Look, you know what you’re going to get out of Bad Grandpa. Going into it I anticipated plenty of poop, child neglect, and horny old man jokes. And that’s exactly what I got. If anything, Bad Grandpa is sort of commendable in the fact that it pretty much delivers exactly what you’d expect. No better or worse.
Premise: Directed by Ridley Scott and written by Cormac McCarthy, The Counselor is a story about a lawyer only referred to as “Counselor,” who gets tangled up in some sort of bad drug deal or something? Brad Pitt plays a cowboy or something? And Cameron Diaz thinks she’s a cheetah or something? I’m going to be 100% honest with you, I couldn’t tell you all the details of this convoluted story even if you threatened to decapitate me, which is something that happens like three times in this movie.
You want to see a challenging film? Go see 12 Years a Slave. It’s not challenging in the sense that it makes you question its themes, or its character’s motivations. It’s a challenging film in the sense that it will make you think long and hard about what the purpose of making this movie really was?
I saw the new 2013 remake of Carrie this week, and instead of doing a normal review, I thought I’d just compare it to the original like a jerk and see which one is better. The Rage: Carrie 2 will not be discussed. Ever.
I’ll just go ahead and spoil as much as I want, assuming you’ve seen the original Carrie (or just the new one). If you’ve seen one of them, then you know what happens in the other, because they don’t really change any plot points.
Premise: A biopic of Richard “The Iceman” Kuklinski, who was a big time mob hitman in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. He’s also a family man, and he likes to keep those two worlds separate. Good luck with that, buddy.
Premise: A guy is informed that he’s losing his job while on vacation with his family at Disney World. So he gets drunk and (possibly?) starts having weird visions, and there’s (possibly?) some big conspiracy. I don’t know. The plot is kind of a half-thought. Escape From Tomorrow is more widely known as the film that was shot (mostly) at Disney World (and its many hotel rooms), without the permission of Disney. I think at the current time, Disney isn’t taking any action against them, as to not give the film any more publicity. Good move on Disney’s part, because this movie probably doesn’t deserve much more publicity.
Premise: A shipping freighter, captained by our titular hero (Tom Hanks), travels past the coast of Somalia, and gets attacked by a band of pirates. The pirates, however, are not as fun and lovable as Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom. They don’t even have choreographed sword fights!
I got a little bored and cut together a re-imagined trailer for Indiana Jones last night, where he is recognized for what he really is: a moderately paid archeology professor. …Enjoy?
Premise: I’m not sure what I was thinking going to see this movie? I guess I kind of felt obliged to for some reason. It certainly didn’t look very good in the commercials. But ya know, I enjoyed the first Machete somewhat, and I think (?) I support the modern grindhouse resurrection genre. Though, now that I think about it, nothing much comes to mind that’s good about this genre, except, maybe… Grindhouse itself? Hmmmm… Wait, I liked Hobo With a Shotgun and Black Dynamite, too. But that’s only three movies. Maybe this whole concept wasn’t such a great idea after all…? Especially if we’ve appointed the main figure to make these movies to be Robert Rodriguez.
Premise: Two families in Pennsylvania have their young daughters kidnapped out of nowhere on Thanksgiving. They go through the frantic motions of looking for them endlessly for the first week they are missing (which is the film’s timeline). At the same time, a detective who’s never lost a case (Jake Gyllenhaal) also looks for the girls. One of the dads (Hugh Jackman) kidnaps a mentally challenged suspect (Paul Dano) who he believes 100% is the girls’ kidnapper, and locks him in a bathroom where he can torture him to get answers while they continue to look for the girls. Then Gyllenhaal starts looking into Jackman, but they are both looking for the girls still. And I think there’s close to three other subplots. It’s a long movie.
Dino Bone 