You're Next

In case you haven't actually taken a look at my profile picture and you just think that I am randomly racist against black people, I’m going to let you in on a little secret; I am black! (gasp) “A Black Sheriff?!?!” “He’s black?!?!” Yes, so I feel I can take certain liberties when it comes to making fun of our culture, stereotypes, or other people’s ignorance. But some people simply don’t get my jokes or even know that I’m kidding. I was out having drinks with two tattooed covered friends, neither of which are black, and the subject of fake tattoo sleeves came up. In case you don’t know what these are, they are basically leggings for your arms that look like tattoos. And apparently someone had gone up to one of my friends and thought that their tattoos were in fact one of these fake sleeves that you could buy. They started rubbing their arm to see if it would come off and needless to say, my friend was annoyed. Well me being me(I have no tattoos btw), instantly spoke up and said “Yeah well some white kid came up to me once and started rubbing my skin to see if this would come off! He was pretty disappointed as well.”  There was dead silence followed by blank stares as I was pointing to my skin color. This isn’t the first time that people haven’t gotten my humor and it certainly won’t be the last but after seeing You’re Next, I now know how they feel. This horror flick feels so esoteric that if you are in on it, you will absolutely love it! But if you are like me, you’ll leave wondering why you weren’t out at the bars trying to make girls laugh with your Blazing Saddles jokes.  And yes I’m single, go figure.

The plot is pretty thin at best. The story is about Crispian and his new girlfriend Erin heading out to the country for his parent’s anniversary. This will be her first time meeting his family and apparently they haven’t been together in one place for a long time. So naturally some tension and unresolved issues arise. But right as the situation is about to boil over, an arrow enters the dining room and kills one of Crispian’s sister’s boyfriend; and then all hell breaks loose. These men with Halloween masks do everything they can to enter the house in an attempt kill everyone there. Just the night before, they had killed their neighbors and left a warning written in blood for the yet deceased that read “You’re Next”.

It’s an ok set up for a horror flick but obviously far from original. The highlights are that the very first scene immediately takes care of the obligatory boob shot and there happens to be plenty of blood and gore in the film. The problem is that if you’re going to have senseless violence and lots it (you know by now that I’m a big fan of that) then it at least has to be fun/funny or really scary. It can’t just be there for the sake of being there, otherwise you’re just making Saw Seven…Thousand!!! The movie has a few jumpy parts but it’s not even remotely scary and the stupid wannabe Drive score certainly doesn’t help matters. 80’s synth pop before a big battle or knife scene only works if you're Michael Jackson and Wesley Snipes in the Bad video. Some of the humor is ok but they tried way too hard to be edgy. There is one scene where a girl is trying to seduce her boyfriend and says to him “hey, let’s have sex next to your dead mother”, who’s head was split open next to them on the bed. Clearly the writers were trying to make us laugh in horror but it just came across as too over the top.

The only reason I was able to make it through this film was the fact that Erin turned out to be a badass but if I want to see a boring movie with a hot girl that can kick ass, I’ll just watch Tomb Raider again. And no it has nothing to do with the fact that Angelina Jolie has triple d’s in it…ok maybe a little. This movie is WEAK and should be avoided.

The Spectacular Now

My friend and I do this stupid thing where we give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to the movie previews that play before the featured film we are about to see. And it typically takes sheer boredom for me to see one of the movies that I gave a thumbs down to initially but this actually happens more often than I’d like to admit. In the case of Spectacular Now, I was actually midway through it when I realized that this was one of the movies I told myself I’d never pay to see!  I got caught up in all of the hype that surrounded this movie and had completely forgotten that it looked like a melodramatic mess just a few months earlier. Maybe I do see too many movies in the theater.

Spectacular Now is a weird take on a coming of age love story, but just like with 500 Days of Summer (the same writers), it not at all what you would expect. The only problem is, 500 Days was actually entertaining and funny at times. In this snoozefest you are introduced to Sutter (Miles Teller), a senior in high school who is trying to fill out his application for college. As he is doing so, he begins to tell you the story about how he had the best girlfriend ever but then lost her due to a misunderstanding. So he proceeds to go out and party hard that night and this eventually leads to him passing out on a random lawn that happens to be on the paper route of Aimee (Shailene Woodley); whose character name is spelled just as stupidly as her real name! She wakes Sutter up and they instantly become friends and eventually a couple.

Sutter however,  is a person that believes in living in the now and could care less about what’s to come tomorrow. So he drinks constantly and never really takes anything seriously, that includes his relationships. He initially hangs out with the little known but smart Aimee as kind of a pet project, as he is the popular kid in school that’s always the life of the party;  he decides to use his popularity to introduce her to what he thinks is the point of life. It isn’t until they decide to challenge one another to step up their overbearing mothers when things take a weird turn from the norm. If you decide to see this film, I’ll let you discover the rest for yourself.

The acting in it is pretty solid as Teller does a decent job of playing the kid that “Treats Yo Self” just a little too much on a daily basis. The entire time he’s always on the verge of being a total jerk but with each smile and with each swig from his flask, you can’t help but root for him to figure things out. Meanwhile Woodley is starting to put together a nice little resume’ for herself as she is hot off of a solid performance in the otherwise boring Descendants. She’s rather convincing as the cute introverted girl that you hope one day you are lucky enough to help bring out of her shell. I felt awful for being unbelievably turned on during their sex scene, that was until I instantly went to my phone and checked her IMDB page to confirm that she was off age (22 years old). I thought I was going to have to turn myself in to the authorities! But lucky for you this dirty old man is still walking the streets!

It’s not as if the story is bad, it’s just that it’s boring. Nothing truly spectacular takes place in spite of the title and it’s not until something freakish happens towards the end where you are awaken from your near slumber. But that entire scene just feels a bit out of place and ends with way too many tears! I get what the writers were trying to do and it works as a nice cautionary tale but man it sure felt a little too much like an after school special to me! There really should’ve just ended it with Teller holding a crying baby in his hand while sitting in their trailer home as they watch their friends go off to prom!

This movie is a rental at best and I suggest that you start making out with your date midway through it. This movie is WEAK! 

The Butler

You can’t go full retard and expect to win an Oscar! I’m paraphrasing Tropic Thunder there a bit, but honestly they were on to something in that silly little movie, there really is a simple formula that exists in Hollywood if you want to get nominated for an Academy Award. This is especially true if you’re a black actor and more specifically a black woman. You either get physically and verbally abused your entire life while possibly getting AIDS like Whoopi Goldberg (Color Purple) and Gabourey Sidibe (Precious), let some dirty old man bang you sideways in the longest sex scene ever while you beg for it like Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball), or be a maid for white people like…well, every black woman ever who’s been cast this role. Speaking of Billy Bob Thorton, he really should’ve killed himself after Monster’s Ball; it was all downhill for him after that. He was dating Angelina Jolie in her hottest and craziest time and he then got paid to grope and make out with a naked Halle Berry for days! That bastard!

Anyway, Hattie McDaniel was the first to win back in a day when 90% of Texas still thought slavery was legal. Taraji P. Henson was nominated for taking care of an old Brad Pitt and everyone in The Help was nominated for everything they did that year (including commercials) because of their roles in that movie.

So Forest Whitaker decides that it’s his turn to get an easy nomination, and why not, it worked for Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy didn’t it? He plays the role of Cecil Gaines, a man who moved his way up from being a child slave working in the fields, to becoming a butler in The White House for 5 different Presidents. As they tell his story they also tell the story of his boy Louis Gaines (David Oyelowo) and his personal fight against social inequality and prejudice against skin color. One is unknowingly changing stereotypes of black men and their work ethic by taking pride in their work and doing so with class and dignity, while the other is taking action to change America’s culture by joining the Freedom Fighters,  Martin Luther King’s movement, the Black Panthers (in a negative response to Dr King’s assassination) and eventually Congress.

Along the way however, not only do they both face challenges in their own occupations but they also fight with one another constantly. Louis is ashamed of his father’s profession and Cecil cannot understand why his son continues to defy him and consistently puts his life in danger. And I haven’t even gotten to the fact that Cecil’s wife now resents his job and the fact that it takes away time that he can spend with her.

The acting in this movie is solid all the way around. Whitaker kills it as the proud black man that has worked his way up so that his family doesn’t have to go through what he did. But at the same time he knows exactly how he has to act around the White House to not cause any waves. This at times can be unbelievably frustrating for the viewer because it’s like having access to Superman but given your situation, all you can really do is sit there and admire his cape. If Whitaker is nominated, it would definitely be well deserved. Oprah also deserves a nomination, and it’s not just because she will draw 100 million women to the movie simply because she’s in it. Based off of what she did in this movie and her unbelievable performance in The Color Purple, she really could’ve been the black Meryl Streep. But as it turns out she’s too busy living out her Pinky and the Brain fantasy of ruling the world, which is getting closer to becoming a reality each day. The only parts that weren’t believable were when she had to kiss a man in a scene. It was seriously like watching a straight male actor kiss another man on camera; yes they are doing it but you can tell that they want to get it over with as quickly as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzZmU0aGmcc

Cuba Gooding Jr is probably the most memorable supporting actor in the film. I know women will disagree with me because Lenny Kravitz is in it but Cuba was so excited to be a part of a real film again that he actually steps up and owns his character. It helps that he is basically playing a role that encapsulates how the world views him now, but Marky Mark did the same thing in The Departed and it got him an Oscar nomination, so why couldn't it work for Cuba?  Here’s to hoping that playing the role of a joke cracking butler lands him in the sequel to the overlooked Hopkins vehicle, Instinct. “Splendad!!!” As my buddy Don says “Greatness is rarely recognized in its time”. He just happened to be talking about Nicolas Cage at the time.

If you can overlook some of the silly casting choices they made for a few of the presidents, you will find yourself immersed in a film that gives you a realistic view of racism, heartache, and even hope. It doesn’t matter how many times you see the horrific acts that took place during the Civil Rights movement or the results of Vietnam, you cant help but be moved in some way. I hate to gloss over the fact that Mariah Carey actually looked hot in this movie, David Banner pops in for a bit, and Oyelowo was on point as Cecil's son, but I can only write so much.I rate this movie as FRESH and suggest that you pop in.

Kick Ass 2

I think that when the first Kick Ass came out, it also got bad reviews. It’s funny to me when critics decide to try and take the moral high road on certain movies but are ok with total trash in other instances. Sure Kick Ass is an ultra violent movie about kids who decide to become super heroes that go out and sometimes behead, burn, or otherwise beat the crap out of bad guys (only in self defense of course) but when a young black girl is raped and verbally abused by her mother on a daily basis and then is giving AIDS by her mother’s boyfriend, it’s artistic cinema! Don’t get me wrong, I loved Precious and I get that it represents the untold story of many underprivileged youths (are you saying Utes???) in the ghetto but it’s all just another way to get the focus off of you and your problems. So why not simply let dorky old geeks cheer on little kids who are living out their childhood fantasy from when they were small, of doing cool karate kicks and beating people up with nun chucks? If you’re worried about teens watching this and getting ideas, then you really should believe in the theory of survival of the fittest. I watched the movie Flatliners as a kid but was smart enough to realize that killing myself to see what’s on the other side was a fairly stupid idea. I mean why else did Keifer get the crap beaten out of him by a little kid?

Kick Ass 2 picks up a few years after the first one and you see that the community has embraced the idea of taking matters into their own hands by dressing up as super heroes to deal out justice. Meanwhile the original Kick-Ass seems to have retired from the game and is trying his hand at being a normal teen again. Hit-Girl is still on the grind a however but it’s just a matter of time before her legal guardian, who is also her dead father’s former police partner, realizes that she is still out fighting crime against his wishes. Kick-Ass cant take the boredom anymore and decides to start training with Hit-Girl to get back in the game. But when her guardian finally figures things out, she promises him that she’ll give normal life a shot; leaving Kick-Ass no other option but to join the local hero super group that is made up of a bunch of amateurs and is led by the former mob member Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey).

Meanwhile, Chris D’Amico (Mintz-Plasse) just can’t let go of the fact that Kick-Ass killed his father with a bazooka. And now that he has control of his family’s money, he dedicates all of his time to recruiting every criminal and money hungry outcast that he can find to form an evil super villain posse with the intent to find and kill Kick-Ass.

What I love about this movie is that it is unapologetic about how violent it is. It could care less that it has kids shooting each other with guns while wearing bullet proof vests or chopping off the hands of criminals with machetes. This movie is what it is and you can either get on board with all of the blood and violence that it brings and simply allow yourself to have fun or go see the freaking Smurfs Take Manhattan! It also never takes itself too seriously. It’s full of moments where it makes fun itself; including the origin of D’Amico’s costume and his super villain name of The Motherfucker. Just know that it has something to do with the discovery of all of his mom’s weird sex stuff in her closet. D’Amico also has racist nicknames for all of his evil recruits, none of which are terribly offensive, but it is pretty awesome how easily he came up with them. One of the better moments of the movie is when Hit-Girl is trying to fit in with the “it girls” and she discovers all sorts of things like boy bands and her own sexuality. Well eventually the “it girls” turn on her and this leads to quite possibly the greatest revenge scene ever!

There are quite a few surprising dark moments in this movie as well and that’s why I liked it so much. Just when you think it will get lost in money making sequel land, it shows you that actual effort was put in to make a good film. All of the actors seem to realize what kind of movie this is, so there isn’t any over acting that takes place; everyone seems to be having fun with their roles. The female Drago from Rocky 4 might have been the best character in the entire movie!

I rate this film as FRESH and definitely suggest that you go see it! 

Elysium

Have you ever briefly dated or hooked up with someone and then immediately dismissed them because of something minor? Then one day, due to a lack of options, you find yourself sending them booty texts at 3 in the morning or liking every picture they post of themselves on Facebook? Come on, I know I’m not the only pseudo creeper out there! You rarely get a second chance and when you do, you realize that they’re actually better than what you remembered; but for some reason that minor wackness keeps on popping back up. Well the same applies to movies and their directors. I didn’t like District 9 at all when it first came out because I thought it was just an average sci-fi film that got way too much hype. Well just like the girl with the huge rack that had a bit of a lisp, I let the hype distract me from what was really important, the movie itself! So a few years later, due to the lack of good sci-fi that was out, I found myself going back to what I know and I decided to Netflix District 9 to give it another shot.  After seeing it again, I really liked it; the action was good as was the underlying theme of the movie. However, I still felt like there was something missing from it that would have made it great! Damn you Neil Blomkamp for answering my 3 am text!!!

Well with the release of Elysium, Blomkamp and I were essentially on our third date. I went in determined to not let the hype get to me and I was just going to enjoy the film for what it was. After seeing it, I’ve come to the conclusion that he is a lot like Donnie Darko’s Richard Kelly; he is really talented director who has brilliant ideas for movies, it’s just that he would be better suited letting someone else actually write the screenplay for him. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like there’s a ton of bad dialogue or glaring plot holes, its just that you are never really given the opportunity to make an emotional connection with the characters. Sure there’s a sick kid that’s thrown in there and you may care about Matt Damon or Alice Braga because their attractive but there’s simply not enough interaction between them or insight into their lives to make you truly care whether they live or die. Now in Blomkamp’s defense, the movie did seem like it was rushed at times; almost making you think that there was pressure from the studio execs to keep this under 2 hours. But when your first major film is nominated for Best Picture, you really should throw your weight around a bit and get what you want.If it takes you 2 1/2 hours to properly tall a story, then dammit take 2 1/2 hours to tell it! 

The story is about Earth in the year 2154; and in this world there are the haves and the have nots. The haves live on a giant man made satellite planet called Elysium. On Elysium, there are no poor and they all have machines that can cure every disease, sickness, or injury known to man. The have nots are stuck on Earth and it’s an overpopulated, diseased riddled, third world mess where every man fends for himself. Matt Damon is an ex con who grew up in an orphanage with Alice Braga. They once again meet when Damon is injured by one of the heartless robot policemen. They plan on meeting to catch up and rekindle what they had when they were kids but their plans change when Damon is over exposed to radiation at his factory. He is given 5 days to live and the only way he can save his life is to take on the seemingly impossible mission of stealing information from one of Elysium’s elite, his former boss John Carlyle, in an attempt to bring equality between the two worlds.  So in order to preserve their way of life, Elysium’s security director Delacourt (Jodie Foster) and her main military muscle Kruger (Sharlto Copley) go all out in an attempt to capture and kill Matt Damon.

As you can see, the story itself isn’t bad, its just the execution of it is. There is one scene in which Braga’s kid tries to tell Damon a story, this is at a critical time where they desperately need for him to care about her sickness and to take her to Elysium to save her life, but it’s like they were only allotted so much time for the scene, so every word was spit out like rapid fire and you could barely understand what was being said. And when you could understand what people were saying, you had to listen to Jodie Foster and the stupid distracting accent she chose for this role. Now I will say that the action is pretty good in this film; you cant really beat exploding heads or guns that blow robots to pieces with one shot. The character Kruger is insane and Copley does an adequate job of making him a respectable villain. And Matt Damon with his acting chops alone keeps this from being a B movie. There’s just that connection element that is missing and that is why I’m barely giving this film a rating of FRESH. And I don’t feel good about that rating at all.  It’s like right when you’re about to climax, the girl with the big boobs and the lisp starts talking and it totally ruins everything! It was still sex but man it could’ve been better.

2 Guns

It took me forever to write this review because I have been distracted by some good television as of late, as if I needed yet another interest to consume my time.  You would think that sitting in dirty theaters to see dirty old men like Bruce Willis act would be enough for me but no, I also feel the need to romp around through urinal overflow and beer covered floors to see poor hipsters try and pay their rent…um I mean express themselves through art. Well its only fitting that I’ve been distracted lately because clearly Marky Mark and Denzel Washington were distracted with the local bars and women while they were filming 2 Guns. Don’t get me wrong, they had good chemistry on camera but it looked like they got along a little too well; as in we can’t wait to get off set and wreck shop type of chemistry! They both put in just enough effort for each scene to gain the director Baltasar Kormakur’s approval. And let’s be honest, if Denzel and the Funky Bunch say that a scene is ok, is some scrub from Iceland really going to challenge them? I mean, I know they have hot women and metal festivals over there but the cold hasn’t made them crazy enough to challenge a guy that played Malcolm X.

Bobby (Denzel) and Stig (Wahlberg) turn out to be DEA and Special Forces agents who are both assigned to work undercover to try and bring down Mexican drug lord Papi Greco, played by Edward James Olmos. Neither of them is aware of the fact that the other is an undercover agent until they try and arrest each other after a bank robbery. Well after they realize that there is way more money there than what should be, Denzel is framed for killing his boss, and Marky Mark’s life is threatened; they realize that they have been set up. So they decide to work together again to get to the bottom of things and in the process clear their names.

This is the typical 80’s buddy cop movie which has boobs thrown in just for the hell of it and you will certainly not here me complaining about that. Paula Patton’s boob shot is worth the price of admission alone but sadly that’s where most the fun ends. The story itself isn’t all that bad, it’s just that when translated on screen, its not properly executed by Kormakur. There are quite a few scenes that are just too over the top to be even remotely believable, which is ok if the entire film had that tone but it doesn’t.  The fact that a 4’ 2” Marky Mark wearing a tight medium shirt can walk up to a group of Mexican cartel gang members and intimidate them is ridiculous to say the least. I am from north Mexico (Texas) and my head would be swinging from a bridge if I even joked about making better tacos than them, let alone calling them “my little bitches”. And I wont even get into his shootout with a helicopter. Either make yourself a borderline cartoon like From Paris With Love did or be a real cop movie like Red Heat…ok bad example. But Bill Paxton is the only who takes this film seriously and he basically steals the show every time he’s on screen. He has a pretty cool and intense scene with Denzel that actually motivated Denzel to act for about 5 minutes. You could almost see Denzel saying “Oh you’re gonna challenge me?  I was in Virtuosity fool!”

In the end there are enough explosions and scenes with Paula Patton in lingerie to keep you interested; but with that said, I will still give it a rating of kind of WEAK. 

Fruitvale Station

“A black sheriff???” “Hey! It worked in Blazing Saddles!” After their initial astonishment, the good people of Sherwood finally agreed that having a black sheriff wasn’t that radical of an idea after all. Well soon people will also begin questioning the concept of black actors. “A black actor???” I’m serious, in 10-15 years when Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, and Vin Diesel (we had the racial draft and we claimed him as black) are all dead; who will we have left? Idris Elba is British, so that means he drinks every night and at best he sees 70 years of age because of it. I like Columbus Short from The Losers but his agent sucks and he’s stuck doing Stomp The Yard 2; and little Will Smith is just as annoying as his dad was when he was young, so that’s almost a lost cause. I know I’ve complained about the lack of black talent in Hollywood before but man, it seems to get worst by the day! Maybe there’s hope in Michael B. Jordan; you may have noticed him in the found footage thriller Chronicle. He stars in Fruitvale Station, which is the story of Oscar Grant’s last night on Earth.

Ryan Coogler, who wrote and directed this moving film, surrounded himself with some wonderful talent in the form of Forrest Whittaker(producer), Rachel Morrison (cinematographer), and Oscar winner Octavia Spencer. Morrison was the cinematographer for Sound of My Voice, one of my favorites from last year, and she brings that clean and crisp feel this picture as well. Coogler doesn’t try and do too much in his first feature film, outside of the little trick he does with cell phone conversation or texts, he for the most part shoots it straight and lets the story tell itself. Part of what worries you about these films is that they try too hard to make the central figure a martyr so to speak, by over exaggerating how good of a person they really were. So they force in these sappy scenes which are a stretch to say the least. But Coogler does an excellent job of showing you how Grant is at a crossroads in his life on this fateful day which doubles as New Year’s Eve and his mother’s birthday. He for the most part is good person who goes out of his way to help others and looks after his family and you can see where he got these qualities from in his day to day interactions with his mother and his grandmother. But he is also a product of his surroundings which is ghetto Oakland; leading to some questionable friends and eventually his drug dealing conviction which landed him in jail at one point.

The movie focuses on the last day Grant was alive and right off the bat through the eyes of a camera phone it shows you how he was shot by an officer while being detained. It’s a rather chilling beginning to the movie but strangely enough, knowing how the movie ends doesn’t in any way take away from the tension and building sadness that is sure to come. Earlier I alluded to the fact that Coogler doesn’t try to make Grant more than what he was and this is shown in the first scene with him and his girlfriend Sophina. They are arguing over the fact that she caught him cheating on her at some point earlier than where we meet them but you can see that he is sincere about his desire to change for the better for both her and their daughter. And as the day goes on you see him at times being the good friend and father that he can be and then at other times you see the street coming out in him. Everything that happens to him that day plays a factor in how he winds up being detained by the cops at the end of the movie and this is key when you are filming a “day in the life” story. You have to make everything relevant otherwise it quickly becomes clear that you are wasting the viewer's time.

Michael B. Jordan’s acting is key to this film working. Because he brings such a strong and almost understated performance, every scene he has with Sophina, his daughter, and especially his mother (Octavia Spencer) just pulls at your heart strings. Speaking of Spencer, she is great as well, especially in a scene where she is administering tough love to her son. Without saying a word and more importantly without over doing it, you can see in her demeanor alone how it’s killing her but at the same time she knows it’s necessary. Thankfully she does a better job than John Lithgow did at the end of Harry and the Hendersons “Goodbye, my friend”. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d8oqIXtjdo

By the end of the movie there literally wasn’t a dry eye in the house, men AND women were crying. Hopefully Jordan hooks up with the Ari Gold of Hollywood and continues to get good roles as he clearly deserves them. I rate this movie as really FRESH and suggest you go see it.