Tag: Drama

The “of the Planet of the Apes” films have been met with some pretty critical acclaim in the last few years, especially after the rebooted Planet of the Apes film was so dismal.

And hey, for Rise? I totally agree. An amazing film, great acting and a plot that made me cheer for Apes instead of just humans. Just a silly romance subplot stopped it from being a great film.

Unfortunately, Dawn just didn’t really do much for me. It was an okay film, but I believe it received more praise for being a pretty standard plot, but with Apes instead of tribal humans. Some cool moments sure, but it was also forgettable.

I had no idea what to expect for War, but I would hope with a long run time, it would put an end to humans once and for all, so the Ape society can begin to grow into what we already know is the end goal.

Which is horses and apes riding horses in the future, right?

War is set only a few years after Dawn, where the apes have mostly gone into hiding in the woods. Koba (Toby Kebbell) is the one who started the fighting with the humans, and Caesar (Andy Serkis) ended it. A few apes are still pissed off and left to rabble rouse, but the rest of the apes just want to live alone. However, humans don’t give a fuck, blood was spilled, and they want revenge. So they keep venturing into the woods, hoping to take out Caesar and the rest of the apes will scatter.

Thanks to a scouting mission, a few apes found a desert on the other side of the mountain where the apes would be able to flourish. Humans are super dying out so they are likely to leave them alone.

But leave them along they don’t. A small raid enters their compound hoping to get Caesar, but get some other apes instead. Boo, hiss. Caesar mad. Caesar wants revenge on the soldier in charge of the humans in the area (Woody Harrelson). So he takes his very small band of soldiers on a potential suicide mission.

Starring Gabriel Chavarria as a human soldier, Amiah Miller as a human deaf girl, and a whole lot of people as apes. Like Judy Greer, Steve Zahn, Terry Notary, Aleks Paunovic, Devyn Dalton, and Karin Konoval.

“Well, are you feeling lucky…Ape?”

Trilogies usually go one of three ways. There is the the rare but incredible trilogy that is amazing with every iteration. There is the more common trilogy where the sequel surpasses the first and the last film is a let down. Or there is a trilogy where it starts off good, and each iteration loses a bit of its soul, giving us a worse and worse film.

And a lot of you would assume this might be the second trilogy because people loved Dawn, but to me, this is the third type of trilogy. Dawn was okay, War was kind of shit.

At almost 140 minutes with War in the title, you would expect a giant battle to, most likely, bring about the end of mankind to start this whole Planet of the Apes thing. Maybe. Well, the Caesar journey with his band takes awhile to follow the humans. On the way, they have another Ape who can talk who joins them, and a deaf girl. This part drags, and even when they make it to the human encampment it drags. I found myself falling asleep, despite being an early screening and having finished an energy drink before it.

The ending is about the apes being enslaved and needing to get to get broken out of a prison system where they are slaves, and the humans are fighting with each other. There is also a new iteration of the Simian Flu, that causes humans to lose their voice and potentially become aggressive, reverting them back into a more primitive form.

The ending break out is not a brilliant plan. It involves the humans being incredibly incompetent. When plot necessary, apparently no one is standing guard at the military compound, so a little girl can walk in and have a long conversation. When necessary apparently a guard will behave like someone who has no military training, and no one else will be on guard duty. When necessary, the fighting between humans will stop enough so that the humans can fire on some apes that none of them were able to notice even escaped. This scene includes a soldier that is so upset with these apes, that he cannot stop firing despite a looming other human threat, that he cannot turn around to get his own grenade launcher. When necessary, an ape looking for redemption will use a weapon to take out a single human, instead of just doing the more obvious move to complete the task that Caesar was trying to complete. When necessary, a giant deus ex machine straight out of Mulan will save the day, but this time no daisies are involved.

The ending is a mess, the middle is a bore, and the beginning is predictable. I didn’t even get into the ridiculousness of the Simian Flu change, and deciding to have a girl who was deaf for real, not deaf for flu reasons. War for the Planet of the Apes is a waste of a film that tried to go a deeper, personal route, and just left feeling a bit superficial.

The Last Word has a relatively pretty poster to look at. It conjures up specific colors, radio, and of course music. But at the same time, it makes me think of the SNL sketch for Schweddy Balls, poking fun of NPR level talk radio.

It also makes me think of The L Word, which is unfortunately a show I don’t have any references to outside of the knowledge is about lesbians. Which hey, maybe The Last Word is about lesbians too. After all, the cover is two women! Maybe they are lesbians!

What I am saying is, I think this movie will be two hours long, about lesbians on NPR talking about balls.

There is a very high chance I am disappointed with this level of thinking.

Harriett Lauler (Shirley MacLaine) is an old lady who knows what she wants. And she knows how to get what she wants. And she doesn’t trust a lot of people to do things correctly, so she often has to take over and do itself. That includes her own gardeners and cooks.

No one likes her. Her relationship with her daughter (Anne Heche) is nonexistent. Her relationship with her past coworkers is weak as well, despite making them and her very wealthy. But while reading an obituary of one of her old acquaintances, she is amazed at how wonderful that person seemed after death, while still being truthful.

So of course Harriett goes to the newspaper to find the obituary writer, Anne (Amanda Seyfried), to make sure she can write her obituary as well. Just like, early. To make sure it is good enough. Sane people totally do this all the time.

And with this task comes, eventually, a change to Harriett’s life for the better. It is never too late to become a decent human being.

Also starring AnnJewel Lee Dixon, Thomas Sadoski, and Philip Baker Hall.

No one expects them to rob a bank, that’s the point!

The Last Word gives us Shirley MacLaine playing a huge bitch, which on its own might be worth the price of admission. But if you only want to pay for movies that take you on emotional whirlwind and leave you breathless, then, well, you might want something more.

Because really, this is a safe and simple film. It goes into a deep topic, dealing with your own mortality and legacy at the ends of your life. But it is also a feel good film, watching this woman better her life finally and start to better the lives of those she decided to make close to her. This drags the film into really average territory.

In reality, what she does is probably really hard. But the opposition she is met with is very limited so the struggles don’t feel incredibly real. The point of the movie is to inspire those to change their lives for the better, to realize it is never too late, which is a great moral. However, this film just feels hokey with how it accomplishes those goals.

I will note, Seyfried’s speech did make me a little bit sad near the end. But not weepy, just sad. So it had a lot left to go to make me connect with it at a real emotional level.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When did The Space Between Us come out? Shit, I don’t remember. This year maybe, or last year and I am super far behind. [Editor’s Note: It was this year! First week in February, I am not super far behind!]

I think I received an invite to this one, but a better looking movie was at the same time. I didn’t know anything about this film either, based on a book, some sci-fi romance plot, and that is it.

Poor Asa Butterfield, he is getting typecasted into a lot of weird roles. And if he had kept his mouth shut, he’d be Spider-Man probably (which is also, technically, weird). It’s good to be able to follow your passions when you are this young, I guess.

Riding on a motorcycle without a helmet is not a good passion to follow.

At long last, humanity is going to reach a new level! We are going to Mars. Not as visitors, but as new tenants, to terraform parts of the area. To live, and study and make a viable new home for mankind. It has long been the dream of Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman) since he was a child, and now he is at NASA leading the expedition from home. A team of astronauts, led by Sarah Elliot (Janet Montgomery), are willing to dedicate their lives to getting there and staying there, for science and shit.

Except Sarah had a secret, even from herself. She was newly pregnant. So on Mars she gave birth to a boy, Gardner (Asa Butterfield), and died during childbirth. The first human born not on Earth, amazing. But also a PR disaster, so NASA agreed to keep the boy a secret. Being born in a weaker gravity would mean that the bones would develop also more brittle, and he likely would never be able to come to Earth. Keeping him a secret was the best way to save their mission and the boy.

Well, a decade and a half later, Gardner is weird and lonely, the only child still on Mars. He has the internet and communicate with people of Earth, but he knows the severity of keeping his secret. One girl he talks to, Tulsa (Britt Robertson), seems like his dream girl, but long distant relationships are terrible. And with enough begging and pleading, they finally decide to bring him back. He has a lot of surgery to add stuff to his bones, but this is the future so whatever. He flies back to earth, and has some issues.

BUT HE DIDN’T COME BACK TO EARTH TO BE TESTED. He came back for love. To find Tulsa. Also to figure out who his daddy is, that too matters. And he won’t let anything get in his way, gravity, nothing.

Also featuring BD Wong, Carla Gugino, and Scott Takeda.

And he won’t let a lack of gravity keep him from getting dat kiss.

Where’s that Hercules disappointed gif when you need it? This could have been an incredibly amazing movie. One that brought all viewers to tears, with its beautiful actual star crossed lovers story. But it was driven down in mediocrity.

At the beginning of the film, there was potential. Sure the whole thing looked incredibly cheesy. Like a hallmark send off to Mars instead of how it might actually look. The interview with the crew before where Sarah awkwardly answered questions and no one else spoke was uncomfortable, but still, the story was a really great one.

And then he got to Earth. And then it wasn’t just awkward it was just a let down. They were on the run from the NASA security trying to get him back, because of course, his body was failing him due to disease, gravity, whatever. But it just failed to reach any deep or meaningful level.

And damn it, it was so close to an amazing story. Well, the idea was close to an amazing story. What was delivered was just trash. This might actually be an average movie, but I left with a worst taste in my mouth just because of how badly it presented a good idea.

The day after watching it, I could hardly recall anything of note. It just is not a film that will stay with you based on how incredibly underwhelming the whole thing ends up being.

Every year, the world is seemingly blown away by a new art-house horror film that really drives into our subconcious. Every year there are arguments about this new art-house film actually being a horror film, or some sort of thriller drama instead. And every year, I write a review of one of these films, and have to talk about the films of the previous years that fit that bill.

But I will save you some time. Last year we had The Witch and I LOVED The Witch. It felt evil to the core, it felt authentic, and it drove the genre to new places.

And now, It Comes At Night is hoping to be the new art-house horror that everyone is talking about. So what do you think? Do you think it will truly be a horror, or more of a dramatic thriller? Do you think it will have a lot of critical acclaim but no one will watch it? Will the meaning behind the whole thing cause internet debates for a long time?

Yeah, probably.

Ah cool, a mask man and some duct tape. Horror staples, for sure.

Set in a year that is like our own, in the future or the past, lives a family, on the edge of disaster. The world is different now, there isn’t any technology that is not battery powered. And the family is about to bury the grandfather (David Pendleton). Paul (Joel Edgerton), his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), and their 17 year old son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) are survivors in a world with not a lot of people. Their grandfather has the disease, so he has to be put down, burned, and buried to protect their lives.

They live in a boarded up house in the woods with a lot of strict rules, and their dog, Stanley. But soon after the death, a stranger comes to their door in the middle of the night. His name is Will (Christopher Abbott), who claims he was only doing it thinking the home was abandoned. He needs water for his wife (Riley Keough) and child (Griffin Robert Faulkner), who are many miles away, waiting for his return. And Will says they have food, animals for eggs and milk, to trade for water.

Or it is all a lie, and he wants to kill them. Who knows.

Sarah wants to bring the family to their house, have more people to defend the place, live in harmony. It is a big trust exercise. What with the virus, the creepiness at night time, and people who just make their world a brutal place to live in.

Travis just wants to stop having nightmares and waking up in the middle of the night.

Sometimes they call the entrance to their house L Street.

Oh I feel so terrible, so dead, on the inside. I rarely due this, but here is an exact quote for what I put on my comment card. They have us fill out quick thoughts so the studios can get initial reactions before longer reviews come out.

“I feel so empty inside 🙁
Great acting, great story, and a never ending sense of dread. Fuck”

And that is still how I feel, days later writing this review. Are there scary moments? Yeah, a few. But most of the horror comes from a personal level, deep deep down inside of you. You know what is PROBABLY going to happen, so there isn’t a lot of surprises. But still, to watch it unfold in front of you just builds the tension and of course, the dread.

Dread is this movie’s official review word. If you don’t want to feel dread for prolonged periods of times, then don’t watch this movie. If you want an emotional experience that will rock you to your core? Then watch It Comes At Night.

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

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

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

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

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

Never mind, costume is great, movie A+!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything? Like, Everything, Everything? Like the whole world?

This movie seems to cover a pretty large range of subjects. And to think it is mainly supposed to be a teenage drama romance that is based on a book!

We get these yearly by now, or at least a few times a year. Gotta get those teenage kids buying movie tickets, watching teenagers in love die and shit. Inherently, I can really get into these films, and most of them have made me cry. I honestly knew nothing about the film outside the cover, so I assumed this movie would be about racism.

Which is kind of shit on me. A white person and a black person can fall in love and have NOTHING to do with racism. This film doesn’t touch on it being weird at all. YAY PROGRESS!

The glass ceiling…err wall, will be shattered!

Our story is about a girl named Maddy Whittier (Amandla Stenberg), on the cusp of turning 18, like all good romance movies. Because when people turn 18, they can do sexy stuff and not be weird. Okay, it would be weird for Maddy. because she has severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID). It is a thing that means she doesn’t really have a strong immune system, like, at all, and most things could kill her. Yes, like Bubble Boy.

But her mom (Anika Noni Rose) is a doctor and is loaded, so instead of a weird plastic bubble, she can live the entirety of her life in her home. They have a lot of space for her to live and learn and be creative, but she just can never leave. She has a nurse (Ana de la Reguera) who keeps track of her during the day, and the nurse has a daughter (Danube Hermosillo), but those are the only people she has any contact with. Her father and brother were killed in a car accident when she was a baby.

Things are about to change for this unreasonably attractive hermit! Because they are getting new neighbors, and one of them is a similarly aged boy, named Olly (Nick Robinson). His family moves around a lot, issues that they will go into eventually.

And they fall in love. A mysterious love, filled with text messages and typing to each other on the internet. For them to meet, it could mean her death. A love that will truly kill her.

Also featuring Taylor Hickson, as Olly’s sister.

Spoilers: She gets out.

This is a teenage romance film, involving big dreams and the potential of death, that did not make me cry.

But that is not my biggest issue. For the most part I thought the movie was cute, but at most still just okay. One of the main characters, the mom, just felt really bad at the acting thing and was getting on my nerves, but overall, just an okay story.

Unfortunately, the ending really threw me off. Not in a “oh man, plot twist!” sort of way, although that is how a lot of people may take it. It ended in a way that I hoped among hopes it would not end. Little clues started to fill me in that it might head that way, but I was hoping they were tiny false flags and the movie would be somewhat creative.

Alas, it wasn’t. It went for an edgy finish, but it feels like something that has been done before. It just killed the entire film for me and I left disappointed, no longer interested in the cute aspects of the film. And on top of that? I still didn’t even cry.

To end this on a good note, Stenberg was pretty great in this movie. Rue from The Hunger Games is all grown up and melting hearts.

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

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

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

Like war profiteers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No one knows how to Guy Ritchie like Guy Ritchie. He likes to go to the extremes, have some fast talkers, and go super British. But he has apparently mostly left his original line of work and decided to focus on remakes and cultural icons.

Sherlock Holmes, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and now his take on King Arthur.

Sure, I am excited, the knights of the round table are interesting, tons of lore, and tons of cool sorcery could be afoot. But I really just want some more of his original stories, more than anything. Hopefully this doesn’t use up more of his time with another franchise.

Honestly, this looks like he just swung his sword at a rock instead.

Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana) is more than a man with a badass name, he is the ruler of Camelot! And he is being attacked and raided by warlocks and mages. Uther is able to take out the threat, but his brother, Vortigern (Jude Law) betrays him and his family, summoning a demon to take the throne. But Pendragon’s baby son escapes, classic Moses manuver.

This son is found by prostitutes in another land and named Arthur (Charlie Hunnam). This is where he was born and raised, not knowing of his noble heritage. That’s right, he is from the STREETS. Now we have Guy Ritchie movie, loving those streets, even if they are over a thousand years ago.

Oh and uhh, then a lot of stuff happened with a sword, magic, wars, tons of fighting, and big group of friends.

Also starring Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimon Hounsou, Craig McGinlay, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Neil Maskell, Tom Wu, Annabelle Wallis, Freddie Fox, and Aidan Gillen.

Arthur walking around, fists out, with that “fight me” look on his face. Classic Guy Ritchie.

Another fun confession time: My movie synopsis was quite short, yeah? It is like I have no fucking clue what happened during the movie, which is true. I don’t. First of all, the theater I was in had two issues: One, the bulb was almost dead, and two, something with the polarizer was wrong too, so the 3D screening I went to was incredibly dark. SUPER DARK. I watched a trailer after the film surprised at the darkness, wondering where the hell the white sky had gone in my viewing.

The darkness, and the overuse of CGI, seemingly terrible 3D, and ugly color scheme, put me straight to sleep. I didn’t sleep throughout the whole film, I woke up quite a lot. But every time I woke up, it still seemed uninteresting and I could not keep my eyes open. And that is terrible. I do know that a huge reason I passed out was thanks to the bad cameras, but I wonder how much of the story actually put me to sleep as well.

And I am never going probably go out of my way to see this movie again. Seeing it in theaters, I sat through trailers spent hours of my life on it. As a reviewer I have to watch a lot, so giving something a second or third viewing is usually restored to things that I actually like. Sure, when it is out on DVD, there is a chance. Maybe someone else will make me watch it with them.

But the experience did not work for me, and normally “slept through the whole thing” would be a 0, but I have to give it some benefit of doubt.

What can I say as a prelude about Paris Can Wait besides…no, fuck that, I wan’t Paris now. But I am not rich, so I guess I will definitely be waiting.

The film is directed by Eleanor Coppola, yes, that Coppola. A woman more famous for being the wife of Francis Ford Coppola, and the mother of Sofia Coppola. This is a woman who has been knee deep in films for a large portion of her life, but surprisingly, this is her first time directing a non documentary. At this point of her life though, Eleanor basically has no reason not to go for it.

Paris Can Wait is a semi-autobiographical film, loosely based on a trip she went on a long time ago. Eleanor is adamant that a lot of this film is made up, but the spirit and story is true and one she has always wanted to tell in film.

And yes, that does mean Alec is playing a fictional Francis.

This is a story about Anne (Diane Lane) and Michael Lockwood (Alec Baldwin). Michael is a big time film producer or director, they are extremely wealthy, and Anne is mostly along for the ride. Their daughter is now on college, and Anne’s clothing shop had closed down recently, so she doesn’t have a lot going on in her life.

She is on a vacation with Michael, right after the Cannes film festival. They have to head to a city for a shoot crisis first, but then they will head to Paris to continue with their vacation, assuming Michael doesn’t get too distracted. But before they get on the plane, Anne says she would rather not go with him for the next leg. She has a splitting ear ache and knows she won’t get to hang out with him until Paris, so why not just meet him there?

Well, their French confidant and helper, Jacques (Arnaud Viard) apparently has to head up to Paris for some meetings and is willing to just give Anne a ride. Michael and Anne reluctantly agree. It is only about an 8 hour drive, so she should be in Paris by dinner and can just wait in their apartment for him.

And then they stop for a fancy lunch and he says they will need to make hotel reservations. Apparently Jacques is more the scenic route type of guy, wanting to show Anne all of the wonderful countryside that France has to offer. And food. Fucking food. So much food. The 8 hour trip turns into a 2 and a half day roam, with Jacques wanting to take it all slow and Anne rushing to Paris for…For what, really? Just an empty apartment and a missing husband.

One of the many stops just to eat.