IHAO on ... Boyhood

This is the second in my series of Best Picture nominee reviews for the 87th Academy Awards, the first being Birdman, or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance.  A little backstory, since this movie actually has some: this movie took 12 years to film.  It actually films in semi-real time a story about a child, and his growing up.  Actors signed up and worked for 12 years in short stints, including our lead little kid actor.  It is a huge stunt, and something that absolutely needs to be watched.  So let's dig in.

*turns on the blu ray*

*turns off the blu ray ... almost three hours later*

Ugh.

Roll credits.

Boyhood.  A film that took 12 years to make.  12 years to write this script.  12 years to come up with a story that was worth watching.  Instead, we get a drama about all the moments that are just about people talking about the moments that were worth watching.  Why show a divorce when you can hear people talk about it after they are emotionally over it?  Why show a kid excited about a scholarship when you can just have him talk to a random NPC out-of-nowhere character we only see in this scene to talk about it?  Why show a kid having a hard time with classes and homework when you can just have random characters show up and telling him that he is doing bad at turning in his homework and such?  Why have plot when you can have conveniences and coincidences?  There are multiple scenes where characters talk about things that happened in this kid's life that WE DO NOT GET TO SEE!  WHY NOT?  WHY DO WE JUST GET LIP SERVICE INSTEAD OF REAL FILMMAKING AND STORYTELLING?!

I do not want to disregard the gamble and the work put into this film.  Filming for 12 years, making decisions on the fly, having to cast your actors at a young age and hope they continue to do well all throughout.  And I won't even say that the gambles didn't pay off, with Ethan Hawke getting his big resurgence recently.  But I cannot say this is a good movie.  It isn't a bad movie, or even an average movie.  But it is not a good movie.  It fails to be about anything that mattes.  It is like watching a fake documentary about uninteresting people.  It is just people talking about things that happened between cuts in the lives of these fake people.  There is only one sequence that kind of has anything actually happening, and that is the end of the "first act" if I can even call it that.  What a novel approach to filmmaking, film a bunch of idiots doing nothing, talking about nothing ... well, not talking, more like mumbling.

I cannot understand how a film that's only achievement is that it took a super-long time to make, had no final script, and barely does anything beyond just being a movie.  It doesn't strive to do anything but an exercise in filmmaking.  It doesn't succeed at anything it tries to do, it merely accomplishes them.  It isn't hard to be perfectly in "period" when it was shot in order over 12 years.  It isn't hard to show a child grow up when he literally does that and you don't have to work for it or do any filmmaking, clever writing, or make up.  This movie just wastes time, showing its theoretical exercise as some huge technical achievement, and people act like it is.

I am mad that so many people are talking about how amazing this film is, when it isn't!  It is nothing.  It is the lack of art.  It is an exercise.  Even I was bamboozled by it in this very review!  I was all "this movie isn't mediocre, it is good, it really is!" and then I list all the terrible problems.  All the details that prove that statement.  This film will be remember as an exercise, and completely forgotten outside of that.  I do not, cannot, and will not recommend this middle of the road, boring, LONG AS HELL, talk-fest that does nothing of value.

Grade: C-

IHAO on ... Scrooge

I do not like the Christmas Carol.

Yes, yes, I'm a heathen, I'm wrong, I should be punished, yadda yadda yadda.  I do not like the story of a Christmas Carol.  While there are adaptations that have warmed my heart, like the Muppets and Mickey, most leave me cold, like Patrick Stewart's, Kelsey Grammar's, George C. Scott's, the list goes on.  But there is an old 1970s version, staring Sir Alec Guinness and Albert Finney which I have never seen, and for some people, it is there definitive version of the story!  So I strapped on my big boy pants, sat down, and got ready with a clear conscience to give this one a shot.  And ... it was fine.

Yeah, I was expecting something bigger.  But it was just ... fine.  It just kind of averaged out to a fine film.  And I say "averaged out" on purpose, because there is some stuff I love, and some stuff that I really hated.  And sometimes they are the same thing, actually.

Like ... let's talk about "scope."  Scope in a film is how enormous or small something feels.  Lord of the Rings films have ENORMOUS scope, and their influence vastly changed the scope of most films, making many adventure and fantasy films enlargen their scope when a smaller scope suited the story better.  Look at the Walden Media Chronicles of Narnia films.  They tried to emulate that enormous scope of the Lord of the Rings films, when those are really much smaller more intimate stories that use scope sparingly to really emphasize their points in the books and earlier, far superior adaptations.  And Scrooge's scope is very large.  It makes London feel bustling and big, and truly I loved that in the beginning, seeing the thriving city and the enormous sets.  But then you reach Scrooge's house where it is just ... empty space.   Or the scene where he walks through the city, finding people that owe him money and you start to get lost in a sea of faces that are hard to remember.  And all the pathos you are supposed to have for the Cratchets gets lost because of the soup man, and the puppet guy, and the old ladies, and the annoying kids.  And you reach the musical numbers which are all just huge and ... impersonal.  Or even worse, detrimental.

"Thank You Very Much" is such a bitter song because Scrooge doesn't get the joke.  He doesn't know what the people are really saying, and the entire song and filming of the sequence is ENORMOUS.  The entirety of this little burb of London is singing and mocking Scrooge.  Compare that with the scene from the Muppets Christmas Carol, where Scrooge watches in as his maid sells his curtains.  In the Muppets version (which I do believe is much closer to the written story, by the way) you watch as Scrooge starts to piece together that this is a future where he is dead, filling him with dread.  But with "Thank You Very Much" he doesn't get that.  Scrooge doesn't see that at all, he just goes along merrily, and the point loses all its nuance.  And then he goes to hell.

Oh yeah, he goes to hell in Scrooge.

Albert Finney is really good ... but also is directed to be very broad.  Everyone is.  Everyone's acting is just as broad as can be.  The nice people are the nicest.  The mean people are the meanest.  The jovial Scrooge at the end is big and just silly with joy!  And that is ... boring.  There isn't anything interesting, like with Uncle Scrooge from Mickey's Christmas Carol pretending to still be mean (again, a scene I do believe is in the original story) but having the hardest time because he is BURSTING WITH JOY!  That bursting is like ... ok, here's the difference between the acting.  Finney, in that final scene, is a bucket of joy.  Just a whole bucket that is filled with joy, and you can see it.  But Uncle Scrooge is a water hose of joy that is all kinked up as the joy builds up pressure trying to push its way out.  And the Uncle Scrooge version is just plain old better and more interesting as acting.

I think Scrooge is a very average film, filled with large, broad brushstrokes of skill.  It is not subtle, it is not realistic, and it loses all those little details that makes good adaptations of a Christmas Carol so great.  Scrooge is in no way bad.  But for me, it gets lost in the shuffle, and I cannot honest say that I really ever want to see it again.  If it was on, I may watch part of it.  But I'm much more likely to turn it off, or put on a version of a story I hate that actually ended up making me like the story.

Grade: C

Hey, guess what, tomorrow is CHRISTMAS!  So you can beat I won't have any reviews for tomorrow or Friday, because CHRISTMAS!  But, I will the next week start a whole week of 2014 in Review articles, including a special AMA about my favorite or opinion on "best" THINGS of the year!  It'll be a hoot!  It'll be wrestling, and tv, and movies, and randomness!  And it'll be glorious!  I'll see you guys on Monday for the BEST WRESTLING of 2014 review!

IHAO on ... a bunch of movies!! - 26 Reviews

Hello everyone! 

Time is an enemy to everyone who is trying to do anything important.  Or at least time-sensitive.   I love being able to write reviews for everyone about everything, current, old, wrestling, television, just on everything, as well as writing all the sillier or more intricate reviews, like the Arbitrary Numbers and the Fantasy Bookings.  But that leaves very little time for me to be able to actually cover everything.  I can’t put out two reviews a day, because that is too much to ask you folks to read.  And I only put out 5 a week, but every week there is probably on average one new film or wrestling event to writing about, and that takes a slot.  Then there are weeks with many films, like I’ve had recently and will be moving into with Oscar season continuing.

So I came up with an idea.  I asked my facebook to give me a list of movies that they did not think I had seen.  I absorb entertainment and media like a sponge, and have watched a LOT of movies.  This way I can give shorter reviews on a bunch of things people might not think I’ve seen, as well as have a fun bank of things to come back to when I need inspiration.  In the nice long list of films, I probably saw a fifth of them, which is a great number.  So I’m going to review all 26 of the movies that were suggested that I have seen.  This will be a rapid fire barrage of reviews.  Let’s get going!

 Dinosaurs! – Nicole Clockel
An edu-tainment Claymation-y fun short about dinosaur life.  I remember specifically sitting with my best friend at the time, Karl, when we were 7 or 8 at his house, and between playing TMNT SNES games or with figures or running around outside, we watched this little video.  I’ve seen it since then as well, but it is a silly thing to talk about.  It is purposefully silly, and all kinds of weird, but really enjoyable.  It is on youtube, and I’ll linky it here.  I definitely think it is worth your time, because of nostalgia for some of you and just for fun in general.  It isn’t great by any means, but it is fun.
Grade: C+



Rat Race – Lenton Lees 
The semi-rebooting, more “another version” of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Rat Race features an incredible cast, and is a big ole chase/race comedy.  It is hilarious, has some heart, and some awesome music.  It is probably one of the best comedies to introduce people to a bunch of great comedians all at once, including Mr. Bean, Seth Green, Whoopi Goldberg, John Cleese, Breckin Mayer, Amy Smart, and Jon Lovitz.  Really enjoyable, though it doesn’t quite shoot that extra mile.  It sits in a nice comfortable zone that most good comedies do, where it is real good, but the actual film never tries to be any greater than that.  Highly recommend.
Grade: B++

The Longest Yard – Lenton Lees
Wrestlers!  Sandler the last time he was funny!  Except there’s sequences of it totally not being funny, too, because Sandler has to always ALWAYS write his characters as having enormous penises or getting the hottest women in the world.  But that’s fine, because that has very little actual impact on the movie.  This is probably one of my favorite sports films I’ve seen.  It actually goes that extra mile in film quality and technique, as well as just having incredible actors in Burt Reynolds, William Fichtner, Terry Crews, and a slew of awesome wrestler … not “cameos” as everyone’s screentime and character weight is larger than that.  It is an incredibly fun sports movie with a moving story, it is really funny, and even though it blatantly steals an entire scene from the British remake of the Longest Yard, Mean Machine, it is still a really fun movie that is also really good.  Probably my favorite Sandler film, and easily the one I think that is his best film.
Grade: A++

Ernest Saves Christmas – Lenton Lees
Here’s the thing about Ernest: you either love Jim Varney’s shenanigans, or you just don’t get it or see a point.  I personally find Ernest endearing.  In fact, this is the first Ernest film I saw, which is good, because it is also easily his highest budgeted, best looking, best acted, best directed, BEST Ernest film.  It tells a great story, has fun comedy, and is a Christmas classic in the Jessel household.  On top of that, I do believe it has my absolute favorite Santa Claus in film, played by the same dude who is the Sultan and Jasmine’s father in Aladdin!  He is perfect as Santa, and adds some amazing gravitas to what could have just been a frivolous and silly kids movie.  It isn’t one of the best movies ever made, and the effects are absolutely dated, but it is a wonderful movie.
Grade: B++

South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut – Lenton Lees
Trey Parker and Matt Stone have made all of two things I like: South Park and Book of Mormon.  I do not like BASEketball, I don’t like Cannibal: the Musical, I don’t like Orgazmo.  But this movie is excellent.  It is an amazingly well made musical parody of just about every single style of musical, from Les Mis to Disney to Sound of Music.  The story itself has a purpose to exist as a film because it is about censorship, parental choices, and really nice satire of the “crusade” against cursing.  I really think this movie does everything right.  And its unique animation style makes it in a sense timeless, which is great!  Great movie.
Grade: A+

Much Ado About Nothing (Whedon version) – Lenton Lees
Not every movie that is a good movie I like.  Wes Anderson movies prove that.  As does this one.  One of the best things about Shakespeare is that every adaptation is 100% the director’s intention.  And some of Joss’ choices are awesome.  And some are not.  I think Whedon was able to really elevate the parts of Claudio and Don Pedro fantastically, making both parts have a lot more weight and interest than most versions of the show.  He also made some very good comedic choices early in the film.  But very quickly, the comedy of this comedy goes away.  And that’s … just … wrong.  Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy, pure and simple.  And Whedon treated it as a drama.  And that is a disservice to a lot of the characters, a lot of the language, and a lot of other choices.  Dogberry wasn’t particularly funny, even though he’s written to be.  Don Jon isn’t very menacing because everything is treated so seriously so he isn’t a foil.  Benedict and Beatrice don’t have a banter-filled romance because the banter is more catty and snide than humorous and joyful.  There are some bits I really enjoyed, generally whenever he had the actors get more physical, because otherwise they just pontificate into the wind at each other.  In the end, Whedon focused on the “Much Ado” while forgetting the point that it is all about “Nothing.”
Grade: B-

Oversexed Rugsuckers From Mars! – Jason Abraham
I’ve been saving this one for a Nanarsday review, but I’m MORE than happy to talk about this HORRIBLE MOVIE now!  It is a gloriously terrible movie about a man who has sex with an alien vacuum cleaner, and it becomes a rapist and rapes a woman, who gives birth to a human-vacuum hybrid baby.  It is gross, and hilarious, and terrible.  One of the worst movies I’ve ever seen and I LOVE IT!  I found it randomly years ago, and it is a pride of my collection of films because of its ridiculous-ness.  Really, if anyone ever wanted to watch it, FIND ME and we’ll watch it that second.
Grade: F+

Chasing Amy – Jason Abraham
I have a love/hate relationship with Kevin Smith.  I either love his films and buy into them completely, or hate them and find them worthless.  Chasing Amy falls in the worthless category.  The script is preachy, the situation is so narrow that no one can relate to it, making the characters unlikable and just complainers.  Smith doesn’t direct Affleck very well here, which is crazy considering how great Affleck is in other Smith films.  It just … I just hate this movie.  Give me Dogma, Mallrats, or Clerks II any day.
Grade: C--


Dawn of the Dead; Day of the Dead; Land of the Dead – Tony Daniel
I love this little bit.  I may have never seen Night of the Living Dead, but I have absolutely seen and own all of the Romero trilogy of Dead films.  Comes with being married to a zombie lover.  Let’s touch on all of these:

Dawn of the Dead – This film is perfect.  Acting, tension, shots, characters, story, everything.  This may just be my favorite zombie movie, period.  I was blown away because what I THOUGHT this movie was and what it actually is are two VERY different things.  The effects are real old and not very good looking, but I like to see them like a time capsule of effects, and completely buy into them.  I say it all the time, but dated-ness is not a real negative, and these may not be the best effects, but they are great effects for what they are.  I cannot recommend this film more highly.  Grade: A++

Day of the Dead – I thought this would be my favorite, and I do really like it.  It is much more of what I thought it would be.  And it easily has one of the best villains a zombie film has ever had in it.  It also explores the zombie mythos more, which is very cool, and Romero continues to push the envelope with his characters.  It has better effects and is really interesting … but just not as good as Dawn.  I don’t know if I can put my finger really on why, but I think it is something to do with our protagonist, who while being interesting just isn’t as good of an actress, and the pacing of the film itself is a little off, leading to some boring stretches.  But the effects, and the other characters, are all well worth price of admission here.  Grade: B+

Land of the Dead – So Dawn of the Dead got a remake, and Romero was all “I can make a ‘modern’ zombie film better than that.”  So he continued the story of his world of zombies.  And man, I love it.  It isn’t as good as the last few, but it has some GREAT characters, some awesome world building, and while the plot is less interesting, the overall effect leaves me very happy.  I love this movie, even if it began the decline in quality of Romero’s writing.  Grade: B++

The Man Who Knew Too Little – Beth Lyons
This comedy was actually suggested to me by Beth probably a year or so ago, so I bought it, and I watched it.  I wish I had been writing reviews then, because then I wouldn’t have to think about this movie again.  Oh, yeah, that should make it obvious, I don’t like the movie.  I don’t think it is bad, I just didn’t find most of its comedy very good.  The entire idea is fine, and some of the scenes are fine, but the whole product just leaves me cold, as our protagonist has to be continually stupider and stupider to allow the very thin premise of “believes all the spy stuff is fake, accidentally gets caught in real spy stuff” to continue.  The climax of the film is just long and tedious with the whole Russian dance sequence and the bomb and … ugh.  I just did not care for the film, and really do not think it is very good, and mostly forgettable.
Grade: C--

The Bank Job – Jason Schmidt
Good ole Jason Statham.  Action star, good actor, British.  Ok, so Bank Job isn’t a GREAT movie.  It’s a real good one, though.  Based on a real heist, with some good actors and some great camera work, the film works.  I’ve seen a lot less memorable Statham films, though this one only barely jumps above that pack.  It isn’t great, but it is fun.  And if you are a history person or a heist person, this one may do even more for you.  For me, it was just a good movie.
Grade: B

Jackie Brown – Jason Schmidt
Jackie Brown is a neat little movie.  That actually sounds more belittling than I mean it to.  It has a slow first act, but not a BAD first act, just a slow one, that builds really well to an amazingly well made finish.  Lots of great actors all throughout the film, including the wonderful Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson playing the character that we all actually attribute to him in the modern zeitgeist, and Robert De Niro who may have … 8 lines in the whole movie?  But it is still one of his best roles.  I really like this movie.  It isn’t the easiest sit because of that long first act that really needed an editor, and Robert Foster is good but doesn’t quite keep me as interested for those long sections as Tarantino has found Christoph Waltz can.  But it is still a very good, very ambitious movie.
Grade: B+

State and Main – Jason Schmidt
David Mamet is a playwright, director, and a screenwriter and director.  He is known for things like Glengarry Glen Ross and American Buffalo, but he’s done a lot of other stuff.  State and Main is one of those other stuffs.  It … isn’t particularly good.  There are bits and pieces I really like in there, but there is also some stunt casting that does nothing for me and some of the comedy beats come across VERY Mamet, in that every character rushes through their dialogue as fast as they can.  The actual movie is about the filming of a movie in a little town because they like a stained glass window, and all the turmoil it causes everyone.  I don’t really think it is worth a watch, but for some people, all that fast-talking is actually a turn-on.  If you are a Aaron Sorkin fan, this may just be up your alley.
Grade: C-

Devil’s Advocate – Jason Schmidt
I love talking about good Keanu Reeves films.  Mostly because I think he is an underrated actor.  As an actor myself, I can see the actual “craft” in what he is doing, and I get why for some he doesn’t come across like he acts.  He is very stoic faced a lot of the time, and his voice is generally calm no matter the emotion.  But what Keanu does really well is expression of emotion through his eyes and his body.  There are very few actors who can pull of supreme confidence just by standing there saying nothing like Keanu can.  And there are very few that can show the deterioration of a soul like Keanu can, that slow wearing down that was necessary for this film.  Devil’s Advocate is a GREAT movie.  It is a morality play in a time period when morality was pretty gauche to begin with.  Al Pacino is fantastic in the movie as well.  It is a great film.  One I used to own, and I need to buy again.  I recommend.
Grade: A+

Man on the Moon – Jason Schmidt
The biopic on Andy Kaufman, made by dear friends of Andy Kaufman, paying homage to the man, played by the only person anyone that knew Kaufman thought could play him.  This is a great biopic.  It has great music.  It has great acting.  It has a compelling, albeit very movie-fied as admitted by the prologue of the film, story of the real life of this enigmatic actor.  I own the soundtrack.  I own the film.  I love both.  It is a shame that Jim Carrey did not get the Oscar for this performance, but of course he should have since 1999 was the year of terrible Oscar decisions and Shakespeare in Love sweeping through almost everything.  Man on the Moon was called by some the best picture of 1999, and others just didn’t get it.  Which is kind of perfect when it comes to talking about Andy Kaufman.  I highly recommend to anyone that loves comedy and the history of comedy.
Grade: A++

Mars Attacks! – Jason Schmidt
My dad took me to see this movie.  My mom didn’t like that he did.  It is a weird, silly, off-putting, crazy kind of film.  Definitely not for everyone.  It is absolutely unique, and everything I want from a Tim Burton film.  It also holds the honor of being the only live-action film based on a trading card series, which is a mindboggling piece of information by itself.  A tongue-in-cheek homage to 50s sci-fi horror films, and filled with just … craziness.  Man, I just … this is a weird movie kids.  Too weird to be good, too weird to be bad, it is its own brand of quality.
Grade: W (for weird … I actually give it a C)

The Departed – Jason Schmidt
Hey, wanna know a great movie?  The Departed.  Done.  Go watch a great movie.  What you need more?  How about its pedigree of actors and directors and cinematographers?  I’ll wait while you imdb it.  I know right?  How about the incredible filmmaking just in general?  Or the tight script?  Or the intriguing characters?  Or the amazing conceit?  Or the original that is ALSO good, but this remakes for western audiences in an old school mafia way that transcends the original?  This movie is great.  Period.  Watch it.
Grade: A+

Black Swan – Jason Schmidt
Darren Aronofsky is so so good.  And Black Swan is amazing.  Tense, thrilling, psychological, amazing acting from Natalie Portman (got an Oscar for it, well deserved), this movie is phenomenal.  The music is of course going to be great because it is Swan Lake.  But really, this movie is amazing.  It should have gotten at least a cinematography and a best director nod.  It got neither.  These kind of psychological thinky thrillers tend to not do well in the Oscars.  Aronofsky deserves awards.  And this film is one of his best, written as if tailored to his style specifically even though it wasn’t.  Watch this very very intense film some time.
Grade: A++

Waterworld – Jason Schmidt
Waterworld is one of the biggest financial flops in history.  Doesn’t make it a bad movie, though.  It makes it a great punchline, but as a fantasy movie, it is actually all kinds of AWESOME.  The setting is all practical and all amazing.  The acting is great from Dennis Hopper and even Kevin Costner.  The script is a great story filled with little nods and secrets to the what happened in the world.  The action is awesome.  I love the movie, and really don’t understand why others don’t.  Maybe because they only know the joke and never actually watched the thing.  Give it a chance.
Grade: A++

12 Monkeys – Jason Schmidt
Time travel movies are difficult, and sometimes their plots just don’t quite add up.  Other times they are too simple.  12 Monkeys is both.  Confusing and simple.  I don’t think it is a bad movie, it has some real interesting parts to it and some good acting.  But I ultimately found it boring.
Grade: B-

Four Rooms – Jason Schmidt
Four very different vignettes from four pretty different directors all based around rooms in a hotel.  Uh … I guess I’ll say this: Tim Roth is great.  Each individual sequence is so incredibly different I’ll just grade each one.
Part 1: D
Part 2: C-
Part 3: A+
Part 4: B+
So when I watch it, I just skip to the middle.  Yup.

Deathproof – Jason Schmidt
Man, I do not know how to talk about this one ... ok, lemme list the things that are good. The direction is fantastic. The movie looks and FEELS good, from a filmmaking and thematic standpoint. Kurt Russel is AMAZING as Stuntman Mike. The action and car sequences are really amazing and frenetic. A lot of the things that I love from Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained are here and this is the prototype for him directing like that. This movie is a bridge from his old style (which I generally don't care for) and his new style. There is a lot to like. But this movie SERIOUSLY needed an editor. A stronger edit would have helped this movie incredibly. And another sequence of Stuntman Mike doing what he does would have been perfect. Trim down all the standard Tarantino talky talk that didn't really do very much and give us another Stuntman Mike sequence. Tarantino learned to trim himself for Basterds and Django, making much stronger, engaging films. And that's the problem, I suppose. I really wanted to be engaged the whole time, and was really only engaged when Kurt Russel was onscreen and for the basics of the chicks. The genre subversion at the end was interesting, but for me, abrupt, and right at the end, I actually found myself rooting for Stuntman Mike because I knew more about him and understood him better, and he had less dialog than the chicks that I was supposed to be rooting for. Showing, not telling, made him a stronger, more engaging character. And they just left Mary Elizabeth Winestead with the crazy redneck! What the heck!? This movie is hard to grade. I can see myself wanting to watch it again, and I LOVED everything with Kurt Russel, but I dunno if I wanna slog through the rest.Grade: B-

High Fidelity – Jason Schmidt
One of the first “serious” comedies I’ve ever seen, it made a huge impact on me.  I am a collector and sponge for media much like John Cusack is in the film, though my own life and his represented in the film has nothing in common, and I don’t actually relate to him, but that doesn’t actually matter.  He resonates.  And his relationship struggles opened my eyes.  The film is unique, which is a huge plus.  It is a really well written and well acted film, so that’s real cool.  Honestly, though, it just didn’t stick with me like I thought it would, and I don’t care to see it again.  I don’t hate it.  I just don’t like it.  I remember how good it was, but that’s the extent of it.
Grade: A

Harvey – Cindy Carrin
The only Jimmy Stewart film I’ve seen and loved.  It is a great play, a great old movie, and just awesome all around.  A classic.  You absolutely should watch it.  Everyone.  Do it.
Grade: A+






And there we have it!  A LOT of films reviewed in a handy dandy quick way with beautiful pictures that took me way too long to format.  Thanks everyone, and I am positive I will do an exercise like this again!  Until tomorrow, where we have some newer films, a Wes Anderson film, some wrestling, and probably other stuff!

IHAO on ... Zodiac

What happens when a very good director gets his hands on an uninteresting script?  Zodiac.

Ok, uninteresting isn't fair.  The story of the Zodiac killer is very interesting.  But how this film goes about presenting it over two and a half hours is almost completely unenjoyable.  It has too many characters that none get enough focus, and is incredibly unbalanced in how it tells its "story."  I put "story" in quotes because this is very much presented as an Unsolved Mysteries episode, except it is actually a nice long marathon of episodes all about the same dude.

The Zodiac killer is a case all about possibly the greatest "unsolved" serial killings in the United States.  We follow a group of people all working towards solving the case, specifically an editorial cartoonist played by Jake Gyllenhaal and an FBI guy on the case played by Mark Ruffalo.  We shift from one to the other for a short time before we officially stick on Gyllenhaal's character as he gathers all the information again to write his book.  This whole thing is very much based on that book.  It is a historical fiction, in that it takes a collection of facts and history and then weaves bits of fiction between to present the story.

Let me talk about the good things: Fincher directs this movie, and in some moments, he is wonderful.  Most moments, he is unremarkable.  Really the whole film is unremarkable, except for ... ultimately three sequences.  There are three sequences that really put on the tension and the interest in this film.  Those sequences are probably three or four minutes long each.  So let's be generous and say 12 minutes of this film is worth watching.  That's not a high percentage.

The movie is not a bad one.  It is just an unremarkable one, other than a few major successes in tension and storytelling.  I would not suggest anyone watch this film, though if you do, and you are really into serial killer stuff, this may be a nice way to spend an afternoon, I suppose.

Grade: C

IHAO on ... the Boxtrolls

Claymation is a really cool medium, especially nowadays.  It takes so much work and so much artistry for something that could be done just as easily, maybe easier, in CGI animation.  Really good Claymation makes you wonder "how did they do that?!" and makes very real looking things happen, because it is happening instead of being all computers.  The craft is really cool, is what I'm saying.  It also does not immediately make a film good.

The Boxtrolls is the perfect example of a conceit in film called "dissonance."  It is where the parts of a film, while perhaps all good in quality individually, when brought together are all rubbish.  There are good things, there are bad things, there are inbetween things, and none of it feels particularly well joined into a cohesive whole.  The voice actors are all well and good, but are reading things a little campier than the script intends, while in turn the script is much more whimsical than the direction of the film plays it which is basically straight without jokes, more like an action film, and then that is dissonant from the art direction, which is gothic and victorian and surprisingly dark with very very little humor to it at all.  As an example, let's just look at our bad guy.  He is played by Sir Ben Kingsley, who does a super super good job playing this dark, brooding, gothic evil character, but the script has him cross-dressing and dying (spoilers) by cheese induced farts and bloating like this is a madcap farce, but then the art direction has him become this truly terrifying Quasimodo-esque looking monster when he is having his allergic reactions.  None of those things really mesh together.  And that happens all throughout the movie.

The plot of the thing is that there are these Boxtrolls, and in this town that is obsessed with cheese and hats as status symbols, a red hat is promised a white hat if he kills all the Boxtrolls.  The Boxtrolls take a baby and raise him, and that young boy - named Eggs - has to save his family from the bad guy red hats..

There is something cool in that plot, yeah?  All right, maybe not for some, but I'm a Dungeons and Dragons, gothic literature loving kind of guy.  And this films gothic nature and dark tone don't turn me off.  But all the dissonance I was talking about above really does make it hard to like any of the film.  Which is a huge shame, because there is some stuff I liked overall in the movie, but really, the Boxtrolls parts for the most part are way better than the whole it creates.  I hate movies like this, middle of the road movies.  I can't even bring myself to be angry or excited about it.  They are just ... there.  I was pretty harsh on Big Hero 6 earlier for not being quite up to snuff for me in terms of scripting and plot and such, much like Gone Girl, but both those movies had strong directors that at least made a cohesive film.

Sorry Boxtrolls.

Grade: C

IHAO on ... A Fantastic Fear of Everything

Hitchcock meets Edgar Wright.  That is exactly what this film feels like to me.  If that isn't enough to sell you, then I don't know what is.  Oh, right, the rest of my review will be.  Or won't be, as the case may be.

Simon Pegg plays an author with crippling paranoia and suffering from delusions and hallucinations.  The film starts out as a clever deconstruction of the author and all the difficulties he is having with his paranoia and fears as we slowly learn more about him, his life that has been a very sad series of events and traumas.  It actually continues to be that as we watch the very solid cinematography and direction pile on the crazy and blur the lines between reality and paranoia.

Then the entire movie throws all of that out at the 2/3 mark and just becomes a comedic thriller where Simon Pegg has to save the hot girl he just made a fool of himself in front of from a silly serial killer.

Talk about the villain from the second Iron Man film, which is totally underrated, by the way.

It is very frustrating to me as a movie viewer to sit down to a movie that starts off promising to be a certain kind of film and then shifts to some ridiculous parody without any connection to the film before it.  It is painful to sit through.  Simon Pegg had such an incredible character, and the first 50-ish minutes were so incredibly fun to watch.  And then it became ... blah.

The direction is very Edgar Wright styled, which worked really well.  The writing was missing Wright's style of character depth and dialogue, but Pegg had something really interesting going on.  "Had" is the operative word here.  I can't even recommend the movie with how just awful the final act is.  It doesn't even feel like it was directed by the same guy, with crazy sound editing mistakes and horrible lighting.  My wife said a thing that I want to quote: "On the one hand, I'm really relieved that he gets a happy ending, but that makes it a worse movie."

I am not relieved.  I am not relieved the film is over.  I'm tired.  I'm sad.  I wanted this to be as good as Paul was, the film that got me writing these reviews in earnest again.  Or at least as good as The World's End, which also had a disheartening finale, though nowhere near as bad as this film's.

Grade: C-

IHAO on ... Resolution

Tension is a very powerful tool in film.  You create tension through music, cinematography, editing, and strong acting.  And it is not an easy to accomplish.  Even great films do not build and build tension throughout the film.  It isn't a requirement for greatness, but some films thrive on their tension.  The Hurt Locker, for example, is the most tense film I've ever seen.  It just builds and builds and builds as we see the life of Jeremy Renner's character.  The Conjuring and Oculus are horror movies that built tension amazingly well to boot.

I say all that because Resolution is EXCELLENT at tension building.  Extremely good.  It had me very very worried and eventually looking half at the movie as I watched, as it got too tense.  It just got thicker and thicker as the characters waded into the climax.  The finish of the film was underwhelming, but the tension ...

Ok, plot time.  Michael is a good friend to a terrible dude, Chris.  Chris is a meth addict who has ruined his life with his addiction.  Michael comes to give Chris one last chance ... by force.  He handcuffs Chris to the wall of the house he is squatting in and stays with him as he detoxes for a week.  But strange pieces of media start showing up, showing imminent death.  And meth heads, missing scientists, and Native American thugs round out the story.

The tension is the best part of the film.  Vinny Curran's Chris is the second best thing.  He has to play a meth addict slowly sobering, and stay likable the entire time, and he does an excellent job.  The rest of the film is ... fine.  It sort of strives for something great and just kind of flounders.  It is shot as a found footage film, but it is not treated as one.  There is no camera man per-say.  I don't wish to spoil things, so I will say that this film's largest problem is that it fails in having any real horror or scares.  It is very clever, with some clever bits, but its script is just too simple, and its filming even simpler, to make the actual idea work.  I wish a higher quality, larger budget version could be made, much like Oculus.  It is a perfectly fine film, but it doesn't reach for the points it strives for.

Grade: C

IHAO on ... Good Morning, Vietnam

This is the film that launched Robin Williams' career, going from stand-up and playing a lovable alien on television to being a funny man in a surprisingly dour war drama.  This film made clear the identity of Robin Williams we all loved, that of the lovable fast-talker who shows real emotion and acts far better than he has any need to in most films he is in.  I wrote a piece on Williams after his unfortunate passing on his film World's Greatest Dad, and in there I touch on my own feelings on Williams and his career.  So now, a little over a month later, its time I watched the film that started it all.

Good Morning, Vietnam is a semi-autobiographical Vietnam war film about a radio jockey for the US military.  He played by his own rules and his own comedy, lifted the spirits of those around him, and maybe some unfortunate mistakes as well.  Not any mistakes that were truly his fault or even shown as true mistakes in the film, but nonetheless, he is forced to by the end of the film leave his surprisingly short tenure as a radio personality in Vietnam with a dishonorable discharge.

The film's drama focuses on two sides to Williams' character's life: the army, and the locals.  In the army, Williams has to deal with fighting to do things his way, bringing good music to the troops out there, and arguing over idiot officers over him who don't know what comedy is.  They end up trying to discretely get him murdered by the Vietcong at one point, but in the end are more easily able to just get him kicked out of his own volition or he'll be charged with treason.  Why?  How?  Well, a young Vietnamese kid he became strong friends with turns up to be a Vietcong bomber.  It isn't particularly subtle or surprising, especially once a GI bar gets blown up, but the emotions and thoughts it brings to mind are interesting.  And since Williams was hanging with a Vietcong member, they offered him his way out so that the officers, who are the antagonists, got what they wanted.

Hurray?

If you can't tell by the above, I found this film a little hollow.  There are some nice scenes, with the aftermath of the explosion at the GI bar being the best of the film, as well as some interesting ones where the idiot lieutenant argues about what comedy is with Williams then proves himself wrong by being terrible as a replacement.  But the whole film just falls flat for me.  There isn't a lot of weight given to the occurrences, the passage of time is very very fast so it feels like only a week or so passes by in the 6 months the film takes place in.  On top of that, the film is a long sit.  And even worse, all the characters, other than Forrest Whitiker's, stay the same from beginning to end.  There is no real purpose in this film.

Now, part of this is because of the writer of the film writing about his own experiences.  He is not a writer by trade.  He was a radio personality.  Good Morning, Vietnam was originally conceived as a sitcom, where these two-dimensional characters would have fit more at home.  But in a film, we get no real movement or change.  We just watch events happen, and then that is the end.  Nothing changes, life moves on, the war continues.

So yeah, I'm pretty sure you can tell I didn't care for it.  War films are a hard sell for me, and while there was stuff I liked, in the end, the whole film just meant nothing to me.  It just acts as a space holder.  Nothing really learned, nothing really experienced, no real stakes.  Just a hollow chamber of a film, with Robin Williams' voice and humor resonating on the inside.

Grade: C-

IHAO on ... the Gotham pilot

This show has been talked about for awhile.  And I knew I needed to give my thoughts to the whole thing.  A little backstory: I absolutely love Arrow on the CW, and season 2 of that show was the best thing on TV in my mind last year.  I'm incredibly excited for season 3, as well as season 1 of The Flash, both of which start in just two weeks, and you can expect a Flash pilot review as well.  I'm a comic book fan.  I really, truly am.  Collecting for a long time, even if now I'm down to just a single series.  And all of that said ... I am not a Batman fan.  The operative word there being "fan."  Some Batman stuff I like, some I don't, some I despise, some I love!  So I'm not coming into this review as a Batman fan, blinded either way by my own love for the series or whatever.  Which ... actually, at first I thought that would count as a negative for me, but you know what, I'm a professional critic (technically), and this is a good place to be!  All right, I'm ready!  Let's do this!

44 minutes later

Ok, so I got a lot to say about this show.  But let me start with this: I kind of liked it.  Yeah, I kind of like it.  I don't like it like a fanboy, and in fact most of the fanboy-stuff (which this show is FILLED with) do nothing for me.  I don't care about seeing all these little nods and winks and nudges to the Batman mythos.  In fact, this show gets 300% better when that stuff is thrown to the side.  It becomes a really interesting mafia/cop drama.  I understand the need for some to see Bruce because he's the main character of the Gotham stories.  But he is absolutely the worst part of this show.

The majority of actors in this show are ... fine.  Including our lead.  Some are worse than that.  Some are better.  I actually really really loved Penguin and Butch.  They are my two favorite characters, and the two I want to see.  In fact, Penguin is even BETTER than that.  He is the reason I'm going to keep watching the show.  And he is in every episode, so I'm excited for that.

The show is clearly something different than the expectations of Batman.  It is set in the present, the characters backstories are different, even some names and hints of future Bat-characters are around, and all are different.  For some this might be a turn off.  And to be honest, some of it was a turn off for me.  Ivy Pepper was so on the nose with all her plants, it made me audibly laugh.  The comedian in Jada Pinkett Smith's club is ridiculously gonna be the Joker ... maybe, but it is at least enough to make us think.  Actually, you know what, take that back, he's interesting enough.  Catwoman, well, Cat-girl is ridiculous ... ok, well, actually I kind of like her too.  It makes sense for someone else to have been in the alley, even if it was just a homeless person, so sure, that works for me.

Now, there are some big drawbacks.  The show looks super cheap.  The sets look bad, the lighting for the most part is utter garbage.  The costuming is either one the nose or ridiculous, many times both, such as with Riddler.  Also, the writing is super super duper ... weighted.  The whole show is.  It is part of the baggage of being set in Gotham's past.  Every character, every choice, all sorts of lines, all have this extra weight attached to them, which drags down the show as it has to slog through the Batman-ness.

By the way, since we are doing a pre-Batman Gotham, and using Gordon as the only "good" cop in a world of either mediocre or bad cops, you have essentially created him as Proto-Batman.  Or Protoman.  The schtick of Gordon normally in the Batman narrative is that he understands Batman and wishes he could do what Batman does, making things right unfettered by the law.  But he believes in the law as well.  It is the very classic argument of Lawful Good versus Chaotic Good.  But in Gotham, he is already basically Chaotic Good, because the "law" he is fighting against is that imposed by the criminals running the city.  Gordon is Protoman.

Which is why the show surprised me when it got real great.  It was able to drop all that weight around halfway through and start focusing on the kind of show it really wants to be: a crime drama about a city that is one of the worst, ever, and the people that make it both better and worse.

This show surprised me.  I'm not supposed to be rooting for Penguin, but I love him, his actor, his costuming, how he is portrayed, the way they worked him into the narrative.  He's the best part of the show for me.  Gordon sucks, Bullock is interesting but Donal Logue is not an amazing actor so he sometimes comes across a little odd and off character, but I bet the writing will start to match Logue better and that he will get better.  Jada Pinkett Smith started as the worst non-kid actor on the show, but she really ends up doing pretty great.

The show's quality is low on the technical side.  It makes me appreciate Arrow more and more, because it is just beautiful.  Using real rooftops and amazing lighting, oh it is so wonderful.  And the terrible looking sets, while pretty decently designed, just all look super cheap.  Gotham LOOKS like TV.  And not good TV.  Not "shot on location" TV.

Now, the most important point: Is Gotham something you can enjoy?  Really, I think it depends on if you are a Batman fan, and what kind of fan.  Do you just like seeing reference to the things you love?  Probably gonna really get into this.  Like being immersed in the Batman you love?  Probably going to hate this, as the immersion of this show is its worst aspect and where it fails the most.  Do you not care about Batman at all?  This might be worth it for you, especially if you enjoy cop dramas, and ESPECIALLY non-procedural cop dramas.

I should mention, all of this is "so far."  All my criticisms and ... what the opposite of that is, like-isms I guess, are all "so far."  There has been one episode.  Most television shows take around six episodes to find their stride.  Some take a full season before they can even get where they are wanting to go.  So who knows.  Maybe they will just put more and more of the garbage faux-father-surrogate stuff that I hated in this, making that the real point of the show.

Grade: C? +?

IHAO on ... God Bless America

One of the most difficult things about watching as many movies as I do, especially now that I focus on bringing commentary and criticism to it, is that eventually, you find a movie that is pretty good, with some pretty interesting ideas, and it just ... already exists in a better form.  It brings nothing to the table above and beyond another film that touches on the same subjects but in a better way, with stronger script and stronger actors and a stronger director and just overall a better movie.  God Bless America is just ... not quite good enough.

Very few times can I point to two films and actually show the difference between objective ratings.  There is so much to love about film that many people cannot separate their love from what they are watching.  And that is a perfectly fine thing, mind you.  That is what makes film so great.  It touches us, sometimes privately and personally, just like all forms of art.  It speaks to the viewer, and even if a film just isn't as well made, that film can be "better."

Ugh, whomever it is that has the job of picking my gifs needs to be fired.

Now, I'm saying all this because this movie is just not as good as Super.  Both films are about rage and cleansing of our society by a man who wants to kill, and his young just-older-than-teenage girl that has a special relationship with him that is both semi-romantic and semi-familial.  The problem is, God Bless America focuses just on talk and character, and Super actually has things happen.  It has stakes, it has obstacles, and it really GREAT actors.  God Bless America has no stakes, no obstacles, and its actors just aren't up to snuff.

Those aren't the only issues.  It's lighting is odd, the music is filled with montages and very out of place choices.  The way the story unfolds is basically null of any consequences.  The big schtick is that everything goes wrong for our protagonist in his life, including finding out he has a brain tumor.  But OH NO WOWSERS the doctor totally messed it all up and gave him the wrong reading and the tumor isn't there!  Spoilers by the way, but this lazy plotting makes me so incredibly upset.  There just aren't any consequences to the actions these characters take, and ultimately it makes this whole film meaningless.

Ok, now that I've gotten all that out of my system ... this movie is pretty good.  Yeah, I know I just complained and fumed about how it wasn't.  But Tara Lynn Barr is a great little actress, even if the writing isn't all that great.  When the film is violent, it is really great; that said, it is very VERY sparse on the violence, which hurts the film.  And the film's emphasis on these characters relationships is a perfectly nice and enjoyable ride.  I am not against character-films that use their time to delve deep into characters as its form of growth and tension and conflict, despite what it might have sounded like above.  This all just ... I've seen it done better.

Oh, and the finale is bullcrap.  Just absolute and utter garbage.  A little more stupid trope-ic cliche, a whole bunch of preaching, and then the rug is just yanked out from underneath us as an audience.  Honestly, the finale makes me angry.  It took a film I wanted really hard to recommend to folks and just killed it for me.  I really just ... I'm almost speechless for how upsettingly bad it is.  It is shot crappily, has terrible music over it, is written just awfully and even worse, is convenient in every single way.  I hated every single ounce of Act 3 of this film.  I hated it.  I cannot recommend this film.  A better film exists.

Go watch Super.  That move is phenomenal, A+++.  This film just gets worse and worse until it ends in a sputtering garbled joke of what it could have been.  Ugh.

Grade: C--

IHAO on ... Lethal Weapon

Remember when I talked about Cobra the other day?  I mentioned a sports bracket of action films of the 80s.  One of them in there was Lethal Weapon.  I had at that point never watched a single Lethal Weapon film.  So I figured, much like with Cobra, I should fix that.  I found all 4 on a good deal, and I've decided I'm going to dole out some Lethal Weapon reviews over the next few weeks as I watch them and share my thoughts.

My first thought is that Shane Black gets way too much credit.  Like, across the board.  He wrote Lethal Weapon, as well as a bunch of other flicks, and is considered a really good action writer.  Or at least that's how he's always been presented to me.  And he is not really good at writing.  Last Action Hero I already talked about, and how uneven it felt.  Monster Squad I did a video review of a long time ago, it's around here somewhere if you want to see it, but that movie is just camp and not particularly well written either.  Iron Man 3 was not good.  The Long Kiss Goodnight is super not good.  And ... like, that's basically it.  Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is an outlier, and it is pretty good, but yeah, he is super overrated.

My second thought is that I don't believe Danny Glover.  Like, ever.  He is always "acting" for me.  Except for Predator 2, which is awesome and arguably better than the original.  And the same holds true here.  He is ... ugh, Murtaugh's character in Lethal Weapon is entirely liftable.  Nothing he does matters.  He's like the Christmas set dressing the movie has.  He adds nothing to the film but an unnecessary hostage and false character tension.  Lethal Weapon is about the Riggs character.

Third thought, Riggs is one of the best characters.  Just, at all.  Mel Gibson does awesome with him, Donner knows how to shoot a scene with Gibson and all the emotion in it.  The music almost ruins the amazing suicide attempt scene, which made me really made.

Fourth thought, this movie has nowhere near enough action to be an action movie.  It is a perfectly fine buddy cop movie, but an action movie it is not.  Action movies are full of tension and Lethal Weapon barely held my attention.  It was a great character drama for Riggs, but it did not have nearly enough action.  And the action it did have didn't make any sense.  Like Riggs' big fight scene at the end.  There are cops all over the place, just watching this slobberknocker.

Now, let me say something that is really good about this movie beyond Riggs.  This movie, I believe, created a whole bunch of the tropes we expect to see in action films and buddy cop films.  And that's important.  The film is an important film.  It created the tropes, the character archetypes, the pacing, the act breakdowns, all of that.  It still isn't a very good movie.  In fact, once everything balances out, it is basically just an average film, straight down the middle.  This first one does awesome stuff with Riggs, and that's about all I care about.  I hope the sequels amp it up a notch or two.

Grade: C

IHAO on ... The Reunion

WWE films do not have the best ... anything, really.  But the word I was looking for was "reputation."  I've made it a point to make sure I watch and buy a whole bunch of them.  Because if I'm going to buy crappy straight-to-dvd movies, I may as well support a company I like, despite what I said about my original thoughts on this year's Summerslam and my opinions on a bunch of the other PPVs.  The Reunion is the third John Cena film, after the surprisingly fun the Marine and the surprisingly good 12 Rounds.  So of course I want to see it!  And ...

You know what, it is pretty daggum good.  I am a sucker for WWE films, but it is pretty ok!  It comes across a little like a TV movie, though shot better, just in scope.  Like, actors wear basically the same thing and are on basically the same sets unless they are the lead three guys, the music is kind of generic though enjoyable, and the faces are ... well, they are all TV actors I've seen.  And liked, mind you.  They are all very good.  The biggest name is Amy Smart, who is barely in the film at all.  The movie is really about the brothers, probably why the original name was Blood Brothers.  Oh, hold up, plot, plus a little backstory.

Abusive drunk dad is a sex fiend.  Fathers four kinds with four different women.  He raises the kinds, with Cena as the eldest, and the youngest, Douglas, who the others never met and never grew up with.  Their lives are all shambles, with rage issues and other things.  Douglas is a thief, Cena is a cop who got suspended, and Ethan Embry (who I have always liked, and is pretty daggum good in this) is a not particularly good bail bondsman.  Well, movie opens with the dad dying, and leaving three million dollars to each kid, but all of it comes with a stipulation: Amy Smart, the sister, holds onto all of it until they can create a business together and work together for a certain amount of years, then they get their inheritance.  So the brothers all go looking for some bad guys who kidnapped a dude in Mexico.

The film is well acted, pretty well made, and is mostly all right.  It isn't as balls-to-the-wall action packed fun as the past two Cena films, probably because the budget is smaller, but it has some moments to really enjoy.  I liked it.  It isn't great, but I liked it.  Just a standard TV-style action flick.

Standard being the important word there.  There is nothing shocking or surprising or even great in this movie.  It is a great rental, and a super good watch for Netflix.  But in the long run, if it wasn't for the WWE being a part of it, this movie wouldn't matter at all.  And that just cycles back to why I like WWE studio films.  I say give it a chance.

Grade: C+