The Review: Inside Out

Inside Out 9/10

I always say this, but it takes a lot for me to get into the new animated films that come out. Either they have a weak ass story or are just not made for me. This movie may not be made for my old ass but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have heard about this for a long time but never sat down and watched it until this past weekend with L. There were some scenes that made me laugh hard as hell.

The Review: Magic Mike XXL

Magic Mike XXL 9/10

This is not a movie you should watch as an out of shape male sitting next to your lady. A few weeks back I watched Magic Mike XXL and was so pleased that it had the same vibe of the first but eliminated that girl he had zero chemistry with and the young dude that wasn't interesting. This takes place three years after the last film where Mike had left the team and had been running his small business. He friends trick him into a reunion thinking his last boss, Dallas, has died. He ain't dead. They go on a road trip for one last hurrah stripping. They meet with Mike's old boss, Rome, who is pissed at him at first since he left her for Dallas. She makes him perform for the ladies at his place before deciding to help him out. Every dance sequence in this made my knees and back hurt just watching. This one was funnier than the first. And by funny I mean that uncomfortable laughter I make when I know I will never be the proud owner of an ab or be able to put my lady in a chair and flip her upside down simulating oral sex.

Channing Tatum as Michael “Magic Mike” Lane

Matt Bomer as Ken

Joe Manganiello as Big Dick Richie

Kevin Nash as Tarzan

Adam Rodríguez as Tito

Gabriel Iglesias as Tobias

Jada Pinkett Smith as Rome

Elizabeth Banks as Paris

Donald Glover as Andre

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The Review: A Christmas To Remember

A Christmas To Remember 2/10

Camille called me yesterday because she had found some Christmas gold. She watches holiday movies every year and found I'll Be Homeless For Christmas a couple of years ago and it was one of the worst/best movies I had ever seen in my life. I seriously hurt from laughing. This was not one of those movies but was funny for all the wrong reasons. I will try and describe the plot for this batch of nonsense. If you wanna see what this movie looks like do a Google image search and see how few images it has and the ones that exist are mad terrible. Also, if you ever wanna know if a movie is bad look at the poster. Nothing but stills from the film cropped in.

A mother who has a bunch of terrible kids and a father who has his own terrible kids plan to get engaged. The mother's daughter and the father's son call their siblings and lie saying their respective parents are sick and dying and they all need to come home. The kids are all fucked up in different ways. Some are gay and hiding it and get outed by a child. One daughter is a stripper in an abusive relationship and has kids. Another has a White boyfriend she hides. Another used to be on drugs and lost his family. The rest are just generally worthless and uninteresting. So they get home and the families hate one another for whatever reason.

The Review: Star Wars The Force Awakens

Star Wars The Force Awakens 7/10

I liked this movie. Even though I have about eight Star Wars shirts and have made countless images of myself using stuff from the films I did not grow up watching the movies. I waited so long that I watched them in actual order and did not understand why people were such fans after watching Episodes 1-3. I got it a bit more after watching 4-6 but not seeing these as a kid definitely made it harder for me to get wrapped up in. I watched Rogue One and was confused there was no Kylo Ren. Then I watched The Last Jedi and was confused as to why Kylo was already jacked up. Turns out I watched them out of damn order again. So tonight I decided to watch The Force Awakens and either tonight or tomorrow will watch The Rise Of Skywalker and then I'll be done. I watch The Mandalorian so don't come at me with that crazy talk and watch a lot of videos online explaining lore from books, comics, and series. I'm not totally lost when it comes to this stuff. I watch reviews for the films and all I get from fans is that they hate things or love things and hate people who hate what they love. It's weird.

The Review: Final Girl

Final Girl 2/10

I randomly watched this movie Final Girl on Amazon tonight. It wasn't good. Well, it started off good. I was intrigued with where it could go but was thankful that the description on Amazon gave away a lot of the plot otherwise I would have given this an even lower score. This little girl in interviewed by this dude after her parents died. He has her solve a puzzle and asks her about death. He likes her answers. He brings her in to his...company? Operation? I don't know. His wife was killed. He angry. He trains her to be a ruthless killer. She tries to get freaky with him. He shuts that shit down. I was happy about that. He assigns her to kill these dudes that hunt girls for fun.

The Review: The Man With The Iron Fists 2

The Man With The Iron Fists Two 1/10

This movie was the hottest of garbage. I saw the first one and that was bad and saw on Starz that there was a sequel and decided that I didn't feel bad enough about myself and watched it. I mean...holy shit. This is really bad. It's worse than the first one because you can tell that they tried with this. What did they try? I'm not sure. RZA is barely in this and sadly even if he never appeared it would not have made a difference in the story. A village is controlled by a bad guy that needs to be beaten and RZA don't wanna fight until he does and people die and there is some golden nectar that is magical. This movie was all manner of shit and the only thing I liked was the music sometimes. I checked out the director and he is the master of making sequels no one asked for. The acting is bad, the fights stank, and the story was weak as green tea. And the fists looked like toys. They even had the nerve to threaten us with another film. I'm good.

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The Review: Hardcore Henry

Hardcore Henry 7/10

Hardcore Henry is a super violent movie that is far more complex than I was giving it credit for. I remember seeing the trailer for this a while back and kind of forgot about it. The advertising was not that great and it looked like a fun movie but at the time one of the actors, Sharlto Copley, was on my shit list for a series of bad films he was in. This movie was like watching a live action first person video game which I don't mind since I watch so many games on Youtube. It took a moment for me to get used to the camera movement but it was not even close to as nauseating as something like Cloverfield.

The Review: He Never Died

He Never Died 9/10

There will be spoilers. I thoroughly enjoyed this crazy ass movie! I was browsing my Netflix and stumbled across this movie He Never Died. It stars Henry Rollins as a guy named Jack. He lives in a regular apartment, pays rent in cash, and does the same thing every single day. He goes to a diner, plays bingo at church three times a week, and pick up something from an intern at a hospital and tosses it in his fridge. He is at home just waiting for time to pass when a girl comes to his door, he opens it, and she leaves. Later two guys show up looking for Jack's supplier. He beats their asses pretty easily and though he is shot in the hand he just wraps it and goes to bed.

The Review: Turbo Kid

Turbo Kid 8/10

This will have spoilers. Months ago someone at work suggested this movie to me after we all got into a conversation about the Nintendo Power Glove. He said that there was this movie called Turbo Kid where the kid had a Power Glove on. Sadly, that was all it took to get me interested in the movie. This came out in 2015 and like Kung Fury, which everyone should watch on Youtube, is made and designed to be very 80's based. It stars Munro Chambers as this kid that lives alone in the post-apocalyptic world of 1997. I don't recall that being said in the film but Wikipedia says its so. He pretty much just dicks around the wasteland collecting trash and trading it in for water. No one has gasoline so they all travel on bikes, even the hard ass bad guys.

The Review: Hot Pursuit

Hot Pursuit 2/10

For no real real I decided to watch Hot Pursuit starring Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara. Each of them are nice to look at so there's, you know, that. This is about Rose Cooper who is a San Antonio cop that grew up with a cop father who was killed on the job and is trying to follow in his footsteps. She gets made fun of by everyone for shooting a guy that yelled “Shotgun!” and tasered him spilling his drink and he burst into flames. She is assigned to escort Daniella Riva to witness protection when all hell breaks loose and crooked cops are everywhere chasing them down.

The Review: Maggie

Maggie 6/10

You remember that scene in Shaun Of The Dead where Shaun's mom turns into a zombie and he is struggling to kill her because she is his mom and he loves her and all that? Imagine an entire movie based off that one emotion and you'll have Maggie. This movie was far better than I was expecting it to be and continues with these Arnold Schwarzenegger films that end up good with no attention like The Last Stand. I never saw any trailers for this but saw the cover art plenty of times online and Amazon with no desire to check it out. But randomly while ironing I decided to. I'm glad that I did.

The Review: Dope

Dope 4/10

This will have spoilers. Two of my cousins have been suggestion that I watch this movie Dope for a long time. I finally decided to partially because this chick I think is cute but too young for me to be looking at was in it. This is about a group of three kids named Malcolm played by Shameik Moore, Jib, played by Tony Revolori, and Diggy played by Kiersey Clemons. They are considered geeks that play music that I would never listen to in a band but for some reason love 90's hip hop and culture. Malcolm wants to go to Harvard but the 'hood wants him to stay. You know the story. Its every story in a film about Black neighborhoods.

The Review: Transporter Refueled

The Transporter Refueled 2/10

I just watched Transporter Refueled and I'm not really sure that I know what it was about. One of many things that bothers me in movies is inconsistent fear. You can't cheer an hoot when a car is flying through small streets and doing stunts and then getting terrified when a car is going two miles an hour towards a fence. That actually happens in this movie along with a lot of other outlandish bullshit.

The Review: Tangerine

I finally got around to watching Tangerine a couple of days ago. Camille had mentioned this after seeing it in theaters and bought it on Blu-Ray and let me borrow it. My cousin Jasmine caught it on Netflix. This was a damned good crazy movie. Shot completely on iPhone it proves that you can do quite a bit with very little. I know in reviews it tends to focus more on how it was filmed and where but don't mention the story very much. It stars Kitana Kiki Rodriguez as Sin-Dee Rella and Mya Taylor as Alexandra. They are transgender prostitutes on Santa Monica and Highland and as a resident of WeHo for about 18 years I thought “Well, that sounds about right.”

The Review: Steve Jobs

I finally got a chance to check out the movie Steve Jobs. I have to say that I enjoyed it very much and if I'd watched it before writing my favorite movies of the year and recording the Chocket Awards (click here to check that out!) I would have added this to some of my categories. This stars Michael Fassbender as Jobs and Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman. This movie was so damned enjoyable and seemed to fly by as I watched it as his career through clever use of flashbacks show his career helping build the first Apple computer in a garage to being a multimillionaire.

It starts out in 1984 with Jobs harassing an employee over the computer not welcoming the audience with a hello and threatening to embarrass him in front of everyone. They end up finagling a way to make it work. Jobs is also upset about a Time article not being about him but a computer. Not his computer but a random one. His marketing executive Hoffman tries her best to deal with his tantrums, self destructive behavior. Also the fact that he has a young daughter named Lisa that he denies is even his and the mother that wants to be supported by him.

Theater Whore: The Big Short

The Big Short 3/10

I watched The Big Short. And...that's it. Has a great cast of people that tend to just shout at each other. Imagine Wolf Of Wallstreet but with more DiCaprio's. Its about the government and banks using people and collapsing back in 2008. I didn't really learn anything new from this and when they tried to have actors, actresses, or singers suddenly pop up and explain it that made things more confusing because they were speaking so fast and trying to seem cool. I did discover that Margot Robbie has an accent and that Selena Gomez looks even more like a child in a casino setting. Very confused as to why this was nominated for a best picture, best director, or any of its other nominations. This movie was like walking into a room full of cool people that didn't want to talk to you.

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Theater Whore: Bridge Of Spies

Bridge Of Spies 4/10

Um...that was definitely a film. I finally got around to watching Bridge Of Spies starring Tom Hanks. Its not a terrible movie but its just a series of things happening that could barely hold my attention. It looks nice. The direction was good. But it was rather dull. Its based off the true story of...whatever. I honestly don't care to recap what it was about. I'm shocked that this was nominated for best picture though when I can think of maybe five more that weren't that were far more entertaining. This is not the kind of film I would ever watch again unless I just wanted sound in my place. I felt every minute of the almost two and a half hours.

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Theater Whore: Spotlight

Spotlight 7/10

I finally got a chance to watch Spotlight after hearing about how good it was for so long. It has a huge cast with Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Liev Schreiber, and Billy Crudup. This is based off of the news team that covered the true events that led to it being publicly known that a lot of Catholic priests were diddling children, not just boys, and covering it all up back in 2001. If shit got too hot they would just transfer them to another location or just pay the victims off. It sucked.

Theater Whore: Black Mass

Black Mass 8/10

I finally got a chance to watch the movie Black Mass starring Johnny Depp. Before I saw this he as pretty much the only person I knew was in the movie. Turns out there was also Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Peter Sarsgaard, Adam Scott, and Dakota Johnson. I had heard of the guy James”Whitey” Bulger mostly after he was captured but didn't know much else about him. This movie managed to cover a good portion of his criminal career as well as the corruption in the FBI that was supposed to be taking him down.

Johnny Depp has one of his best performances in years as Bulger. I like when I can watch a movie and forget that I am watching a movie and I felt that was with this. Bulger is controlling organized crime in Boston and starts off small but gets big fast because he and his gang are ruthless as hell. They will beat people to death that you thought were their friends because of mistakes they made. Joel Edgerton plays FBI agent John Connolly that grew up with Bulger and his brother and now senator William Bulger played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Bulger trades information with Connolly for the ability to continue his criminal ways. He pretty much uses the FBI to get rid of his enemies.

Theater Whore: The Revenant

The Revenant 9/10

There will be some spoilers. Cam and I went to the Sundance theater and checked out The Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy. Holy shit. This movie should have been called This Is What Real Cold Looks Like, Fuck Bears, Nature Is An Evil Hooker, or Always Bring Chapstick. I mean...damn! This movie was rough! Poor Leo got his ass kicked the entire damned time. If it wasn't Native Americans it was bears. If it wasn't bears it was the weather. If it wasn't the weather it was sickness. If it wasn't...you get the picture. Shit was way rough.

It takes place in the early 1800's where a team of hunters and trappers are gathering pelts. Native Americans show up and start wrecking their shit. Leo as Hugh Glass and his half-Native American son are there and he is leading them. They get attacked, grab what they can, and out of 45 guys about nine of them survive and make it to a boat. When they reach land Glass is attacked by an angry ass mama bear. Its one of the most brutal attacks ever filmed and awesome. It made me sweat, my asshole pucker, and my face melt off.