Inside Llewyn Davis

With the number of movies I see in the theater each year, I obviously also see a ton of previews before each one of them. And very few of them, outside of the mainstream romantic comedy, make me openly sigh in disgust. Well the first 1 minute and 55 seconds of the Inside Llewyn Davis preview fell into this category as it seemed like someone purposely set out to make the least interesting and quite possibly the worst movie ever. Who wants to see a 2 hour movie about a week in the life of a folk singer in the sixties not named Bob Dylan? Well I felt safe in making this assumption until the last 5 seconds of the preview came along. This is when the voice over said “A new film by the Coen brothers”; damn you you last 5 seconds! I figured there was no way I could not see it now because Coen brother movies are impossible to sum up in 2 minutes. You can’t get a true feel for what the movie is about and it’s nearly impossible to properly display their smart and quirky nature in that time frame.  If I had based my decision solely on the preview I would’ve missed out on The Big Lebowski, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Fargo; all of which are classics.

But I was still a bit apprehensive because it had that Barton Fink feel to it; a movie that was basically a big inside joke that only fellow literary nerds would enjoy. They did another movie that was similar in tone in A Serious Man but I absolutely loved that movie and it actually ended up being one of my favorites of theirs. But again, this is a movie about a folk singer in the 60’s. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate folk music or today’s version of it, singer-songwriter. These shows always put me to sleep and at best you end up with a poetry slam that has some scrub playing the same three chords over and over again. These people are never quite as interesting as their songs suggest they are.They’re probably more like that Walter Mitty scrub in that they imagine all of these awful things happening to them and then they decide to bore us to death with their songs on the subject.

Well the Coens take us on this circular journey using the dark and cold winter of New York as its backdrop. You immediately are introduced to Llewyn Davis and his beautiful voice in the film’s opening shot as he is performing a heartfelt song in the middle of this café/bar and has the full attention of everyone there. At that moment you can tell that he is at peace with everything that going on in his life and that he is pouring everything he has into this song. The only problem is, he can’t sing every second of his life. Because the second he steps off the stage he immediately becomes this detached and unlikable struggling artist that has to sleep on whoever's couch is available for that night. He usually rotates between the couch of his best friend and former lover in Carey Mulligan or at the home of his former band mate's parents. He manages to upset everyone he comes into contact with at one point or another due to the fact that he is uncomfortable in his own skin. He can’t seem to realize that it takes more than just skill to connect with people in the music industry and because of it, he can’t seem to get ahead while others are experiencing at the very least moderate success in this growing world.

This becomes glaringly apparent at every dinner party he attends at his former band mates’ parents house, while he is in the recording studio with Justin Timberlake, and especially when he finds out that he may be the father of Mulligan’s expectant child. This causes major problems as Mulligan is married to Timberlake, so you understand the constant hostility she shows Llewyn. Now I realize that all of this may sound somewhat interesting but believe when I say it’s not.

The Coens go light on the humor here and the few attempts they do make either end with a small chuckle or they completely miss due to a miscast. I love Adam Driver from HBO’s Girls but he is way too much of a hipster for his scene in the recording studio with Timberlake and Davis. He would never quite sell out like they do in that scene, so his quirky take on what’s happening doesn’t quite come off as believable. The one act in the movie that is typical Coens comes when Davis decides to take a trip to Chicago in hopes to get a gig and he has deal with John Goodman and his quiet and straight to the point driver. Goodman makes fun of suicide and folk singers in general and brings up some points that almost had me applauding in approval. Too bad the entire film wasn’t like this act because this was the only time I didn’t want to commit suicide myself.

I know that the Coens are way smarter than I am, so maybe this was another one of their esoteric films that I’m too dumb to get but sadly I don’t think so. They did manage to of course sneak another reference to the Odyssey in the film but in the end this movie was just to WEAK for me to suggest it for others to suffer through. Of course though, every other critic is too embarrassed to admit that they didn’t get it either, so they go the safe route and gush all over it. Well you will get none of that malarkey here!

47 Ronin

Keanu is like the stoner version of Nicolas Cage, he’s just not as self aware as Cage is. And I’m talking about the post bankruptcy Cage when he was doing any movie that was thrown at him because he needed the cash, not the Adaptation or Raising Arizona Cage. What I mean by this is that Cage has become a caricature of himself and he uses that to his advantage; Keanu I don’t believe is smart enough to do this so his agent does it for him. Don’t get me wrong, I hear nothing but great things about Keanu in regards to how nice of a guy he is and how he tries extremely hard to be good at the roles he is in but let’s be honest; his agent knew exactly what he was doing when he used Keanu’s natural ability to look lost at every idea that extends beyond animal crackers when he got him the role of Neo in The Matrix. He was set after that!

And this is why we love Keanu; the majority of us are just as dumb as he is, we just wont admit it to ourselves. And then there are the Honey Boo Boo idiots who are obviously dumber but they love him as well because it gives them someone to look up to even if they don’t realize that Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey wasn’t a documentary.

Seeing as how I just admitted that I’m an idiot, it should come as no surprise that I had been looking forward to 47 Ronin for almost a year when I saw that Hollywood decided to release another version of this Japanese tale involving a surfer white dude as a Samurai master. Oh and I can’t forget the fact that he would also be fighting strange beasts and weird tattoo covered Irish (I believe) beings while trying to earn honor among his fellow Samurai.

I lost interest about an hour into this snooze fest but I believe the plot went something like this; Keanu is a half-breed that was raised in the forest. One day for whatever reason he runs away and is found by a local village leader in Asano and his son Oishi. Despite the Samurai's wishes to instantly kill him, Asano decides to take him in as his own. But as he raises Keanu, he becomes an outcast in the village and is only shown love by Asano’s daughter Mika.  I think it’s because she finally saw a man that was taller than 5’3” but that could just be me. Anyway, one day during a friendly test of skill between villages, Kira and his witch of the rival town unleash their evil plan to disgrace Asano and his followers that will ultimately lead to his ruling over their land, the marrying of Mika, and the exiling of the local Samurai.

I believe it was around the time that Keanu decided to lead the Samurai into the forest from which he came that I fell asleep for a few minutes. Only to awaken to him fighting his own weird reptile people so that he could get weapons for his crew as they were on their way to avenge the death of their leader. There are really only three moments in this movie that will hold your attention and they are when Keanu helps fight the beast at the beginning, when Keanu is sold into slavery and forced to fight giant mutants for entertainment, and of course every blank stare Keanu makes as he tries to understand Japanese culture. If you can't tell, I like saying the word Keanu. 

Now to his credit, I too have a hard time understanding some of their ways. They seem to be happy when they get to kill themselves and for some reason witches only want to turn into weird foxes. Is life so hard in Japan that the highlight of your life is slitting your stomach open? Sadly there is very little action for a movie that involves Samurai.The majority of this movie is a lot of walking and talking, so it’s basically the Japanese version of Lord of the Rings. They really should’ve called in Tom Cruise of The Last Samurai fame to be Keanu’s mentor simply so he could teach him to yell Sake!!!!!!

This movie was terrible and gets a rating of WACK partly due to the fact that it cost me $14 to see it. Avoid it at all costs! 

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Christmas Day always seems to bring a ton of distractions with it. There are the 180 NBA games that are playing on television that day, which allow you to fall in and out of asleep to while watching them after scarfing down 20 lbs of ham and turkey, there are 1500 screaming kids running around, none of whose parents seem to be anywhere in sight, and of course there are all of the relentless questions about your personal life and future plans. When I ventured down to San Antonio to be with the majority of my family I hadn’t seen that many Black people gathered together in one scene since 12 Years A Slave. Speaking of, as I walked in I immediately caught the aroma of the repulsive southern black delicacy chitlins; otherwise known as pig intestines. I shouted as loud as I possibly could “Regardless of what Kanye says, we are no longer slaves!!! We can now eat the better part of the pig!”

After I ate and tossed a few children in the air, I moved on to the next distraction that Christmas brings with it and that’s movies. This can be good and bad in that the good is, it allows you to escape from your family when needed. The bad is, you get Hollywood trying to shove what they believe to be Oscar bait down your throat. With The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, they started their propaganda a few months earlier with their variety of their loud ads that included Arcade Fire blaring over the speakers and old people running with no particular destination in sight. I recognized their stupid formula from a mile away; put an aging comedian/comedy actor like Ben Stiller in the lead, have an “I didn’t know she was still alive” actress in Shirley MacLaine on screen just to prove that she can still talk, and create this overly sappy human interest story where the lead rediscovers their youth or love or whatever you can think of to give old people hope.

Now don't get me wrong, I really wanted the movie to be good but I can’t tell you how happy I was when I walked in the theater and saw that it was nearly empty and noticed that half of the jokes fell completely flat within the first hour. Maybe the rest of America is starting to recognize this silly formula as well. The one joke that kind of turned things around was a particularly odd day dream sequence where Ben Stiller turned into Benjamin Button while hooking up with Kristen Wiig; I’ll leave the punchline for you to discover on your own.

But if you haven’t been slapped across the face with the previews yet, the story is about a middle aged Walter who apparently has never done anything interesting or note worthy (in an annoyingly high pitched voice) in his life. When he was a kid, he took risks and was a skate boarder but when his dad died, he stopped living and became this play it safe, no frills kind of guy that only truly lives through his constant day dreaming. He works for Life magazine which has just been bought out by another company and they are about to publish their last cover amid rumors of massive layoffs. Life’s go to photographer in Sean Penn, has only worked with Walter and he has sent him what is considered to be his masterpiece pic for their final cover photo. The only problem is, Walter can’t find the negative and he is stressing out as his new boss is constantly on him to produce it. So with the egging of his wannabe love interest Kristin Wiig, he sets off on this world wide journey to track down Penn in order to find out what happened to the negative, as it was the only one missing from the reel of prints he sent.

Speaking of Wiig, I like her but she was an awful miscast in this role. Her comedic style doesn’t work for this role at all and the writers didn’t do her any favors by giving her material or a character that fits her personality. So she just comes off as this wooden woman who appears to be reading off of a teleprompter. Was Jennifer Connelly not available? I’d run around the world naked while singing Billy Joel hits just to get with her! Anyway, while he's on his journey, Walter discovers that being adventurous is the true essence of life and he is becoming less recognizable to himself and to his friends, as the old person he used to be is slowly starting to fade away.

It’s not that this is a bad movie, I actually kind of liked it. It’s just that most of it falls flat and it seems really forced; especially his over the top jerk of a new boss. And I of course can’t forget the annoying Sean Penn forcing in his “take a step back and appreciate life” persona. I just want one good punch at him; but the problem is, I can see myself wanting to grab a beer with him afterwards as well. Oh well, this movie is WEAK and I suggest you stream it via Netflix. Also try not to puke at the shameless ads for E harmony and Papa John's.

American Hustle

I am always leery when I see movie previews that don’t have any dialogue in them; they instead just have beautiful people walking around or dancing to cool music to try and get you pumped up about the movie. You can essentially deduce the fac that the producers are telling you "we know this movie is going to suck but hey, at least its full of beautiful people." This works great for porn but not when it comes to movies that you’re trying to get nominated for Oscars. And why do I mention porn in about 1 out of every 5 reviews of mine? I don’t know, maybe it’s I'm a lonely scrub. Or maybe it's because its an easy target, much like Jenna Jameson’s upper body area! I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself, something that was also overheard while watching the last Jameson porn but moving on.

David O. Russell can do no wrong in the eyes of Hollywood lately. The only problem I have with this is that all of his movies are good but never quite great. Three Kings was cool at times and had Ice Cube yelling about Black quarterbacks but in the end it was just ok. Silver Linings had a busty,sexy, and crazy Jennifer Lawrence, basically the recipe for my future wife; but in the end it simply had too much Brad Cooper and was a chick flick in disguise. I wont go through every one of his movies but you get it, he never quite deserves the acclaim he gets. So while I liked the cast he put together for American Hustle, I was trying to curb my enthusiasm a bit because I’ve been fooled by this con before.

The opening shot of the film reminds you of just how funny O. Russell can be as it shows you Christian Bale and how crazy dedicated he is when it comes to morphing into his roles. You see the huge potbelly he grew for this movie and him meticulously working on his toupee to cover up his male pattern baldness. Bale plays Irving Rosenfeld, a small time con man who meets and falls in love with Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) at a party. He eventually finds out that she is pretty good at conning herself, as she has changed her identity to get away from a life that she dreaded. Everything is going great as they team up to expand his hustle game until one day Sydney is busted by the ambitious and slightly childish Richie Dimaso (Cooper). After she is busted, Richie runs a con on Sydney convincing her that Irving doesn’t really love her and that he is just using her as he does everything else in his life.

At the same time, Irving agrees to help Richie bring down 4 con men that are like him to help him boost his career in exchange for their immunity. The only problem with that is Richie keeps raising the stakes and things start to get out of control. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that Irving is married and has an adopted son that he absolutely adores. This is significant because he has a young pistol starter of a wife played by Jennifer Lawrence who is hustling him and constantly adding stress to his life with her near disasters and meddling. She provides great comic relief to go along with Bradley Cooper’s hair rollers, their eccentric 70’s clothing and jewelry, and Amy Adams oozing sex every time she’s on screen.

I love Amy Adams because she’s not Hollywood sexy but more like your typical every day person kind of sexy. If you ran into her on the street you better scoop that up with the quickness, otherwise you’ll end up with a cracked out Juliette Lewis. Everyone does a great job with their roles but this is especially true with Bale. He starts off as this cool and confidant man but as the old saying goes “hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn”. You see him slowly begin to break down as both Adams and Lawrence’s games wreak havoc in his life and start to take their toll on him. Now again, we’re talking about rich people’s problems on screen, in real life Adams and Lawrence can as many games with me as they want; preferably at the same time! 

I liked this movie as the plot movies along a pretty good pace and keeps you interested as the stakes begin to rise. Plus every time there's even a small hint at a lull, Russell focuses in on Adam's tight little body and all is forgiven. When you finally reach the end of this hustling team's journey, you're left somewhat satisfied but you have this overall feeling like there wasn't quite the punch you were hoping for. O. Russell leaves you wanting more, more, more like the former porn star Andrea Truden begged for in her famous disco song. I rate this movie as FRESH as is was only a Hustle and Flow rap song away from being Tight.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

It’s not often that I fall asleep during a movie, let alone three times during the same one; but that is exactly what happened when I saw the first Hobbit. There was one scene in particular where I believe it was Gandalf that was talking to Cate Blanchett the elf, that ran for so long that I fell asleep, woke myself up snoring, looked around and saw that they were STILL talking! And the sad thing is, its not just this movie but all of these fantasy movies that run way too long! Is it because these nerds don’t have as many opportunities as they did in the past to tell their stories of frolicking dwarfs, flying horses, and trolls that fall in love? I don’t remember Willow or Krull having to break their stories up into trilogies that lasted 15 hours a piece. Willow fell in love with Princess Elora within 5 minutes! And if these movies are supposed to be marketed for the whole family, how do they expect a kid to stay interested for 3 hours if I cant keep myself awake without having to fantasize about Elven porn just to mix things up.

This movie opens up with a 5 minute Quentin Tarantino style discussion that takes place between Gandalf and Thorin, and it is accompanied by soap opera music every time something profound is said. It’s a total rip off of Obi Wan meeting Han Solo in the alien bar from Star Wars but it just sets the table for what is to come later in the movie. Once you get past the silliness of it, it’s actually a cool little tie in into how they all came together in the first Hobbit and it also takes you right into the action. The plot is unbelievably simple, they need Bilbo the master thief to steal an arc stone from some giant mountain that is heavily guarded by the deadly dragon Smaug so that Thorin can then unite everyone against a great evil that is brewing in the world. I mean come on! Why not just call it what we all know you were using for inspiration when you wrote the story in the first place, THE NOTHING! Anyway, Peter Jackson (the director) takes you through a magical forest that is full of giant spiders and tricky elves while doing some cool things along the way with everyone’s favorite ring, the Precious. Also while on their journey, you meet humans and you see the dwarfs and Bilbo repeatedly trying to avoid the evil Orgs.

There is absolutely no reason why this story couldn’t be told in 2 hours or less; tell your story and fill it with plenty of short but effective action scenes, its really not that hard. No, not Peter Jackson; he feels the need to take a somewhat interesting story and stretch it out for as long as he possibly can. It’s like he watched way too many seasons of Mad Men and felt like their writers were challenging him. “Oh you think YOU can put people to sleep, just watch what I have in store for you!” I am an action junkie, so the more action the better is usually my take on a movie. But even I know that these scenes shouldn’t last for 40 minutes. In theory it sounds tight but in actual practice you end up with Steven Spielberg 2.0. You have characters running through de facto obstacle courses and ridiculous attempts at humor. So basically the scene loses its effect and you’re stuck thinking about elven porn again.

There is one scene that so blatantly steals from Temple of Doom that I was just waiting for one of the dwarfs to all of a sudden develop a Chinese accent and start yelling “Doctor Bilbo, Doctor Bilbo!! Ooooooh you cheat Doctor Bilbo! You cheat!!!” And while we’re at it, why not just offend everyone and have one of the dwarfs yell “Oh sexy girlfriend, you need to start yanking my wankie! The Donger need tang!” This is a reference to a weird love story that takes place between an elf and a dwarf.

I liked this movie but it runs way too long, just in case you haven’t picked up on that yet. I actually stayed awake the entire time and I loved the cliffhanger ending. It's yet another “ode” to Empire Strikes Back or even the Matrix Reloaded; but I can’t fault him for that. I rate this movie as barely FRESH but suggest that you watch it at home, so you can break it up over a few days.

Oldboy

When I first moved to Austin, I was still young and had the raging hormones of a jackrabbit that was watching a Dolly Parton movie for the first time. So needless to say, unless it was kung fu movie night, I didn’t really feel like sitting around and watching a movie with the boys. I preferred hopping down to dirty 6^th street and chasing busty blonds that could drop it like its hot to the Yin Yang Twins. But there was one particular movie that always piqued my interest and that was the Korean flick, Oldboy. My buddies kept raving about it but whenever their wake and bake high eventually wore off, they also had similar interests in chasing tail on dirty 6^th. So every time I had them pop the movie in, they would simply fast forward, oh wait it wasn’t a VHS tape, they would skip to the fight scenes and drunkenly yell “That’s all you need to see anyway!”

So over time I simply forgot about the movie, that is until one day recently when I saw somewhere that Spike Lee was remaking it. Once again however, my buddy movie blocked me and told me to wait for Spike’s version because it was supposed to be an incredible shot for shot remake of it; and this way I wouldn’t ruin the mind f&@$ that comes at the end. Well it seems like every critic in the world saw the original and because of that their experience of the remake was completely ruined. The movie got mixed at best reviews and as a result got a limited release in the U.S. Plus apparently its hard for Spike Lee to get studios to give him money for his movies these days. Really? I know that his filming style can be a little jarring at times and that some of his movies completely miss the mark; but can the director of Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing, and He Got Game really not get money to make movies? It’s been decades since Brian De Palma made a good movie but he still gets money. Mel Gibson has offended every human (even other racists) on the planet yet he’s still in movies. Oh well, I was finally able to track down Oldboy in the barrios of Austin, and once I threw on my hoodie to fit in with everyone else, I was ready to finally witness freshness.

There’s not much that I want to tell you in regards to the plot because I don't want to ruin the experience for you. But the story follows Joe (Josh Brolin), an awful and self-centered alcoholic salesmen who is about as unlikeable as they come. And being that I’m a salesman myself, I can testify that this pretty much describes every sales person that has ever existed. If there ever was a species that deserved genocide, this would be it. Well one drunken night after pissing off a multitude of people, including his ex wife for missing his three year old daughter’s birthday party, he runs into an Asian lady. The next thing you know he wakes up underground in a fake hotel that has no windows and no door. He is fed the same meal everyday through a slot in the wall and is forced to watch updates about how he is blamed for brutally raping and killing his ex wife, leaving his daughter to grow up in a foster home.

Well after 20 years of being stuck in this place, he suddenly wakes up in a suitcase that is above ground. He gets out and immediately attempts to figure out what happened to him and his life and why these events occurred in the first place. But as he seeks revenge for his random imprisonment, more and more awful facts are revealed and you are taken to places that you never wanted to go to; either in real life or on film.

Spike Lee is on point with what he brings to the story utilizing his signature style. He can be a master of at using his surroundings to set up a scene and to add whatever emotion he wants to without the actors even saying a word. Sometimes he goes overboard with this but not here, it seems like the producers held him in check quite a bit. He also held his own when it came to the fighting scenes, which really surprised me. I was worried about how that would come off  in what appears to be modern day Brooklyn and with a white lead actor, but it worked and afterwards you were sold on Josh Brolin being this badass. I will watch Elizabeth Olson do absolutely anything, so of course I liked her, but having said that, none of the actors really added any depth to the characters. It’s like they all watched the original and got lost in reading the subtitles; forgetting to actually pay attention to how the actors told the story. I blame Lee for not pushing them more but the plot is so good that you get caught up in the story and overlook the sub par performances.

I will say that this movie isn’t for everyone; the themes are so dark that no one was even laughing at the obvious jokes that were in the movie. Everything Sam Jackson said or did was hilarious as he dropped “mother#@$” as many times as he possible could. And by the time the ending was revealed I was the only one who gasped out loud. I NEVER do that! I’m fairly certain the only times I’ve done that in the past 7 years was during Oldboy and 12 Years A Slave.

If you have seen the original, I suggest that you skip this remake as all of the suspense will be taken away for you. So you will sit there picking apart every flaw of the movie instead of actually enjoying it; similar to M. Night Shimashamalan’s The Village. But if you’ve never seen it before, I rate this movie as FRESH and suggest that you pop in because the ending is one of the all time  biggest mind f%$# ever! 

Out of the Furnace

“You and me, we’re fucking done professionally!” I wonder if Bale is screaming that at director Scott Cooper and producers Ridley Scott and Leo Dicaprio right about now. Or maybe he’s too much of an “artist” to care how well his movies do in the theater. Either way, Hollywood should know better than to put a depressing movie like Out of the Furnace out during the holiday season. People are depressed and stressed out enough as it is without having to pay money to make themselves feel suicidal after sitting in a large dark room and crying over beautiful people’s problems. It didn’t really affect me because I will gladly pay money to see someone who has more issues than I do. I walk out thinking that it’s not so bad after all to be stuck in a dead end job, while maintaining a blog that no one reads, and slowly realizing that I may have a drinking problem! At least I know that Christian Bale’s dog is dying of syphilis! With that said, I walked into Furnace with the high hopes that it would supply me with exactly what I needed to get me through the week.

The movie takes place in a rural town where it looks like the only thing to do for fun is meth. Bale is a hard working man at the factory who has a beautiful black girlfriend in Zoe Saldana and a brother who is desperately trying to do everything he can to keep from working at the factory. Casey Affleck plays Bale’s brother, and he is a difficult kid that has to be repeatedly bailed out of of trouble by his older brother; but there is hope for him as he has enlisted in the army in the hopes that this will give his life some structure. Just before he leaves however, Bale, gets in a drunk driving accident that promptly lands him in jail. It’s from this point on that everything goes downhill. Affleck comes back from the war clearly disturbed by the events that took place over there and when Bale is released, he finds himself coming back to an empty home as his girlfriend has left him for a local cop. Man that’s rough, you would think that Black women would be used to their men doing a bid in jail; rap music prepares them for this! I kid, I kid.

Well things eventually get worse as Affleck finds himself mixed up with some inbreds from New Jersey who allow him to “compete” in their illegal underground fights. I put compete in quotes because the fights are all rigged and it all depends on whether or not Affleck takes a dive or not. The problem is, he’s a hot head and is totally unpredictable. Well wouldn’t you know it, certain events take place and Affleck winds up missing. This once again leads to Bale having to try and come to his rescue while at the same time dealing with his own demons.

The leader of the inbreds is Woody Harrelson. At first you find it hard to see Woody from Cheers as this scary badass, but the film’s opening scene of him getting hammered in a car at the drive in quickly convinces you. The scene is both scary and odd as it involves him forcing his date to do something strange with a hot dog and this eventually leads to him getting out of the car and beating the crap out of innocent bystanders. Sound like a movie full of uplifting moments just in time for Christmas? Well I am not telling you half of the depressing stuff that happens.

I actually really liked this movie for the reasons stated earlier but also because of Bale. I don’t think this movie works without him. There are quite a few scenes that would normally come off as corny if he weren’t there to provide some balance. And even in a few of those scenes, he wasn’t able to keep me from chuckling. But overall, the theme of protecting family at all cost resonated with me and provided me with the entertainment I was looking for. I rate this movie as FRESH and suggest you check it out January 1. 

Sinjin Hawke and Joanna Gruesome

My life is about to become a bit more boring as I have now sworn off bars unless there is a show happening there. So you will have fewer stories of hipster greatness from me unless they are rocking skin tight jeans and white tees that shows off their potbellies while wielding their baby making ukuleles. By the way, I’m not sure if that’s an intentional trend to shoot the finger at society’s view of what a man should look like or if hipsters are just lazy and like to drink their fatty PBR’s while eating cheese laden vegetarian meals. Either way, it leads me to talk about the unintentional yet quintessential hipster in James Murphy. If you don’t recognize that name, he is the former lead and co founder of the indie legend band LCD Soundsystem. Ever since he quit the band at the height of their popularity, he’s been kind of lost in obscurity while only popping up randomly to play dj sets in small venues. I missed his first stop in Austin but was the first to buy a ticket to see him spin records when he returned to play a larger venue.

Now I have always said that I don’t see the point of paying money to watch someone famous play their favorite records for us on stage but for some reason I fell victim to Murphy's evil yet genius plan. Think about it, he quits his band at their peak, disappears for a while so that we will pay money to simply see him do anything, and then he will then make his triumphant return at LCD’s reunion tour 3-5 years from now. He’s ultimately trying to create a Daft Punkish mystique and I can’t really fault him for that. Well in the meantime, for the most part his DJ show is boring as you could barely see him; and instead of turning it into a big disco dance party, everyone just stands there trying with all their might to catch a glimpse of the furry hermit he's become. The only fresh part was seeing this meemaw get down with what I assumed were her daughters at the show. I’m sure she had no clue what any of the newer records were but I'm also sure that she was the only one there who was alive when he started playing records from the 70’s. Why do I bring all of this up? I do so because I wish I had spent my money of seeing the up and coming DJ Sinjin Hawke instead.

If you have never heard of Hawke, he is from Montreal and he makes these live and energetic beats that take you places you’d never expect. At one point you’re thinking that this beat is kind of wack and then all of a sudden he drops horns out of nowhere that literally have you yelling “that’s the shit right there!” He does this on one of my favorites, Prom Nite. Another favorite of mine is Crystal Dust, it sounds like something that should be on a Big Boi solo album. Check him out for yourself as I give him a rating of FRESH!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XWWvOgLpxA

Next, you should check out Joanna Gruesome and their 90’s pop punk sound. They are a 5 piece from Wales with a male and a female lead. Their music makes you want to hop around off beat and it reminds you of when you had your first beer as a teenager. While their not quite a One Direction or Haim guilty pleasure, it is still something that you’ll like but will be ashamed to admit it. Check out Lemonade Girl and Secret Surprise. As of now I give them a rating of kind of WEAK!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMHbn8fQLlk

Homefront

I’m not sure why I have the audacity to think that Black mainstream movies are actually beneath me…oh wait, that’s because they are!!! Don’t get me wrong, New Jack City, Boyz in da Hood, Mo’ Money, and Juice were all tight but it seems like ever since Don’t Be A Menace While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood came out, it was all downhill from there. Once the Wayans proved that you don’t actually have to try to make money in the film industry, every Black film maker or writer hopped on board with this idea. Look at Tyler Perry! I could write a 50 page dissertation on how Perry is single handedly killing Black films, Black actors, and Black people with his stupid movies, plays, and face.

My mom and brother tried to make me watch Diary of a Mad Black Woman once and I stormed out of the room within 30 minutes of witnessing that travesty. If they weren’t my family I would’ve thrown on some baby powder and pimp slapped them both. But looking back, I could tell that they didn’t even really like it that much themselves; they just simply felt the need to watch it because Black people were on screen. It’s not the 70’s anymore where movies like Car Wash and Cooley High were must see pictures because you NEVER saw Black people on camera unless they were serving Ms O'hara. In today's time, we are all over the place but we still feel the need to settle for trash. Just today I walked by and heard some woman talking about how awesome Best Man Holiday was. Ugh, why not just euthanize yourself already and get it over with! I guess we all have to have our guilty pleasures though and mine just happens to be short balding actors in tough guy action movies! It doesn’t matter if it’s Wesley Snipes, Sly Stallone, or my latest favorite, Jason Statham on screen, either way I'll be in the mix. So yes, there I was this holiday weekend spending my much needed free time watching Homefront.

I know it looked it hokey, especially with James Franco sporting a terrible Southern accent but I couldn’t help myself. Even watching the Franco clearly mailing it in so he could collect a check for his latest “art project” is better than watching Ice Age 8 or whatever stupid kids film came out this weekend. Plus it had Winona Ryder in it and I’ve had a crush on her since the 90’s. I figured that since she’s struggling to get roles, she’d do what every other aging actress does for attention these days and that’s get naked on camera. While she didn’t quite do that, she did have a rather forced doggy style sex scene with Franco that was so awkward, I’m sure they had to do it in 20 takes because the two of them kept laughing so hard. Oh well, I still enjoyed it, sort of.

The movie starts out showing Statham rocking terrible hair extensions while working undercover to infiltrate this motorcycle gang that was dealing meth. Once it’s time for the bust however, things get crazy and the gang leader’s son is killed in the raid. He vows to get revenge on Statham who was clearly done with the pressure of the undercover game at that point. So the movie flashes forward some time after this incident and you see him living with his daughter in a sleepy town outside of New Orleans. His daughter gets in a fight with the local bully and ends up kicking his butt. Well in small towns, people have nothing better to do than hold grudges and the bully’s parents are hell bent on getting revenge. So they convince their brother Franco, who is the town’s badass and local meth dealer to scare Statham a bit. In the process, he finds out who Statham used to be and sees an opportunity to use this for his advantage. Things escalate and the next thing you know, you have multiple gun fights and explosions happening. The problem is, there just isn’t enough of this.

Stallone, who wrote the screenplay, tries a bit too hard to make this a legitimate movie when all he had to do was fill it with bad one liners and exploding heads. So there are one too many moments that kind of drag on. Just like with The Walking Dead, save the dramatic moments for people who can actually act. I will say that Kate Bosworth once again excels at playing white trash; I’m beginning to think that she isn’t acting. She was also wonderful in Wonderland with Val Kilmer. Statham is his usual bad to the bone self with his death stares and casual ass kicking fighting style. His daughter is only slightly annoying at times and you actually hope that he keeps her safe as the bad guys don’t care who hurt or kill that get in their way.

I want to give this movie a rating of fresh but I simply cant. Instead it gets a rating of WEAK but I certainly would frown if you decided to go check it out. I mean, I did finally break down and see Think Like a Man and kind of liked it, mainly because Kevin Hart was hilarious; the rest of it was trash.