to see 12 years ago Ethan Hawke, who looked notably younger. It almost creeped me out.

Whether this is the movie of the year or decade, it is hard to tell. But it tells such a wonderful story that people can relate to, without any excessive Hollywood shenanigans, allowing for a realistic portrayal of life and getting older.

Sex and comedy go together like cheese and my mouth. Sure, not everyone will agree with the statement, but those who do tend to laugh more at life.

Sex Tape is thus, a comedy movie about sex. Staring some people who have been in funny things in the past, and about a subject America loves to pretend to hate, it should be successful. I mean, it is about sex and actually rated R?

Well. I guess it being funny also has to happen too. I guess.

This isn’t how the scene actually looks. The white shirt is way more see through in the film.
Not a joke. Just a factual observation.

Annie (Cameron Diaz) and Jay (Jason Segel) used to have a lot of sex. When they first had sex, they both loved it so much, they did it constantly, everywhere, in every position. But then. Then they got married. Then they had two kids. Then Jay saw a baby come out of Annie’s vagina. Then the kids made them busy and tired, and Jay’s job kept him late at night and well. Sex went away.

But Annie, a successful blogger about to sell her website for mommies everywhere, wants to ignite the sex back. After a night of failed attempts, they decide to make a sex tape showcasing all the different moves in a sex book, and film it. Well, it works, they have sex, feel the love, and fall asleep. The next day, the iPad syncs with all of his other devices, as he has set it to do. But Jay has a lot of devices, looking for a radio station, and he gave them to many friends and family members to enjoy his shared content music lists. And you see where this is going.

So Jay and Annie spend a night trying to clear it from everyone’s device, and along the way get blackmailed, get into many fights, do cocaine, get terroized by dogs, and owe people lots of money.

Also, starring Rob Corddry, Ellie Kemper, Rob Lowe, Nat Faxon, and Nancy Lenehan.

Kids destroy sex, not from making adults tired, but seeing the crowning.

I have to admit something. First of all, the theater wasn’t too full. There were like, eight other people, and they all sat on the right side of the theater. So I sat by myself on the left side, glad no one would disrupt me with their phones or talking. Now, sometimes a movie is so boring and dull and I get tired. Sometimes a scene might make me fall asleep for a minute or 30 seconds, and I might fight that feeling for awhile. But this time? When they were destroying computer equipment servers as seen in the trailer? That is the last thing I remember seeing.

I woke up with the theater light on, and a cleaning lady making noise so that I’d wake up. The theater was empty. I don’t know if anyone even noticed, because they all would have used the other exit and I was alone. But man. Embarassing. This is the first time a movie has been so dull and unfunny that I fell asleep for a long period of time. I mean. The entire credits. At least 10-15 minutes of movie (I’d hope). I have never walked out of a movie for being bad, but I guess this is about the same result.

Thankfully, I don’t see that as a fail. I quickly had the ending told to me by people who saw it, realized I missed not a thing, and went on with my life. In fact, my falling asleep is more telling. See, I was just going to give this a 1 out of 5 for being not funny. But with a reaction like that, in the middle of the day, after a nice night of sleep? No excuse. No excuse at all.

Yawn. Some cameos had some funny moments, but most of the jokes fell extremely flat. The entire situation was ridiculous, and they even noted in the film how easy it would have been to fix most of their problems after they found out about them. Bigger yawn. Move on. Worse summer comedy by far.

Behaving Badly is not a movie I was rushing out to see. Not really a movie I heard of ever, actually. But I grabbed it and a few others, purely as fillers when I needed something else for a week and wanted something random.

Literally, the only reason I grabbed these movies was to make sure my reviews weren’t just the well known new movies. I need those straight to DVD randoms. Especially if they have an interesting cast.

After all, those unheard of films that look terrible? If they end up good, that is the greatest feeling of all.

Yes, even greater than that.

Rick Stevens (Nat Wolff) is not your average teenager. His family is dysfunctional in many ways. His mother (Mary-Louise Parker) is on a lot of booze and pills. The dad (Cary Elwes) is never around, they hate each other, but he says he doesn’t want to divorce to lose money.

His sister (Ashley Rickards) is a stripper, getting money to go to college and his brother (Mitch Hewer) is very angry, stupid, and not coming out of the closet.

But they aren’t the cause of all of his problems. That is all because of Mrs. Bender (Elisabeth Shue), the mother of his best friend Billy (Lachlan Buchanan). For whatever reason, she likes Rick and sexual relationships happened. This changed his life greatly, leading to two weeks with some dead bodies, people in jail, mobsters, suicide attempts, and lots and lots of boobies. However, he just wants to impress a smart girl in his class Nina (Selena Gomez). Oh boy Rick, you done fucked up by fucking that lady.

It is also full of celebrity cameos. Gary Busey is a police chief, Heather Graham a lawyer, Patrick Warburton the principal, Jason Lee a priest, and Dylan McDermott as the strip club owner.

Generic Creepy Teenage Male Fantasy: The Movie!

Behaving Badly was a weird movie. It was definitely not made amazingly well, that is for sure. It has an incredibly low budget feel, a lot of it is half-assed. It definitely isn’t great.

But I still almost gave it a 3 out of 4 on originality alone. This movie felt like it was created for an ADHD generation, and since the story is the main character retelling most of the events, you can say that is why everything seems so hectic. It is all from the teenage boy perspective.

There were just so many awkward moments, that I had to give it some props. I loved seeing all of the celebrities making quick quips. It actually lived up to the teen sex comedy genre, although also not being of fantastic quality.

I am at a point where this film in most cases would deserve that 1, and definitely not deserve a 3 or higher, but there was a charm to it that just took me in. I didn’t know what I was getting in to, and well, it surprised me.