Tag: Foreign

What makes a Legend? Is it their walk, their background, their story, their Will Smithy-ness?

Or does it involve being a bad ass mofo mobster, enough that one day someone will make a movie about you?

Like, Whitey, he was bad ass, and Johnny Depp played him in Black Mass.

Is your Legend-ness downplayed if you have to share the spotlight with a partner? Obviously it is easier to become famous if you are a duo act, instead of a solo act. And in Legend, our criminals are real life twins. Which means we get one actor playing two people, which is probably one of my favorite things ever in movies. One of those things you just can’t do in a play.

However this picture makes it look like a bad romcom.

Ronald Kray (Tom Hardy) and Reggie Kray (Tom Hardy) are twins and gangsters and running this small town of London. Well, soon. Ronald just got released from a mental hospital, because a psychiatrist said he was sane after some arm twisting, but he is very messed up. He was some level of schizophrenic, and openly homosexual. He liked the truth. He also wore glasses, which is helpful for telling them apart early on. Reggie, no glasses, wasn’t insane, but still a gangster. He just had a good head on his shoulders, could think things through and wanted to maybe, eventually, go clean.

This story, narrated by Frances Shea (Emily Browning), tells of their rise to actually control the London underground, their falling aparts, their separate arrests, and what finally brought them down to justice. Oh, and she is totally dating Reggie, of course. Because he is the cute one.

Nipper Read (Christopher Eccleston) is the main constable trying to bring him down (and Joshua Hill is his side constable). Adam Fogerty plays their muscle, Shane Attwooll some competition, David Thewlis their business partner, and Taron Egerton one of the gay lovers of Ronald.

No, don’t cry Emily. Yes you have to kiss a killer Tom Hardy. But at least he isn’t wearing a mask.

If there is one reason I am glad to be writing this review, it is that Legend will serve as a great example for future movie reviews. For quite a few films, I have seen great acting in overall mediocre films, which is sad. But rarely do you see great acting in actually bad movies.

Hardy. Is. Excellent. Twice! The brothers are very unique individuals, they talk differently, they have different mannerisms, and one even wears glasses. I actually hard a hard time believing that Hardy was playing Twins because they started to look nothing alike in my eyes. It is such an amazing show being put on him, especially as he seamlessly argues and fights with himself. This isn’t a dumb Parent Trap situation. This is great fucking shit. I will admit I found them hard to understand 70% of the time and would have loved subtitles, but I will take that as my own fault.

The rest of the film falters, and it does so big time. It is too long, over two hours and seemingly drags. I was sitting in the theater just wondering when they would finally mess up and get caught. Hurry up and lose. The narration from Browning felt unattached from the rest of the film and mostly unnecessary. Giving it from her perspective made it feel Romance instead of a Crime/Drama. And I have to mention the music, which I basically never do in a review. The score sounded as if it was taken from a soap opera or an extremely older film. Jazz is one thing, but the music was always painfully obvious and distracting, never helping the scenes out.

This is bad that the acting from Hardy was so good but the rest of the film is meh. Most of you will watch this movie, solely for the fact that Hardy is in it. And you know what? Do that. Watch that man do his best. Watch him work. And then forget the rest.

“You know what your website needs?” I hear these words all the time. People offering suggestions for genres, or movies to review. I like suggestions, so this is great. “Your website needs more horror films from other countries.” Well, that is a very specific request. But let’s do it.

Now the person who requested that most likely meant something Asian. They have a lot of crazy scary horror films, if I am to believe my friends. Since I am afraid of scary things, I never really jumped into that subset. So instead, let’s take it slow and dive into European Horror. Specifically, Austrian.

Oh hey, look at that. Austria’s official submission for Best Foreign Language Film in the next Oscars is actually a horror movie! That means it is either really good, or Austrian cinema is really lacking.

That is why I am looking at Goodnight Mommy, or, Ich Seh, Ich Seh (which of course does not mean Goodnight Mommy in German). I assume the name change in English is because they didn’t want their film compared to Foghorn Leghorn.

“Ah see, I see, sons, why are you wearing those masks?” – Foghorn Leghorn playing the mother.

Lukas (Lukas Schwarz) and Elias (Elias Schwarz) are twins, let’s say 11, living in a secluded and rich house in the Austrian countryside. There are farms nearby, woods, a lake, some caves, everything they could want. And eventually their mom (Susanne Wuest) comes home! Yay!

Or…or does she? Their mom was involved in some sort of accident. She had a lot of surgery on her face. So her face is wrapped up in bandages, with just her eyes and mouth visible. But the boys believe that something is different. Their mom is meaner and more distant. She has created a lot of rules that keep the boys mostly in home or right in the yard.

She doesn’t take them to town. She orders in food so they can just be alone for a good long time while she heals. They are alone and they are pretty certain that the lady is not their mother under the bandages. But with a dad out of the picture and no real ability to talk to anyone, what are a couple of kids supposed to do?

Also featuring Hans Escher as a priest and Elfriede Schatz and Karl Purker as two Red Cross workers.

“Why the hell aren’t you showing any faces in these pictures?” – You, the reader.

On the comment card after the film, I wrote “I am completely unsettled.” That wasn’t descriptive enough though. I should have also mentioned that my jimmies were in fact rustled as well. In all honesty, the best way to describe my emotions after the film can probably only be described as an emoji, but I don’t use those and I don’t want to find the appropriate one.

This is not a typical horror. It isn’t full of scares throughout, but a good chunk of the film is instead just a bit eerie. The directors spend a lot of time building the mood before things really start to hit the fan. There are glimpses of madness, but they are in short bursts, or told through dreams, letting the creepiness build.

But the in the entire third act, we reach the level of things you come to expect from the drama, and it pays off wonderfully.

Two aspects of this movie I really enjoyed. One, it is a mystery of sorts technically. But the mystery doesn’t seem to be that important. I imagine most people will “figure it out” before they finally reveal what is going on, but that doesn’t take away from the film. Once I had my guess, I enjoyed watching the film to look for hints or clues to see if what I thought was right. It was still a good experience.

Two, the directors used a lot of silence which is a lacking sound from most modern horrors. Silence is a wonderful tool that can be used to make a situation far more tense. And I don’t mean “Silence, followed by loud scary noise to make you jump!”. No, just silence to make the gross or scary a bit more realistic and thus a bit more darker.

I don’t want to see Goodnight Mommy again. My body couldn’t take it. I hope some of the more graphic scenes eventually leave my brain completely because of how brutal they were. Goodnight Mommy has to be a good horror film, because it scared me into wanting to see it a second time.

Strange as it may sound, to properly start this review I need to talk about The ABCs of Death. If you have never heard of it, it is a horror anthology movie (all the rage these days) with 26 shorts, one for each letter of the alphabet. They have free reign to do basically whatever they want, to match up any word they want to a particular letter. It is an easy way to make a movie, as each director is only involved for a short while and can be done on almost any schedule.

So what does that have to do with Turbo Kid, a retro inspired sci-fi adventure horror (eh) movie?

Well, it turns out that this was inspired by a short made for the anthology that was eventually not used: T is for Turbo. Although it didn’t make it in the film, one of the producers decided that it would be even better as a full feature length film. So they brought Jason Eisener, who directed Hobo with a Shotgun (a movie I still have never watched, sadly), to be executive producer and Turbo Kid was born! And yes, you can watch the short if you click on the title link above.

See kids, dreams really do come true!

You see that? That is a GnomeStick, and it is truly wonderful.

The world is in shambles. The land they live in is now referred to as The Wasteland, and of course it is a post apocalyptic world. The future is a scary place, the year is 1997.

Our hero is named…well, no idea, so let’s call him The Kid (Munro Chambers). He is alone, a scavenger, just him and his bike. He is also a lover of comic books! Who isn’t though, right?

Well, this Kid meets a girl, despite trying to avoid strangers. Her name is Apple (Laurence Laboeuf), she has pink here, is very eccentric, and doesn’t seem like the type of person who could survive in The Wasteland alone. She just wants a friend, and the Kid reluctantly lets her tag along — only if she follows his rules and gets a weapon!

Eventually the Kid finds a cool suit that is straight out of comic books, and when he puts it on he gets super powers! Okay, he just gets a laser cannon gun thing on his arm, that has a timer after a few uses that lets him recharge. But at least it looks cool and snazzy. More importantly, it gives him the confidence to start fighting back.

Fighting back against Zeus (Michael Ironside), self proclaimed ruler of The Wasteland. He has an army of warriors, including Skeletron (Edwin Wright), who shoots out rotating saw blades, and Female Guard (Orphée Ladouceur), who is a woman!

But the Kid isn’t alone, no. He has the help of Frederic (Aaron Jeffery), an Indiana Jones looking mother fucker who arm wrestlers, until he loses his hand early on. And also there is Bagu (Romano Orzani), a trader who was the only friend the Kid had before this mess gets started.

When Metal Man and Skeletor have a baby, you get this lovely killing machine.

I feel like I was transported back into my 1980’s going to see sweet B movies live for the first time. This is of course ridiculous, because I was born in 1989 (Like Taylor Swift. We are both successful people), and I have no memories of being zero or watching movies. It is a ridiculous statement for me to make, and this entire paragraph is down right nonsensical, which makes it a perfect description for Turbo Kid.

I joke a bit, of course. There are character motives, a plot, everything that is necessary for a movie to be comprehensive. The world created is just over the top and very Mad Max-ian. It can easily be pictured as a movie in the franchise, just with a much smaller budget and a kid with lasers as the hero. Fuck it. George Miller needs to just somehow make it canon and everyone would win out in the future if they can eventually crossover.

There was a lot great with this movie, outside of its intentionally bad graphics for the death scenes. The soundtrack is straight out of the 80’s and gives the best vibes possible when watching this movie. And they were very creative when it came to costume (and hair!) designs, weapons, deaths, and sets. It was a visual rainbow explosion, despite the bleak landscape.

The cheese is high with this film and it runs with it. This is why I hate the bad on purpose films like Sharknado so much. Because there can be actual movies that are bad in a good way, like Turbo Kid, or Black Dynamite, that serve as genre parodies while also entertaining people without the use of alcohol.

This review deserves a third picture just to showcase some great costume design or something.

Yes. This will do.

I have been told by my peers that Shaun the Sheep is a pretty popular kids television show. About a sheep! And shenanigans! Sheepanigans!

So these people were excited that a movie was coming out. But much like my recent review of The Unbeatables, Shaun the Sheep Movie came out a long time ago in the UK. The delay wasn’t as extreme, but it came out in theaters in February for the British and obviously early August for America. Unlike the last animated film, they didn’t even have to replace the voice actors with Americans, because it is a movie has no words! That makes me feel like it is just petty on their part. Booo pettiness!

This is also one of those movies I knew nothing about going in. It has that classic looking stop animation that the Wallace and Gromit studio is known for, which makes sense given that it is the same studio behind this film. Hell, apparently Shaun is a spin-off character from that franchise. I am seriously behind on my stop motion British genre films.

But I am strangely up to date on my sheep based films.

How do you describe a movie like Shaun the Sheep? Well, hopefully with good grammar and real human words.

Shaun the Sheep lives on a farm! He has an owner, who raises the sheep, a cow, some pigs, and has a dog too, Bitzer. Bitzer runs things around the farm. Sometimes he herds sheep too.

Well, their life is pretty standard. Wake up, eat, get herded, go back to sleep. Not a lot changes and everyone finds it dull. Duller than a pair of kids scissors covered with tape.

So Shaun gets the idea to have a “Day off”, by sort of tricking their owner to think it is still night time, locking him away so they can do whatever they want all day! No one will get hurt, just a few tricks and sheepanigans. But of course like all well laid our plans, something goes wrong. Now Shaun and the sheep and Bitzer have to go on a journey, AWAY from the farm their home, into the big city and you know, do things. Things!

And look! A dog that is actually more dog than human! There are levels of humanization in the animal kingdom!

My review of Shaun the Sheep is going to be short and straight to the point (despite all my fluff already). Shaun the Sheep is a funny and witty stop claymation film. I am always awed by clay/stop motion work, given the extreme amount of time and dedication it takes to getting it all done and done well. One of those things I tried to do as a kid because of all my free time and getting no where fast and giving up after an hour. The camera work despite the just very small sets is also well done, given a few types of shorts I couldn’t even imagine were doable for the genre.

Given the lack of dialogue outside of human mumblings to sounds like words, all of the jokes take place as sight gags or slap stick, and it is great that it leans a lot more in the sight gag department. There is almost always something happening in the background that is interesting, making it a movie you definitely have to pay hard attention to in order to get the full experience. (Which should technically be true for all movies. It just happens to be more true in this film).

If there is one main disappointment I had it would be its length. It sort of seems too long because of the no dialogue. About a third of the way into the film I was fighting back sleep. I was entertained from the movie, but not enough variation in sound was making it hard to fight back the tiredness. After the movie was halfway through, I had no problems anymore. That is when stuff started getting hectic to appease my millennial mind that always needs things exploding to keep my attention.

Despite this, Shaun the Sheep movie will most definitely end up nominated for Best Animated film, but as of now, it will also lose to Inside Out.

The Unbeatables, aka Underdogs, aka Metegol. You might know this movie by one of its names.

It was of course first called Metegol in Argentina, where the film was made and released back in July of 2013! It had the distinction of being the most expensive Argentinian film ever at $21 million, and most expensive animated film in all of Latin America. Given the American budgets on these things, that is a pretty crazy fact.

Needless to say, it did well enough to release internationally. The Unbeatables came out in the UK in August of 2014, same plot and everything, just nice English voices to make the populace happy.

And that is why I am watching this version of the movie. Despite being available for a long time, it isn’t hitting USA theaters until mid August 2015, a whole year after the British counterpart. It was pushed back several times over a year. Well, screw that. If I can legally watch and buy a movie already out, many months before it comes out here with just more American voices instead of British voices, there is really no reason to wait.

No matter the nationality, we can all agree on their fabulous hair.

In a small village in, I dunno, let’s say Mexico, there is a boy who really loves foosball. Young Amadeo (Rupert Grint) works at a small cafe/bar where he cleans and plays foosball all day long. In fact, he got pretty dang good at it. He can score in so many ways, can flip the ball through the air, and you know, other shenanigans. Others do not share his passion, so he gave all of his players a name and personality and often puts them in their own soccer based stories.

Then he met Laura (Eve Posonby), who likes things, and likes foosball, and even maybe likes Amadeo. Then he met Flash (Anthony Head), a pompous boy who never loses and is a soccer star. Well, he sees Laura and also wants to impress her, so he challenges the loser Amadeo. And sure enough, Amadeo wins. This is Flash’s first real loss in anything, so he runs from the town.

Now years later, the town is close to dying, but Amadeo is still there playing foosball and Laura is about to leave. WAIT JUST A SECOND. Flash is back, now a world famous soccer star. The BEST star. Rich beyond imagination. Rich enough to buy his birth town and build the biggest stadium ever there.

Well, the villagers don’t want their town to get demolished. And so eventually Amadeo challenges Flash to a game. If Amadeo wins, he will leave the town forever. Great! Just they aren’t good at real soccer which is what Amadeo has demanded to enact his revenge.

If only…if only there was some nice tear magic out there, that would bring his foosball players back to life, and help him solve his many problems and save the day. If only.

Featuring the voice work of Rob Brydon, Ralf Little, Alistair McGowan, Peter Serafinowicz, and Alex Norton.

Basically, everyone is Pinocchio, but no where close to being real men.

“You can trust me I used to work with FIFA.” That’s an actual quote from this movie and it really made me laugh. I know there has been talk about FIFA being corrupt for years, with the Qatar mess, but it still feels even better to hear that joke after all of the indictments.

The trailers for the US version, Underdogs, are shit. I have seen two of them and they made me immediately hate the film. The animation was odd, the plot was pretty dumb, and, well, yeah. It was very stupid sounding, no way around those words. Surprisingly and thankfully, there was a lot more to the movie than the trailers showcased. That is usually the case, but there are also trailers who show everything and it really felt like one of those moments.

The animation at first bugged me as well, but while watching it, they had clear distinction between the foosball players and people, making them both feel unique in their world. The players had a completely different clunky style that made their existence a bit jarring, but something that made a lot of sense in the film.

Again, a lot more happens in this film than just the “play soccer for the town”, and I am a bit worried some of the other side plots or jokes will get cut from the American version of the story. I might edit this review in the future after watching the new version to see if it deserves the same grade, so as for now, The Unbeatables and not Underdogs is surprisingly worth a watch.

The release of Seventh Son was overshadowed because it came out the same day as Jupiter Ascending, which is interesting. The later is a sci-fi/fantasy epic that was faced with delays and the release was moved back. The former? A fantasy epic that was faced with even more delays and production issues.

Production on this movie began in early 2012. The visual effects of the film was being done with Rhythm and Hues Studio, famous for getting best Visual Effects in the Oscars for Life Of Pi, while also filing for bankruptcy. Not a good time for that studio, tons of layoffs despite their impressive work.

So in 2013, Seventh Son was still in production and the company got a loan to help finish the movie. It was pushed back to October 2013 release. Then it was pushed back to January 2014 thanks to Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. breaking apart.

However, once Universal got the distribution rights end of 2013, they said nah, let’s wait til February 6, 2015. They didn’t give any fucks about the movie and figured they’d have no competition. Which again, is amusing that Jupiter Ascending came in and fucked up any chance of them actually making money.

Well, costume wise it looks like a nerds wet dream!

Seventh Son is a story about a witch and a witch hunter. Clearly star crossed lovers. The witch, Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore), is being all evil, and Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges), the Spook, wants to stop her. During a routine snatch and grab, they almost succeed too! But no, she escapes, and she kills his apprentice (Kit Harington).

So instead we get Tom Ward (Ben Barnes), who is the seventh son of a seventh son. That means something. It means a lot of fucking and babies. When the Spook showed up, he knew already he was leaving thanks to dreams, so he kissed his mom, Mam (Olivia Williams) good bye and went on his merry way.

Things get a bit more hairy when Tom also sees a girl about to be mobbed for being a witch. He had visions of her and him, so he saves her too. Her name is Alice (Alicia Vikander). That is nice.

What is not nice when she goes back home to her witch mom (Antje Traue) who is involved with Mother Malkin. Ah interesting.

Then some witch magic stuff happens and people get hurt, lies get said, and of course, even more magic stuff. Also with a John DeSantis and a Djimon Hounsou!

On the other hand, this image looks so uncool, Outkast wouldn’t even touch it.

First of all, I apologize for that last caption joke, it is terrible.

Second of all, I feel really really bad for Rhythm and Hues studio. They did amazing work with Life Of Pi, then they got shit on, then they had to make this piece of crap. I want to assume that the reason this movie is not visually pleasing to look at is because the studio had to lay off all of their workers and work on a very small budget. I hope so. Because the CGI and effects were anything but quality.

You know what it reminded me of? Dungeons and Dragons, the movie. That is a really mean comparison, technically. That movie was terribad. But they are both pricey fantasy films that wanted to reach for something greater, but instead fell down into Mediocre Valley, looking ugly to boot.

But good looks aren’t the only important thing to a film. Acting and plot! So dang important! This one has two people who have won Best Actor and Best Actress at the Oscars! Hot damn! They can’t save this story though. They don’t even attempt to save it.

Jeff Bridges is basically transforming into Nick Nolte. The last few movies with Bridges have been hard to understand. This movie was the worst, with the movie almost demanding you watch it in subtitles to understand a damn thing he says. Moore plays a caricature and a non-interesting villain, and so she too is completely forgettable.

The plot itself would be easier to follow if there was anything remotely exciting about this movie. A yawn fest, beginning to end. It is a shame Sci-Fi is getting such a revitalization in the film industry and fantasy films seem left to die in its wake. We had a good thing going on with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but the disappointing Hobbit films and absolutely nothing else going on seems to mean it has to wait for the eventual Harry Potter reboot to be good again.

Welcome to a very special review here at Gorgon Reviews! So I apologize for how weird this one goes, just consider it non-canon.

This review is not the normal review for the day. Because it is Sunday, reviews don’t normally come out today. So of course it is a bonus review!

This is a special review because this one I am posting at some point after the time my wife has delivered out baby. Let me be vague here, because I might do it right away, the next day, hours after the fact, when we get home, who knows!

That’s why I am going to talk about Babies!

I first saw that this documentary existed when I worked in the ancient store of Blockbuster. It was one of our new releases and I used to watch every new release despite its perceived quality (that’s when I had 14~ reviews in a week). The only genres I avoided were extreme horror and documentaries, because I didn’t review either at the time. But now I do both and now I can talk about Babies.

This documentary goes into the lives of four freshly born babies from around the world. If only there was a nice graphic to showcase the babies themselves…

Shit that white baby is sad.

These four babies are in very uniquely different parts of the world at various levels of “comfort”. Ponijao is born in Africa with his mom, slightly older sibling and like, a neighbor or two. No medical comforts, just a hut and the hot hot sun. On the other side, Hattie is born in San Francisco, came from a rich enough couple in a hospital. Mari is also a traditional born baby, for the most part, hospital and all, while Bayar is a step above Ponijao in terms of civilization, but not with all the modern comforts.

These babies are going to grow up and have drastically different lives. We only get snippets from the first year of their life (I think), but we can see them learning to roll over, learning to crawl, and learning to talk a little bit. We will hear them laugh while playing and cry for no reason at all. And this whole documentary provides no story, no narration, no structure. Just babies with their families. Hell, it doesn’t even provide subtitles.

In theory, this is an amazing idea. What better way to showcase how we are all human and equal than by comparing how we raise our babies, creatures not yet molded by society, knowing no hate. It is a good idea and potentially very thought provoking.

My main issue is the only thoughts that were provoked for me were how boring it all felt. The idea for Babies sounds good on paper, but while watching, I frequently checked over and over again at how much longer I had until it was all over. I don’t want to say I have a small attention span, but I can only watch babies (that aren’t my own) falling down and existing for so long before I want to walk away and play video games.

Without even transitional frames to group this into at least stages of development, or statistics about babies, I am left to derive my own point for the documentary to exist. However, at only 80 minutes, you are going to get roughly 20 minutes per baby and still not know about the different cultures. Some babies play with rocks, some babies play with fancy equipment. The end. I am sure I will figure all that out in the next year anyways.

Kill me once, kill me twice, kill me deadly, as Lita Ford kind of almost once said.

Ms Ford couldn’t count to three, much like Valve, but it is for good reason. Kill Me Three Times? That is definitely excessive. Two is usually excessive as well, unless you believe in resurrection, but most cultures don’t have double resurrection as far as I can tell.

Now, this could be some strange Beetlejuice situation, where the only way to die is killing the entity three times. Maybe the person in question is a third cat and two thirds human (how to genetics work?), so they only were given 3 lives instead of 9.

Actually, yes, that is my official answer going into this movie. A movie that must be about a man who is one-third cat. And no, I hope it isn’t anything like Catwoman.

Although wearing all black and having a sexually awakened pose does give me pause.

In the Australian action thriller comedy (?) we’ve all been waiting for, we get to see Simon Pegg play a hit man! Sure, Charlie Wolfe is a bit eccentric, with a mustache and all. And maybe he doesn’t take out his targets in one well placed sniper kill. But you know, he eventually gets the job done! And right after getting the job done, he gets a call to do another job! Ha ha! Life is good, plenty of work, people to kill.

It is simple, Jack Taylor (Callan Mulvey) wants his wife, Alice (Alice Braga), killed and he wants Charlie to do it. A nice lump of sum for the job too. He wants her dead for the reason anyone would, getting cheated on. She cheated on him with a MECHANIC, Dylan (Luke Hemsworth), which makes sense, given that he is the third (and oldest) Hemsworth.

However, the issue is that Charlie wasn’t the only one who was hired to kill Alice! Enter mild mannered dentist, Natahn Webb (Sullivan Stapleton). He has a bit of a gambling addiction and owes some powerful people a lot of money. His wife and receptionist Lucy (Teresa Palmer) is going to help him out, and they are going to be awkward about it.

Also featuring Steve Le Marquand and Bryan Brown. And other shenanigans and twists occur of course, but if I told you them, you’d have no reason to watch the movie.

Like, omg, how did that knife get in his hand?!

Kill Me Three Times was actually a bit harder of a film to describe for two reasons. One, the story isn’t told in standard chronological order. It jumps around a bit. Why? Just to see things in different points of view, and get some flash backs. That is why. It could be fine, but in this case it didn’t enhance the movie at all.

Two, the movie was boring as fuck. I am so disappointed by how uninterested the film went as it dragged along. This element of course made the scenes where we were able to see events again from a different point of view even more dull. I was bored the first time they showed it to me, now I get to be bored from a new angle!

I don’t remember laughing at all. I thought some scenes may have been amusing, but no outright guffaws bellowed from my diaphragm. Was it a bit dark? Sure. And there was technically a little bit of action to make it interesting.

Pegg wasn’t terrible, but his character also felt underutilized. There was a bit too much advertising his character for how much of the movie was about all the other characters as well, if you know what I mean.

Overall, I would describe Kill Me Three Times as a bad cluster fuck. A movie that wanted to be a Tarantino film and dropped the mark a few yards before a first down.

Day 2 of Blackweek!

Day 1 featured Blackhat, so we are going to remove our clothing and take a dive in the Black Sea instead.

I’d make a corny joke about what this movie is about and act surprised when it is something different. But how could I do that? It is called Black Sea! That is a real place, right there above Turkey. Huge as shit, important to history. Can’t miss it.

If this movie doesn’t feature the actual Black Sea, I will quit my job as a movie reviewer!

And drive a submarine into the job territory known as “Film Critic Land”.

Under water salvaging can be a tricky job, but someone has to clean that ocean litter. I have been told prisoners are not up to the job, so instead, real people do it and get paid! Like Robinson (Jude Law). Or at least, he used to get paid. Now he is laid off, his company doesn’t want him anymore, his job “redundant.”

But the good news is, now that he is jobless, he has free time to do crazy things. Like get a crew together and search for a rumored Nazi gold! Apparently a U-Boat sunk off the coast of Georgia (IN THE BLACK SEA) with millions and millions of dollars worth of gold bars in it. Some shit involving Germany and Russia. No one has been able to find it, but no one has had Robinson’s skills.

So he gets a backer, a mysterious Lewis (Tobias Menzies) agrees to fund the expedition for 40% of the profits. He gets a crew, half British (like him!) and half Russian (for reasons). They get a really shitty beat up sub and head on down!

But first, they have extra crew. Like Tobin (Bobby Schofield), a neighborhood kid who Robinson brought along for other reasons. And Daniels (Scoot McNairy), a representative of Mr. Lewis.

Our crew only has one translator though between the sets. And a whole lot of money on the line. People migh get all antsy and want to make their cuts a bit bigger. And hey, maybe there are even more twists and turns in line. MAYBE.

Also featuring Grigoriy Cobrygin, Ben Mendelsohn, and Konstantin Khabenskiy.

The movies initials may be BS but this Nazi gold sure is for real!

For the most part, I wouldn’t say I am ever really a fan of submarine movies. I mean, did you see Phantom? That totally was a real movie a couple years ago. Like a submarine itself, submarine movies are kind of limited in terms of what one can do with them. Only so many things can happen on a sub, so a lot of submarine stories end up using the same sort of events. There can only really be one Das Boot.

Despite this, Black Sea had a lot going for it. Enough unique members with a few different desires to make it not a complete one man Jude Law show. It wasn’t just a weird murder mystery thriller. That is what I was most afraid of. And speaking of Jude Law, he did a pretty swell job.

My main issue with it all is the ending. It was lame and cheesy and expected. I was getting pretty excited with how things were going, I was getting super into the story. Then the ending. Meh. I should also note the beginning of the movie is pretty dang slow. It takes awhile to get on the damn submarine, but once they do it, it goes up pretty quickly.

Are you excited? They made a sequel to The Woman in Black!!

Why do I hear crickets? Must be my refusal to try to buy more bug spray. I personally have no idea what anyone else thought about The Woman In Black, and I am far too lazy right now to look something like that up, but I thought it was a dull. Harry Potter did nothing for me. Just was an period piece British film, with a shitty ending, and a shitty everything else also. I would have never guessed a sequel could have happened.

Because now we have The Woman In Black 2: Angel of Death. I have to assume Great Britain went bananas over the first film. I am pretty sure it was a remake or a book or something first, and they probably like anything set in their country.

From what I can tell this thing isn’t even really related to the first movie. Different actors/characters. Maybe a different ghost, but that would be Troll 2 levels of dumb. Honestly, if it has anything to do with the first film, I wouldn’t even remember.

Oh it’s a creepy looking doll that a kid likes. That’s normal in horror now, I guess.

This sequel takes place in World War II, which is either before or after the first film. Again, I remember jack shit about it. We have a very universal concept here. Britain is getting bombed occasionally, so a lot of kids have lost family. Orphans and double orphans. Eve Parkins (Phoebe Fox) is a teacher of orphans, and their school is going to go leave the bustling city of London to live in the countryside instead. You know, where the Nazis should not be bombing. Her headmistress (Helen McCrory), Eve, and a bunch of kids head out to live in an abandoned building, to be safe.

But of course they won’t be safe. This is a horror movie sequel. And it is the country so we have inherently creepy looking people like Hermit Jacob (Ned Dennehy) running around. Thankfully there is a hunky man, a pilot, Harry (Jeremy Irvine), and another guy, the air raid warden (Adrian Rawlins). Gosh, could they be anymore safe?

Anyways. Haunted mansion type movie. Little kids going missing. Mute kid (Oaklee Pendergast) is of course involved, cause that bitch can’t talk.

But oh nelly can he scream. Suuu-eeeee! Suuuu-eeee!

Yawn yawn yawn. No surprise. A sequel to a movie I disliked I didn’t find great. But man, it was just so dang boring. And British. Not that British things can’t be scary. But this doesn’t at all feel like a concept worth even creating. They didn’t add anything new to the horror genre.

It just seems like a ham fisted concept, that vaguely is related to another film, to make money. It is literally Troll 2ing us. Right in front of our eyes. Oh, the ghost is a woman in black, who hates kids? Fits. Done.

Fuckkkk. It is just. It is full of boring characters, boring plot, boring scares, and nothing new. Throwing in a bad ass subtitle doesn’t make a bad ass film. It makes it generic.

Generic horror is maybe worse than generic comedy. Maybe. It’s just the level of mediocrity that we should all avoid in order to make it through the night, actually entertained. Boooo boring. Yay entertainment.