MovieOx

1st, let me give a shout out to Jason Sudeikis for repping an Arthur Bryant’s tee.  What a badass.

He plays a successful, white collar (customers) weed dealer.  He gets robbed in the aftermath of helping out a weird kid (Will Poulter) who lives in his building.  The kid was in turn helping out a homeless girl (Emma Roberts) who sleeps in the area.  So Jason ends up owing his boss about $40,000 (they stole his drugs and money).  The boss (Ed Helms) tells him he can make it back and make more if he’ll go to mexico and bring in a shipment to the US.

Jason doesn’t think he can pull this off, until some tourists give him the idea to sneak in and out of Mexico disguised as a fake family complete with RV.  He enlists the two kids who got him robbed and a stripper who also lives in his building (Jenifer Aniston) to play his fake family, the Millers.

I laughed my ass off watching this movie.  The family all hate each other (except Will) so well.  Ed Helms is hilarious as a crime boss.  Jenifer Aniston takes her clothes off.  I think Emma Roberts will tear some shit up in the future, she’s game and funny.  Will can pull off the most retarded facial expressions of a non mongoloid I have yet seen.  Surprise cameo by Ron Swanson.  And for the final reason to see this film, this sentence is uttered:

“Hey buddy, I’m going to let you in on a little secret, I’m like an amazing sculptor; I’ve been working on it all day; it’s an orca and he’s breaching and I’m balls deep in his blow hole .”

The laughs in this movie come out of the blue.  You won’t expect the direction.  I quite liked it.

Good comedy fare.

I love this book.  Say what you want about Orson Scott Card and his political/religious stances, Ender’s Game is a solid book.  Everything else I’ve read of his was a waste of my time but not that book.

I do not love this movie.  It’s not a terrible movie.  I’d say it’s almost good.  But it’s not good.

In the future, humanity will encounter a race of large ant like beings in space.  The first encounter is called the 1st war.  The aliens then invade Earth, most of humanity’s forces are destroyed but in the upset of all upsets; Kiwi commander Mazer Rakham destroyed the invading fleet with the last gasp of human forces.  Since then all of Earth has united and organized itself to combat the further invasion of the bugs.  Language is standardized and children are monitored and mined for potential military contribution.  Those deemed worthy are brought to Battle School to be tutored in Space combat.

Battle school teaches space maneuvers and their underlying theory by having student organized armies play lazer tag in zero gravity.  The student armies are completely student run.  Soldiers are ranked by individual performance, armies are ranked by group performance.  The internal politics and undercurrents of this school are utterly fascinating.  The slang, games, and various drama are my favorite part of the book.

But almost none of that made it into the movie.

The movie does focus on Ender, but it fastforwards him through his career at Battle School.  It also doesn’t go into what his brother and sister get up to while he’s away at school.  They literally shift the balance of power in the world during his absence but it didn’t make the cut

Spoilerish stuff follows:

I personally think this movie should have been 2 movies.  Not a trilogy like everyone seems to be doing these days, but 2 movies.  The first could end with Ender deciding the teachers at Battle School are actually the enemy and beating the 2 armies by a unique interpretation of the rules of engagement and thinking he’ll be reprimand but surprised by his immediate promotion to Command School.  Then have the second movie focus on Command School and the war.

That way we’d have enough time to go into Peter and Valantine, and how fucking cool Battle School is.  Also I think Ender was poorly cast.  The kid doesn’t look capable of beating an infant to death.  Ender is a killer.  He’s a young potential Hannible Lecter.  Not that he is, just that he had the potential to travel that road.  The kid needs to be a little more intimidating.

I didn’t hate this movie, but I wish they hadn’t made it.  If you tackle a story this beloved you need to go all in or fuck off.

Not a fan.

The more I see of this series the more I rather dislike it.  I actually had to re-watch this movie because I fell asleep the first time.

I get that it’s supposed to be a kind of sci-fi Theseus.  No minotaur though.  Although I guess there is a maze of sorts in the upcoming sequel, but nothing comes of it.  I also appreciate the various attempts to offer social commentary on news programing and reality TV.  But ultimately don’t care.  This comes off as being as light as Twilight.  Almost nothing worthy of holding my attention occurs onscreen.  All the cool stuff is suggested, or happens off screen.  I know, I know, it’s a kid’s story.  Pacific Rim is a kid’s story.  Maybe that’s not fair…  The Princess Bride is a kid’s story.  At some point you have to care about a character for some reason on some level otherwise it’s just…  Spy Hard.

The evil Capitol (who demands child tributes each year from other vanquished states to fight to the death for their amusement) is still the antagonist.  In order to punish Katniss and Peeta for surviving the last games by manipulation of the mob by playing up their (fake, or is it?) love for the cameras; the new tributes will all be former victors.  Hence Katniss will have to compete again.  The new gamemaster (the last one was beheaded for failure) is played by Phillip Seymore Hoffman.  His character is my favorite part of the film, and his character is a massive style departure from the prose counterpart.  That’s all to the good.

There’s some interesting stuff at parts, and maybe I’m being unfairly critical, but the story just comes across as lazy on screen.  That’s because the viewer can’t experience Katniss’s thoughts and nobody likes the internal thought voice over.  Like I said, I fell asleep the first time.

The cast is all great, the books (which are also kind of underwhelming) take place mostly inside the main chicks’ head and there’s almost no actual action depicted in the stories.  So the movie just looks like people thinking about shit.  There’s some monkeys and an evil poison gas cloud.  But mostly it’s just bleah.  With a cliffhanger.

Feel comfortable skipping this.

I mean Coven.  It’s hard to tell at times.

And I was only kidding with that before the mid season point when one of the witches literally became Xavier.  Well, cane instead of wheelchair and presumably vagina and not penis.

Let me back up, the 3rd season of the anthology horror series called American Horror Story is Coven.  It’s about 2 clans of feuding witches in New Orleans.  One originally resided in Salem (white) but relocated to New Orleans.  The problem was group of Voo-doo  practitioners (black) already resided there.  They don’t get along.  The Salem group has a token (Precious) but she defects mid season (gasp!)

If you think about it, something about all the participants being girls kind of hides the fact about it being a flat out race war.  It would sure seem that way if they were all men.  And it might be more offensive to people.  It’s not like it makes the situation less obvious; but something about them all being female brings out a reaction of:  no, no, let em fight…

Anyhoo, the 1st season (Murder House) was surprisingly good.  The second (Asylum)  started strongly, but I got pretty bored of murder/rape before I finished it.  I know, I know.  I wouldn’t believe me without seeing it either.

And I’m watching this season, and will finish it.  The heavyweight addition to the cast this year (there’s always one) is Kathy Bates who is one of my favorites.  However, as a denizen of pre-Civil War New Orleans, she uses a similar accent to the one she had in Waterboy.  Makes it harder than normal to take her seriously.

They also (like other seasons) incorporate some real life murder history with a solid appearance by the Axeman of New Orleans.  That scores big points with my brand of nerd.

Why do I compare it to X-Men?  The witches seem to have specific abilities except for Apocalypse (played by Angela Basset) whose powers are more vaguely defined and seem to have no bounds.  I’m serious, there’s a Rouge, Precious is kind of a human Voo-doo doll where her injuries are experienced by her enemies, a minotaur dude, a Frankenstein(ish), there’s a professor X, there’s a Madalyn Pryor, lots of similarities.  The white chicks live in the X-Mansion, which poses as a school for gifted youngsters.

And the best fights happen on the lawn of the X-mansion.  I’m not saying I haven’t enjoyed the season, just saying the writers are either doing this deliberately or are channeling Stan Lee and Louise Simonson.

But, like I said, I’m still watching.  It’s not boring.

Update:  It really went to shit and the various plots collapsed into a pile of fuckall.  Skip it if you haven’t already.

I mostly like Jackass and its ilk.

I say mostly because sometimes I just don’t have the energy to watch it.  The guys are too good at their work, they produce emotional gut reactions.  If you’ve watched Jackass without a physical reaction (nut-tightening, dry heaving, menstruation, or otherwise) you are actually a dead person.  What’s it like being a zombie?  I bet it’s boring.  Although…

That was starting to get dangerous, anyway… I just can’t watch it all the time because it has an effect on me.  Bad Grandpa is a slight departure from the normal product in that it has an overall linear plot.  The movie is mostly hidden camera crowd reaction gags that most will be familiar with but each advances the plot.

Grandpa (Johannes Knoxville) inherits the responsibility of delivering his 8 year old (I think) grandson to his estranged father who lives across the country.  Grandpa doesn’t like kids, people, his give-a-shitter’s broke, and his long time wife has just passed and he’s out for some strange.  Hijinks ensue.

There’s some funny shit here.  Granpa’s dick gets caught in a soda machine, they enter the kid (male) in a female beauty padgent for cash, and a whole lot more shit.  The main surprise is one of the last bits that will actually make you tear up a little.  Not kidding, it’s not all that sad but it will catch you off guard.  Even with this warning.

Good movie.

I like Chris Helmsworth as Thor.  Thor is a character that could easily be silly or boring by turns.  Helmsworth doesn’t annoy me like the comic book character does.  I also like the way they’ve crafted the different worlds at play in Thor’s universe.  I don’t know who to thank for that so I’ll give credit to the director of the first one, Sir Kenneth Branagh.

I’m a fan of all the Avengers centric movies Marvel has put out so far.  It’s been fun to see.

So what’s Thor been up to since Avengers:

Well, when the rainbow bridge broke everybody not on Earth forgot about Odin’s pimp hand and started acting all foolish.  So they had to be pacified.  Which is where we find our hero and his friends.

MEANWHILE!

On earth Jane Foster hath discovered dangerous magic floating powder that can…  Do something really bad.

MEANWHILE!

On a space ship somewhere the Hannible Lecter legion of Elves awakens from a long slumber…

So Jane snorts the powder, Thor has to go back to Earth to get her and bring her to the realm immortal to save her and meet his parents.  But the Hannible Lecter Klingons (or elves?) attack because they want the powder.  Spoiler: Thor’s mom dies in the attack.  They need a way to sneak the powder out of Asgard, so they have to dust off Loki.  Hijinks ensue.

It’s a solid chapter.  The post credits scene continues with the infinity gauntlet teasers.  I have it on good authority that the next crossover villain will be Ultron who I’m not sure has anything to do with the infinity gauntlet.  Maybe the third one.  Oh well.

Anyway, this sequel has charm and is a solid entry into the new visual cannon Marvel is compiling.  Worth a watch.

This movie is a wretched piece of shit.

Am I being overly harsh?  Is that really important right now with people dying in Syria?

Anyway the commercial for this was one of the best I’ve seen.  I had a Sci hard on.  It looked like the movie was going to do a little Tarrantinoesque borrowing and have some Neuromancer fight scenes which, combined with the direction of Neil Blomkamp (who burst onto the scene with District 9, his sci-fi/kafka epic, which has made me wetter for a sequel than any movie since Starman) and the acting talents of Sharlto Copley, Matt Damon, and Jodie Foster would at least be okay.  And probably epic.  Well it was epic.  It was an epic abortion.

The movie has the basic issue of being boring and preachy but I’ll get back to that in a moment.  It has a basic plot issue that annoyed me for the whole movie.  Attend:

All the rich people in the future are white or Indian (dot) and live off Earth on a luxury space station.  All the poor people on Earth are Mexican or Matt Damon.  The rich have these special beds which can restructure your atoms and as such can cure most (all? it was unclear) disease.  Every so often the poor people get together to launch a spaceship to try and land on the space station and try to storm someone’s house to get their sick kids or what have you into one of the beds.  (the space station security isn’t allowed to shoot them if they can land their ship)  Let that sink in for a moment.

Matt Damon, who’s trying to keep clean and fly straight ends up sick with something and needs to storm the station.  He chats up his former criminal friends and they graft a cybernetic exoskeleton onto his spine in some dude’s garage and they go attack the station to make the beds open for all.

So why does a group of people who posses the engineering knowledge to regularly launch precision space attacks from a planet to a satellite and the medical chops to perform a spinal cyborg graft in some dude’s garage need to go through all this effort for healthcare?  Seriously?  If you can do some garage spine surgery I think you can handle cutting out some cancer cells.  Also assaulting the country club death star also speaks of a rather firm command of science.  And the people in the station?  How many missiles does a magic healing bed cost?  I bet you’ve spent that many so far.  The conflict at the center of the film is essentially just fucking stupid and that effects the entire film.

The actors are all their awesome selves.  Although it seems like Jodie Foster is aware how dumb her character is and is deliberately being a caricature.  Some of the future stuff like the automated parole officer could have been good if the core of the movie wasn’t lazy.  Which just makes you further annoyed by the heavy immigration/racial social commentary.

But Killer Klowns from Outer Space has a better plot.  Avoid this piece of shit.

In a word, disappointing.

I wasn’t as actively offended as I was when I sat through X-men Origins: Wolverine; but I’m not a whole lot happier with this waste of time.

I can see how people might view this movie as potentially worse because it attempts to bring the classic Wolverine in Japan story to the screen.  There’s great stuff there.  Frank Miller and Larry Hamma have both weighed in and there’s literally tons of shit already storyboarded that would make an amazing film. They went with Logan’s introduction to the Yashida clan and all their yakuza assassination shenanigans.  And at one point Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) was supposed to direct it.  But Darren dropped out, so I’ll probably not ever get to see a good Wolverine movie unless Fox somehow loses the film rights.

Light spoilers follow:

Sigh.  Anyway I liked the actress who plays Mariko Yashida, she’s pretty adorable.  I like some of the staging in the early action sequences.  There’re some shots that suggest how Logan deals with pain and injury in his mind, enough to raise my hopes for the film in the early viewing.  Hugh Jackman has always been wrong for the part of Wolverine but he’s not a terrible actor.

However, I hated everything else.  There’s a scene where Logan survives the bombing of Nagasaki, that just does not work.  Enough of the population of earth understands how an atomic bomb functions that all involved should be ashamed of how dumb that scene is.  Pants are apparently fireproof also.  There’s a retarded ninja archer character who has a bunch of screen time, walks around on roofs in broad daylight at public events (I guess everyone is used to seeing him and it’s totally normal) who needed to be cut from the story.  That which has no purpose other than stupid should be cut.  There are several throwaway scenes that do not accomplish anything other than to suggest plot holes.  Lady Hydra/Viper fans (are there any?) should be upset at her portrayal.  She’s a fairly classic villain that deserves better treatment.  In this film she resembles Poison Ivy from Batman and Robin.  Silver Samurai (who there are actual fans of) is raped as well.  They re-imagine him as a really really boring version of Cyber.  Kind of.  It’s really stupid.

Yukio they don’t do a bad job with initially, but she becomes lost in the mix and later fights Viper in the decade’s most boring action sequence.

Said action sequence is really bad.  The Black Clan (does somebody else own the rights to The Hand?) is the most retarded bunch of roof hopping idiots I’ve ever seen and the transition from fighting dudes with machine guns, to bows and arrows, and then to giant cyborgs strains even my elastic sense of credulity.  Also, clearly the best route to the mountain fortress is straight down the only lighted street for miles around.

Also, Wolverine has other abilities besides healing and claws.  Might be nice if writers knew that.

The worst part of the film is actually after the end credits when Magneto and a reincarnated Xavier accost Logan as he’s going through airport security.  Few things; 1) Why airport security?  Xavier doesn’t need to actually be near anyone to talk to them.  2)Magneto is a high profile criminal/terrorist  3)  If this is all the effort they put forth trying to be smooth, the sentinels deserve to win.

Basically this is just a stupid, forgettable movie.

I’m not blown away very often.  Movies have surprised me before, but I’m not sure it has ever happened this much.

We’ve been seeing previews for this movie for awhile.  And it’s not like I wasn’t going to see it.  As I’ve alluded to previously, I LOVE ROBOT FIGHTS.  I’ve seem them all.  From the straight shitty (Robot Jox) to the disappointing (Bay’s Transformers) to the surprisingly good (Real Steel).  I feel the 1986 animated Transformers to be highly superior to the live action version.  I am a veteran of Robotech and Gundam.  I’m the only person who watched Sym-Bionic Titan and who liked Matrix:Revolutions.  This is all to say, I’ve seen most everything the genre has to offer and am not a likely candidate to be blown away by Gundam Wing vs Godzilla and Friends.

I figured Guillermo Del Toro would give us an entertaining effort like he did in Hellboy 2 and that the movie would be a better than average summer tentpole because of his involvement.

I was incorrect.

This movie is fucking amazing.

The plot (which I assumed would just be the normal weak excuses for massive robot fights) was actually great.  It’s still an action movie but it’s got a knack for knowing when you’d like to be cynical and fucking that right up for you.  There’s a dimensional rift in the pacific and gigantic horrible monstors the size of Cuthulu regularly visit from it.  These are called kaiju.  After almost dying out humanity is able to create giant war machines to combat these beasts, called jagers.  The machines link to the human brain but you need at least two to run it as the load is too big for one mind.  And it is better if the two minds are close in some way because the minds have to link to each other to accomplish this.

I don’t want so spoil the wonderful world that they’ve created here by telling you too much.  Veterans will recognize the usual anime tropes, but they’re done extremely well.  Idris Elba is like a samurai Lou Gosset Jr.  Sorry Morpheus, but you’ve been topped.  Charlie Hunnam, who I havent seen since Green Street Hooligans, is an awesome point man for this movie.  Those of you who know Charlie Day from Always Sunny in Philidelphia will love his scientist character.  Rinko Kikuchi and Ron Pearlman round out a wonderful cast.

This movie is epic.  G-Gundam, meets Iron Eagle, and that isn’t the half of it.  It’s larger than life.  It blew me away.

See this movie in the theater.  Now.