Euphoria the TV Series 2019-

I'm going to keep this short. And it's not because I'm feeling particularly lazy today, which I am, but it's because this show honestly sucks. 

One crazy fucked up thing after another, and not in a Breaking Bad kind of way either. It wasn't entertaining, it was absolutely depressing as fuck. There's a ton of drug use, abuse, sex, weird sexual situations, you name it. It's just a cluster fuck of someone's excuse for entertainment. 

Don't get me wrong, the actors were absolutely remarkable, and that is the only reason why even watched the first season. But after a while, I felt depressed just watching this show. I don't like feeling depressed. 

But if you do, like being depressed, that is, by all means watch this show. 

I'm going to give it a completely random, but wholeheartedly fitting 1.2 out of 10 because it just overall sucked. I'm giving the 1.2 for the actors and actresses that made the show at least somewhat interesting.

Road House, 1989 and 2024

 

 

 

"Nobody wins a fight." That's what Dalton says when the hot doctor asks "Do you ever win a fight." And that's just about the only real similarity between these two masterpieces (from James Dalton in the original and Elwood Dalton in the reboot).

Ok so that's not true. In both movies, Dalton is a cooler, a bouncer boss who keeps the fights out of the bar. And there's a bad guy who wants the bar for some mysterious reason for only about the first half of the movie.

Then there's the owner who is paying Dalton an outrageous amount of money to take care of their bar because of all the fights that keep breaking out. And they both killed a guy in their past. Oh, and no one tells them about the bad guy until he finds out about the bad guy, and then all of a sudden everyone wants to talk about the bad guy. And the bad guy seems to have another fighter show up to take care of Dalton. And they both have their Doctor like-love interests.

And wait, there's more! There's that pivotal moment when Dalton, on his way out of town, defeated, angry, and to the point where he has completely given up, occurs. That makes Dalton go a little nuts. Dalton loses all of his goodness and grace and just flips a shit until the bad guys are either dead or in an ER somewhere. In my opinion, in 1989, I thought Swayze really pulled that shit off. He went pretty nuts. But Gyllenhaal takes it to an entirely new level in the reboot. Also, I should mention that one of the original writers Lance Hill also co-wrote the reboot.

Now there are some pretty huge differences between the two movies, too. Let's start with the original. In the first movie, in 1989, Swayze was an actor I looked up to. He was the kind sensitive skinny guy who kicked everyone's ass and got the hot girl in the end. He danced, he did love scenes, he fought, he did it all. Patrick Swayze was in the movie no guy wants to admit they liked, Dirty Dancing, back in 1987, but I actually love that movie. Of course, everyone saw Swayze in The Outsiders, 1983, and that was a movie every guy could admit they liked back then.

Back to Road House, the first one. Dalton gets laid, obviously, with Kelly Lynch, who plays Dr. Elizabeth Clay, and he beats people up, smokes like a chimney, and seems to fix any problem that comes up without any hitch. What drives me nuts, is that this really smart hot doctor doesn't mention to Dalton that smoking could kill him? Maybe give him cancer? Couldn't the writers have just sort of mentioned that just for fuck's sake? I wish I were even being funny saying that. Maybe it was too late by then. Anyway.

There's a small but memorable amount of tits and ass in this movie, namely the doctor, which is on par for nearly every movie like this. And of course the bad guy, Brad Wesley played by Ben Gazzara has his fighter guy that no one really knows come in to take care of Dalton. And has his hot blonde girlfriend dance semi-nude at the bar for...literally no reason at all. It's right about now shit gets weird. Especially the completely awkward fight scene toward the end when the bad guy's bad guy says "I used to fuck guy's like you in prison." Yeah, it wasn't too weird up to this point, now shit just got kinda fuckin' weird. Not that Dalton ripping a guys trachea out of his neck wasn't weird, but I digress. He almost did it again at the end with the bad guy, but chooses to let him keep his trachea. Everyone else in town shows up out of the blue and takes shot gun shots at him and it somehow takes four shots to kill him at close range, and he's not even screaming like mad after the first one either. What's really fucked up, is if Dalton simply said "Hey guys, you wanna come kill the bad guy?" it would have made his life slightly easier taking out all the henchmen.

The biggest difference between this first movie and the second one, is that this one is so damn serious. There is literally nothing funny or even slightly chuckle-worthy in the first movie at all. I mean, Wade offers a mild almost smile at some things, but not much. Mostly he comes in, fights, hits on Dalton's girlfriend, ya know. Best friend shit. But Everyone is serious, the music is serious, all the situations are serious...it's just serious. Oh, and his best friend is Sam Elliott, who plays Wade Garrett. He comes in like he taught Dalton everything he knew about fighting and left out a few parts like dick-punching and knee breaking that he happens to enjoy very much. And he's fucking serious about it. And maybe the polar bear at the end was funny back in 1989 but today? Meh.

So there's a lot to love about the original, but the 2024 version could not have been a better reboot. Sure, it took twenty-five years, but it was worth the wait.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays the new and improved Dalton; an ex-UFC Championship fighter who killed one of his friends in the ring. In this movie, other than the flashbacks to that fight, he seems to have some fun with fighting. I mean, he unapologetically enjoys the fight a lot. And he tries to keep things fair by letting people know, offhandedly, that whatever he's about to do is going to hurt pretty fucking bad. The first fight he's really in, which I'm sure is in every trailer out there, he steps outside and asks the guy if he has health insurance. Then he asks if there is a hospital nearby. And the guy and his three buddies all are glad they have it, because they all wind up in the ER with physical and emotional scars from getting embarrassed so badly while having their asses kicked. The absolute funny part is no one would loan him a car, so he drove them in his car to the ER. While they're driving he says "Bump", just before a bump, and they're all moaning from all the trauma he gave them. It's those little things throughout the movie that make it worth seeing. He has a lot of dialogue in fights, which is honestly pretty funny, like he's not treating his ADHD at all, and it seems even near death, he still has a decent sense of humor about everything. No roundhouse kicks or ripping tracheas out of people's necks, but he's got what he needs to fuck everyone up. Personally, the "this piano isn't in tune" was one of my favorites, as he was bashed up against the piano keys.

And then Conor McGregor, who actually was a legitimate MMA fighter in real life, plays this absolutely insane "Knox" fighter who loves to steal shit, blow shit up, walk around mostly naked and literally does not have an off button at all. Nothing is putting this crazy fuck down. Now I wanna say that, other than doing some voice acting in Call of Duty and a couple other games, this is his first time on screen as an actor. And it better than I expected. He is just the bad guy's bad guy we need here. He's insane, he's angry, while being happy about being angry, and wherever he goes and whatever he does in the movie, he fucking owns it. All of it. It's honestly a great character made for the perfect actor.

Anyway, that's about it as far as the review goes, so I'm going to do a point system for both movies together. Because, seriously, you can't NOT watch the original. I mean, technically you can do whatever the hell you want, but I'm just gonna suggest seeing the first one at some point, even after the reboot. It's always fun to see the roots of a great film. You'll certainly see a huge difference between the two, and hopefully you'll appreciate these movies as much as I do.

Tits and ass: 5. Not much, but it was pleasant.
Music/score: 8 Great music that you'd find in a road house.
Fight Scenes: 8 Both movies had pretty memorable fight scenes, I mean, I should fucking hope so!
Blowing shit up: 8. A lot more at the end of the first, but the second wasn't too shabby.
Humor? : 5. I gotta say, the seriousness of the first kinda canceled out the humor in the second.

Which brings the grand total for both movies to a whopping 6.8, which means absolutely nothing. They were two really fun movies to watch and I would recommend both of them.

Beau is Afraid 2023

After watching the film, I decided to describe who is in it, and what parts they play, because honestly I have no idea what else to write (except what I wrote down below).

Joaquin Phoenix is Beau Wassermann. He just recently played a magnificent Napolean in 2023, and confused most fans with his brilliant role in Joker in 2019. One of my favorite movies was Gladiator in 2000 where he played opposite Russel Crowe as Commodus. Say what you will, he's a brilliant actor can make you absolutely love or hate a character with ease.

Patti Lupone is Mona Wassermann and she is most famous on broadway, with two tony awards, for Evita in 1979 and most recently Gypsy. It's for this reason many people might not recognize her, but she's a remarkable actress and this movie was written for her part.

Amy Ryan as Grace I think her most acclaimed role was as Helene McCready, in not exactly the best of movies, Gone baby Gone (Directed by Ben Afleck in 2007) where she received nominations for Academy Award, Golden Globe and Sag Award for best supporting actress. Most recently, she played Jan Bellows in one of my favorite series in the past few years Only Murders in the Building.

Nathan Lane as Roger. One of my all-time favorite actors, was in one of my favorite recent shows Only Murders in the Building. He was in Modern Family for a few episodes as Pepper Saltzman, but his most memorable role in my mind, and my favorite, was in the role of Albert opposite Robin Williams in The Birdcage 1996.

Kylie Rogers as Toni very recently was in Landscape with Invisible Hand 2023 opposite Asante Blackk.

Denis Menochet as Jeeves. You might remember him in Inglourious Basterds 2009 as the french dairy farmer interrogated by the Nazis. You might not, it wasn't a huge role, but certainly worth mentioning.

Parker Posey as Elaine Bray. You probably forgot this, but she spent about 5 minutes of screen time in Dazed and Confused as high school Queen Bee Darla.

Zoe Lister-Jones as young Mona, who's most known for writing, producing and starring in Lola Versus in 2012.

Armen Nahapetian as Teen Beau, he played Jason in aTypical Wednesday in 2020.

Julia Antonelli as Teen Elaine and she played Grace in Alex & Me in 2018.

Stephen McKinley Henderson as the Therapist Dr. Jeremy Friel. He was, most recently in Dune Part 1, 2021, Thufir Hawat.

Richard Kind as Dr. Cohen, whose most famous role was probably Andy in Curb Your Enthusiasm (2002-2021) but has been in a plethora of films and television shows.

The cast is a complete mixed bag, from Award winning to virtually unknown, so that just incentivized me to see it, to be honest. And after watching the entire three hour film with only breaks to pee and grab a snack, I have no idea what I watched.

This is what I would consider an "awkward" film. I see a lot of movies like this, mostly independent films like Focus Films etc, and they're all fun to watch at least once. This wasn't fun. It was awkward. I felt like I was in second grade and peed my pants in front of my class just watching this movie. 

But all that aside, let's do a rundown of what I could kinda understand about the film. And before you go off arguing that there's all sorts of morals and societal issues built into the film, I would probably agree with all of it. If I had a single clue what I just watched.

Joaquin Phoenix plays a middle-aged balding man who is basically agoraphobic with a therapist who sounds awfully manipulative. Not sure if the therapist is legitimately trying to make Beau crazy or not, but it appears to be working rather well. I mean, not like there isn't a reason he doesn't want to go outside. His neighborhood is a fucking nuthouse. People jumping off buildings, gun shots, whack jobs, someone slipping notes under his door that miraculously make it all the way across his apartment to his bed telling him to shut off his music (which doesn't exist in his apartment). I think he's hallucinating almost everything, to be honest, but I can't tell).

So the story is, so far, that he's about to head out to visit his mother, when his keys and bag are stolen. He left his door open to run back and grab something and boom, gone. When he tries to explain this to his mother over the phone, who is extremely excited to talk to him at first, then turns into a manipulative bitch. He reverts into some child-like personality. Maybe I'm being sensitive, but that's what it sounds like.

Anyway, he takes new meds and has no water, and it specifically states to take meds with water, so, in a near-psychotic frenzy (which basically describes him throughout the entire film) he runs frantically, jumping over rapists and avoiding what can only be described as mental institution rejects, to get to the bodega across the street just to get some water because, for no reason whatsoever, there is no running water in his apartment. Then everyone on the street just wanders into his building like zombies while he tries to fish change for the water out of his pockets to pay. And by the time he gets to his apartment door, which he propped open and has now been rather un-propped, everyone is gone. With the exception of a mostly dead looking body in the middle of the intersection, there is no one on what was just a busy crazy street. He has to sleep outside his apartment on construction scaffolding while everyone in the neighborhood destroys his place. He wakes up to a construction worker drilling something and completely ignoring the fact he exists. Eventually he gets into his apartment, which is pretty much destroyed.

He finally calls his mom on the phone and the call is answered by a UPS guy who apparently found his mother dead without a head or face. The UPS guy is freaking out because he found her dead body smashed by a chandelier. And then the UPS guy said maybe he dialed the wrong number and to call back. Beau calls back but then the UPS guy is totally serious and asks him for permission to check for ID. He does and Beau learns that it's his mother.

So just to recap, we're 30 minutes into a 3 hour long movie about an agoraphobe who is quite possibly hallucinating most of the time, who's therapist is testing out a new drug on him while being super sketchy, and he finds out that his mother is probably dead after his apartment is ransacked by lunatics from his neighborhood.

Then he finds some guy in his apartment while he's trying to take a bath, up in his ceiling, like Spider Man without a costume. The guy falls on him in the bath. They try to both drown each other and escape the bathtub at the same time, which was weird. He runs out into the streets completely naked. And that's not the weird part. He encounters a cop who thinks he's the naked murderer guy (it'll make sense when you watch it) who scares him off with his gun out. As he runs back to his apartment, he gets hit with, what I can only assume, is a bread truck.

The folks that run him over take him to their house and say he was stabbed repeatedly, so they saved him. This is a couple days or so later. Roger (played by Nathan Lane) is apparently a surgeon who fixed Beau up and gave him a place to stay (along with what looks like an ankle monitor for good measure). He calls his mother's attorney and is given an even worse guilt trip because his mother's body is being watched (Jewish tradition of Shiva) and she wouldn't be put in the ground without Beau there. And he's apparently been out of it for about 3 days, but no matter what he explains (getting run over, stabbed, etc) the attorney just tells him in the most asinine way possible to get home.

The daughter of Roger, and her best friend, are druggies and psychopaths, another person living in the house is a homicidal maniac suffering from severe PTSD...

Ok, hold on a sec.

Do we really need to hear more about the plot at this point? I'm going to watch the whole thing because I want to see where this goes, but I don't need to describe anything else right now. He's going home to see his mother, apparently. I guess we'll see how things pan out.

* * *

Two hours and twenty four minutes later:

I have no idea what I just watched. I literally haven't the slightest clue as to what happened, or why, or if it was all in his head, or someone else's.

At this point, you are just going to have to see this just to get it out of your own system. Or not. Was it brilliant? I have no clue. Was there some moral? No idea. Was there really a plot or was it just a bunch of random shit that happened to happen while someone was randomly filming? Most likely.

Having absolutely no clue: 2
Incredible acting: 6
Watching Beau kill his childhood love by ejaculating in her, and thus killing her, because of some genetically screwed up massive testicle problem: 4
Tits and ass: 1

Which brings the totally awkward and useless rating to a 3.25, much like this movie. I cannot believe I sat through the entire thing.

Poor Things 2024

From the get go, this movie is absolutely fucked up. The cinematography is migraine inducing with all the wide angle lens shots and the oddball camera angles. The musical "score", if you can call it that, sounds like what fifty monkeys eventually came up with when handed random badly tuned instruments. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!

We have dog heads on chickens, pig heads on chickens, duck heads on goats, an animal I can't even conceptually grasp at all, and a black and white movie that is just slightly less than black and white; more like almost kinda black and sorta close to white. Like someone fucked with the contrast just enough so you'd notice it wasn't black and white. And maybe the black shadows are black and the white highlights are white, but I am having a hard time seeing it. I think the contrast changes randomly just to fuck with you.

Nevertheless, Emma Stone, playing the role of Bella Baxter, is absolutely remarkable in this role. Willem Defoe looks like his face was patched together by a kindergartner and some duct tape, but that doesn't diminish his role as the crazy physician Godwin Baxter at all. Rami Youssef plays the role of one of Dr. Baxter's students Max McCandles, and he is brought into the home to "gather data" but Godwin is trying to get him to marry her. 

He's a little awkward at best around her. And then he asks Godwin "hey, aren't you fucking your daughter?" I suppose that's reasonable considering the incredible absurdity of it all so far. Godwin explains in rather unnecessarily graphic detail that he's a eunuch and it would take same power to run London as it would to give him any sort of sexual function.

Mark Ruffalo appears as Duncan Wedderburn, the family attorney? I'm guessing as he's drawing up a contract of marriage and all. His character is also fucking weird and looks like he's on opium.

To cut an extremely convoluted story, which about 10 minutes into the movie doesn't really matter at all, Bella committed suicide while pregnant prior to the beginning of the movie. Godwin Baxter finds her, and her unborn baby still in her womb. Through some mysterious and weird medical process, he's able to take the unborn baby's brain and put it in Bella's head. And somehow this works to the extent that Bella is able to somewhat function in society. Ish.

Bella and Duncan, who as I mentioned, was actually setting up a contract for Max to marry Bella, instead run off to Lisbon. At some point he stuffs her in a crate and takes her to Athens, and they wind up penniless in Paris. Over the course of the movie, Duncan becomes more and more jealous and insane because Bella can't seem to keep her vagina to herself; including being a prostitute to live. 

Just before the end of the movie, we finally meet Bella's actual husband Alfie, who turns out to be a psychopathic murderous maniac. At some point, Bella drugs him, drags him back to Godwin's home to Max, and they put a goat brain in his body. And everyone lives happily ever after.

There's a lot of weird fucking going on in the movie, which Bella usually enjoys for the most part. The cinematography is absolutely brutal, as I might have mentioned earlier. From pin-hole cameras, to wide-angle shots which may cause you to vomit if you aren't careful, this movie was designed to give you brain damage.

The movie switches randomly from black-ish and white-ish to color. At first, I thought it was just depending on whether you were in the past or present, but at some point that doesn't even make sense. I thought the oddball camera angles and lens changes meant something too, but I'm afraid I couldn't figue it out at all.
I'm not really doing this movie justice with this review, but I can't watch it twice. I really can't.

So if you are in the mood for a watch-once-and-possibly-vomit movie, please, by all means, watch Poor Things.

Migraine inducing cinematography: 1.
Puking in my mouth a little bit from the "music": 1
Weirdly not sure if I enjoyed Duncan and Bella "jumping furiously": 5
The way Godwin describes the atrocities his father put him through with such creepy nonchalance: 3
Tits and ass: 7
Mixing heads and bodies of different animals for fun: 5
Figuring out the significance between the black and white and color scenes: 3
Figuring out the significance between normal, crazy angle, and wide-angle lens shots: 3
The absolute marvelous cast and their talented acting skills that pulled off an otherwise insane movie: 8
Actually seriously debating whether Emma Stone is my new celebrity hall-pass: 6

Which brings this movie's rating to a completely insignificant 4.2.

Take whatever headache, nausea, anti-vertigo or motion sicknes medication you use before watching the movie, turn the volume down, and make sure the closed caption is on in the language of your preference before watching, and you might get through this movie unscathed.

Fargo, 1996

 

I am going to assume if you are reading past the first sentence here, that you have seen Fargo and are purely curious what I am going to write about it, or you have lived under a rock for the past 30 years and have never gotten around to see this beautiful movie. 

That's not to say living under a rock has certain advantages. For instance, there are a lot of movies that you should be happy you have missed. This is certainly not one of them. This is one of those must-see movies for anyone who considers themselves a movie buff. 

This movie was released in 1996, during the last few years where renting movies at Blockbuster was still a thing. And unlike a lot of movies you would rather wait for to rent, Fargo actually did pretty well in theaters and garnered a lot of positive accolades as well as awards. 

It was written and directed by the Coen brothers, which, if you don't know, created some of the most masterful movies of their generation. Fargo takes place in Minnesota, which is odd, because the actual city of Fargo is in North Dakota. That tidbit of trivia is completely meaningless to the story, but I thought I'd mention it. Not only that, but they filmed a lot of this movie in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, nowhere near Fargo, ND. But that's neither her nor there, just some random trivia I thought I'd share.

William H. Macy plays Jerry Lundegaard, a car salesman that has made some rather shitty and dubious financial decisions with regard to the dealership owned by his father in law. When I say "decisions", I am really saying "he embezzled money" and cheated a lot of customers out of money. In addition to that, he's been using the lot to embezzle money by using invalid VIN numbers with the IRS to evade taxes. Apparently quite a lot of taxes.

When he realizes that everything is going to go to shit due to a government audit (which will completely out his shady tax scheme, and possibly uncover all the other schemes he is involved with), he asks his father in law Wade (played by Harvey Presnell) for a loan. Although the specific reason for the loan is somewhat unclear, it seems that he wants to invest in a parking lot business. 

The scheme is so believable that the father in law invites an investor to join them in a meeting and they decide to just outright buy the business Jerry wanted in on and leave Jerry with nothing more than a finder's fee, if that. This is Wade's way of not only letting Jerry know how little he respects him, but outright insulting him. Now Jerry realizes he's completely screwed. 

With me so far?

So now that he basically has been fucked over by his father in law, he devises a plan to have his wife Jean (played by Kristin Rudrud) kidnapped so he could collect a ransom from Wade, his father in law. Did I mention Wade is pretty wealthy? Even though he is, he has made it very clear to Jerry that any inheritances or money that might be distributed would only be done to his wife and son, but not him directly. Another slight that Jerry is upset about. 

For the rest of the movie, we just watch helplessly as Jerry makes mistake after mistake, trying to get this ransom from Wade. This includes hiring two thugs Carl Showalter, played by Steve Buscemi, and Gaear Grimsrud, played by Peter Stormare, who are at complete odds with each other the entire movie.

Jerry tries to make this entire ransom scheme as simple as possible, but Wade steps in and completely fucks up his plans. Now his father in law is dead, his wife is in danger because Gaear is a complete nutjob, and he still doesn't have the money he needs for his schemes. 

Marge Gunderson, the pregnant Minnesota state trooper who is rather unfazed as only a true mid-westerner could be by this entire investigation, is the calm against Jerry's storm. She is investigating the murder of a state trooper and two other victims who happen to have been driving a vehicle from Jerry's dealership, that, unbeknownst to her, was perpetrated by the very same thugs that Jerry hired in the first place. Now Jerry is completely spooked, the two thugs are spooked, and the movie goes to hell. Oh, and a wood chipper comes into play, which is always nice. And that is about it as far as the plot of the movie. 

The thing about Coen brother movies that I love so much, and find to be so remarkable, is that what you see from beginning to end is merely a snapshot of a situation in one or more character's lives. You aren't arriving in the beginning, nor is the end all perfectly wrapped in a nice little bow tie like most other films. You are simply an observer in a very small yet important window of a situation. You know that there was more to the store beforehand, and you know the story continues on after the movie is over, but it has no bearing on the movie itself. And this goes for nearly every Coen Brother film out there. 

However, this particular movie is one of the exceptions that actually does tie things up rather well. The viewer is left with some questions, there are still some mysteries to be solved, but there is some sense of certainty that the movie is over as far as Jerry's story. 

Fargo is not a fast-paced thriller or action flick, it's not an overly done drama or crime film. It's simply a movie about a guy who has no idea what he's doing, who makes some pretty fucked up decisions, and loses everything in the end. 

Unlike most of my previous reviews, I'm going to simply rate this a 9 out of 10. And this is because I firmly believe everyone should see this movie at least once; twice because you probably missed something the first time. If your repertoire of films does not include Fargo, it is immeasurably incomplete.

Fatman 2020

So what do we have here, exactly?

Mel Gibson was one of my favorite actors growing up (with the Lethal Weapon series, Mad Max, etc) and I was pleasantly surprised that he played this role so well. A mediocre role in a somewhat mediocre film with so-so actors, director, writer, etc...

After his career somehow survived his various career killing situations (google is your friend) that came up over the past decade and a half, he has given us this rather fun-to-watch-once-and-forget movie. 

I should also mention the not particularly well-known director/writer brothers Eshom and Ian Nelms. They are not famous, they've had some interesting kudos at various film festivals, and yet they still kinda pulled off a somewhat courteous chuckle-worthy and goofy Santa Claus movie.

In a nutshell, it's an action comedy flick about Santa Claus having to seek out funds from the Federal Government in order to keep his factory working and keep his elves fed. Apparently they'v'e been living off the government dole for some time, and this year the check is only half of what they usually get. 

Apparently Santa's excuse for the slowdown is that "kids don't believe in Santa" or "aren't very well behaved" et al and has come up a few times to suggest why Santa's elves haven't been as busy as usual, thus the pared check situation. These excuses are basically ignored by the military folks that show up with a proposal: to build weapon parts for a couple months. 

You get right away that the federal government stiffed Santa just to get him to get the elves to build weapon parts, right? 

Well, as it turns out, the government stiffed Santa to get him to get his elves to build weapons parts. Is this a reflection of the U.S. Government and an insight to how our government really works? Could one walk away from this movie with a different point of view about the global insanity that our government leaders create from a need for power and greed?

Probably not.

In the meantime, this extremely spoiled rich kid Billy Wenan (played by Chance Hurstfield) decides he doesn't appreciate the idea of getting coal in his stocking. So he hires "Skinny Man" played by Walton Goggins to kill Santa. He'd already hired him to kidnap and force his school mate into admitting she cheated so he'd win first place in a school project, so what's so hard about killing Santa? Can't be that much of a big step...

So.  

The trailer might suggest that it's just a straightforward action flick, and it's not that far from the truth. There are lots of little plot twists and it's dark comedy is actually close to interesting enough to finish watching the entirety of the film. 

You would expect this to be a rather nutty film, and it is. I mean, the plot is certainly oddball, but that's okay. And the actors aren't exactly a-list, but that's fine. The writer/director brothers are sort of unknown, but that's cool. I had a hard time watching Mel Gibson in anything, to be honest, but it was tolerable. 

I suppose what I'm saying is: I'm okay with this movie. I came in expecting an all out action flick and I saw something rather fun to watch as well. Not as fun as the Gibson classics, but still fun nonetheless. 

As everyone has been pretty much in lock-down on and off over the past 8 or 9 months, and things have gotten pretty desperate with what to watch online, this movie somehow leaked through the cracks and caught my attention. I watch a lot of movies and shows, so I figured, what the fuck. Might as well say something mediocre about a mediocre film. 

Mel Gibson playing Santa and getting shot several times: 5

Overall plot: 3

The scene when the elves explain their diet to the military guy: 7

A movie with barely memorable cast members still doing a decent job at pulling off a mediocre film with a couple kinda funny situations:5

For a perfectly mediocre total of 5 out of 10.

Greenland, 2020

 

You've seen it before. Pretty often, actually. Big thing falls from the sky, gonna wipe out the entire human race, cause Armageddon, the usual. And then there's a person, family, group of some kind who is racing to get to save the planet, or just to get to a safe place, etc. 

Yes, you've seen this movie over and over again since 1916 (yep, you read that right, not 2016) in The End of the World, which, by the way, was about a comet passes by the earth. 

As it turns out, this movie is about a comet passing WAY too close to the earth and what happens when all those thousands of pieces hit. 

However, you haven't seen it with Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin as leads in this film directed by Ric Roman Waugh. Well, maybe you have seen it, so that's good. 

I say "that's good" because this is just a refreshing movie with nearly no hints of humor whatsoever in it. It's a straight on legit drama between John and Allison Garrity (Butler, Baccarin) and how they have to deal with their marriage falling apart. 

Nathan, their son, played by Roger Dale Floyd, is really the center of the entire film, not the comet that comes down and wipes out 75% of humanity. 

The film basically introduces you to the Garrity family, and the fact that their marriage is completely on the rocks. Nathan, their son, has diabetes and he needs insulin on a regular basis. 

So there's your little "oh, yeah, that's gonna suck if a comet breaks apart in the sky and starts wiping out the planet" plot point. 

The Garritys get picked to go to a secret government facility (location unknown) through a huge loud message on their television and phones, while their neighbors question why they didn't get similar messages themselves. 

They then have to fight their way into the airbase to jump on a series of planes to some unknown location for safety. 

As they travel, they get separated, kidnapped, and miraculously brought back together at the last moment to somehow mysteriously wind up not even a mile from a special bunker in Greenland designed to withstand the apocalypse. 

Although you've seen this movie hundreds of times over the past century, it was still fun to see an interesting dramatic twist here and there, some interesting actors you might never get to see in a film, and Gerard Butler. 

I'm going to give some ridiculous algebraic equation to determine a completely random rating. 

Another apocalypse movie: 7

Getting to see Gerard Butler's six pack: 1

Having Morena Baccarin in a movie after seeing her in Deadpool 1 and 2: 6

Somehow believing yet again most of the planet could explode except for one tiny little bunker in some remote part of the world: 6

General sense of everyone is going to die!: 8

 

Which brings us to a noteworthy 5.6 out of 10. 

 

Not the greatest apocalyptic film of all time, but certainly not the worst.

Chef, 2014

If you want to see a very cool feel good exciting drama with and awesome cast of actors and actresses, with an edge of comedy (not too funny, though), that hits you right in the Little Cubans, than this movie is for you!

John Favreau (known for his role in Iron Man, Avengers, Cowboys and Aliens) steps out of the action movie genre into this dramatic happiness as a chef on a quest. The gist of this film is pretty simple. He is trying to be the best he can possibly be and his entire career is being held back from his boss (played by Noteworthy Mr. Dustin Hoffman) when he finds "twitter."  He tweets his way into a series of life changing events, eventually leading him to purchasing a dump of a taco truck from his ex-wife's ex-boyfriend (played by Robert Downey Jr.).

Turns out he always wanted to drive a food truck but felt being a chef was the better option in life. Along the way he gets to know his son, who's been feeling though his dad is ignoring him and not caring about him, and they wind up building a much stronger relationship together. The father son relationship building part of this whole movie was by far the best part of the film, the underlying plot which actually is the best part of the movie, to me.

I have to say it was a refreshing movie that I actually have recommended to quite a few people, including personal friends, which is saying a lot. I don't typically recommend any movies to anyone, but this was just fantastic. To watch the cooking alone was worth the time to watch the movie. I do recommend this film to anyone, regardless if you like to cook or not.

Without getting into detail, I'm just going to throw out a random 8.37 rating out of 10 for this film because it was just fantastic.

Lucy, 2014

Okay, so let me just get one thing straight here before we begin this review of Lucy. Scarlett Johansson is by far one of my favorite actresses. She plays smart, witty strong characters, and has recently made a rather successful transformation to beautiful kinda air-headed roles to super hot action star actress roles. She's ridiculously beautiful and talented and I am rather biased by this for any film she's in. I've been a fan since I first saw her in Lost in Translation (with Bill Murray, directorial debut of Sophia Coppola). She'd done some work before that, but that was the first movie I'd seen her in.

Morgan Freeman is also one of my favorite actors, although I will have to admit, I don't get a hard-on for Freeman like I do for Johansson. Nonetheless, Morgan Freeman is epic as epic can be for a sci-fi film like this.

The film starts with Johansson's character being duped into bringing drugs to a huge drug overlord. She winds up being kidnapped and having a pound of this weird drug surgically implanted in her stomach. Of course, at some point, the bag it's in bursts and the entirety of the bag of drugs gets dumped into her system. Instead of killing her, it makes her capable of using more and more of her brain, giving her super powers and unlimited knowledge of all things in the universe.

She then turns into a computer, compiles all the information she learns in this brief time, and transforms into a rather tiny little USB flash stick.

That's really it. The rest of it is Scarlett Johannson in tight clothing, being an awesome tough bitch with magical powers. Amr Waked played a very believable confused french police detective, by the way, a difficult role to get down as he did.

Directed By Luc Besson
Staring Scarlett Johannson, Morgan Freeman, Min-sik Choi, Amr Waked

Tits and Ass: 10. Scarlett always gets a 10.
Interesting plot : 6
Morgan Freeman: 9
Action sequences: 7
Min-sik Choi playing awesome bad guy: 7

Giving this a 7.8, which, although meaningless, in this case I really mean it, go see this film. It was worth the wait and it was an awesome cool flick to see. 

The Giver, 2014

What happens when Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep get together to make a movie about pseudo-religious freaks that control minds, kill old people (and babies that are slightly defective) all while creating a perfect utopia for a small society? You get The Giver.

Strangely enough, I actually found this movie watchable to some extent. Brenton Thwaites had just played the role of prince Phillip in Maleficent (brilliant film, btw), before which he was relatively unknown. Odeya Rush is one of those young actresses everyone will be tripping over when she turns 18. Not hugely popular, this film may have given her a little bump in her career.

Alexander Skarsgard started his career in Sweden and wound up in a couple decent television series here and there in the past decade. You might recall he was in Melancholia and Battleship a few years back.

The basic idea is there's this utopia place, and Jeff Bridges is the keeper of knowledge that no one else in the entire society is allowed to know because it's all the secrets of the world before the society was created. War, injustice, horrible things done to the environment, death, destruction, etc etc etc. This old guy the Giver selects this new kid (uh, the Givee?) and transfers this knowledge through touch just like magic, man!

With all this knowledge and power, the kid gets stupid and starts trying to escape from this perfect baby-killing utopia outside the borders of their land. He does so by stealing some kind of air bike thing and riding out into the desert, completely unprepared, and then through snowy mountains, to a cabin of people singing christmas carols. We don't know if he ever makes it to the cabin, but he does get past the magical towers. 

Oh, yeah. So there are these towers, and if this kid, the givee, can get past the towers, then magically everyone in this baby-killing utopia will suddenly have all the memories he has (the good, the bad, the ugly) and everything will change. For the good? For the bad? Who knows, doubt we'll see a sequel to this, and doubt it will even be as mediocre as this film was.

Not seeing Katie Holmes naked: 9
Seeing Jeff Bridges in a robe and slippers again: 6
Wishing Odeya Rush was just a couple years older in this film: 6
Completely easy to figure out plot twists: 8
Teenage love: 4
Completely obvious references to religious cult : 9

For a grand total of 7, which is a completely meaningless number designed to help in no way shape or form.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2014

You can't really give this movie a bad review, even if, like me, you are rather cynical having woken up at 5 am when you definitely don't need to be up at 5 am (or anywhere near 5 am for that matter) and are hoping the meds kick in at some point in time so you aren't in pain the rest of the day and might get something accomplished other than having a personal record of how long you can lay in bed before everything goes numb.

So I am going to give this movie a horrible review, only because I can do whatever the fuck I want, but you should stop here and go see it because it was honestly a really really good feel good awesome sci-fi fun movie to watch.

First off, this movie is the sort of thing that needs a sequel as soon as humanly possible. You can't possibly have this much fun and excitement in a movie, action and plot twists and what not, without having a sequel. 10 minutes into the movie, every single person in the theater is thinking "seriously, there better be fucking sequel to this movie."

The PG-13 rating was really the swearing mostly, and might have been a PG rating otherwise. There wasn't enough gratuitous sex, violence or anything else to really give this movie a PG-13, so here's for hopping up a film just to make it so the cool kids want to watch it.

I found the character development in the film was well done, especially with the Rocket Raccoon character played by Bradley Cooper. Bradley Cooper is a pretty well known actor who started his career as a small forgettable spot in Sex and the City before most of the people watching this movie were even born. He played small roles here and there on various television cop shows (and Face in the movie adaptation of the A-Team) as well as a rather fantastic role in the Hangover movies. Now he's the voice of a raccoon with a moral dilemma.

Zoe Saldana. Honestly, if you go see this movie for any reason Other than seeing Zoe Saldana in it, you are wasting your time and money. Saldana is most famous for her lead role in Avatar, Neytiri, where she played a strong female role in an historically male dominated sci-fi genre. In fact, 5 years previous, she played a strong female role in The Terminal (she was the Visa stamp officer that Tom Hank's character kept meeting day to day to get into the U.S). She was Uhura in the newest adaptations of the Star Trek Films, where most of the geeks you will talk to will know her from. I have a lot of respect for strong, hot female lead roles with awesome bitchy to bitchy with exception character development like this movie here. She's an awesome actress that deserves patronage to her films for sure.

Without spoiling the movie at all, because you should see this, it's a pretty typical plot. Everyone meets in some weird circumstances, gets together, not by choice, and overcomes various personal issues in order to save the entire universe from complete and utter destruction, just barely, during the very last 4 minutes of the film. Everything that happens in between is fluff, but interesting and fun to watch fluff.

Notable actor in this film, completely underrated, Djimon Hounsou. You will remember this phenomenal actor was in Gladiator, Blood Diamond and Amistad, as well as more recently the voice of Drago in How to Train your Dragon. A lot of talent, not a whole hell of a lot of screen time, but a worthy addition to this film's credibility sheet.

Director: James Gunn
Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Lee Pace

Gratuitous use of the word Groot: 9
Not seeing Zoe Saldana (who I highly respect as a talented actress) way more naked: 4
Hearing Chris Pratt's voice from the lego movie the whole time you watched this movie : 9
Trying to get "everything is awesome" from said lego movie out of your head: 3
Interesting plot twists you didn't see coming: 5.3
Humorous use of finger gestures: 6

Grand total :  6.05

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 2014

Wow. Okay so this was a very cool film to watch.

Let me just say, like most movie cover images (like this one, with the ape and the gun through the water by the burning bridge, etc) never took place in the movie. I really hate when that happens. I mean, yeah, monkey in the picture was technically riding a horse in the movie and did actually hold a gun....Whatever it's all good.

So the movie basically starts out 10 years after the monkey flu pulls a Stephen King "The Stand" on the world and only a handful of humans are left. Surprisingly the monkeys don't over populate what's left of the world in those 10 years and stick to some small forest just over the bridge from San Francisco.

The humans there in San Fran need to get into the woods where the monkeys are to rebuild the damn and provide power to the city.

To make the movie more interesting and provide the usual plot twists, instead of just making friends with monkeys, offering them information, teaching, technology, etc, in return for access to the damn, we find the usual fuckups on both sides (monkeys and humans) from greed, fear and warmongering, resulting in lots of dead monkeys and dead people. And blown up things.

I wasn't too too excited about watching this film, it was either this or watch porn, and this seemed to be a good waste of an hour or two.

Tits and ass: (Unless you like monkey tits and ass) : 0
Gratuitous monkey sex: 0
Plot twists that could have been avoided by just not being stupid: 9.3
Bill Murray Cameos: 0 (a shame, really)
Violence: 7.5
Sex: 0
Completely random number generated because I finished my coffee: 5.2

That brings this wonderful film rating to 3.14. Don't let the numbers fool you, it was an interesting watch that opened up the way for a sequel.

Kick Ass 2010

Kick Ass, released in April of 2010 did just that. Kicked Ass. We start with our hero Dave Lizewski (played by Aaron Johnson) narrating the first five minutes. Dave basically discusses superheroes, his dead mother and masturbating about his teacher's tits. I honestly believe Matthew Vaughn (directed Snatch and is also directing X-Men: First Class)  added the tissues to the trash repeatedly to remind parents that just because there are kids in the movie doesn't keep it from being rated R.

Once we get past his teacher's tits (nice, by the way, for a Cougar teacher) we get into the movie. I spoil all movies, so I'll try not to spoil this one too. Yeah right!).

The basic premise is the dweeb hates being mugged so he begins his valiant attempt at vigilante justice. which fails miserably. He basically gets his name reversed upon himself (get it? ass kicked?) on several occasions. While getting his ass pounded (metaphorically, thank goodness) he runs into Big Daddy, played by Nicolas Cage, and Hit Girl, played by Chloe Moretz. Chloe, in case you don't recognize her, did voice work for My Friends Tigger and Poo from 2007-2008. Don't let the sweet little voice fool you, though. Her character is vicious and lays a trail of blood and entrails every time she puts her mask on.

Well, as the plot unfolds, it turns out that Big Daddy has a score to settle with Frank D'Amico, played by Mark Strong. Strong played Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes recently, as well as Godfrey in Robin Hood, two blockbuster hits of 2010. He was busy.  Strong has no idea that Big Daddy even exists, and a string of hits against his evil little empire are blamed on Kick Ass because someone actually got a shot of him on his camera phone.

So Frank's son Chris (played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse; Superbad, Role Models, How to Train Your Dragon) sells his dad on the idea that in order to catch the hero, he has to be a hero. So Chris transforms himself into Red Mist, drives around in a supe-d up car and finds Kick Ass. After realizing that Kick Ass is innocent, he finds out who the real culprit is for all the damage being done to Frank's people.

Eventually, he tricks Kick Ass into luring Big Daddy to his demise. Big Daddy's little girl (she's what, 13?) kills everyone in site, but not in time to save her father. Now it's her time for revenge. She takes out everyone in site and then Kick Ass blows Frank up with a Bazooka.

I know. Totally random. But in the movie it makes sense.

It's already rumored that 2012 will bring us another installment of Kick Ass (Balls to the Wall), but that wasn't too hard to swallow when you see that Chris is still alive and looking for vengeance too.

All in all, it was a very fun movie to watch. Kinda hardcore in some spots, like when they cut some guy's fingers off with a cable cutter, microwaved another guy, crushed someone in a car crusher, and then the overall action always ended in guts and brain spew (which was kinda cool). There was certainly a good amount of action, the plot was well thought out and easy to follow, and our hero (Kick Ass) gets the girl Lyndsy Fonseca who plays Katie Deauxma (Which is French for ten times hotter than...). Lyndsy has been all over TV from Boston Public to House M.D. and is also rumored to be in the sequel to this movie. She was also in Hot Tub Time Machine (played Jennie), but we'll get to that movie later.

Here are the numbers:

Gratuitous violence by a 13 year old: 9
Masturbation references in narrative: 3
The Balls it took to do this movie: 8
Unrelenting Spider Man references: 2
Nudity: 1
Cameos: 0
Tits and Ass: 3
Special effects: 7
Geek to Hero: 9

Brings our grand total for Kick Ass to 4.67. Don't let the number fool you, this movie was fantastic.

Zombieland 2009

First and foremost, there's a definite genre for this film. I just have no idea what it is. It's not really your typical zombie movie, it's not a dark comedy, not really a drama. More like a mix between all of these. I mean, if you took the zombie's out of the movie and only implied they existed, it'd still be an awesome movie. So let's just get that out in the open up front, first.

Secondly, Ruben Fleischer won an audience award at the Catalonian Film Festival this year for Zombieland, his Directorial Debut. For his first film, it's got the makings of Fight Club cult classic all over it, cigarette burns in the reel included. Well, except the ending wouldn't garner the "huh?" reaction from like most cult films and you could actually understand almost 99 percent of the movie. It just made perfect sense.

This movie is about living, getting by each day, one day at a time in hopes of finding your twinkie. Think of the way the characters are named. They are all named after a place, when they introduce themselves. Columbus and Tallahassee; not a place they've been or where they are from, but where they are going. Tallahassee, because he's just heading there, Columbus is looking to see if his parents are still alive and they live in Columbus, etc.

So Columbus, played by Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland) meets Tallahassee  who's played perfectly by Woody Harrelson (if you don't know who he is, climb out from under that rock) and immediately hit it off by hating each other, but at least tolerating one another. Then both of them meet Witchita  (Emma Stone, Superbad and Little Rock) Abigail Breslin (who was the voice of Rosebud in Air Buddies and started her career in the movie Signs) and have a very easy time hating both of them. 

 

The feeling's mutual. Tallahassee has no twinkie, no guns,  no car and Columbus has no girl to push the hair behind her ears. The girls are heading toward Pacific Playland because there are no zombies there. Everyone has a place in their mind that has no zombies; the fact is there's no such place.  In the movie, there is no such place where zombies don't run rampant killing everyone.

Anyway, Bill Murray pulls off a fantastic cameo and overall the sound track is the best since Forrest Gump, in my mind. These are the two most memorable things in the movie.

Unlike most movies I review, I will not ruin this for anyone. You really should see this. There's a little gore in the beginning, and the occasional freakish zombie eating intestines, but it's really not enough to hurt the experience. You have to see this movie if only for the Bill Murray cameo.

Here are the numbers:

Random yet wonderfully played Bill Murray cameo: 10. He's fantastic.

Violence: 8.0. There's a lot of it but it doesn't take away from the film at all.

Ridiculousness: 7.0. The entire premise is ridiculous that we'd be taken over by zombies, but if we were, I'd hope to be on the road with these guys.

Not seeing Emma stone at least partially nude: 5.0. I could live with out it, but it would have given the movie some flair.

Tits and ass: 6.0. There are tits and ass, but usually they are being eaten by zombies.

Creative euphemisms for sex: 6.0. There were some, but definitely not enough.

Waiting for the evil zombie music: 8.0. No evil zombie music, thank god.

Watching a geek become and then live the life of a hero: 8.0. Columbus is awesome. He's my hero, but he didn't grab Witchita's hair and pound her from behind.

Grand total of 7.25. 

 

I love this film. I really do. I believe this will come down to be one of the best cult classics of all time.

Land of the Lost 2009

Anyone looking to watch Land of the Lost (LOL for short) for serious acting, stunning visual effects or witty comedy, stop right here. It's just not what you are going to get, so lighten up. Nobody liked this film. I didn't like this film, but just like a child that throws food all over the house, you still love that child and keep trying to force feed it asparagus and carrots and everything else that's good for it.

And that's just what we do with Will Ferrel's odd choice of movies here. Sometimes we're proud of Will's movies. We take them home, love and cherish them and put them in spots of honor in our movie collection. Other times we put them out for the yard sale the day after we buy them or just bring 'em back to where we bought them.

Once you get past the extremely low-budget look to the movie (which is sort of appropriate for LOL anyway), the ridiculous pretense (whoops, which is also sorta, um, like the original series), and the crappy acting (I think we're on a roll here), it's actually kinda fun to watch.

Will Ferrel plays Dr. Rick Marshall, a quantum paleontologist who's sole claim to fame was being ripped a new asshole by Matt Lauer (played by himself) on the eve of the release of his new book, as he tries to explain how time warps are necessary to solve our fossil fuel problem. Matt Lauer plays a fantastic nasty version of himself and eventually uses a fire extinguisher to subdue Marshall.

Cut away three years later, Marshall is in a class of some kind teaching kids about Tachyons when in comes Anna Friel playing the part of Holly Cantrell, Marshall's biggest and only fan. Coincidentally she's hot. She convinces him to fix or repair the tachyon machine and finds that the one place that has the best place to find tachyons is in Devil's Canyon. Or something like that. This is where they meet Danny McBride playing the character of Will Stanton, the redneck

Regardless of what you think about the movie, the cinematography was actually pretty well done. The script was actually pretty funny if you pay close attention to what Will Ferrel is actually saying everytime something happens.

"Captain Kirk's Nipples!"

"What a piece of crap! The machine, I mean, not A Chorus Line. I love Show tunes. They really tell the story of the human condition."

Just totally random weird shit. Completely serious.

Anyway, so Marshall winds up in another time/dimension/place/set with Holly and Will and immediately finds a viking ship and a Cessna. In the home movie he's making he describes Will as "Some trashy trailer park reject that smells like malt liquor and feet..." and Will says "I'm standing right here!".

Okay, not roll on the floor funny, but situationally funny.

Enter Chaka, some form of bipedal life (slightly monkey, kinda human) played Jorma Taccone who as it happens  to understand english within about 10 minutes of being introduced in the movie. Totally feasible, of course.

Anyway, enough of the plot. The script doesn't really put a lot into it, so why should I. The rest of the movie is fun to watch and the dialogue is actually pretty funny mostly. Leonard Nimoy plays a cameo, which gives some amount of life to the movie.

Here are the numbers.

Overall Ridiculousness: 7. Could have definitely been more ridiculous. For instance, there could have been midgets. No midgets in this film except possibly Chaka.

Violence: 3. No violence, really, except the dinosaur stalking Marshall, but that was just funny.

Tits and Ass: 0.0. None. Except for maybe some indirectly at the very end which I won't talk about because I don't want to completely ruin the movie (as if I could).

Random dialogue: 6.0. Funny enough to keep the movie along in between smoking your crack pipe to stay interested.

Completely random number: 4.

Overall 2.5.   Funny, bad effects, somewhat good dialogue, and Anna Friel in a wife beater and shorts. Meh. It' was altogether mediocre but I liked it about as much as I liked the original series, which, mind you, sucked.

Quantum Leap: in 144 words.

Quantum Leap: Sam jumps person to person for 5 years, gets laid once? 

 

Turns out was just god's mean joke. Jumps forever; Al keeps living. Sucker!

Crank 2: High Voltage 2009

I'd like to personally thank Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the directors of Crank High Voltage (aka, Crank 2), for taking the time and effort it obviously took to incorporate as much tits and ass as humanly possible into a movie that has nothing to do with tits and ass whatsoever. 

 

Watching something like Animal House, or Van Wilder, or any National Lampoon movie since 1983, you actually expect tits and ass. and are then completely disappointed when you get the shaft. You expect it and you get jipped when you get like four seconds of the side of some body-double's boob. Sorta like Crank (the first one, that is).  So tits and ass do not make a mediocre movie into an incredible one, but they certainly do take one's mind off the senile fuck that came up with the premise to the sequel here.

I'm thirty-three minutes into this movie and there's more tits and ass in this movie than the last four movies I reviewed, and most of the porn I don't bother finding any pertinence in, combined. There's fucking, there's spanking, there's nudity, there's strippers, there's jiggly juggliness, there's even hookers and mostly naked chicks with guns running amok. In fact, whenever there's something completely mindless and ridiculous going on, count on naked girls to show up with guns. 

But does this make a good movie thus far? I really think this is what the last movie lacked completely. Maybe the directors felt that too much sexuality in the  first movie might have distracted the casual viewer from the fact that Efren Ramirez (Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite) played a cross-dressing freak and that would draw in audiences all on its own. Instead, now Efren plays the freak's brother, who happens to have something the movie refers to (in big bold letters) "Full Body Tourette Syndrome." Apparently one out of every six billion people have it, and it happens that Venus (Ramirez) just happens to show up on a scooter to rescue Chev (Jason Statham) from being arrested by the police. 

There's nothing wrong whatsoever with Jason Statham's acting, either. I really did enjoy his parts in Snatch, The Italian Job, as well as a few others. Although my review of the first Crank movie was a little rough, this one, I think, might come across a bit more respectful.

But before we get there, let's take a look at the premise:

Three months after his supposed death in the first Crank, Eve Lydon (Amy Smart) has begun pole dancing. Completely coincidental, in fact, that Chev happens upon her in a completely random strip club that he just happened to find out about from a hooker that he saved. But no, life would be so easy if it just followed simple laws of physics. Instead of dying, Chev just sort of bounced off a car, landed on the asphalt and was literally shoveled off the pavement and thrown into a van. When he woke up, it was three months later and he had a plastic heart installed into his body while he was still awake by two surgeons who looked vaguely Asian. Of course, he was required to recharge the battery pack that came with the heart (as he found out by someone who's number he happened to know by heart (get it?) and Dr. Miles coincidentally was a heart transplant expert played marvelously by Dwight Yoakam), and when that got screwed up, he looked for someone to mess with for the rest of the movie that might try to electrocute him. A few someone's, in fact.

Make sense yet? Guy broke the battery to his plastic heart, so he has to keep charging his heart up any way he can. Get it?

So here's Chev running amok and plugging himself into anything with electricity. You are probably thinking to yourself "How many ways could the directors possibly defy the laws of physics and yet make it even somewhat believable?"

It turns out three. Getting tazed, fucking and when the EMT used the paddles were the only three activities (the middle one worked because it generated "friction" and gave a great excuse to watch two people go at it on a horse track) that would not actually kill him outright. Just for giggles, let's see how he tries to recharge:

1. Wiring ignition cables to it.
2. Getting a Jump Start using jumper cables and his tongue
3. Getting tazed
4. Electronic Dog Collar
5. Rubbing up against an elderly woman at a horse track
6. Fucking extravagantly on the horse track itself during the race
7. EMT jumping his heart with paddles.
8. Massive electrical transformers (which, then, also transformed the movie into a really awesome king kong versus godzilla (except with mutated characters) sequence which was hysterically funny)

9. Not so massive electricity transformer on top of an electric pole which nonetheless catches his hair and clothing on fire and causes him to hallucinate that he's screwing Eve and not burning the weird asian hooker that he previously saved at the beginning of the movie. 

By the way, GREAT Cameo by Ron Jeremy playing a raucious picketer in the movie. Very cool. And then we had another great cameo by David Carradine (RIP) who played the 100 year old horny Fu-Manchu Asian man  Poon Dong who actually was the recipient of Chev's heart in the first place.

Okay, so we get past all that to the final big finale of tits, ass, guns, knives, nun-chucks, a random head in a fish tank, nude women, fire, electricity, a pool, gorgeous backdrop and hallucinations and the movie finally ends with Dr. Miles transplanting the heart into a burnt wrapped body during the credits. So not sure how this will work out, whether there will be a Crank 3: Fucking for dear life or not, but I'll be sure to watch it.

So here's the break down:

Tits and ass: 9.9. This is officially the best tits and ass movie I have yet to see that Scarlett Johansson wasn't in.

A completely randomly generated number: 5.1

Overall Ridiculousness: 8.5. This movie was just plain ridiculous, but started making fun of itself about half way through, so that was awesome.

Violence: 7.0: There was non-stop violence, but mostly really ridiculous violence (like sawing off one's own nipple) that was just sort of too stupid to be called violence. 

Violins: 0.0. There were no violins of any type in this movie at all.

Fucking: 8.9 Extremely well done, particularly because it's during a horse race on the horse track while horses are jumping over them in front of thousands of people.

Special effects: 8.0: The cutaways were kinda cool, but there weren't all that many noticeable special effects to draw away from the ridiculousness of the movie.

Random cutouts to completely random situations that were just plain funny as all hell: 8.8. This happened often, they were always ridiculous and funny and lent to a better experience.

So overall I rated this movie 7.025, which is pretty damned good. I really couldn't believe a sequel could be better than the first, but this certainly was.

500 Days of Summer 2009

This was an awkward movie. Picture that one girl you met several years ago, the one that says "we should just be friends" and proves it by fucking you consistently, and leading you on every day toward an end that you know will involve you having the feeling of being shit on by everyone in your life simultaneously.  All while saying, "no really, we're just friends. We shouldn't put a label on this. Honestly, I'm just happy as we are here and now, friends. Wanna fuck?"

Yes, I've been on the receiving end of the Summer (Zooey Deschanel) character. I've been Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) quite a few times in my life. And every single time it's because she had a boyfriend. This movie's no different, really, except the boyfriend doesn't come in until day 460 or so. So at least that lends the character of Summer a tiny bit of credibility. And sure, she was up front in the beginning. First time they talked for more than six seconds, she laid it out (in more ways than one, of course) the way she felt and then proved it by just being as romantic as possible with the shmuck Tom.

And Tom is a shmuck, just like I was, just like you were, just like most nice people are. You might be a shmuck and not even know it. Summer just used Tom until she could find her true love, which, of course, wasn't him. She was practicing. Well good for fucking her.

Let this movie be a beacon. An indicator. If you watch this movie and say "yeah, who needs labels anyway?" then you, my ignoramus dipshit of a reader, are a fucking shmuck.

But aside from that, this was a really well done movie. Usually the skipping from day to day back and forth would aggravate me (much like The Fountain did when I reviewed it) but in this case it was pretty helpful. The scenes skip so you can see where everything was particularly fucked up.

Like for instance, there's a scene where they are in a restaurant. She says "where are we going. what is this?" etc. He says "aren't you happy?" and then a little while into the movie, the same scene, roles reversed, happens in his car. The first one, they are in the process of breaking up, shit sucks, and he has no clue what to do. The second time (which, chronologically is the first time) they are both happy to be a part of each other's life. Stuff like that was pretty cool.

And at the end, of course, just to make this movie rounded out a sappy love flick that's trying not to be a love flick, he gets emotionally mangled by Summer just to bump into a new girl Alison (Rache. Boston). That, of course, worked out great as he poured his soul to her about, guess who? Summer.

Yep, she took that longer than most girls would, but Rachel Boston just literally must of walked off her canceled set of Ex-list onto the set of 500 days of Summer before they shot the scene in the diner, so she wasn't exactly in any rush to go anywhere. She finally smartens up and leaves while he does karoake poorly and drunk, and he bumps into Summer while he's moping at his favorite spot in the park. She's not stalking him, of course. So he tries to get on with his life by going to 10,000 interviews as an architect because that's what he was studying before he wasted several hundred days with Summer. So on the very last interview before he basically has no other place to go, he bumps into a new girl while waiting for the interview. She's interviewing for the same job. Her name is...

wait for it....

Autumn.

Autumn, of course, is the fabulously sexy Minka Kelly who's extensive career thus far includes such renowned movies like Devil's Highway, The Pumkin Karver and... well, this movie. Yeah, I have no idea either, but she's gorgeous.

The particularly interesting thing about the film, the thing that got me, was that the narrator (there's a narrator, and his name is Richard McGonagle, and he's appeared in or done voice-overs for EVERYTHING you've ever seen) actually says at one point "this is not a love story," when, in truth, it was a love story. Like when she said "we should just be friends" and fucked him ass-way-backwards throughout the film.

Alright then. There's my rant of a movie review. Now for some points.

Reality: Horribly bad Karoake done extremely well: 5.4

Tits and Ass: There was absolutely no tits and ass in this movie: 0.1

Masochism: You really like this movie although it hurts like hell to think that the very movie you are watching right this second is actually something you could have written the screenplay for: 7.3

Simulated sex: All sex that appears on your screen, regardless of how real it looks, really is simulated. The shower scene was portrayed rather well, particularly leading up to it parts. 8.1

Visually the movie was very stimulating, shot very well. You can see several shots that really made the film and I was impressed by the overall tone of the movie. 8.2

Aggravated that not only does Zooey look like my ex, but so does the "look-a-like" Kathryn Weisbeck, if not moreso. What, did someone steal my frigging brain for a week? 3.5

That brings us to a total of 5.433. Just a pubic hair over average. I would see it again.

Idiocracy 2006

This work computer is really pissing me off. After a year of using a laptop and getting used to there being a nice little neat touchpad down there in the middle of the keyboard, and having all the keys nice and flat so they don't make noises when you type, I'm lucky I haven't thrown this whole system through a wall yet. ARGH. Which makes writing reviews, by the way, much harder. Fucking shit! I can't even get the stupid spell checker to work on this fucking thing. Argh, I am not in a good place right now.

Well, except for the most ridiculous movie of the year so far, which was Idiocracy. It stars Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph, two people who are stuck together unceremoniously in some weird army experiment. The premise of the movie, is they take two "morons" and stick them in capsules and wake them up a year later.

Well, unfortunately, things go bad somewhere and they wind up being forgotten. 500 years later, in a garbage dump avalanche gone horribly bad (you ever hear of a good avalanche?) Luke Wilson's character winds up in the parlor of Dax Shepard (who's character is a lawyer) while he's taking a dump on his toilet/couch. He freaks out, and goes to a doctor played ingeniously by Justin Long, and winds up in jail for being so smart, basically.

Long story cut way way way...WAAAAAAAAAAY short:

He becomes secretary of the interior. Can you name our secretary of the Interior without looking it up? Exactly. Completely ridiculous eh.

I really don't want to go too much into this one, because although it was funny and very worth my while watching it, I have a splitting headache from laughing so loud at it. I watched the movie right before I watched Eulogy, but I'm still reeling from it.

I'm not going to do my usual breakdown on this one, as it was just too funny to really pay attention to much going on in the film.

So, just this time, go out and rent Idiocracy purely because I told you to. I'll even rate it a random 7.9 for shits and giggles if that makes you feel better about yourself in the morning. It's really really stupid, and that makes it quite funny.

It's especially a good movie to watch if you sit there thinking how bad your life is, and you are completely depressed and stuff.

It's like a paper towel: a quicker picker upper. Yeah.

Eulogy 2004

I've actually seen quite a number of movies over the past couple weeks, but as my computer died on me recently, I've been quite unable to share them with you. So I finally broke into a work computer far enough that it actually plays videos I find online. It's rather dead tonight so I thought I'd share this little gem with you.

If you haven't seen Eulogy yet,  you are certainly missing out on a really fun movie. Technically it's a drama, and there are a lot of serious issues being developed in the story, but really it's a comedy neatly disguised as a drama acting like a comedy laughing at the drama going on in a comedic yet dramatic sort of way. Ish.

The story is simple. Grampa dies and everyone shows up for the funeral, and within seconds you realize no one in the family likes either Grampa or anyone else for that matter, except for the main character Zooey Deschanel who plays Kate Collins, the granddaughter. Apparently she is the only one that liked Grampa. She also narrates the film.

Kelly Preston plays Zooey's lesbian Aunt, who's lesbian feance happens to be none other than Famke Janssen. For those of you who live under a rock, Famke Janssen played Jean Grey in the X-Men movies. And, for those of you who are blind, she's drop dead gorgeous.

Anyways, Ray Romano plays Grampa's son Skip Collins, and he's a divorcee with two sex starved 11 year old boys. How you somehow become sex starved at 11 I have no idea. When I was eleven, I was climbing trees and farting at the next door neighbor's daughter for fun. I wonder what ever happened to that girl...She was so awesome. She liked me. Once she threw an oil filter at my head for no reason at all. It was love at first site. I ripped a tree (it wasn't a big tree, and I was a pretty strong kid at 11) and threw that back at her. I think because it was a couple weeks belated she didn't understand it was retribution for the oil filter thing, so that didn't work too well in the whole "ha, so take that!" department. This went on for days and days until her dog ate her.

Where was I.

Oh yeah, so ya got Kelly Preston and Ray Romano, two very strong actors, and then their sister is played by Debra Winger, who plays a neurotic Alice Collins. Alice is basically the epitome of a (did I already say neurotic?) bad sister; completely judgemental towards Lucy and her lesbian lover (can you just picture Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen triple-tonguing the skin turbans? I can.), who talks so much her husband and kids are literally in fear just thinking about talking.

Rounding out the story is Hank Azaria, another son of Grampa who plays Daniel Collins, who is just brilliant no matter what role he's playing. He plays an obscure adult film star who got his childhood fame by being in some peanut butter commercial. go figure. Hot sticky goo in the face- things just don't change for him apparently.

Regardless. It's a really cute story about how no one really knows what to do and how to react to Grampa being dead, so they just take out all their psychological issues on everyone else in their family.

The whole time you watch the movie, though, all you think about is Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen double-teaming the soft naked enchiladas. No offense, but really. I've literally paid attention to nothing else other than those two and the thoughts of them finding how many licks it takes to get to the center of their vagina pops. I think I have to change my shorts.

But really, things could be worse. Oh, and I just realized that Hank Azaria plays the part of Katey's (Zooey Deschanel) Dad. See, somehow I missed that until just now. Crap.

I think the neatest part of the movie was the cameo by Rene Auberjonois, who was basically famous for playing the part of Odo on Deep Space Nine, among seven  million other tv show appearances. You know he started his career as a voice over on the Jetsons? He was also on the tv show Bensons, which I think he was most famous for, and most recently a role on Boston Legal. Just random filler for this review, basically, but noteworthy nonetheless.

So here's the official countdown:

Thinking of Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen doing the naked bungee noodle slip a dee doo da day- 10.0.

Actually seeing Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen participating in the two-way Indy 69 thousand- 1.0.

Not caring about whether Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen actually do it on screen or not but getting off at the mere thought of it the entire time I watched this movie, thus, missing most of the movie- 10.0

Trying to come up with creative euphamisms for Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen getting it on the lesbian way- 10.0

You know, I really can't stop thinking about Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen lip-locking the fandango buffalo monsters, so I'll throw in another- 10.0

Okay, seriously. This movie was actually very heart warming, and it was awesome to see Debra Winger as a psychotic bitch, but it certainly wasn't anywhere close to as exhilerating as thinking about Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen riding the naked tuna boat to charlieville- 8.0

I really need to stop thinking about Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen. So, in lieu of a reference to lesbian sex, let's concentrate on some other fine aspects of this movie. Like when the two twin hormones freaked out their aunt by ripping into their birthday cake and shaping it like two breasts. That was kinda funny. 5.0

Oh, and when Grampa's wife OD'ed, and they pumped her stomach, Ray Ramano is saying on the phone : "Hey sis, did they puke her? Alright, I'll spread it...Aight, bye...[hangs up phone] She unswallowed."  That was the best puke euphamism of all time. That inspired me to write a love poem about puke a while back. For that line alone, I'll throw in a 7.5

Wishing I was 11 and my aunt was dating a hot lesbian (well, like I said, it wouldn't have really mattered...)- 5

Overall experience- 7

A completely random number I chose because I have to pee-

Which gives this movie a grand total of 7.0.

And just in general, I hope you are not taking 10 to mean "Must See" and 1 to mean "avoid at all costs". It's just a stupid numbering system. I mean, look here, I put 10 this time, and usually I only put 8. I must really be bored.