The Review: Mandy

Mandy 9/10

This will be full of spoilers. Today I got to watch the movie Mandy with B&H. Holy shit this movie is insane. I was sitting here trying to figure out how to even write a review for it because this movie has such a simple plot but is full of so many insane visuals it feels silly to sit here and try to write it out. This guy Red Miller played by Nic Cage and his girlfriend Mandy Bloom played by Andrea Riseborough live out in the middle of nowhere in the early 80's. They are living their odd but simple life when one day while walking this creepy ass group of people pass her in their van and their leader Jeremiah Sand spots her and becomes immediately obsessed. He sends the spooky old lady from his group called the Children of the New Dawn to check Mandy out before later that night kidnapping her.

The Review: Life

Life 3/10

In space everyone screams like a bitch. I just watched the movie Life and like with most films about space it seems to have a lot of smart people making bad decisions to move the story along. I have listened to interviews with astronauts and just to get the chance to get on a ship requires a ton of smarts and work. You can't just be like “I wanna go to the spaces!” and they slap a suit on your and next thing you know you're propelling yourself in zero gravity with the power of pee thrust. This movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ariyon Bakare, and Olga Dihovichnaya. If only you could see how much red was in my spell check right now.

The Review: The Equalizer 2

The Equalizer 2 DNF/10

Normally when I start a movie and then stop it I do not write reviews. DNF means Did Not Finish. I tried and failed to watch movies like Shimmer Lake, Suburbicon, as well as Cargo and after maybe 10-20 minutes I tapped out. But since I watched one hour of Equalizer 2 starring Denzel Washington I felt that I was punished enough and could write at least why I did not finish it. After one hour that felt like two already and knowing I had one more to go I had to give up on this. The story was not interesting at all and when there were threats of a good time being had by me it would slam on its brakes for some boring story development that I just did not give a damn about. I did not care about anyone in this movie! I don't care about the guy painting the building. The old man. I didn't even care about the old teammate that was attacked in her place! Who are you people?!

The Review: Ash Vs Evil Dead Season 3

Ash Vs. Evil Dead Season Three 6/10

My best friend Cam accidentally got Starz and by accident I mean that Amazon is up to some sneaky nonsense and everyone should check their accounts. I saw that they had Ash Vs. Evil Dead on there and it took me a week to notice that they had all three seasons. I loved season one. Loved season two. Season three...not so much. It felt like they were trying to do too much with the small amount of time they have. Most shows have twenty episodes or more person season and forty some odd minutes with commercials and such. This show is half an hour each and ten episodes.

The Review: Rough Night

Rough Night 1/10

I laughed during one scene when some guys were buying adult diapers in slow motion. It wasn't really a laugh so much as a smile with sound. Rough Night stars Scarlett Johansson, Zoë Kravitz, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, and Ilana Glazer. I enjoy four of those five people and while I didn't expect this to be an incredible film or anything I did not think this would be as lame as it was. This is not a funny movie but should have been. It felt like everyone was just acting out scenes and not really committed. Five friends from college get together for a bachelorette party an end up killing a guy and trying to get rid of his body and alleged funny ensues. Everyone is exactly what you think they are from being introduced. The mother getting divorced will hook up with her ex girlfriend from college. The one running for senate will win. The party girl will fuck up and because she is heavier will take the brunt of punishment. I'm sure it was fun to make this movie and be on set but it did not translate to film well. This was a straight up waste of time.

Click here for previous The Review.

Casting Slouch: Jack Reacher Series

Saints be praised! The author of Jack Reacher, Lee Child, does not want Tom Cruise back to reprise the role. Know why? He short. I know that sounds fucked up but hear me and the author out. I liked the first Jack Reacher movie and the second stunk to high hell. I have read a few of the Reacher books and I could not finish (I have three of them near my door on the shelf) because when I read them all I picture is Cruise and if you have read the books it does not fit. I know that in translations of books or comics or whatever that characters can have their races, genders, and everything else changed. But with the Reacher character his size is such an important aspect of him that having a 5 foot 7 Cruise play him is ridiculous. Not to say that people of that height can not kick every inch of my ass because people like Demetrious Johnson exist. But Cruise is not Reacher. I saw the movie before I read the books so I just accepted that until reading the books and him using his intimidating size against opponents or diffusing situations with it.

The Review: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs 7/10

I didn't even know this movie was a thing that was happening let alone available on Netflix because I would've easily seen this in theaters. This Cohen Brothers movie The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs is a series of six shorts films that are not really connected but tied together by being in a book. Some stories seem longer than others and while none of them are bad the longest one was the least interesting to me which is why I didn't rate this higher.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

This one stars Tim Blake Nelson as Buster Scruggs. He is a cheerful ass cowboy that is riding his horse through canyons and into a town just singing his heart out. I didn't know if the whole movie was gonna be like this but I wouldn't have been mad if it were. This was by far my favorite story in the film. He is super nice and polite but explains that he is an outlaw. He heads into a bar where he is turned down for a drink because of how he looks and gets into it with another patron. It was one of the funniest death scenes I'd seen in a long time and I rewound it and cracked up even harder. After singing about killing dude the dead guys brother shows up and challenges Buster to a duel and ends up having every finger shot off one by one. Buster is then challenged to a duel by another guy that shows up playing a harmonica. I loved the weirdness of this short story and would watch an entire series based on this guy.

Theater Whore: Everybody Knows

Everybody Knows 8/10

I was gonna do a long ass review of this movie Everybody Knows that I saw at AFI with Koko this week but after seeing that it does not come out until early next year I'm gonna write a short one that does not spoil anything really. This stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem as Laura and Paco. Laura goes to visit her home town for her sister's wedding along with her other sister and two kids. As soon as they arrive and the daughter is let loose I was like “This girl gonna end up dead.” She isn't like a stupid teenager like in most films, but she is dangerous and thinks everything she does is cute and funny. I shit you not, at one point she hits this boy with a dead, dusty ass bird and giggles. I was like “That ain't cute!” A few days later during the evening of the wedding she ends up being kidnapped and shit gets super real from that point on.

Theater Whore: Ash Is Purest White

Ash Is Purest White 9/10

Last week I saw Ash Is Purest White with Cam. This movie was great. Filmed over seventeen years from 2001 to 2017 but has an actual story unlike Boyhood. I'll never forgive that movie for being such garbage. Anyhoot, the good movie we saw was at the AFI festival. It is about a mobster, or jianghu as they call it, and his lady. Zhao Tao stars as Qiao and she is loving the night life with her dude and he has dreams of more money and power. Liao Fan plays Bin her boyfriend.

Theater Whore: Widows

Widows 3/10

Tonight at AFI with Koko we saw two movies. One of them was Widows starring everybody and their mama. This movie was like having every ingredient needed to bake a cake and ending up with candy corn. I don't know what the hell happened. Full disclosure, I saw the trailer for this a few months back and thought it was a joke. I did not think this was an actual thing that was being made so I did not have high hopes for enjoying it. But then as the movie started I got all kinds of happy seeing who was in it. “They got Punisher in this shit?! And Liam Neesons?! Michelle Rodriguez aka Wife #3 and Viola Davis aka Wife #5?!” Suddenly I was very interested in this movie. Hell, a lot of the cast and the director Steve McQueen were even there. I live down the street from Hollywood. Be all kinds of jealous. I'm just saying. So in the Mann's Chinese Theater or whatever they call it now with 900 mutants we watched what ended up being a clusterfuck of a movie.

The Review: Collateral

Collateral 3/10

I watched this series on Netflix called Collateral. There are over twenty characters which would be fine if there were 1 episodes or something. But there are four. In four episodes they have to squeeze in all these people, their stories, their history, and do some detecting at the same time. It did not work. The basic story is that a pizza boy gets shot after delivering pizza and the next thing you know there is this giant web of deceit. I shit you not, I can barely even recall what was trying to be stopped. I thought maybe some drug thing. But then there is a soldier with PTSD that ends up raped by a commanding officer. A pregnant cop played by Carey Mulligan. A partner that yells at her. A detention camp. A baby birth. Some bad dudes killing potential witnesses. A priest that is gay and harboring a Vietnamese woman that she is in love with. An alcoholic drug using mother played by Billie Piper. By the way, all these people are connected in some way. Its pretty ridiculous.

The Review: Bodyguard

Bodyguard 10/10

This show should have been called Ha! You're Wrong A Lot! This is going to be full of spoilers! Jesus, I had to take a deep breath after watching Bodyguard on Netflix. This is a six part BBC series which I love. If a show now has more than 12 episodes in a season chances are I'm not gonna give it a try because these shows that have less are keeping it nice and tight with stories and such when there are so few episodes to work with. This stars Richard Madden who I did not even recognize from Game Of Thrones as Police Sergeant David Budd. He is a British war vet and is suffering from all kinds of PTSD related issues. There is also Keeley Hawes as The Right Honorable Julia Montague, the Home Secretary, Conservative MP for Thames West which is a long ass title that can easily be shortened.

The Review: Status Update

Status Update 6/10

The other day I watched this movie called Status Update with B&H. This stars Ross Lynch as this kid named Kyle that moves into a new town in Arizona from California. So of course he had this bleach blond hair and is accused of smelling like avocado. When he arrives immediately people shit on him. He gets picked on by jocks. The teacher is movie rude to him. In reality this guy would have draws raining down on him like confetti based on how he looks but he has to be picked on. He lives with his mom, sister, and grandfather that seems to always be on the shitter and getting walked in on. One day one of the jocks breaks his phone and he heads to a mall to get it fixed by this weird ass dude that I know from the internet. He unlocks this app called Universe where when he updates his status (get it?!) it will come true. It is like a genie.

The Review: Badder Ben

Badder Ben 6/10

This one was made for the fans. So today B&H decided that I had to watch the sequel to Bad Ben called Badder Ben. I didn't know how they could make a sequel based on how the last one ended. This team of researchers or something decide that they need to record some ghostly and spooky stuff and gather all the video from the first film where that poor dude Tom Riley got his ass kicked by Ben. Turns out that he survived and they even manage to use facial recognition to track him down because even though he was attacked more than any human in existence by a ghost he still has to play the lottery. They pay him some cash and decide that they need to make Ben appear.

The Review: The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina Chapters 3-4

Click here for reviews of Episodes 1 and 2. There will be spoilers.

Chapter Three: The Trial of Sabrina Spellman

So after Sabrina fucked off her dark baptism she and her family have to deal with the repercussions. She is being sued by Blackwood for breaking her contract with the dark lord. Her aunts end up having their powers taken away and one of them has a tooth fall out and they are both aging rapidly. She wants to hire this lawyer that has experience with working supernatural trials and he turns her down until he looks at a picture of his daughter who is dead. Meanwhile Madam Satan aka a school official is fucking with things behind the scenes. I know I don't keep mentioning her much but I'm not trying to make these long. Sabrina ends up finding out that this same lawyer got a lot of terrible people off during trials and he explains that after a deal with the devil he could not lose a trial and one of the guys killed his daughter. Whomp whomp. He feels bad and will not represent Sabrina at trial.