Tag: Drama

Ahh, Nerd movies! Not movies nerds would like. Nope, movies about nerds. The first two over the last few weeks were Lloyd the Conqueror then Knights of Badassdom. Now we have Zero Charisma. Given the way my site has been going lately, it only seemed natural that I had to watch and review this bad boy as soon as possible.

It even has a clever title. Zero Charisma. That tells us a lot about the movie. We are going to be dealing with someone very unpleasant, so get prepared.

Hah, who role plays without TVs or graphics anymore? What silly nerds.

Who is that unpleasant individual? Why, it Scott (Sam Eidson), who is overweight, living at home with his grandmother. He doesn’t have a job anymore, he got fired from the local gamestore. He wants to publish a game system he has been working on for a few years, but no publishers seem to care. But at least he has his weekly game group, yeah!

Except one of the regulars has to leave, because his wife is leaving him. Shit, hard to blame him then. But now he has a spot to fill, and no one wants to join the group because people kind of hate him. But then Miles (Garrett Graham) walks into the store. He apparently is into home brew campaigns, so agrees. Miles is great though, kind of a hipster. He is nice to people, has good stories, roleplays really well, and even created a nerdy website that is pretty popular. Shit. Everyone likes Miles, and not Scott, so Scott gets even more upset than normal. He even might…gasp…cheat.

At the same time, his grandma (Anne Gee Byrd) has a stroke, so his mother (Cyndi Williams) is staying in their house for the time being. She wants to sell the house, but that would make Scott homeless. She also hates his gaming, and makes his life even more unpleasant.

If Scott lashes out against everyone he knows, even his heroes, will even his best friend (Brock England) no longer support him?

Damn, Miles does look cool. Almost like James Franco. I’d rather play with him too.

One thing this movie definitely got right was the culture around RPGs in general. There are several types of people in this movie and they are all starkly based on reality. I guess you could call them stereotypes, but for us gamers, we all know someone like some of the people in this movie.

The main character is indeed an asshole, and he is an asshole the entire film. Many tantrums are had. Despite its level of “Realism” character wise, which a lot of indie movies do strive for, there is something else missing from this movie entirely. The entertainment aspect. Sure, early on, parts are entertaining, but it starts to dull out in my eyes and never really feels like I need to be watching it. Just a man digging deeper and deeper into his social outcast hole.

I’d be fine with that, depending on how it ended, but the ending came almost out of no where. The character showed a little bit of growth, maybe. But not a lot, and it seems like he was rewarded for being a jerk. He had to change his surroundings, but he is arguably in a better position by the end than he was at the beginning of the movie, so he basically learned nothing. So you know, its an okay movie. I guess.

By and large, the trailer for Draft Day is one of the worst I have ever seen. If you haven’t seen it, give it a watch. It is two and a half minutes. It is almost mythical the way they made that trailer. It is both a trailer that gives us the entire movie while also giving us absolutely nothing at all. It is truly marvelous to comprehend that achievement.

I guess that is a negative. A terrible vague yet overly detailed trailer. It also was advertised a lot, so I got to see the same identical thing over and over again. The concept became slightly infuriating. Basically, it had a huge uphill battle to prove itself an amazing movie in my mind.

Look at how fucking laid back they are about this movie. Clearly they don’t care what I think!

A lot is going on in Sonny Weaver Jr.’s (Kevin Costner) life right now. His dad died a few days ago, one of the more famous coaches of the Browns. Ali (Jennifer Garner) runs their salary cap number stuff, and it turns out she is now pregnant with his kid. It is also 12 hours til the NFL draft, and as the GM Sonny is told he has to make a big splash tonight at the draft or his job might be done. So sayeth the owner (Frank Langella).

Good. He has the 7th pick though. Right now his choice is between a running back that fits his teams system, Ray Jennings (Arian Foster), that is also the son of a former Browns player Earl Jennings (Terry Crews). So Browns royalty, the obvious pick. But Sonny really likes this defensive guy Vontae Mack (Chadwick Boseman), good at sacks, can stop many great players, just might have some emotional issues.

But thanks to all of the pressure he is facing, he ends up trading for the number one overall pick for his first round picks this year and the next two. Shit. Now he can get Bo Callahan (Josh Pence), a great looking franchise QB. Their current QB (Tom Welling) has bad knees and got injured early on their last season. This pisses off the coach (Denis Leary) who feels his job is on the line thanks to Sonny’s boneheaded decision.

Yeah, then a lot more drama happens. OH WHAT WILL SONNY DO? Ellen Burstyn plays the mother, Sean Combs plays Bo’s agent, and Griffin Newman plays an intern.

Didn’t you know there was constant arguing and drama right before a draft pick?

If you hadn’t noticed, there are no real NFL players or coaches or GMs talked about in this movie. All of the plot points related to the Browns are of course made up. Which is why seeing Crews/Foster there was a bit weird. Oh wait, 98% of this is made up. But they also mention Andrew Luck, and that is probably the only mistake they do I guess.

Garner’s character didn’t really seem to fit the normal stereotypes of a woman in her situation. She was really calm, which is generally not how I see her in most roles. It was strange.

What they ended up doing by the end was a bit clever, but not really too realistic either. Basically, there is no reason for a certain other GM to have done what he did and that is the only main issue with it.

So overall, it is an okay movie. I am surprised it came out in April, since it is clearly just a giant commercial for the NFL, romanticizing the whole thing. The NFL is next month, so I figured they’d make it basically the same day. Most of the teams mentioned were bad, maybe to drum up support, outside of the Seahawks. I also liked Boseman in this movie. Pretty crazy. I have seen him as a famous baseball player, now a made up football player, and later this year, a famous musician. Pretty exciting film roles for this guy is all I gotta say about that.

I am still atoning for my year and a half of never really doing horror films, but Cheap Thrills is a new one. If you take a quick look at the cast list, you would probably assume it was bad. Most likely you haven’t heard of three of the cast members, and the fourth you will recognize but not for his talent.

I was definitely intrigued by the title and plot line, so I gave this lower budget film a whirl. It is a very simple concept but it can go a lot of places. Kind of like The Purge, I guess.

Cheap Thrills on a cheap set? Checks out.

The story is mostly about one man, Craig (Pat Healy). He has a wife, a kid, and now he is getting kicked out of his home. Evictions suck. But they both lost their job and are having lots of trouble making cash. Not looking too good for their house. So Craig goes out to get a quick drink. There at the bar he meets Vince (Ethan Embry. The main character from Can’t Hardly Wait with a beard), an old high school friend who dropped out and he hasn’t seen in years.

They drink a bit, both of their lives kind of suck for different reasons, but at least there is alcohol right?

But then they meet two strangers: The ever texting and silent Violet (Sara Paxton) and her talkative husband Colin (David Koechner). They are celebrating her birthday and they have wads of cash!

They are looking to have a little fun, so they invite the two “friends” along for the ride. They also start giving out cash like its nothing. In fact, they pay Vince and Craig for them to do some outlandish behavior.

But happens when it starts to escalate? What then? What would Craig do to help protect his family?

This Ethan Embry doesn’t believe in destiny so much.

Living up to its name, Cheap Thrills provides cheap thrills to the characters in the movie and to the viewers watching. Just kidding. The thrills in the movie are anything but cheap, with about 250 thousand dollars overall being up for grabs based on the extremity of the stunt.

With only four characters, three of which are vocal, they actually have to act. The three males all have personalities and we learn about our two friends more and more as the story progresses. Some of the moments were actually quite powerful. They both have needs, and if only one person can win, it can get quite serious.

Not much else I can think to say about this movie, but it took a simple concept and made it really work. Nice job, movie.

Sometimes life is hard. I get that. Life is hard over here sometimes too.

But movies tend to be great escapes from life, telling great stories, increasing your imagination. But then we have documentaries that bring reality crashing back down. They remind us that things aren’t always easy in the world, or that things aren’t so bad.

Rotisserie Chicken is a Netflix original movie that was only available for one day through its services. Personally I think that is because people couldn’t deal with the truths that were being shown. It created such a broad range of emotions. Anger. Apathy. Giddiness. Confusion. Hysteria. Glee. Depression. I have never seen such a polarizing movie, not since Napoleon Dynamite or something by Terrence Malick.

Speaking of that, I heard Terrence Malick hates chicken. Get him!

The story itself is relatively simple. You have a cooked turkey, almost at the end of its journey in the afterlife. It is basically a retelling of the end of the journey, but in reverse, so you know the outcome before you begin. Never has a backwards story been so real (after all, a documentary), yet so relevant to the lives of almost everyone in the world.

The chicken, that was set up and forgotten in its prison, roasting.

You want character development/change? You get that in this movie! It is slow/gradual, but if you pay attention you can see the changes as they occur. If you look away, you might have missed a lot and are left wondering how you even got to that point in the first place. Definitely a film that commands your full attention.

For those unlucky enough to have missed this opportunity, I am not sure what I can say. I guess I hope it doesn’t come back to bite you in the ass some day or cause you to live in regret. That would be terrible.

But really, you should feel regret if you missed it.

God’s Not Dead may be the first movie ever based entirely on a spam/chain letter. After I watched the trailer many months ago, I couldn’t stop laughing. It was clearly a B-movie, looked like it was made for TV, extremely low quality. There are a lot of examples of the story they go over in here, but the most famous is the one involving Albert Einstein. All of them ridiculous. This is the movie version of it apparently.

This review is very likely going to be biased. Totally, totally biased.

Bias attacking bias. That’s the American way.

College is hard. Especially for Josh Wheaton (Shane Harper), no relation to Joss Whedon. He is a big Christian taking his freshman classes and picks an intro Psych class with Professor Radisson (Kevin Sorbo). The professor, after a 5 minute speech, wants the class to sign a paper saying “God Is Dead” to get past it as an argument throughout the semester, so they can discuss pure philosophy on its own.

Well, Josh can’t do it. Nope, too Christian. So he has to argue the opposite point that “God Is Alive.” He gets the professor to agree to let the class decide at the end of his talks. He has three classes, the last 20 minutes of each, with minor interruptions by the professor to get it done. Everyone tells him not too. His friends, his parents, his girlfriend (who I want to link, she is in like, four scenes, but literally not even on the IMDB page…). But he does it anyways.

This movie also has a thousand side plots. Like Ayisha (Hadeel Sittu), a Muslim girl with a strict traditional father (Marco Khan), making her wear the headpiece, how dare he. Well, turns out she is secretly super Christian and hiding that from him too. When he finds out, he smacks her some few times and kicks her out of the house.

We have Amy Ryan (Trisha LaFache), a blogger for a “lefty” organization, who I guess also is super into PETA. We get to see her with a boyfriend who clearly doesn’t care, as she has a surprise interview with Willie Robertson and his wife Korie outside of their church, attacking the fact that they kill animals and are religious…? Well, she gets cancer and her boyfriend leaves her.

Also Reverend Dave (David A.R. White, from that terrible movie Me Again) is our local go to helper guy for some of the plot lines. He is welcoming in Reverend June (Benjamin Ochieng) from somewhere in Africa as a Missionary, but things keep going poorly to ruin their vacation. I guess.

We also have Paul Kwo playing a transfer student from China in the class, and as we all know, the Chinese are all athiests. Oh, and Cory Oliver, who plays the much younger girlfriend of Professor Radisson. Because she is a former student. But also a Christian. And has a mom with Dementia. And What? How does any of this part make sense?

You can practically see the straw flying out of Kevin Sorbo’s mouth.

I understand that Christians may not take anything I say in this review for a grain of salt. So here is a different actual Christian blog talking about how terrible the movie is. After watching the movie, everything in the trailer is basically true. So, I won’t repeat them, but yeah.

This movie has a bunch of subplots, some of which are loosely connected, and others that seem to just flicker out without resolution. The Muslim girl subplot was terrible. Let’s ignore the fact that the two religions are already really similar, but having an abusive father, and a Muslim girl switching to Christianity? I am not saying these don’t happen, but they just seem silly in this movie. That plot line after she gets kicked out? No resolution. Good, she has Jesus…and now is homeless I guess? I guess that is true. Religious parents definitely kick out their kids sometimes if they turn to another religion or no religion at all, I read about the latter a lot.

Same with the reporter. She finds Jesus by the end of the movie, after bad stuff happens to her. I thought they were just parodying the Duck Dynasty people but I guess that is one of the real guys with his actual wife. Why are they in the movie? Not sure. But they had a media fiasco that happened last year with people getting kicked off the show because they were anti-gay. But the news reporter attacks him for helping people kill ducks and being religious, not for the reasons they had controversy last year. So his speech he gave about God seemed pointless.

They made everyone in the movie that wasn’t Christian a complete asshole, so of course the Christian way shown is the right way. If they aren’t, they beat kids, assault students, and get cancer. But that doesn’t present a good version of reality. The professor almost physically assaulted the kid after his first talk, was dating a former student (who he asked to date after a midterm…?) making him super scummy. He constantly and clearly berated her, and then based his entire self as if he was warring with God. Yep, he was actually a hater cause of an event in his childhood, not through being an intellectual.

The rest of the review has some spoilers. Read at your own risk.

Then the fucking killed his character in a car accident as he was walking to find his former lady friend. What in the actual fuck. His death was juxtaposed with the concert, basically celebrating the fact that he “lost” the argument to the kid and how he and Jesus were awesome, and he sucked, as he was dead. Erm.

Speaking of concerts, this whole film felt like it was some strange advertisement for this band The Newsboys. A thousand references and posters for them, along with the film title I guess.

Terrible movie. It uses arguments that have been refuted in the past, but make the professor a strawman who can’t handle them while also having a tantrum. If it tried to actually use some better proofs are arguments, that would be something. But no. Also, there is a big Spartacus like scene at the end. Gah. This movie is just a fluff piece meant to pat people who agree with it on the back, without going any further or to any deep/significant level.

A score of “religious” movies have come out recently. A month ago we had Son Of God, God’s Not Dead somehow elevated from made for TV B-Movie status to a wide theatrical release and next month is Heaven Is For Real.

But Noah is something completely different. It is directed by Darren Aronofsky and he was given complete directorial control over the picture. That’s right, the guy who directed The Fountain and Black Swan is taking on the Bible.

This won’t be a simple story and in all likelihood, it won’t be like anything you read before.

Hah. The joke implying that I have actually read a book before.

For one thing, the entity that created the world pre-flood is always referred to as “The Creator.” I won’t tell you all the differences because that would ruin the fun.

Let’s just say that the Adam and Eve story is basically the same, and the Cain and Abel happened the same way too. Noah (Russell Crowe) is a descendant of Seth, the third son of Adam, while the vast majority of civilization is a descendant of Cain.

These men have pillaged the world, draining it of its natural resources and animal friends. Noah has tried to protect his family from their corruptness, keeping them to a mostly nomadic lifestyle. Then he gets a vision. He believes the world will be cleansed by water and he must build an ark to save the animals upon it.

But if Man is the problem, can he save others? Is he even allowed to save his family or himself?

Jennifer Connelly plays his wife, Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth and Leo McHugh Carroll are his three sons, Emma Watson his adopted daughter he finds along the way, Anthony Hopkins his grandfather, and Ray Winstone his main enemy.

There is also a very strange massive man wet dance number in the middle.

Here is a pro-tip. Don’t drink a lot of fluids in theaters while watching Noah. It is a movie about a giant flood, which also occurs about halfway through the movie. Given the length of the movie, you might have some uncomfortable feelings before you reach the end.

Since the flood occurs so early, the second half of the movie is mostly human drama aboard the ark. Because of the drama, the ending does seem to drag on a little bit.

I thought Noah was awesome. The movie was visually stimulating. It was beautifully shot and the CGI elements weren’t terrible. The acting from the leads felt great on all accounts. In particular, I really loved the story of how Man came to be from the Creator in six days. It is a famous tale, but the way it was shown from start to finish in this movie was pretty unique.

However, at times I still felt the movie was just a tad bit too long. There are also certainly going to be people upset with the movie due to its loose interpretation of the source material.

Noah was definitely a much better movie than I thought it would be. It told a good story, wasn’t pushy with any messages, had great acting, and was visually pleasing.

One thing the movie could have used? More puns. Just imagine this ending. The family finally makes it to land. The wife says “Now we can spread out and repopulate the earth!” Her husband turns to look at her and says: “Yeah, I Noah.”

Hah. Wes Anderson. For those that don’t read every post I make, Wes Anderson is a strange guy for me. Every movie I reviewed for the site that he directed, I have love love loved. But that was only two movies. The other one I saw I just didn’t really get, and thought it was weird. Yet still, I was excited for this new one.

So excited, I am pretty pissed off that they forced The Grand Budapest Hotel to be a limited release. It broke some records for its release. Like, most money gained from a super super limited release. But only two cities? That is crap. There is no reason for that. I am lucky I even got to see it so soon as I had to drive three hours to see it, weeks after its “release date”. Maybe I am more annoyed because it wasn’t even advertised as a limited release, so I have to imagine it was just a last minute change.

But I guess I expected Anderson to be a dick if he could, so there is that.

This story in a story is about The Grand Budapest Hotel, as you might have guessed. It used to be a…grand old place, but recently, it has gone under some bad times. The clientele is no longer the elite, the staff is no longer extremely efficient, and really it is in shambles. That is why a young writer (Jude Law) is so interested to meet its current owner, Mr. Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham), to hear his story about he acquired the hotel and his vast fortune.

M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) is a man amongst boys. He used to be the concierge, a god amongst men. Working morning to night, every day, he made sure the rich guests felt welcome at the hotel and would do anything to please them. Including the extremely rich Madame D (Tilda Swinton) who stays at the hotel for weeks every year.

Well, she dies, mysteriously. Also, her will was changed last minute as well it seems. Apparently M. Gustave was left her priceless painting, pissing off the ungrateful and evil family. Now, they also think M. Gustave killed her!

It is up to the help of his Lobby Boy, Zero (Tony Revolori) to help prove his innocence, get him out of jail, and in general, save the day!

Also featuring a shit ton of people. Here they are, roughly, in order of importance: Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldbloom, Saoirse Ronan, Mathieu Amalric, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, and Owen Wilson.

This scene represents birth.

Ahhhh, quirky Wes Anderson movie!

This one took a little bit to get going, trying to figure out just what the movie would be about. It takes place over three time periods, technically, so the story needs time to get started.

But when it does? Man. This movie was hilarious. Ralph Fiennes, although I don’t know how to say his name, is a terrific actor and a charismatic character in this film. You can’t take your eyes off of him whenever he is on the screen. And it works so well. Much laughter, much ridiculousness.

This film has a lot of Anderson standards, with his camera work and use of colors.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is also a bit more crass than his other recent movies. Some nakedness, some death scenes, all a bit extreme. But I think that made it a little bit better.

Definitely as good as the trailer made it seem to be, and one of the best early movies of 2014.

Divergent, or as I like to call it, the next fucking recent young adult sci-fi/fantasy series to have taken off, has been turned into a movie. Weeee.

A lot of these lately have been terrible. Did you see The Mortal Instruments: The City of Bones? I did, it was ghastly. So was Vampire Academy. The only recent successful one of these was The Hunger Games, which had a dystopian aspect, just like Divergent, and just like this random other movie The Maze Runner later this year.

So, will it actually be a nice parallel of society? Or will it just be made to make teens feel special? That’s the important question with these adaptions.

And here is the main characters ass as promotional material.

Beatrice (Shailene Woodley) is an Abnegation tribe member. What? Okay. This story takes place in Chicago in the future, after a big war, they have built a big wall around the city. They have split members into big tribes, each having a trait. Abnegation people are selfless, run the government, wear grey, simple lives. The Amity are peaceful, hippies, farmers. Not really talked about in this movie. Candor wear white, are honest, and just say whats on their mind. Yeah, another kind of pointless tribe I guess. Erudite are the smart people, doing smart stuff and wearing blue, the smart colors. Dauntless wear black and leather, the brave, the cities police force and protectors.

Well, Beatrice is about to go to her choosing ceremony, where she picks her faction she will live in from then on. Her parents (Ashley Judd, Tony Goldwyn) are big in Abnegation, and want her and her brother (Ansel Elgort) to stay in their area. Well, during her test to see who she actually fits in with most, her results are inconclusive, equally selfless, brave, and smart. It is called being Divergent, and it should be secretive, because people don’t like free thinkers?

Well, Beatrice, now Tris, chooses Dauntless, as she always liked them. Now she has new friends (Zoe Kravitz), and has found out that just because she chose Dauntless doesn’t mean they have picked her. Of the recruiting class of like 40-50 students, half will be cut after weeks of training based on physical skill, and then another half will be cut after emotional/mental training. So only like, 10 or so people will actually make it. Yep. This movie is mostly a training movie. Ha ha! Fooled you guys!

This gives us characters like Four (Theo James), her main trainer and probably love interest. Or Eric (Jai Courtney) a much meaner training guy. Kate Winslet is a mean smart woman, Miles Teller is a mean new Dauntless recruit, and Ray Stevenson is a mean Abnegation leader.

And shit, this movie has ninjas too!

So I felt like again, if I had read the book, parts of this movie would make a lot more sense. Just like every other damn young adult adaption. Here are brief thoughts about my ramblings, that as far as I can tell didn’t get answered in the movie. Some are just world building questions that would have been very helpful.

How often does this choosing ceremony take place? Multiple times a year? How old are you when it happens? I guess the main character and her brother are not twins, but born close enough that they have to choose the same year? Does every faction have a long ass training process for when people join? I wonder how strict it is to train to be a hippie. Why did Tris not learn about what a Divergent is until her test, and only because she was one, but as soon as she does, it seems to be common knowledge for every other person what it is? With all the cuts the Dauntless people made, they literally only gained like what, ten recruits? How the fuck is that helpful? Did the plot really need to wait for the ten new recruits for something other than training to start taking place?

If the point of the faction system is to keep people in their place and get rid of human nature, why even let them choose what faction they live in after some random age? It seems like it’d be better to have the false notion of a choice, but in general, make everyone stay where they came from. Honestly, how does early life in other factions like Dauntless even work? Are there any parent type people there at all? It seems very messy to have people trained in a faction type for blah many years, and switch to a different faction, giving them awkward skill sets, that clearly they never lose after switching factions.

Really, this movie is literally just a high school movie, put into a Sci-Fi setting. We have cliques: jocks, nerds, hippies, normal people, and I guess gossipers or something. We have a high school girl, Tris, who feels like she doesn’t fit in with just the normal people, so she tries sports. She tries to also be smart. So she is a nonconformists, and all the conformists want to get her for being different. Or something like that. That is what the movie boils down to.

It was a cool concept, but I also feel like the writer has no idea what the fuck she is doing. Just making an interesting story and hoping it works out. There is a good chance the second movie is better, given that it will take place outside of Chicago. Wait, why is Chicago now bad? They beat the main bad guys? It should be easy to fix now? Eh, whatever.

I guess I should also note the trailer is pretty misleading. It makes it look like because she is Divergent, she joins some group of underground fighters who train her and then they attack the government or something. Nah. Well, she gets trained, but the Divergent-ness seems to be mostly pretty pointless overall.

Hours! What is it, and why did I need to watch it as soon as I could?

Well, it is the first movie to be released after the death of Paul Walker, that stars Paul Walker. Well, technically Fast & Furious 6 did like, a week or two later, but I am going to ignore that. This is a smaller budget movie that most people would have ignored, but I guarantee you it increased its sales due to the circumstances of its main actor.

I mean, shit, that is why I am watching it. There has to be at least, one or two people who thought like I did. Right? I am not a unique snowflake.

Aww, this movie will have a sad Paul Walker in it. I don’t want to imagine him sad.

This movie takes place in August, 2005, in New Orleans, Louisiana. For those modern historians, you have no figured out what this movie is about. For everyone else, I will keep it a secret for a little bit longer.

Nolan Hayes and the love of his life are about to have a baby. In fact, right now, this shit is happening. So they go to the hospital, she goes in labor, and Nolan just…waits. Because it is a movie, complications happen, and of course the pregnancy goes badly and he loses his wife. Shit. I guess complications are to be expected when labor is induced five weeks before the due date. Sad times.

So the baby is now hooked up to a bunch of machines and on life support. After a while, hopefully, it will be okay.

The bigger bad news department is that the storm outside is getting worse. Like, hurricane bad. Oh no, the hurricane has turned into a category five and people are evacuating. Patients and all, but Nolan can’t leave. His baby needs to stay on life support, and the staff as ensured him they will stay with him.

Psyche! Next thing we know, Nolan is in a hospital, maybe alone. And bad things start happening, with the back up generator, the battery for the contraption, the special fluids that need to go in, and of course staying awake 24/7 with people raiding shit to survive. This will be a long day and a half or so for Nolan. But can he save his daughter where he failed to save his wife? That’s not fair, he had no way to save her. But still, can he carry on her life through his daughters? Yeah, he is going to do his best to protect dat baby.

No, Paul Walker didn’t earn his Doctorate the traditional way. Paul Walker earned it through instant necessity.

Sure, there were other actors/actresses involved in this movie, but I didn’t feel like tagging them. Most of them had small enough parts that they wouldn’t matter in a normal movie. Since the entire point for most of this is just how alone the main character feels, everyone else he ends up interacting with doesn’t really matter as much.

By itself, I ended up actually liking the story. I did see some good moments from Walker, mostly in the emotionally breaking down / crying / yelling range that I hadn’t seen before, which of course just makes me sad again.

The movie also had a lot of slower moments, which I guess makes sense given the situation, but still made it boring. I did like it when he opened up to his baby and tried to tell it about the mother, but when they went full flashback, I lost my interest again.

Kind of infuriating. An actual decent plot (despite my initial thoughts on it), but not as good due to pacing and flashbacks.

Alright everyone. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

This is the moment a lot of you may have been waiting for. Veronica Mars has finally been given a movie.

For those who weren’t blessed with experiencing one of the better TV shows of the mid-2000’s, Veronica Mars ran for three seasons before getting canceled. It was one of those shows that was critically acclaimed, but suffered with ratings. It also didn’t help that the third season was a lot different from the first two (college), with several minor arcs instead of a big one. It also unfortunately ended on an awkward unfinished cliff hanger. Not as awkward as the series finale of My Name Is Earl, but awkward nonetheless.

But that isn’t the only crazy thing about this movie! No, it was funded by Kickstarter. Warner Bros. wouldn’t green light the film, so the cast raised money. They wanted $2 million to make the movie. In ten hours, the $2 million was raised, a record for the website. In the month time frame over $5 million ended up being donated. Needless to say, there was a lot of hype around it. Because of the Kickstarter, not only was the film released theatrically, it was also released same day Video on Demand, and the movie being sent out to all who backed it at the same time. Wow.

I will admit some bias. As a fanboy of the TV show (and as a Season 3 apologist), there is a good chance I like this no matter what.

Total nostalgia overload aAAAAGGHHH11!!~

Guess what! It is time for Neptune, California’s favorite high school class to have their ten year reunion. Turns out after the third season of the show, Veronica (Kristen Bell) switched out of town to Stanford. Yeah. She got real far away. She went to law school and now she is about to get a high paying fancy lawyer job at NYC. But just when she thought she was out, they pulled her back in.

That’s right, Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring) is being charged with murder. He was dating another former Nuptunian, don’t worry about her, she had two episodes in the series. She eventually became a pretty famous pop star, and now she was found electrocuted in her own bath tub. Logan says he is innocent and for whatever reason, Veronica believes him.

So she is back in town. Her dad (Enrico Colantoni), still a P.I., the police force still inept, and her friends Mac (Tina Majorino) and Wallace (Percy Daggs III) are still by her side. Will this be her final case, something she swore she would never do again?

It also features more returning cast members than you can shake a stick at.

Piz (Chris Lowell), Dick (Ryan Hansen), Gia (Krysten Ritter), Weevil (Francis Capra), Leo D’Amato (Max Greenfield), Deputy Sacks (Brandon Hillock), and Vinnie Van Lowe (Ken Marino).

Also featuring some new faces, played by Martin Starr, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jerry O’Connell and Gaby Hoffmann.

Yay, BFFs, still after 8 years of not really talking. They too must be raging on nostalgia.

Going into this movie (despite my fanboyism) I was still a bit skeptical. I am used to the plot taking 22 episodes to solve, not one in less than two hours. I thought the plot might feel rushed/forced and I wouldn’t get enough cool clues along the way.

Well, after seeing it, I think the story really does work. It has twists and turns, there are multiple plots, and they did a few things I definitely would never have seen coming.

At the same time, this film might actually be accessible to those who haven’t seen the TV show. I wouldn’t suggest seeing the movie first still, because the show is phenomenal (What are you doing? Go watch it now!) but everything you need to know gets explained in the plot. You won’t get every character reference or throwback joke, but you can still get by.

Still, this film only seemed to arouse my appetite without bedding it down. What I (and everyone) really wants now is new seasons to continue the story onward. From what I can tell, there is absolutely nothing in the works but a small web series and that is all we are getting.

With just the length of a movie, although the story was good, it just didn’t feel like enough for me. Now I might find myself living in denial that it is truly over and done.

Veronica Mars is an excellent film continuation of a TV series, but I would argue it doesn’t match the quality given to us from the first two seasons. Alas, perhaps my lofty goals were set too high.