Sorry to Bother You

Both my name and my voice have provided me a certain level of anonymity throughout my entire professional career. For years I’ve received free Victoria’s Secret magazines and application forms to be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader because somewhere in someone’s system they have me labelled as a Black female. Now I am Black and my name is Kelly however I don’t have Meatloaf boobs just yet. That’s a Fight Club reference by the way.

And because I went to school to be a doctor, I spent years getting rid of my Southern accent. I figured no one who was facing a life or death situation wanted to ever receive their medical advice from some clown who sounded like Matthew McConaughey. "Alright, alright, alright! Now wut we gon do right here is…" Um…no thanks doc, I’ll be getting a second opinion. Well, I clearly never finished medical school and I now mainly work with clients over the phone. But because I spent so much time sounding like a professional asshole, all of my clients assume that I’m white. And it isn’t until they’ve finished throwing some low key shade at Black people in general and received a photo of me along with a recap of everything that we talked about, that they call me apologizing and asking where I’m from. My response is always the same, "I come from the beach…BOY!!!" That’s a Half Baked reference by the way. I’m sorry that I keep doing that but half of my readers have never seen or have even heard of these films before.

The point of all of this is that there is no way I’d be anywhere close to being effective or successful in my current gig if I hadn’t adopted the Colin Powell voice. Let’s face it, white people simply don’t trust the Chris Rock voice or name. I mean hell, if some Black dude named Rock called me trying to sell me anything, I’d tell him to meet me on MLK BLVD at midnight with an ounce of that greeny green green. That would give me the necessary time to get that twenty that Pookie owes me. I kid, I kid, I don’t smoke weed. But you get my point!

Well when I first saw the trailer for Sorry to Bother You, I thought that it was just going to be a biography of my life! I thought to myself, the world isn’t ready for this yet and no one is going to ever pay money to see it. It’s like the time they tried to turn Jessie from Saved by the Bell into a stripper; America wasn’t ready to see its sweetheart sliding up and down a pole (I was). The timing was just way off. But I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that this film was much deeper than that. This is a film that we can all relate to in some way, shape, or form because whether we like to admit it or not, most of us sell our souls one paycheck at a time just so we can continue to afford that HBO subscription and see how Game of Thrones is going end. Damn you Jon Snow, damn you to hell!

So to help point out our flaws to us, Boots Riley (writer/director) decided to take us into the world of Cassius Green, a young dreamer who is played by Get Out and Atlanta star Lakeith Stanfield. Cassius is a young Black male who lives in his uncle’s garage with his beautiful and artistic girlfriend, Detroit. He’s stuck in a rut and is worried that he’s living out a meaningless life. So he decides to get a job as a telemarketer at one of the world’s biggest companies which is run by the controversial and cocky Steve Lift (Armie Hammer). More on him in a second. Cassius initially struggles at his new gig because he goes into it attempting to be himself. And it isn’t until his colleague Langston (Danny Glover) notices his struggles and lets him in on a little secret that things start to turn around for him. Langston lets him know that he has to stop using his normal voice and that he has to adopt the more trustworthy "white" voice. At first Cassius is reluctant but once he caves in, he quickly becomes not only a rising star in the company but also the floor’s best salesman. And it isn’t long before he gets promoted to the legendary and almost mythical Top Sellers department. It’s here where he meets the aforementioned Steve Lift.

Lift is the innovator of a new workplace; one where you can work, live, eat, and sleep without ever leaving the building. On the surface it sounds great because it provides you 3 quality meals and what appears to be a good roof over your head; two things that are hard to come by for the average low income family in this society. But as you can imagine, it’s an absolute nightmare.

It’s viewed as modern day slavery and has led to a number of protests in the city, some of which is led by Cassius’s girlfriend Detroit, which of course leads to some tension between the two. Does Cassius risk losing his girlfriend and his close friends to live out the life he thinks he’s always wanted or will he realize what he’s gotten himself into?

Now so far this sounds intriguing but you can pretty much tell where it’s headed, right? Wrong! This is the trippiest movie I have seen since Scanner Darkly and that movie had animation in it. It seriously feels as though you’re on a high as the film continues to get weirder and weirder. And it’s not just the filming style or the quirky characters, it’s the story itself. By the time Cassius wanders off in Lift’s party, which had an Eyes Wide Shut orgy in it by the way, and discovers the film’s main secret, I thought I was having an acid flashback! Which is really weird because I’ve never done acid. And I honestly believe that this is how most of the audiences who saw this film and rated it felt because their ratings don’t quite match up to the quality of the film. I think it was just too out there for the standard viewer.

I however loved every second of it because it’s a fresh take on the comedy genre and there are so many not so subtle but also not preachy messages in it. One of the funniest and yet saddest moments in the film is when Cassius is forced to rap at Lift’s party and completely sells his soul to gain the approval of the crowd. The look of total defeat and shame on his face was something that I will never forget. Someone please make Kanye watch this film.

I could honestly 3,000 words on this movie but sadly no one would read it. Hell, you probably already stopped reading after my Half Baked joke. But just in case you didn’t, I will stop my review here and say that you should definitely check this film out as I give it a rating of TIGHT!

Ocean's 8

The last time Hollywood came out with an all-female cast to remake a classic film, it was in the way of Ghostbusters. And the end result was an awful one as that was one of the worst movies to come out in the past decade. Now if I were a smart man, I would’ve just lied in my review of it and said that it hit on all cylinders but there’s a reason why I’m 86 years old and single, I’ve never learned to pick my battles. I instead chose to hold on to my "artistic integrity" and told the truth. Well as you can imagine, the backlash was brutal and I didn’t get laid for 4 months afterwards. Things got so bad at one point that I would see female friends of mine in the streets and they would look at me and simply shake their heads in disgust. You would’ve thought that I had become Cosby Jr. and was passing out roofies like they were Starbursts!

Well when I saw that Oceans 8 was coming out, I was praying that it would at least be decent just so I could maintain some semblance of a social life this summer. I can walk out of the convenient store with only a bag of potato chips and lotion only so many times before the clerk finally realizes what’s up. "Wait a sec, he isn’t THAT ashy!" But thankfully I learned from last summer’s fiasco and had a Flesh Light on order through Amazon Prime just in case this movie did suck and I had to hole up in a bunker somewhere. Hey, don’t judge, I’m getting in touch with my inner self and helping the economy at the same time!

Now if you have never seen Ocean’s 11, I suggest popping in really quickly mainly because it’s good but also because they make so many references to it in 8 that you’ll miss half of the jokes and cool guest appearances if you don’t. But what’s sad about that is Ocean’s 8 is almost a shot for shot remake of 11. They steal the opening scene, the overall plot, and even the filming style of Steven Sodomy (I know that’s not his name but I hate him and refuse to call him by his real name), which is a shame because the women that are in this film are legends and they at the very least deserve their own original story.

What made 11 so cool was the fact that Clooney, Pitt, Damon, Mac, Garcia, and Roberts were all at the top of their games and you could tell that they were having time of their lives. Now it helps that they were all in Vegas because it’s kind of hard not to have fun there but still, seeing Damon, fresh off of Jason Bourne, playing something completely out of character for him was both funny and engaging. And that, combined with the fact that Pitt was eating in every scene and casually dropping the film’s funniest lines, made you feel as though you were a part of the crew.

Well that’s what was missing in this film. Don’t get me wrong, I liked 8 but it took a while to get over the fact that Hollywood didn’t feel as though Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, and freaking Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) couldn’t carry a film on their own. All of whom were amazing in this film by the way. It felt as though you could visibly see Bullock feeling the pressure of becoming the new Danny Ocean but Blanchett and Hathaway were clearly having fun.

In 8, Bullock has just been released from prison and she is looking to get the old gang back together to pull off the ultimate heist. She wants to steal Cartier’s version of the Crown’s Jewels when they are on display around the neck of Hathaway at the annual Met Gala. So Bullock and Blanchett go on a recruiting tour to find a team that can pull this off. This is where they find Awkwafina (the pickpocket), Mindy Kaling (the master jeweler), Sarah Paulson (still not sure what her special skill was), Rihanna (the hacker) and Helena Bonham Carter (the fashion designer).

Blanchett showed that she still has it as she just oozed coolness on the screen and thankfully Rihanna wasn’t distractingly bad with her acting but the highlights were clearly Bonham Carter and Awkwafina. Bonham was her normal quirky self but in this film she displayed a vulnerability that you don’t normally see in her characters, similar to Damon in 11. And everything Awkawafina said and did had me in tears. I will admit that there was a plot twist at the end that I didn’t really see coming but looking back it did fall in line with their original goal which was to copy everything that happened in 11.

Overall, I liked this film and it is definitely better than Ocean’s 12 or 13; I guess I was just hoping that Hollywood would come out of the Dark Ages and allow it to have its own identity. Oh well, at least they are getting closer. I give it a rating of FRESH. Now can I please be removed from the Blacklist on Bumble?

I, Tonya

Everyone always talks about how weird the 80’s were but I think that’s only because we were so full of anger and angst during the 90’s that when bizarre stuff actually went down during that decade, we chose to immediately condemn it rather than simply appreciating it for its beauty. For instance, I was one of the few who actually appreciated the awful but awesome RnB group, Color Me Badd! And yes, that’s Badd with two D’s because their music had that much of an effect on the ladies; if you know what I mean. This group had everything you could ever want in a young professionals boy band, including amazing song titles like I Wanna Sex You Up and I Adore, Me Amore. They also represented the very best of America at the time. They had the Black guy with dreads who looked like a bigger version of Chappelle’s Jamaican stoner in Half Baked, "I’m from the beach, booooooy!" They had the Don Johnson look-a-like with the permanent 5 o’clock shadow, a wannabe reject from the hip hop group 3 ^{rd Base, and of course a pasty white guy who rocked a ponytail and a pirate shirt.}

Now while most people hated on the dude with the pirate shirt, I had to give him mad props. Do you know the kind of balls it takes to rock a ponytail AND a pirate shirt?!?! I’ve only seen one other man come close to such greatness and that was when MC Hammer rocked the greasy Jeri Curl mullet and Hammer pants; his personal ode to Patrick Swayze when he paired the OG mullet with tight sweat pants in Roadhouse.

Well the point of all of this is that we didn’t truly appreciate all that Tonya Harding brought to our lives when her idiot associates decided to break Nancy Kerrigan’s knee just outside the skating rink on that unbelievable day. Their hope was that this would give Tonya a free path to competing in the Olympics in the event’s most watched sport at the time. I know that it’s hard to believe now but everyone loved figure skating at the time; watching young women skating to the sound of symphonies while dressed up in half bathing suits/half formal dresses was the highlight of your winter. It was a sport for high society and only people of a certain ilk were allowed to be a part of it on this level. And this is why everyone was in awe when Harding and her bat shit crazy family tried to literally bully their way in. It was like the white trash version of Goodfellas but on ice! But once the video of Kerrigan was on the television of every household in America, it was a wrap for poor Harding; she was instantly hated by everyone and at the same time became the butt of every comedian’s jokes.

Well in I, Tonya, director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) tells the side of Harding’s story that no one ever cared to listen to back in the day. He shows you how her crazy mother (played by Allison Janney) almost turned her love for skating into a nightmare by pushing her too hard and practically sabotaging every relationship she tried to form, including her relationship with her coach and her first ever boyfriend, a boy who eventually became her husband.

You also see how she fought to overcome her socioeconomic status to even be considered on the same level of skaters who weren’t nearly as talented as her but fit the overall profile that American judges were looking for at the time. It was a little heartbreaking really because all she ever wanted to do was skate and feel some sense of normalcy but that’s hard to do when your father had you hunting for rabbits so you could make your own fur coat or when your mother’s best friend is a parakeet that literally lived on her shoulder like she was the female version of Popeye.

Gillespie does an amazing job of capturing just how odd, tragically funny, and surreal this whole ordeal was. And I’m talking about everything that happened in her life before the incident. Things went up another notch after the knee breaking episode. The fact that she was still allowed to compete, that she missed the Opening ceremonies, her laces broke while trying to compete, and that her bodyguard went on national television and claimed to be an international spy makes it seem as if this was nothing more than some dark Saturday Night Live skit on a random weekend. But sadly all of this actually happened and reliving it made me feel like an idiot for not truly appreciating what I was living through at the time. However I must admit that I also felt like a sheep for falling in line with the rest of the world and instantly hating Harding mainly because I was told to do so. Now I’m not saying that this film will make you become a Harding apologist but I am saying that it will at least make you hear the other side for a change; something I think this country is in dire need of at the moment.

Margot Robbie is a bona fide star and her performance alone makes this film worth watching. I give I, Tonya a rating of VERY FRESH!
 

Logan Lucky

I know that everyone else loves him but it took me forever to appreciate what the Steven Sodomy was trying to bring to the big screen. I used to call him Sodomy because that’s what it felt like he was doing to me every time I paid money to see one of his pretentious films. His 90’s flick The Limey was nothing but a high school course on philosophy put to film and Traffic felt as though he was trying to recreate one of those awful D.A.R.E. to Keep Kids off Drugs speeches he heard while growing up in the Ronald Raegan era. I seriously almost walked out of the theater when I saw the word traffic pull up in the lower left hand corner of the screen in the film’s opening shot. I mean, can you suck your own d&*^ just a little harder dude?!?! And yes, if you’re counting, that’s two reviews in a row where I’ve quoted someone from this ridiculous administration; and I plan to continue doing so until the Russians hack my computer and make me fight the modern day Drago for my freedom.

But I eventually began to recognize the fact that he was simply trying to bring art back to filmmaking. I don’t always agree with his approach and only about half of his films are any good but I do give him credit for trying. He decided to briefly retire so that he could go sculpt in his dungeon or whatever but once he got tired of sucking the porcelain d&*^ of his own statue (ok, I promise I’ll stop), he decided to make his return to filmmaking by giving us Hillbilly Oceans 11; or as they call it in the film, Oceans 7-11.

Logan Lucky is about this down on their luck family in West Virginia who can’t ever seem to get ahead no matter what they have going for them. The film’s two main stars have noticeable marks of this as Jimmy (Channing Tatum) has a busted knee from a football injury that ended his promising college career and his brother Clyde (Adam Driver) lost half of his arm fighting in the Gulf War and thus rendered him useless in the military. Neither of them seem to be particularly bright but they are geniuses compared to their cohorts, and you’ll see evidence of this as they attempt to pull off this grand heist.

Jimmy is struggling just to make ends meet as he can’t keep a job due to his bum knee and sadly his brother is of no help as he works a dead end job as a bartender in the town’s only bar. Plus it doesn’t help matters that Jimmy has to deal with his temperamental ex-wife and her new rich douchebag husband who have full custody of his daughter, the light of his life. So one day Jimmy gets this brilliant idea to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway, the Mecca of the South. Millions of dollars flow through there on any given weekend and because Jimmy was working construction beneath the stadium to repair the sink holes that had formed, he was somehow able to luck upon a flaw in their security system. So now all he has to do is find a way to break the town’s explosive expert, Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) out of jail while he also convincing his two idiot brothers to help him in pulling off the impossible heist.

Now as you can imagine you have to fully immerse yourself in the land of Never Never Land to believe that these hillbillies have the mental faculties to pull this off but to Sodomy’s credit there are quite a few mishaps along the way. Plus, it’s always funny to see hicks stumble and bumble over each other even if you can totally tell that it’s just James Bond and little Han-Solo trying to give their best impression of a southern accent. Sodomy’s artistic approach is on full display as he uses odd camera angles and an almost 70’s approach to storytelling to bring this fun crime film to life and in the process give us ordinary folk some hope in these dark times.

We can use some mindless entertainment from time to time and since George Clooney is 70 years old and just had twins, you may as well recruit Channing Tatum to do just that for us. I rate this film as kind of FRESH and suggest that you pop in.

The Big Sick

It’s funny to me how certain people luck their way into super stardom while others are basically forced into it. Take Matt Bellamy of Muse for instance, he had absolutely no desire to be a lead singer but because no one else in the band could or would do it, he was basically forced to take over the reins. And now because of his unbelievable range as a vocalist, and of course his ability to shred on a guitar, they are one of the world’s biggest bands. And they’d be even bigger if the Old Face Killah aka Kate Hudson aka Band Killah never came on the scene and tricked poor Matt into planting his seed into her womb of witchery. Come on Matt, you couldn’t find a Kardashian to knock up? Oh wait…the curse is real with them too! Plus, I don’t think any of them have ever seen a white penis in their lives, so that’s basically out.

And then there are the super cool and super talented idiots like Snoop Dogg. I just watched the first part of the HBO documentary, The Defiant Ones, and one of the last scenes in that episode involved Snoop’s reaction to being asked about posing for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Here is what the Doggfather had to say at the time "Man bleep Keith Richards and the bleeping Rolling Stones. I don’t know those bleepers. Put me on the cover of The Source bleep! That’s bleeping king in hip hop bleep! Man, bleep Rolling Stone!" And then of course he appeared on Rolling Stone’s cover and the rest is history!

Well thankfully for The Big Sick’s Kumail Nanjani it looks as though his rise to stardom is a nice mix of hard work and unbelievable luck as getting cast on HBO’s Silicon Valley has helped skyrocket his career! I say hard work because he’s been grinding for years now to get where he is but it’s also luck because we are in a country that hates everything brown. The President is brown? Call him a terrorist, accuse him of not being from this country and make fun of the fact that he likes Grey Poupon on his sandwiches! Too many brown people expected to come to the show? Put up metal detectors everywhere and have the SWAT team on standby just in case! Snickers bars are getting a little too dark? Come up with a new flavor called Almond and put it in a white wrapper! Problem solved.

So it’s a modern day miracle that a romantic dramedy starring a Pakistani male was given a wide release. I’m personally crazy excited about this; not because it has the chance to quell any stereotypes people have about Pakistani people but because of what it can do for skinny non athletic black scrubs like me! Sure black guys have been pulling cute white girls for decades now but you either have to be jacked and play sports or have the ability to spit dope rhymes to do so. Now my jump shot can be lethal on a good day and I did get lucky and spat out a cool freestyle flow once but let’s be real, the only thing I really have going for me is the fact that I can make girls laugh from time to time; and even that’s hit or miss. So come on Kumail, take this movie all the way to the Oscars as all of nerdy brown nation is counting on you! Anyway, this is the longest intro to a review ever, so I’ll get to the movie now.

The Big Sick tells the unbelievable story of how Kumail met his real life wife Emily (played by Zoe Kazan) and how they had to battle through their huge cultural differences just to make their relationship work. Kumail, as mentioned earlier, is Pakistani and in his culture you were expected to marry within your own ethnicity. And to ensure that this happened, you were set up with an arranged marriage of some sort. So every family dinner they had, Kumail’s mother would invite a random girl over to meet her son. They would be forced to interact with one another in front of the family and she would drop off her resume’, so to speak, as well as a photo of herself for him to remember her by. Now on the surface, having your mom pimp you out to hot girls sounds kind of fresh but the problem is, if you don’t wind up marrying one of these girls, you’ll be banned from the family forever. That’s obviously a cause of concern for anyone Kumail dates if they aren’t Pakistani; so he decides to hide this from Emily.

Emily on the other hand is a free spirit who meets Kumail at one of his stand up acts. The two of them hit it off right away in spite of Kumail’s lame attempt at a pickup line and despite the fact that she claims to not be looking for a relationship at the time. She tells her parents everything so there’s really no issues on her end that is until one day she finds Kumail’s box of potential wives. Now Kumail is forced to choose between Emily and his family; and he initially chooses his family until one day Emily is put into a medically induced coma. And it’s in this moment that he comes to realize the mistake he made and wonders if he will ever get the chance to win her back. Not to mention the fact that he now must also win over her parents who know what took place between the two of them.

Kumail is his normal and casually hilarious self as he somehow founds a way to inject humor in even the most awkward of situations. I won’t ruin the joke for you but there is a moment when Emily’s dad asks Kumail his thoughts on 9/11 and his response to that ridiculous question is absolutely classic. That moment alone helped him win over Emily’s dad who was played wonderfully by Ray Romano. Now her mother (Holly Hunter) was a little tougher as the only thing that mattered to her was her daughter but you can’t help but love Hunter and everything that she does in this film. And I have been crazy over Zoe Kazan ever since she played Leo DiCaprio’s side piece in the depressing movie Revolutionary Road and she certainly does deliver here when she’s not in a coma (which is over half of the movie).

What I loved most about this film is that never wallowed in the land of depression like so many of Judd Apatow’s productions normally do. They are typically sold under the guise of being a comedy but really the vast majority of his movies are just dramas with people yelling at one another the entire time. And while that does exist in this film, for the most part you are able to laugh as the characters experience pain, love, and loss. And that’s ultimately what we want when we go to the movies, to cathartically deal with our day to day problems but to do so in a pleasurable manner.

This movie will at least be nominated for quite a few awards once that season is upon us and I can’t help but give it a rating of very FRESH!

La La Land

Everyone who knows me, knows that I absolutely love dramatics; and yes I also love The Dramatics from the Snoop Dogg song Doggy Dogg World, but in this particular case I’m not talking about a soul singing group from the 60’s. I’m talking about high pitched screams in the middle of a guitar solo while fireworks go off in the background, dramatics (see any Muse show ever). I don’t know what it is but something about that just strikes a chord with me. And while I normally avoid musicals with the same vigor that I do secret meetings in the country that involve white sheets, I decided to pop in on La La Land simply because there’s no way you can make a musical about Hollywood and it not be over the top!

Writer/director Damien Chazelle has already brought us the highly entertaining surprise hit of last year’s Oscar season in Whiplash, and he is sure to be back on the red carpet this year with his most recent follow up. It’s clear that he too has a flare for the dramatic as he, for whatever reason, decided to make a love story between two artistic hopefuls into a musical. I say this because looking back, the singing and dancing really didn’t add that much to the story (I have my goofy friend to thank for pointing this out to me). Don’t get me wrong, there was definitely a scene or two that added some wonderful magic to this rather engaging story via the show tunes Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone provided us; but overall, this film was pretty solid without it.

This is the third time Gosling and Stone have paired up and brought us their unique chemistry on film. Both in real life and on camera they seem like such an odd couple but for whatever reason when the lights come on, it just seems to work. Gosling is his usual casually funny slash borderline jerk self, while Stone brings her typical sassiness with a hint of innocence to the story.

Her character Mia is an aspiring actress who keeps trying to live out her dream even though she continues to get rejected at every turn. And in between auditions, she spends most of her time either working at a coffee shop on a studio lot or trying desperately to avoid the usual awful LA party scene. Gosling’s character Sebastian, is a traditional jazz piano player who has dreams of opening his own club one day so he can share with the world what made jazz such a wonderful genre back during its inception. Both of them have essentially gone all in to reach their goals and that includes living with three other people or tossing aside past due bills with regularity. And I have to say that It truly is inspirational to see someone absolutely throw caution to the wind when chasing their dreams, even if their loved ones can’t understand why they do it.

Well naturally when these two eventually meet, they’re instantly going to fall in love, right? Wrong! Every time they randomly run into each other, Gosling is the ultimate jerk to Stone. Now some of it is due to poor timing and some of it is due to Sebastian’s blind passion for his craft. But things finally do take off when Mia runs into him and his awesome (I use that term loosely) 80’s cover band at a pool party. And from that point on, the singing and dancing goes to another level.

Oh, but don’t you worry, there was definitely plenty of that before this scene. The opening credits almost had me walk out of the theater because it was just a little too over the top, even for me. It was like the Sound of Music meets LA traffic; which looking back on it, sounds really fresh!

But that scene served as an appetizer for what was to come later, a two hour celebration of one of the greatest cities on Earth. LA is a city where you can chase whatever dream you have and in the process fall in love with a kindred spirit. There are beautiful sights everywhere, whether you’re up in the hills or the mountains or you’re standing under one of its many landmarks; it’s nearly impossible to be bored there. And this is why I loved this film so much. If I could sing and dance in the streets and get away with it whenever I’m there, I would totally do it. And maybe this is why I was caught singing and dancing on top of park benches while twirling my goofy and mortified friend outside of the theater once the film ended; I wanted to be there at that moment so I too could talk passionately about music or film as if they were the only things that mattered!

But this is something Hollywood must be aware of when pushing this film come Oscar season; unless you are an art nerd or you are direct descendant of a middle to upper middle class family, chances are this film will be lost on you. I by no means would ever recommend La La Land to Jethro in Renaw, Alabama or to Tasha in Compton. But even taking all of that into account, I must give this film rating of very FRESH!
 

Office Christmas Party

The last time I had an opportunity to attend a work Christmas party, it was one that I threw myself in my tiny little apartment amongst the trees in north Austin. The big corporation I worked for at the time was too cheap to throw one, so it was up to me to rally the troops and spread a little holiday cheer. Everything started out great with nice little t-shirts and gift exchanges but it quickly took a turn for the worse as we wound up playing drinking games, violating at least 20 different HR regulations with a dangerous game of Twister, and of course ending the night with an odd viewing of the Paris Hilton sex tape! Needless to say, that was the last one I was allowed to throw for a while.

Well after all this time, you’d think that I’d know how to act when it comes to attending corporate work events. My plan was to simply show up, have a drink or two, and politely bounce out so I could get rowdy around people who couldn’t fire me. Heck, I even went to see Office Christmas Party this past Thursday night just to remind myself of what not to do. Perhaps I should have taken better notes.

I’m not sure what happened but all I do know is that the second I started seeing coworkers hooking up, a trigger went off in my head and I immediately turned up to a ten! Next thing I know, I’m channeling my inner Kid Cudi and doing shots while looking for any young pretty thing to make out with at the bar. Seriously, Betty White could’ve walked up to me at that point and it would’ve been on! And I know she’s not young but my standards dropped pretty quickly.

I should’ve known it was time to go home after someone asked me where the girl I made out with went and I had no clue what they were talking about, but nope, I decided to keep the party going. Apparently this make-out session happened 15 minutes earlier and I had already forgotten about it! It was official, I had gone from Kid Cudi to Rick James. "Why you bringing up old shit?" Sadly the night ended with me being denied entry into one of the shadiest bars there is in Austin. I won’t call it by name but you should just know that I have seen people leave their disgusting restrooms after doing drugs and having sex on multiple occasions. Yet, they somehow took one look at me and said "Nope, you are way too messed up to be in here." Monday morning should be interesting.

Well what happened to me on Friday evening was the perfect description of what took place in Office Christmas Party. The only thing that’s missing is a branch manager (T.J. Miller) trying to throw an all-out rager in an attempt to save his employees’ jobs from his evil sister. She is threatening to close the branch unless they somehow bring in the ungettable client in Walter Davis (Courtney B. Vance). Davis is big on company culture and will only work with a company that doesn’t reflect the behaviors of evil corporations today. Which is ironic considering the company he was originally looking at going with. Again, I won’t say their name here for fear that they have hacked my computer and will leak videos of me masturbating to Scarlett Johansson on the internet. But just know that it’s an awful company to work for in real life. Well as you can imagine, the party gets way out of control and somehow Miller’s life is in danger. Will his work family put aside their differences and come together in time to save him?

I went in with fairly low expectations for this film as I would’ve been happy had they simply supplied me with a boob shot or two, but I could tell early on that this wasn’t going to be just another Seth Rogen crapfest. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the greatest comedy ever made but it certainly did make me laugh out loud on multiple occasions. Whether it was the Uber driver going off for 5 minutes about how lame the name Carol was or Miller saying he gains 15 pounds every year so he doesn’t have to go out and buy a winter coat, there were plenty of moments in this film that made paying $11 worthwhile. I hate reviews or previews that give away too much of the story or tells all of the jokes, so I won’t do that here, but just know that by the time they broke out the eggnog luge, I was nearly on the floor in laughter. I give this film a rating of FRESH!
 

War Dogs

So as I was out seeing a late movie on a school night, I couldn’t help but notice that standing in front of me in the concession line were two high school students that were clearly on a date. Now I don’t know what movie they were there to see but whatever it was couldn’t have ended before midnight; and from what I remember in high school, all movie dates ended with at least a little bit of fooling around in the back seat of the car, for what I like to call a quick little night cap. Now staying out all hours of the night means nothing to me as I am essentially a black vampire who never actually sleeps once the moon becomes visible, but here we are, only two days into the new school year, and kids are already making poor decisions.

First, if they were there to see the movie War Dogs like I was, then that was an awful choice by my man if he had any designs on getting laid afterwards. I know that in high school you can get hard if the wind hits you the right way but after two hours of seeing how much of a whale Jonah Hill has become, there is no way he or his girl would’ve been in the mood for anything but a Slim Fast shake and perhaps a bulimic purge or two out back by the dumpster. I mean seriously, Hill looked like the real life version of the Penguin from the Batman movies as he is clearly shopping in the Big n Tall section of Dillards these days.

Now that doesn’t mean he’s no longer funny or that he can’t act when given a role that basically fits his personality but it does mean that every now and then you are taken out of the story whenever you notice him laboring to get out of a seat like a pregnant woman would. I really don’t mean to sound harsh as I actually like Hill, it’s just that I’m very concerned about his long term health. Maybe it’s time for Brad Pitt to arrange another intervention for him.

Well before he eats himself to death like Pizza the Hut did in Spaceballs, hopefully he’ll continue to turn in some good performances like the one he gave us in Dogs. In this film, he plays Efraim Diveroli, a cocky young gun salesman who has just moved back to Miami after a bad breakup with his business partner in LA. He runs into his best friend from high school David Packouz (Miles Teller) who really doesn’t have anything going for him outside of his unbelievably hot and pregnant girlfriend Iz. And David is a bit stressed out because he has no clue how he’s going to be able to support a baby when he gets the majority of his income from giving messages to Miami’s elite.

Efraim notices this and decides to bring David in to be his partner in his new gun running company AEY. Together they start off small by bidding on all of the government contracts that no one else really wants or even considers wasting their time on and as a result they wind up winning the majority of them and forming a successful little small business for themselves. But one day, David somehow lands a game changer of a deal when he convinces an army general who is stationed in Iraq to let them supply his need for a large shipment of Berrettas.

Everything seems to be going great until their shipment is help up in Jordan and they are left with no other alternative but to fly over there and make the delivery themselves. Now as I’m sure you can imagine, this little story turned out to be one of the film’s funniest and most thrilling moments as two Americans driving a truck full of guns through war hungry Iraq is definitely no day in the park. But they somehow survived that ordeal and things started to blow up (no pun intended) for them, so much so that they found themselves bidding on government contracts that typically only go to large arms dealers. And it’s from this point on that things get a little hairy.

Director Todd Phillips (Hangover, Old School) does an excellent job of making this already unbelievably interesting story also funny as he routinely puts the focus on Efraim’s weird quirks like his Eddie Murphy esque laugh or his penchant for hookers. But whenever guns and large amounts of money are involved, you’re also going to have your fair share of drama all throughout. After Nic Cage gave us Lord of War, I didn’t think we really needed another movie about gun runners but I’m happy to say that War Dogs certainly proved me wrong and I would strongly suggest that you pop in; if for nothing else, to see Jonah Hill before he becomes the next John Candy.

I give this film a rating of pretty FRESH!

Sausage Party

After my date cancelled on me at the last second, I was ironically forced to see a movie called Sausage Party in a dark room that was full of overweight dudes who had probably scarfed down three or four sausages themselves before coming to the theater that night. And while I had planned on seeing this movie at some point anyway, I was desperately hoping that none of these overzealous fans of dirty cartoons would get too excited and start grabbing their own sausages during the infamous food orgy scene.

But as I sat there in fear, I slowly began to realize that I am only a few years and a few more Fatburgers away from being one of these lonely miscreants myself. So perhaps it’s time I face my eventual reality and get fitted for a full length brown overcoat now. Does anyone know if London Fog has a sale going on? I have a feeling I’ll be one of those guys who likes to masturbate in a high end artsy theater, so I may as well dress the part right? Why am I being more disgusting than usual you ask? Well it’s because I believe it’s the perfect intro to my review of such a raunchy and juvenile film.

I don’t smoke weed but in spite of that fact, I will say that I have still somehow managed to enjoy most of Seth Rogen’s movies. He does get on my nerves from time to time but overall he’s a pretty funny dude. I got what he was trying to do with Pineapple Express and if I was blazed out of my mind I would’ve thought that it was the funniest thing ever. But I wasn’t, so I walked out of the theater wishing that I had waited to see it on Netflix so I could pause it and go on a beer run when necessary.

Well when I first read about him and Evan Goldberg working on an adult cartoon called Sausage Party, I thought it was going to be more of the same; but once I saw the preview and it looked like it could legitimately be a Pixar film, my interest was piqued a bit. Now I knew all along that this wasn’t going to be a family film by any stretch of the imagination but the preview gave me some hope that it would be more than just 90 minutes of cum and weed jokes; which is basically Rogen’s go to every time he’s on screen.

But sadly the first 45 minutes of the film is just that. They do try their best to a bit "clever" by poking fun of some age old racial stereotypes and ethnic tensions that have been around centuries; most notably the ongoing battle between Muslims (Pita) and Jews (Bagel), but overall the first half of the film relies too heavily on the fact that there’s cartoon grocery items cursing and talking about sex. Don’t get me wrong, the first few times you hear them drop the f bomb it’s cool but after a while you’re hoping that there’s more to the story than a sausage just biding his time until he can enter a bun.

And thankfully by the time the secret was out that the gods (humans) actually cook and eat them once they leave the grocery store, the story picks up a bit. Rogen is on a mission to get proof of this so he can warn everyone in the store and along the way he has some pretty interesting trips to the liquor aisle as well as the Mexican food aisle. But the clear highlights of the film (outside of the orgy of course) belong to the special guest appearances of Meatloaf and Stephen Hawking (gum). Trust me when I say you have to see it for yourself.

I do have to say that I found myself laughing out loud more than once and really in the end that’s all you can ask of a comedy. So I, along with the entire theater of people who absolutely wreaked of weed, would give this film a rating of barely FRESH!

Bad Moms

With the return of 1990’s MTV this past month, I have once again been reacquainted with the days of my youth. Watching classics like Nirvana’s Unplugged or seeing old reruns of Matt Pinfield’s 120 Minutes brings back that feelings of excitement I had when I first saw my favorite band’s music video randomly pop up in a show. I also remembered what it was like to discover some random underground band who would never actually make it big but still managed to put out quality music during that time. For only the second time in my life I actually felt cool when I watched these shows; the first time being when I used to dress up and dance around like Bobby Brown did at my junior high dances.

But after watching reruns of Janeane Garafalo’s high school years, otherwise known as Daria, I realized that I have become the old male version of this cynical cartoon character. I make fun of almost every situation I’m in, I wear big nerdy glasses, and the only chance I have of having an exciting sex life is if my tall lanky female friend gets drunk and decides to randomly go down on me one night. How did it come to this? Am I destined to live a life of eating tubs of ice cream while I sit on my couch and pet my evil cats who are secretly plotting my demise? I certainly hope not! My only chance of avoiding this is to go out and tear up the town while I still can! So with that in mind, I’ll see you suckers at the hangover brunch this coming Thursday morning! I’ll be the one in the corner who’s wearing dark sunglasses and contemplating whether or not I should OD on Percocet before the noon rush comes in.

Well speaking of weirdly shaped women who get drunk and cause trouble; I decided to check out the movie Bad Moms this past weekend. Now why would I see movie that has a title like this and isn’t rated XXX? Well because Mila Kunis is in it, that’s why! I will watch her sit in a dumpster and read 200 pages of the boring Great Expectations if she decides to do that as her next passion project!

Now I must say up front that this film is basically the wet dream of every mom that’s ever existed, so you have to go in expecting some fairly unrealistic scenes. Such scenes include Kunis and her newfound friends getting drunk and basically having the best time ever in a local grocery store while swigging bottles of alcohol and scarfing down boxes of food without getting arrested. And then of course there’s the fact that every male in the movie, with the exception of the supposedly sexy Jay Hernandez, is a total pussy or a complete moron. Ok so maybe half of that is realistic. But the fact that they had a super evil PTA president in the form of Christina Applegate was just a bit too much.

I mean I get it, you do have to have an antagonist in the story and she did basically did represent every single pressure packed situation house moms or working moms have to deal with on a daily basis, but at some point it was just a little too over the top (see her planting drugs in a little girl’s locker). But having said that, I do think the writers did an excellent job of showing just how much mothers have to deal with when it comes to raising children in today’s society. And they also showed that if moms aren’t allowed to let loose every now and then, then trouble is definitely on the horizon for everyone who crosses their paths.

I thought it was fun when Kunis and company had a rager with wine at her place or decided to throw away their grandma bras to go out and hunt for men. Although you have to admit that there is NO way it’s that hard for Kunis to find someone to sleep with her. I mean seriously, she could sound like Billy Bob Thorton from Sling Blade while snot is pouring out of her nose and I’d still hit it! Without any hesitation!

Now again this film isn’t Shakespeare by any stretch of the imagination but if you’re a mom who needs a break from the monotony or you’re just a girl who hopes to have kids one day, you should definitely pop in on this film to see how to bring a little balance to your life. I give this film a rating of barely FRESH!

Ghostbusters (2016)

Jamal Wallace: You mean women will sleep with you if you write a book?

William Forrester: Women will sleep with you if you write a bad book (in thick Scottish accent)

Well William, I’m still waiting for women to sleep with me over the screenplay I recently finished. I mean if trash like Anchorman 2 and Swiss Army Man can get people laid, then I am certainly next in line to get a Jessica Alba spread out on my couch with the hopes of getting cast as my next leading lady. With my luck however I’ll probably get a 71 year old Goldie Hawn showing up at my doorstep with a bottle of lube trying to relive her Banger Sisters days. And sadly at this point, I might take her up on it! "Oh Maaaarcus!!!" (That’s a Boomerang reference btw)

Anyway, I say all of that to say this; Paul Feig has apparently made a deal with the devil as he has somehow found an inside line to every woman’s heart in America. I mean how else do you explain movies like Bridesmaids, The Heat, and Spy making billions of dollars collectively? Even a close friend of mine nearly bit my head off this week when I started talking disparagingly about his latest effort in Ghostbusters. Has Feig really reached Beyoncé level with women? And what I mean by that is, no matter what he says or does, any conflicting view or negative comment made towards his work is met with calls for your balls being cut off and you being burned at the stake.

But what I truly can’t understand is how he gets critics to like his humorless nonsense. One reviewer, whose takes I actually respected before this past week, went completely overboard with his review of Ghostbusters by claiming it was nearly as good as the first one and that anyone who didn’t like it was a misogynistic jerk! Wow. Do you remember that Entourage episode where Vince and the gang sent three incredibly hot hookers to the hotel room of some influential movie critic geek at Comic Con just to ensure that his film Aquaman would get a good review? Well clearly Columbia Pictures and Dan Aykroyd sent an army of women to this clown’s apartment to get him to do an about face when it comes to his usual takes on 80’s reboots. If you don’t like this film you don’t like women? Really?

Now I am sensitive to the fact that women and minorities typically have to be twice as good as their white male counterparts are in Hollywood to get afforded the same opportunities as they do. And this is why I was secretly hoping it would be good in spite of the fact I initially wasn’t a fan of them remaking one of my all-time favorites from the 80’s. The original Ghostbusters spoke to me in a way that most comedies can’t because it somehow got my off the wall humor. So any attempt to modernize that is clearly facing an uphill battle with me. But I’m a fan of Kristin Wiig (even though only 10% of her SNL skits were actually funny) and I also like Melissa McCarthy (even though only about 25% of what she does is actually funny). Both of them can be funny in spots, however their shticks can get pretty old if they are put in a featured role.

Now I won’t waste your time explaining the plot as it’s basically the same story from the original with a few exceptions of course. The writers do an ok job of trying to match up the personalities of the female leads with the old school characters we grew up on while at the same time giving them some flexibility to add their own flavor and unique style to their characters. The problem with that is they try way too hard to be funny. They literally attempted to spit out a hundred jokes per minute while missing on nearly every single one of them. What made Peter Venkman such a cultural icon was the fact that he was naturally cool and funny with everything he said or did, and he didn’t have to resort to terrible dancing or Chris Farley esque physical humor to get laughs. And I love Kate McKinnon but yikes! Chewing gum really hard and putting your feet up on the desk while saying things like "Booyah! Emphasis on the boo!" doesn’t come close to making you cool. They tried so hard to make her the new Bill Murray that it felt like I was watching LeBron James give his best Michael Jordan impression, either you have it or you don’t! And when you don’t it’s obvious and people ridicule and hate you for it.

The special effects looked like they were still using the same technology that Ivan Reitman had available to him in the 80’s, so the ghosts looked pretty lame. And the only truly funny spots came from the moronic receptionist of theirs, Chris Hemsworth and the over the top yet in your face funny Leslie Jones. Well that and the awful excuse for a metal band they had in one scene. Even the cameos by the old stars were lame. Dan Aykroyd stopped being funny the second he signed up for Driving Miss Daisy and sadly Bill Murray hasn’t been himself ever since he was shot gunned to death in Zombieland.

This movie was a disaster in every way imaginable and I hope that this will finally open the eyes of those women who are under the spell of Feig’s evil love potion. At some point they have to realize that all he is doing is shoveling shit in their faces while making them pay him money to do it. And to be honest, I was going to come up with a new low rating for films called Absolute Shit just for this particular movie but I figured that was a little too harsh; so I’ll just stick with the current system that’s in place and give it a rating of unbelievably WACK!

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

After a weekend of partying that included me being called a narc and nearly killing myself on my bike after riding and texting while trying to find a late night party that had Jell-O shots, I felt the need to find two losers who were far worse than me when it came to actually growing up. As one of my ex-girlfriends told me this past weekend after I was shocked to find out that there was more to dating than just going to shows and having sex afterwards "Oh Kelly, you’re forever going to be stuck in your 20’s."

Is that true? Is it really that bad that I somehow found myself in a bar where people were openly doing green and white drugs on the patio while discussing their latest findings on Pokémon Go? And should I have been worried when one of them noticed that I choose neither the green nor the white substance to partake in and they proceeded to call me Five-O like the beginning of that Dr. Dre/Snoop Dogg song Deep Cover? Perhaps it is time for me to put out my own Craigslist ad so that I can find me a nice girl to take me out of the streets.

Well this is exactly what transpires in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. In their minds Mike (Workaholics’ Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) are the life of every party they attend as they’ve effectively created a world where every girl they meet immediately loves them and the party is instantly turned up a notch the second they arrive. But thanks to an intervention that’s setup by their parents, they soon come to the sad realization that every family celebration or gathering is ruined in spectacular fashion by their goofy antics; some of which include their accidental head butting of bridesmaids while jumping on trampolines or setting an entire beach on fire with their own homemade fireworks display.

The reason why they have set up this intervention is so these two clowns won’t do what they normally do and ruin their baby sister Jeanie’s upcoming wedding. So their father has come up with a find two nice wedding dates or else you can’t go ultimatum with the hopes that it will finally help them grow up and move on to the next phase of their lives.

Mike and Dave reluctantly agree and decide to put out an ad on Craigslist for an all-inclusive trip to a destination wedding in Hawaii. Well as you can imagine, the ad goes viral and the amount of weirdos they encounter is overwhelming. Alice (Anna Kendrick) and Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) hear about their ad via the Wendy Williams show and come up with a clever way to grab their attention without seeming too desperate. The plan works and they fool Mike and Dave into believing that they are the "girls next door" that they have been looking for, when in reality they are the female equivalent of their counterparts.

Mike and Dave Needs Our Hard Earned Money doesn’t really take off until the four of them reach Hawaii. Up until to that point, it’s a bunch of yelling and rehashed party jokes. But once they reach the islands, their characters start to develop a bit and you get to see the comedic talents come out of each of the actors, especially that of Devine and Plaza. Neither of them really stray from what you’ve seen them do in their previous efforts but what they’re known for is a perfect fit for the clueless and self-absorbed leeches they’ve been cast to portray in this film. The chemistry these two have feels as though they’ve been working together for years as they have quite a few memorable moments together, one of which leads to a Dangerous Minds and Coolio reference for you old folks out there.

But the films longest and funniest joke belongs to a massage therapy session between Jeanie and the ever present Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley). I won’t ruin it for you but this scene had literally had me laughing for five minutes straight. Efron and Kendrick certainly have their moments too but they are the couple that’s closest to being normal in this picture so they were toned down a bit for the most part.

This film is far from being perfect and there are quite a few jokes that miss, especially early on, but for the most part I found myself entertained. With everything that’s out right now, I’d probably wait until it hits Netflix but it’s certainly worth a watch. I give it a rating of barely FRESH!

Central Intelligence

If you haven't done so yet, do yourself a favor and check out the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on O.J. Simpson. It's nothing like the cheesy Hollywood version of the story that came out on AMC or whatever with John Ravolta and Chill Factor's Cuba Gooding Jr.; this is actually brilliant filmmaking that made me feel sad, joyous, ashamed, and pessimistic all at the same time. It's such a surreal story that I still can't believe it's true even though I actually lived through it as it was happening. But after 7 1/2 hours of this depressing and in depth look into our society and having reoccurring nightmares of O.J. popping out of my closet and killing me, I thought it was high time I saw some Black people who were actually on the right side of the law! So I broke down and saw the new Duane Johnson and Kevin Hart action comedy called Central Intelligence.

As I walked into the theater I thought to myself not only was O.J. killing me in my dreams but he was also killing my dreams of their ever being another good movie where black people were the main characters. And as I saw the previews for the new Tyler Perry movie where Madea takes on zombies, I literally almost stood up in the theater and yelled "Take me now O.J.! You win! I give up!" His heinous actions indirectly forced me into seeing a film I swore I'd never pay money to see.

But when it was all said and done, I found myself looking up the address to the Nevada State Penitentiary so I could write him a nice thank you note and possibly send him a lovely fruit basket to boot. This movie is far from original as it follows the buddy cop film formula to a tee! But what helps it stand out is the unexpected and amazing chemistry the Rock and Hart have on screen.

We've all seen the hysterical clip of a fat Rock sing En Vogue's Never Gonna Get It in the shower, and if you were being honest with yourself, you just had to think that it was possibly going to be film's only funny moment given the recent trend of comedy failures these days. But I'm pleased to say that it wasn't. The Rock was clearly a dork in high school and Hart was the cool kid that everyone loved. Their two paths crossed one day after Hart was the only one to step up and show a random act of kindness to the helpless and overly embarrassed Rock after he was thrown into the middle of a high school assembly completely naked. An act that he apparently has never forgotten as he decides to reach out to Hart just before their 20 year reunion to invite him out for a drink so that he can properly thank him.

Well after 20 years the Rock not only lost a ton of weight but he looks like a real life Hercules with his muscular and intimidating body frame. But the funny thing is, he's still kind of a dork as he wears unicorn shirts, jorts, and fanny packs and still says things like "What whaaaaat!" The director does an excellent job of playing up the size difference between the two actors to gain cheap laughs and the Rock's performance is genuine enough to where you kind of believe that he actually does still find those awful "wassuuuup" commercials to be funny.

The way Hart and the Rock feed off of one another is reminiscent of Jackie Chan's and Chris Tucker's relationship in Rush Hour as it seems like the Rock is from another country or even another planet at times with his cagy CIA skills. And while the story follows the lead of its predecessors, there's still enough double crosses and twists and turns in it to keep you interested.

So all in all I'd have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself while watching this film and I must give it a rating of pretty FRESH! And here's to hoping that O.J. gets an early release fairly soon just so he can go out and mess up again with the hopes that his misfortune will once again inspire me to see a low budget comedy film.

Now You See Me 2

I used to work with this nice but super nerdy (and not in a good way) woman from the Midwest. She was tall, told terrible jokes, and lived for things like drinking virgin mead during the annual Renaissance Festival. Now don't think I'm going to come down too hard on her because I too am tall and happen to tell terrible jokes; but the last thing you'll ever see is me daydreaming about becoming Martin Lawrence's character in the Black Knight! That was one of the most ill conceived ideas ever brought to life on film! Although I must admit that reenacting scenes from Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness while wearing a Dez Bryant jersey and throwing up the X before battle would be pretty tight!

Well the reason I bring this nerdy woman up is because she also happened to think that magicians were cool and sexy and that magic was something that was actually real. She honestly believed that the film Now You See Me was a solid confirmation of her wacky beliefs. And who knows, maybe she's right, how else do you explain David Blaine and David Copperfield bagging hot models? Maybe Andre from The League was right too; if I start doing card tricks in bars and referring to all women as "My lady' I could stop trolling for girls who are only looking for green cards and finally find a woman who doesn't mistake me for L.L. Cool J."Mi gusta Kangols!" I may or may not have actually taken advantage of this in the past but moving on...

Now You Can See Me was total cheese but at the same time it was mildly entertaining. I have no idea why they decided to make a part two or why they thought replacing Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers) with Lizzy Caplan would push them over the top but they did. Don't get me wrong, I actually like Caplan and think she's a funny actress but man the writers didn't do her any favors in this film. She was supposed to be this snappy and sassy addition to the team but every joke or "cool" thing she said simply fell flat and made her come off as the girl who was simply trying too hard; so basically she was the Lebron James of magic (no I still don't like him).

And Woody Harrelson had made a return to greatness with his roles in True Detective and Zombieland but boy did he ever fall off hard with this performance. He basically resorted to making awful dad jokes the entire film in a desperate attempt to stand out amongst his peers. And no I don't mean he was telling jokes about fathers, I mean he sounded like your out of touch dad who tries to impress your friends with his corny jokes when they come over. This combined with the fact he and Caplan were on screen together for the majority of the film made for some pretty excruciating cinema!

I won't even attempt to describe the convoluted plot. You should just know that everyone is in on everything and that everyone has their own angle while at the same time apparently being smarter than everyone else. Clear as mud? Good! That sentence was intentionally bad to reflect how awful the plot was. Also the inexplicable hero moments that the film Inception makes fun of is predominant all throughout this movie. I cannot tell you how many times I buried my head in my hands after yet another lame scene. This is about as popcorn of a flick as you can get. Even the unintentional yet intentional funny inclusion of Woody Harrelson's twin brother couldn't save this film. Yes, there are two of them and yes they both tell lame dad jokes. One even has a toupee that looks like a collection of Hugh Hefner's pubic hair that he gives to each playmate of the month as a nice parting gift when they make their way to the closest clinic.

I rate this movie as WACK and suggest that you avoid it all costs!
 

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

So I’ve seen not one but two to three different Beyonce’ singalong options pop up at the Alamo Drafthouse in the past month alone! And just in case you’ve never been to or heard of Austin, TX before, the Drafthouse is an anomalous movie theater chain that allows you the opportunity to eat full meals and drink adult beverages during their shows. They also put on special events like these so that gay men and fangirls alike can come together in one place and safely celebrate their love for divas, prosecco, and Marky Mark.

Well the reason I bring this up is if they had this kind of stuff around back when boy bands were actually cool then I would've been there for every single Bell Biv Devoe and Another Bad Creation singalong that was available. Now I would’ve also included Boys II Men in this list but looking back those dudes were never cool. The coolest thing they ever did was have Lisa Bonet’ and the black girl from Saved by the Bell in the same video together. And while that is unbelievably fresh, none of them had the game that was required to tag either one of those beauties even with all of their money and fame. But moving on, who wouldn’t want to sing Poison and Iesha at the top of their lungs while eating chili dogs and drinking mimosas? And yes I intentionally made that sound as gay as humanely possible because no matter how manly I try and make this alternative to a Beyonce’ singalong sound, it’s still extremely odd and creepy for a straight male to want to go to a dark theater and sing songs written by 12 year old boys.

But anyway, Andy Samberg made a name for himself on SNL by spoofing these cheesy boybands and the ridiculously over the top hip hop videos that had for whatever reason become the norm at the time. I’m on a Boat has become something of a legend at this point and his video with Natalie Portman made me want to instantly propose to her or the closest look-alike of hers I could find in the mosh pit of a Blink 182 concert (I assume that’s the kind of music she likes). I could never get enough of those silly skits of his and this is why I found myself a little excited about his latest movie Popstar.

Well the first 20-30 minutes of it certainly delivered as you had Samberg in full on popstar mode with his Kanye esque attitude and his absurd lyrics about donkey dances and ball licking. And what nearly had me in tears was his song Do it to Me Like Bin Laden in which the song ended with him saying "you told me to terrorize that pu$$y". That crown jewel of a line alone made me feel as though I had already received my monies worth but there was this fear that was starting to creep in that there wasn’t going to be much else to the film. Was it simply going to be 90 minutes of SNL skits? Thankfully no!

Samberg actually takes you through the rise and fall of a pop icon who initially gained his stardom from being a part of the influential hip hop group The Style Boyz; which included two other white guys, Jorma Taccone (the DJ) and Akiva Schaffer (the lyricist). Well just like Beyonce’, his star shined a little bit brighter than that of his mates, so he broke off and saw instant success with the release of his first album. But once the success got to his head, he made a series of mistakes that ultimately led to his downfall.

Thankfully though these mistakes were displayed in the most hilarious way possible. Samberg smartly and somewhat discretely pokes fun at some of the game’s biggest stars as well as some of their past failures. There’s the fact that he has an enormous entourage that consists entirely of yes men, which of course leads to some quality interactions (MC Hammer). He also resorts to odd gimmicks to try and boost his popularity like having his DJ wear a giant cube on his head that sounds like a foghorn (Deadmau5, Garth Brooks-Chris Gaines, and alternative Sheryl Crow). And then he releases a completely irrelevant song about gay marriage while at the same time trying his hardest to convince everyone how straight he is in his video. I think you’re smart enough to figure out who he’s making a reference to there.

All in all I found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable film and it certainly was a more than suitable alternative to seeing Teenage Mutant Ninja Scrubs. I give Popstar a rating of FRESH!

The Lobster

I keep waiting for Lil’ Wayne or 2 Chainz to finally come out with a booty shaking song or two about their awesome Tinder experiences from when they were on tour together. And maybe this has already happened and I’m just too old to know it but as far as I know Hotline Bling is the closest thing we’ve gotten to something like this since New Edition’s Mr. Telephone Man. Thankfully I never got a click every time I called my baby’s number when I was growing up but dating has changed quite a bit since then.

Nowadays both men and women are skilled in the cowardly art of ghosting and it’s not uncommon for someone to count a night of tripping on molly as the equivalent of being in a different area code. And of course we all know that it doesn’t count as cheating if you’re in another area code right? Thanks for that Ludacris! We’ve become so reliant and adept at communicating via text and social media that when we actually do see one another face to face, all the sparks seem to fade away as we have no clue how to interact in person. "Oh wait, I can’t put a filter on my face right now? Is she going to notice that my right eye is bigger than my left one? I wish I could Google an awesome meme to send her; that way she’d still think I was funny!"

It’s like we need a step by step instruction manual on how to have real life relationships while we’re sober. Now I realize that I’m starting to sound like a bitter old man, and believe me when I say that I can keep going as I have a long highlight reel of awkward encounters that I could reference to support my theory, but just know that I’m not the only one who shares this sentiment. Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos is apparently also feeling the sting of our cold and selfish dating world as he has created this dystopian society where it is no longer socially acceptable to single. Under the law of The City, once you become single again, you are forced to check into The Hotel where you have 45 days to find a compatible partner or you will be turned into an animal of your choosing. And it’s at that point that you will be set off into the wild to either find a mate there or be killed in whatever manner is typical of that species.

Well once in you enter The Hotel, you’re put into all of these random Orwellian situations that are supposed to be reflective of normal every day human interactions; and in the process you’re supposed to find someone that shares a common trait with you. What you’ll soon notice however is that everyone appears to only be looking at the negative traits like a lack of empathy, uncontrollable nosebleeds, or a noticeable limp. And what makes things worse is The Hotel puts on these hilarious yet ominous skits that basically say you will die a horrible death if you’re not able to find someone within the given time period. You’ll just have to trust me when I say that much weirder stuff than this goes down in this hotel but I’ll spare you for now as I want you to experience them on your own.

Now of course there are those who choose to be alone but they are forced to live in exile in the woods with the animals. And every day they are hunted by those who live in The Hotel who happen to get an extra day added to their stay for every "loner" they catch and bring in. Again, some really weird stuff goes down in this society.

We of course experience all of this through the eyes of David (Colin Farrell) who had to enter The Hotel after his wife chose to leave him for another man. David’s robotic emotional and physical response to everything seems to embody the spirit (if I can use that term for these people) of this imaginary society. It isn’t until he and Rachel Weisz find one another that you actually start to see what we would typically consider normal behavior.

Lanthimos’s sad and frightening take on modern dating is bookended by two of the most unforgettable scenes you’ll ever experience in cinema. And in between them is a killer and haunting score that punctuates the overwhelming sense of desperation that seems to be secreting from the screen with each line that’s delivered. Oh and did I mention that this was a comedy? It’s about as dark as they come but it’s definitely meant to make you laugh in order to keep you from crying.

It’s certainly not for everyone as nothing you expect to happen actually does; and I think it’s because of this that I loved it so much. If you’re up for something different that will challenge you on multiple levels, then I strongly suggest you pop in. I give The Lobster a rating of kind of TIGHT!

The Nice Guys

After seeing movies like 48 Hours and Thelma and Louise, I’m pretty sure that both men and women who grew up in the 80’s or early 90’s wanted to have their own buddy cop or buddy road trip adventures! What guy wouldn’t want to chase around loose hookers and jacked up coke heads with Eddie Murphy? Or what girl wouldn’t want to have sex with a young Brad Pitt in some shady roadside hotel? Well these dreams soon turned into comical nightmares as Hollywood all but killed this formula when they greenlit movies like Tango and Cash and Stop or My Mom Wil Shoot!

I know that I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to drive so my buddy and I could go on wild goose chases like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover did in Lethal Weapon. But when the time finally came for this, our lives were more reflective of Ricky and Tre’s from Boyz in the Hood as we spent the majority of our time driving around with 40’s and trying to have sex with Catholic school girls. But I have to give writer/director Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, The Last Boyscout) credit for being the lone consistent writer in LA to help keep this genre alive.

My favorite of movie of his is Kiss Kiss Bang Bang starring Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. This is the point where he reached his peak as a writer as his intricate storytelling was only matched by the snappy and streamlined dialogue he provided for his talented cast. And while The Nice Guys isn’t quite on that level it does come pretty darn close. When it comes to executing Black’s scripts, chemistry between the two actors is paramount otherwise the film just won’t work; and for the most part Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe seem to work well together.

In The Nice Guys, Crowe is a low level problem solver; meaning, if someone is causing you strife in your life, you simply hire him and he will put an end to it. And while he is good at what he does, he does appear to be a bit disgusted with the work and with himself in general; he wants to do something meaningful and good in his life for a change. Meanwhile Gosling is a private investigator who spends the majority of his time getting over on senile old ladies who are slowly living out the remaining years of their lives by searching for their dead husbands. While he’s clearly a talented P.I., he simply settles for doing just enough to get his next payday as he spends his entire day boozing and disappointing his sassy 13 year old daughter who tries her hardest to bring out the best of him.

Well their two paths cross one day as the girl Gosling has been following around has hired Crowe to get him off of her trail. Gosling has been hired to find the recently deceased porn star Misty Mountains and in the process has stumbled upon a murderous plot that involves an assortment of weird characters who are obviously doing their best to cover their tracks.

Now if you’ve ever seen a Shane Black film before then you know that the story isn’t as simple as it seems. You will be taken through a host of twists and turns before you finally figure out who’s behind the sinister scheme but you’ll also find yourself laughing every step of the way.

Coming off of a successful turn as the douchey but highly motivated stock broker in The Big Short, Gosling seems like a natural in his comedic skin as the down on his luck P.I. Every time the film seems to have a bit of a lull, he’s always there to take things up a notch with his high pitch screams in the face of danger or with his drunken misadventures which somehow also turn hallucinatory at times.

Black’s humor is not for the faint of heart as he has a complete disregard for what’s considered P.C. these days, so expect to find yourself laughing at a few jokes that would otherwise make your mother frown. But in the end, isn’t this what we all really want? Well those of us who are still in a bit of a rebellious stage anyway. This movie doesn’t quite flow as well as some of his masterpieces in the past have but that’s probably due to the fact he had a relatively inexperienced (as far as Hollywood is concerned anyway) co-writer in Anthony Bagarozzi help him.

But having said all of that, I will still give this movie a rating of very FRESH as this movie is starting to grow on me more and more by the second.
 

Sing Street

Whether it was through books, music, movies, or even video games; we all had that one outlet we relied upon to help get us through the formative years of our adolescence. If we were experiencing issues at home, problems with a bully, or were simply fawning over a cute girl or boy, we would always turn to that one special coping mechanism that spoke to us the most. And finding that mechanism was key mainly because when you’re a teenager, you’re in the most impressionable years of your life, and the last thing you needed was to succumb to the multitude of negative influences that were out there simply to harm you (man that was dark). This was especially true if you just so happened to be one of those kids who stuck out like a sore thumb; kind of like a Black kid growing up in the country where raising a quality show pig was put on the same level as being a part of the National Honor Society. But moving on…

Well in Sing Street, writer and director John Carney (Once, Begin Again) takes us back to that time in our lives as he tackles every one of these issues through the bright eyes of 15 year old Cosmo. We first see Cosmo sitting on his bed strumming his guitar to the background noise of his parents fighting as he converts their hateful words towards one another into lyrics of his own. He soon finds out that because the economic crisis Ireland is experiencing in the mid 80’s has found its way to the doorstep of his household, he now has to be pulled out of the private school he’s attending and must go to a much rougher public school that’s run by a strict and unforgiving headmaster.

And from the very second he steps on the campus’s grounds, he immediately enters survival mode as he sees barbarians fighting and spitting on one another; basically the perfect intro into his new environment. It isn’t long before he himself is having to avoid bullying as he clearly stands out as being one the few kids who’s actually smart and somewhat educated. Thankfully for him though, he also finds his necessary outlet on his first day of school in the form of Raphina. Raphina is an older girl who has aspirations of being a model and she has made it abundantly clear to any high school boy that approaches her that she is out of their league. Cosmo however is undeterred by this and decides to approach her anyway as he is immediately love-struck from the moment he lays eyes on her. He realizes though that he needs some sort of an angle so he lies to her and tells her that he’s in a band. And as is typically the case when a girl finds out that a dude is in a band, her interest is automatically piqued.

So he invites her to be in one of their videos and promises to call her with the details. But now he finds himself in a rush to round up a collection of friends who actually have some semblance of musical talent so that he can to put together a band for this potentially match making video. He’s eventually successful in doing so and the music they make actually turns out to be pretty good. Now keep in mind that this was during the time when MTV was first starting up and the idea of a music video was still considered to be somewhat revolutionary. So Cosmo and his friends are now exposed to a world of music they wouldn’t normally have access to and they and their music are of course heavily influenced by it. Some of the film’s funniest moments come from when the kids shows up to school dressed like the bands (Duran Duran or The Cure) they saw in a cool video the night before. And in case you were wondering, yes they went all out; makeup and all.

I personally was able to identify with this as there were quite a few moments in my life when I did the same thing. Like the time I showed up to my Valentine’s Day dance dressed like Bobby Brown from the Don’t Be Cruel album; or the time I started wearing multicolored overalls backwards because I saw Kriss Kross do it in a video. Trust me when I say the list goes on and on but in the interest of ever getting laid again, I think I’ll stop there.

The point is, in the process of forming a band and making new wave music, the kids all found an escape from their depressing surroundings and at the same time also found a new lease on life. They once again believed that anything was possible as they immersed themselves in a world of music, videos, and fashion. And I truly believe that this is something that can happen with each and every one of us if we just find the right outlet. By the way, the videos they produce make you long for the days of cheesy 80’s electronic rock and all that came with it; including the big hair and random semi-racist images.

This film is all at once funny, fun, depressing, and inspirational and it was one of the best times I’ve had in the theater in a while. I give Sing Street a rating of very FRESH!

Keanu

We all have those movies that we grew up on and loved as children; the ones that sparked our imaginations and helped mold us into the people that we are today. Whenever we needed a laugh, needed our spirits lifted, or simply wanted to get away, those films were always there for us. For me I would look for inspiration through the wonderful stories of Krull, The Neverending Story, The Karate Kid, and of course Silence of the Lambs; I wasn’t much of Disney kid growing up. And no matter what anyone said to me, nothing could keep me from loving these films.

Well the problem with this is that we have such fond memories of these movies that we tend to overlook the glaring flaws in them. So we forget the fact that the only way Krull could defeat the evil beast was with the power of love or that Willow was really just a creepy looking midget on film. I’m sure the kids of today will one day look back and realize that movies like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games were never really any good to begin with mainly due to the fact that with all of the MDMA that’s out there these days, there really is an easy solution to those pesky friendship testing love triangles that pop up in these corny films; and I’m not talking about a game of Quittage either.

The point of all of this is that I believe the movie Keanu may eventually fall into this category. Don’t get me wrong, I was laughing like an idiot in the theater last night but once the hype machine behind Key and Peele dies down a bit, I’m not so sure that this movie will have the lasting power of say, a Chappelle Show skit. I know, I know but they had to know that they would forever be linked to him once they signed up to be on Comedy Central.

Keanu is as dumb as its premise sounds; it’s about the brokenhearted Peele finding a new reason to live when the cutest kitten the world has ever seen wanders his way up to his doorstep. This lovely little creature appears to have turned his life around until one night, when he returns home from seeing a movie with Key, he realizes that Keanu has been stolen by a rival gang of drug dealers who mistook his apartment for his weed dealer’s. So the two of them embark on a dangerous trip through the dark underworld of drugs and guns to retrieve this little life saver of Peele’s.

Along the way however they must prove to its new owner Method Man and his crew that they are the mysterious duo the Allentown brothers, two deadly assassins whose killing methods have become legendary in the hood. But at the same time, they must be careful not to do anything that will jeopardize their everyday lives, which includes the struggling marriage of Key’s.

From there you are taken on a wild ride that includes the od’ing and fatal shooting of a real life celebrity, gang banging initiations, the entire George Michael anthology, and of course Keanu running his way through epic gunfights! And even though it doesn’t appear that way in the previews, they really do find subtle ways to poke fun at some of the stereotypes that are associated with black culture. Now I have to admit that that last part truly surprised me simply for the fact that nothing about their show is remotely subtle.

And if you’ve seen their show, you know going in that only about 25% of what they put out will actually be funny, but that that 25% will be unbelievably funny! Well it appears that they saved their best for this film as that percentage went way up in what will surely be a game changer for them. I rate this film as FRESH and suggest you check it out.

Everybody Wants Some

At some level every one of us is able to find a connection with Richard Linklater’s classic film Dazed and Confused simply for the fact that we all remember being a scared and awkward little freshmen from the very first moment we stepped foot on a high school campus . I mean who doesn’t remember spending the majority of their time trying to find their niche while at the same time avoiding the jerkoff upper classmen who were only there to haze us. I personally loved that movie because it describe to a tee just how awful weekend nights in a small country town can be. Sure in Linklater’s film he made it look cool, but driving around all night and hitting up the local Sonic in hopes of finding a party that will eventually get broken up anyway is not as fun as it seems. The only thing it was missing was a bunch of country hicks in ten gallon hats pounding Old Milwaukee’s Best in the parking lot of a country dance hall and you would’ve had an exact replica of my teenage years on film.

Well in his latest movie Everybody Wants Some he decides to put his focus on the All State freshmen Jake, a talented young baseball player who is arriving on campus at a small college in Texas for the first time during the early 80’s. There’s still a few days left before school starts but this bright eyed jock finds out rather quickly that he has quite a bit to learn as he gets adjusted to the needs and wants of college girls, the partying and lifestyle that goes along with living in the baseball house, and the diversity that exists on a college campus.

As is typically the case with a Linklater film, there really isn’t much of a plot as he instead puts his focus on the everyday experiences that help shape and mold us into the people that we eventually become later on in life. And I have to say that this formula has seemingly always worked for him in the past but in his latest attempt to capture the magic of growing up, it appeared early on that he was going to fail miserably this time around. The first few characters Jake meets are these cocky upperclassmen who are way too full of themselves and who are not welcoming at all. And as the story goes on, you find that he’s meeting more and more of these weirdo jerks as he makes his way through the house.

But you eventually get used to these oddballs and their peculiar ways, much like you do when you’re entering any new environment for the first time. You realize that they’re just a bunch of kids who are also trying to find their niche through the use of posturing and attitude, and that it’s all done with the hopes of keeping their spot on the team while also getting the attention of cute young girls. Looking back I wish the only weird thing I did to get girls was posture and play sports; I instead chose to dress up like Bobby Brown and dance like I was an extra in an MC Hammer video. Thankfully this was before the days of YouTube and Snapchat.

Once you get settled in, it truly does feel like you’re watching the sequel to Dazed as you find yourself laughing at all of the silly things you used to do while growing up. This film takes you back to the days of having to learn quite a few of life’s lessons such as: your limits when it came to taking a big bong rip, learning how to properly mosh in a pit, and of course having to deal with seeing the promiscuous girl you just hooked up with, hooking up with someone else the next night. That of course was followed up with an STD test the next day but thankfully Linklater spared us that footage.

So if you’re in the mood for some fun nostalgia and you want some inspiration to get back out there and pound some beers, I suggest you check this film out. I give it a rating of pretty FRESH!