Verdict: * * * 1/2 – –

Yesterday I watched Gone Girl where everyday suburban people were dancing  because they did something very bad to someone they loved. Then I happened to see a Wayfarer.com commercial where everyday suburban people were dancing because they bought a really nice sofa for a great price and free shipping.

One of these scenarios I could wrap my head around and the other I just squirmed and grimaced the entire time. It’s not that GG was a bad story (I never read the book but everyone tells me it was so much better). It’s that the characters in GG were complete jerks to each other and practically everyone else… and I’m supposed to be drawn in?

I had heard the premise of the story before renting the movie, so I was already kind of prepared. I went into it as if I were watching a reality show. If you go into movies from a certain point of view, in this case, Nick (Affleck) and Amy (Pike) Dunn are two affluent writers who live in NYC and move to Missouri because Nick’s mom gets sick and needs care. Amy hates Missouri. Oh, and she also hates Nick after a while because he’s such a guy. There are other reasons, and I’ll admit, but the time I saw them unfold, I friggin’ hated Nick too.

But I also hated Amy because she’s essentially a pretentious hoity toity who speaks in a very mysterious, smoky, heady voice and uses big words and walks around hating herself and her life and everything she’s attracted into it. Suddenly <BAM!> Amy goes missing, and because she’s loved worldwide for her children’s books, her disappearance becomes nationwide CNN/Fox fodder and we begin to see what happened.

The entire story is three fold: We see things from 1) his POV, 2) her POV and 3) her diary’s POV. All blended seamlessly and it moves the story along well. Now, I won’t go further because there’s a lot to reveal and even one clue would be a spoiler so I’ll shut up about what happens. I will say that if you go into this movie as if it were a horror/thriller, you’ll be horrified/thrilled. I went into it as if it were a reality show because I identified with the characters about as much as I identify with Honey Boo Boo. This made it a popcorn flick for me and, while everyone else around me gasped, I laughed every time a new twist was revealed. This movie takes itself waaaay too seriously, in my humble. Like any marriage, the marriage in this movie could have used some laughs, but that’s just me!

No one was voted off the island, but the entire movie had me shaking my head thinking “God, these two deserve each other.” and “Thank God I’m not this eff’ed up. My life is lookin’ pretty good right about now!”

Verdict: ☆☆☆☆☆

Five friggin’ stars?? What are you crazy Jas??

Nope! You read it right, my friends. Don’t wipe your glasses and shake your head, don’t adjust your monitor settings. This movie was absolutely perfect in just about every single way! I was already a fan of Vaughn and Wilson, but wow! These two totally shot their humor into the stratosphere with this one.

The Internship… basically a 119 minute Google Advertisement that these two completely flipped on its back, yanked its pants off and shotgunned tequila shots next to from opening to closing credits without apologizing. It was one of the funniest movies I’ve seen since The Wedding Crashers!

Billy McMahon and Nick Campbell (Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson) play two mid-life, out of work salesmen who need something… anything… a bite in today’s recession when everything’s gone computer and just aren’t finding it. Brilliant as verbal mouth to mouth salesmen, they’re trying to look for just another step in a world where sales has gone digital.

That is until Billy stops Googling job searches and comes up with the brilliant idea to just Google Google itself and drops them both in the intern program.

What’s so amazing about the genuinely reactive chemistry this entire story pours forthwith upon our keyboards is the fact that just about everyone can identify with some part of this movie. Two oldsters who really aren’t that old (my God, the 80’s were just last week, right?) are thrust head first into the world of today’s internet where even the lingo is like another language… and expected to make it work. The kids don’t understand them and they don’t understand the kids. Sounds like parenthood, amIright? Another reason I identify with this movie! It was a total blast, every single second of it.

The Internship has nothing to prove. It is just a big jar of awesomesauce. If you get what I just said, you’ll love this flick. If you don’t get what I just said, you’ll love this flick even more!

Quick notes I jotted down while laughing my ass off the entire way through the movie:

~If you liked Wedding Planners, you’ll like this one
~Mr. Chetti, the Internship supervisor, played brilliantly by Aasif Mandviwala who’s comedy in this one reminds me very closely of John Turturro’s genius… hilarious!
~Keep it playing through the credits

I’m buying this one on blue ray. I don’t care if Google gets some royalty out of it. Heck, maybe they should for the brilliant marketing alone! Okay, I’m done before I ask this movie out on a date. Promise.

Verdict: ☆☆ – – –

This was an interesting political movie. Written and directed by District 9’s Neil Blomkamp, it was fairly simple in it’s plot because we’ve all seen this before… not in a movie, per se, but on the news! But what it lacks in plot, it makes up for in CGI.

The 1% The rich and powerful people on Earth decided they’d had enough of the world (they helped create) that has gone to Hell and, because they’re rich and powerful, built a space station (named Elysium) to live on with all their riches and power and just left all the poor people behind on Earth to suffer without any technology or privileges. Apparently by 2051, the rich and poor have grown so far apart, they’re completely alien to one another.

The healthcare on Earth is archaic for the 99% everyone who can’t afford to even eat properly and were forced to buy Obamacare have to live with very few hospitals and dismal medical coverage. Everyone on Earth is sick and everyone on the space station has their own healing chambers that fix everything from a cold to Leukemia and even old age in a matter of seconds. Occasionally human traffickers transport those who can afford a ticket up to Elysium but only a tiny fraction of those get up there because the “alien” ships are usually blown out of the sky by Elysium defenses. You know, because the rich don’t want to just build a few thousand more of these medical pods that will cure everyone on Earth. That would be an expense they are not willing to shell out.

Enter a dude named Max (Matt Damon) who gets sick from an industrial accident at his crappy job. Luckily he knows a computer whiz/human trafficker known as Spider, who can get him to the space station for healing, but only if he is allowed to turn Max into a human cyborg that can download data from the person who “built” the space station and therefore can hack into the system, change some code, reboot it (because Elysium is one big operating system run by Unix) and make everyone on Earth a citizen of the space station, thereby helping give medical attention to everyone for free. Think Obamacare becoming real Universal Healthcare with the click of a mouse and a reboot of a Windows machine.

A subplot in this story about the political turmoil on the space station reminds me of American politics at its finest from the perspective of an American joe schmoe. Everyone in office has no soul and is trying to unseat the politician above and there are agents in the field who also have no souls doing the dirty work. And no one is listening to the 99% majority of the people.

I don’t want to give too much more away, because I’d spoil the whole flick for everyone, but if you’ve been watching the news anytime in the past 20 years, you’ve seen this movie. It’s like Blomkamp watched the 6:00 news and said, “Hey, that sounds like a good plot!” In a recent interview, he did admit to this in a way by saying, “”This isn’t science fiction. This is today.” I found it interesting that Elysium police are called “Homeland Security” and that the Secretary of Defense on Elysium (Played oddly by Jodie Foster) has her own private assassins running around doing lethal, top secret covert ops and basically tells the President at least twice to take a hike in no certain terms.

All in all, it was a decent flick. There were emotional moments that tried a little too hard to pull the heartstrings and came off as corny, but otherwise, it was entertaining, if not disturbing when I think about the world we live in.

Verdict: ☆☆☆☆ –

Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) has got a lot to learn about women. Being the number one covert operative in the world throughout most of your career can have that sort of impact on one’s retirement, and Frank is feeling the heat from his now girlfriend Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), who wants adventure more than ever now that she’s had a taste of it!

But Frank has other ideas in mind. He’s retired, and loves shopping at Costco, and buying things for their house… and generally playing Suzie Homemaker. This doesn’t strike well with Sarah, who flat out tells him their relationship is getting stale! Luckily for her (but not so lucky for the world), a Wiki document has leaked on the internet about an insanely nightmarish weapon, even worse than a nuclear device… portable, untraceable and Numero Uno on every arms dealer’s shopping list since the document leak.

Oh, did I mention the document referenced Frank and old buddy Marvin (John Malkovich) as involved in its origins? Suddenly the two of them are right smack in the US Government’s spotlight again, not to mention MI6.

Everything you enjoyed about the first movie, you’ll enjoy about this one. No one believes these “old people” still got it until they come face to face with ’em and find out that R etired E xtremely D angerous actually means something. With even cooler stunts, jet setting around the world in an unbelievably crazy quest to get to this mysterious device first, Frank’s gotten a little sloppy now that he’s been distracted by keeping Sarah safe and meeting ex-girlfriend agents from the old days, and his brothers/sisters in arms don’t mince words in making it known.

This was a fun flick, as action packed as the first one, with twists and turns as complex as Paris, London and Russian streets can provide! Heck, just watching Bruce Willis try and be romantic is hilarious in itself! You’ll find yourself jet setting and sipping wine and feeling for that gun under the cushion until the credits roll.

Verdict: Hahahahaha! (wipes tear) Oh, you were serious?

Well, this movie starts with Air Force One flying over the Bermuda Triangle and goes downhill from there. The President (John Savage) has long hair and jokes around about both the Bermuda Triangle and his long hair… and that’s pretty much the first minute of the movie. A freak storm suddenly comes out of nowhere and lightning strikes one engine. Apparently, a random flight attendant is in charge and knows more about modern avionics than anyone because she immediately screams, “We need to evacuate you now Mr. President!” Because, you know, one lightning hit is apparently all Air Force One can withstand. Secret Service and top brass generals leap to the random flight attendant’s demand and scramble the President to an underwater escape pod. Instead of just diverting the plane to Florida at an altitude that would suffice gliding right in, Air Force One maintains current course and altitude which means the President has to visit Davy Jones’ Locker in a capsule that has a crush depth of 25,000 feet, enough food for seven days and a .45 caliber pistol with 100 rounds of ammunition.

I’m not making this up!

Air Force one completely explodes from that one lightning strike on the engine and the escape pod jettisons, but not before the President shouts to everyone “Save yourselves!” It was right about here that I realized I had two full minutes invested in this movie. But this is what you pay me for, right? Seeing these movies so you don’t have to!

Enter our heroes, an elite soldiering force of kids who look like they got their fatigues at The Gap walking slowly and proudly off a helicopter that just landed on a random Navy ship. After the deck is hosed down with official nautical garbledygook and militaryish twaddlespeak, laced with a few “Yes sirs!” our boyscout heroes are off to rescue the President from the unmerciful depths.

The ship’s skipper, Admiral Linda Hansen (a rather rough looking Linda Hamilton) who has experience fighting terminators and shit, calls the shots. I will give her this, when first meeting our high school glee club heroes, she gives them a once over as if she’s about to burst into laughter. I don’t think I could have held the laughter back, so I admire her for that. Give that woman an award or something!

She is in charge of the mission to bring the President back, but not before several mile-high tentacles surface and position themselves around each ship present and accounted for. Keep in mind, we’re still in the Bermuda Triangle here. Enter Dr. Zimmer (a bearded Jamie Kennedy… wait. Jamie Kennedy?? Seriously??) a biologist who is aboard the flagship for some reason and even has his own lab. You’ll be able to tell who he is, he’s the one who starts chattering in scientific jargon and can almost immediately identify the tentacles as “tube worms, but with a very extravagant embodiment that seem to possess some sort of bio-electric genesis which is contrary to any of the species in its respective phylum.”

To which the admiral shoots him the look you see in the picture above. I’m not kidding, I screen-shot this just so you can see her expression! It’s like, “Wtf?”

Yeah, I would have looked at him about that way too.

This entire movie is a baked July-deposited cowpie slathered with extra thick, government cheese topped military jargon that would make even the most gung ho marine remove his cover and scratch his head in confusion. If your eyes just glazed over with that last sentence, my eyes literally glazed over throughout most of this flick… which actually helped blur the atrocious movie makeup everyone had on. The blur, oddly, made it more realistic.

If you’re still reading this, 1) I applaud you because you have more patience than I do and 2) the plot so far is that the President’s still at the bottom of the ocean (I can’t believe I just typed that) and there are giant indestructible bio-electric genesii tubeworms blocking the way to him.

If you’re looking for a rompy, barely acted, half assed attempt at a movie andSharktopus Vs. Dinocroc isn’t available, aaaand it’s raining outside, aaaaaaaaand you have no vacuuming to do… this might be your movie.

Verdict: * * * 1/2 – –

Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is a college kid who looks and acts smart, but loves to party and has a real creep for a boyfriend. Not just a creep who looks at other girls’ boobs, but the kind of creep who is a courier for extremely powerful drug lords and wears Stetson cowboy hats made in Taiwan. Yeah, that kind of creep.

Sorry, didn’t mean to throw that Stetson made in Taiwan thing at you. That may have been a little strong. Seriously though, he makes it a point to tell her his Stetson is made in Taiwan, so… he’s creepy. Where was I? Oh yes!

Anyway, being creepy, he lures Lucy into delivering this particular shipment of drugs for him and we sit there for almost ten full minutes while they argue about it. All this time, the scene Lucy, her creepy boyfriend and his Stetson are chewing up are punctuated by scenes from the Serengeti with big cats stalking prey, as if the writer/director (Luc Besson, The Fifth Element, The Transporter) pretty much thought the audience would be entirely too stupid to see what was happening here. Lucy is being stalked by predators (her creepy boyfriend, his Stetson, and the powerful drug lord). Okay, we get that.

Then suddenly I start to see, as Lucy goes along with the drop off and the shizzle really hits the fan, what Luc Besson was trying to do. Much like The Fifth Element and practically everything else he’s ever done, he has injected a very sophisticated rhythm into the movie that creates a 3D perspective from a 2D screen.

Now, just so you know, there are no real spoilers in this review. Everything that happens in the movie, you’ve already seen from the trailer. You know what happens to Lucy. The deal goes south, they need her to deliver the baggie of a brand new synthetic drug to the United States and the only way to get it through customs is to sew it into her abdomen. Unfortunately, word of this didn’t reach a couple of thugs who work for the drug lord and one of them beats her up because she wouldn’t let him rape her. The baggie leaks inside her and WHOOSH! Off goes her brain into orbit towards Godlike power.

This is all inside the first half hour of the movie. After that, things really take off and you’re left pretty much breathless when the credits roll. There is a subtle philosophical idea that this movie is riding on, brought to you by Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman), that asks, “Are humans more concerned with ‘having’ than with ‘being’?” All throughout this movie, everyone wants something. Everyone is trying to get something. Bad guys want their drugs back. Cops want the bad guys. Everyone wants to shoot guns because guns make them feel powerful. Prof. Norman wants to know what Lucy knows but isn’t sure the human race is ready for that knowledge.

But is that such a bad thing that we’re more concerned with having than being? People are wrapped up in their own individual worlds, each world containing everything they think about and feel emotionally, and yet they never do see beyond that world. We cannot (at this time) walk in another man’s shoes, so to speak. All the while Lucy ascends beyond quantum physics and sees all these individual worlds as One World moving in an infinity of different directions, all measured by time. As she sees them, she can control them and she basically spends 24 hours ascending from human to “beyond” as her brain capacity is gradually activated more and more.

Lucy is an idea about ascending to the next level of evolution… really fast. What would actually happen if we expand our minds and open up our worlds? Will this happen eventually? Could we, as limited consciousness individuals, really see that we are each One with All? Could we see beyond the labels and illusion and see that we simply… are?

With action and philosophy combined, Luc Besson brings what I would consider a beautifully done piece of art to a world in which it would be most attractive. He blends action and violence with thought and by the time the credits roll, you’re both wired and deeply composed at the same time! I think this flick would have been better done with a much younger lead actress, however. ScarJo is awesome, but a little old to be the naive party “kid” she was supposed to playing. That said, I thought this one was really well done!

Verdict: * * * * –

When I first watched HTTYD, I thought at first it was just another goofy animated movie. I mean, c’mon… a scrawny kid with a nasaly, Canadian accent the son of a mighty viking chief? But as the movie played on, I started really enjoying it. The movie didn’t take itself seriously, and even the nasaly Canadian kid made fun of his own character. I liked the sequences, the way the story unfolded, the tension of the dragons and the struggles of man verses beast in almost every fashion. The action was incredible and the humor had me laughing out loud.

When I first heard that HTTYD2 was coming out, I cringed because I thought it was just another goofy animated sequel that Walmart would have in its $5 bin in six months, sitting right next to Fern Gully 2; A Financial Rescue Attempt. But as this movie played on, I ascended from liking the characters to truly fall in love with them!

Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and Astrid (America Ferrera) are coming into their own and Chief Stoic (Gerard Butler), along with his right hand man Gobber (Craig Ferguson), is trying to train his son how to be the next chief of the vikings in Berk. But Hiccup was never one to go along with rules and as he and Astrid stumble across an enormous dragon army controlled by the fearsome, mysterious man Drago, it opens up a whole new world of dragon-wrangling for our young hero.

I won’t give much more away, suffice it to say that comparing the first HTTYD to its sequel is like comparing a bottle of Budweiser to an entire twenty four pack of Budweiser! The bottle of Bud will do ya in a pinch and tastes great (less filling!) but the suitcase will bring your friends to the party and everyone will enjoy themselves so much more!

I do realize that describing children’s animated movies with melodramatic alcohol references may not win me over at my daughter’s school or get me invited to community little league games. I’m sure I’ll deal with that while I’m hanging out with friends drinking a suitcase and watching this movie again. But for now, I just added HTTYD2 to my Amazon wish list and tagged it as the highest priority!

If you liked the first movie, you’ll love the second movie! I don’t consider it a sequel at all, really… but a second part to one big story. Apart, they’re wonderfully done little adventures, but together, they make for one beautiful, fulfilling epic that you’ll walk away from with your fists in the air going “Yeah!”

Verdict: 1 out of 5 stars

I heard from a friend who loves Jenny Slate (Saturday Night Live) that this movie was really fun and engaging… and that it’s streaming for free on Amazon Prime! Woohooo! Win – win! Rotten Tomatoes shows a 90% fresh rating!

I made it about forty minutes in before I started writing this and another ten before I turned it off. Afterwards, I had to watch a Southpark episode to keep from drinking a fifth of Jack, drunk-texting my ex’s all at once and crying myself to sleep.

Oddly enough, this is where they begin their romance. My wife finally got up and left the room while I was typing this up and I just hit the “Stop” button.

If you like Jenny Slate’s humor on SNL, this may be something you’ll enjoy. Maybe I’m just not getting it. But I felt this one lacked direction as if the director filmed without a script and just decided to go with whatever.

Verdict: * – – – –

First of all, there are some minor spoilers in this review. If you want to go into it completely unknowing of any plot devices, read no further!

I wanted to like this movie. Seriously, I did. The trailers looked awesome, and a couple of buddies said it was really good. So I figured it was a thinking man’s hitlist movie or something. Really good, to me, equaled great visuals and great plot!

Plus, if it wasn’t one of the signs in the back of the Bible already, it ought to be: Keanu Reeves showed some emotion! I know, I know. You don’t believe me, but in this movie he really does present a depth of emotion that astonished me. I mean, he smiled. He actually smiled! I didn’t even know he had teeth!

This movie started out pretty good. A gripping opening scene. Lots of metaphorical visuals and color. Meaningful balance of subject and placement. Everything you see in the first twenty minutes seems to mean something, so that when you see this movie twice, you are pretty sure you’ll see something different.

Then I saw Allstate’s Mayhem (Dean Winters) who played the unnecessary role of being the only American Accented member of the Russian mob and that’s where the movie sort of stopped asking me to think so hard. The movie started to follow a connect the dots pattern… and not just any connect the dots pattern; the one that looks like a snow man before you even start.

John Wick (Reeves), an emotionally vulnerable, retired ex-badass who just lost his wife (a small bit by Bridget Moynahan), gets his ass kicked old school by three Russian thugs who want his sweet ride for a quick chop shop yoink. And just to prove how ultimately small certain parts of their anatomy manly they are, they kill his puppy, given to him by his recently deceased wife.

Unfortunately, the kids work for the Russian mob… one is even the mob boss’s son… the same mob that contracted John Wick before he retired; the same mob who are now pissing their pants in fear because that weasel, loudmouthed, eff – up of a son robbed and puppy snuffed the wrong badass.

Now, me… being most certainly not a badass, I would have just called the humane society and filed a report. I’m pretty sure no one wants to yoink my Smartcar for a chop shop job. But Keanu’s a badass, so he has standards. Thus, he (probably) donated to the humane society, then went after the kid who killed his puppy with vindictive counterinsurgency that would make Navy Seals whimper.

Of course, the kids don’t care who John Wick is or that he used to be the baddest ass on the badass block. They wear shiny suits and are surrounded by bikini babes and have guns and shit. And despite all the older Russian mobsters warning them that they should be frightened, they continue to boast and brag and party their little parts of their anatomy butts off, come what may. This, of course, just makes us scream for their death sentences because weasel, loudmouthed, eff – up kids wearing shiny suits, surrounded by bikini babes need their heads rolled down a lane or two and John Wick is the man wearing the bowling shoes that’ll do it.

What I don’t like about movies like this is that it’s beyond my comprehension for a mob boss to protect his weasel, shiny suited, loudmouthed, bikini babe surrounded, gun toting eff – up of a son to the point where the boss’s entire unabbreviated empire and army of perfectly respectable mobsters is brought down, especially if he’s fully aware from the beginning John Wick can accomplish it. My first thought was,”Here! Take my weasel, loudmouthed, eff – up son for killing your puppy and leave us be!”

I know I’m in the minority on this, and I really wanted to like this movie. What I thought might be a thinking man’s hitlist movie turned out to be a rather unthinking action chain of events. And that’s cool, I like some flicks that ask you to check your thinking cap at the door… I enjoyed Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Pacific Rim, for goodness sake! But I just didn’t connect with John Wick. Keanu has some depth of emotion, I’ll give him that and want to see more of it. Unfortunately, all the other characters without exception are splashing around in the shallow end. The action was good, but man! The dialog seemed to be scrawled out on toilet paper in the bathroom of a 24/7 Shit n’ Git, and I just couldn’t connect.

Verdict: * * * ½ – –

What happens when you cross a group of big, bad, bearded egotistical men running an international prostitution ring with arrogant smiles on their faces and bigger guns than body parts… with one man who has a good heart, a hidden history, lots of patience, love for good people and skills that rival some superheroes?

Pretty much what you think happens.

Ever since Glory, Denzel has been the grounding force in every movie he’s starred in, no matter what character he plays. Good guy, bad guy, guy down on his luck… when you see Denzel, you know everything’s going to be alright.

The Equalizer is no exception. And once again the talented direction of Antoine Fuqua takes what may appear to be a simple story and squeezes the most amazing detail from it from the opening scene to closing credits. Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is a simple man, patient with an undercurrent of fathomless sorrow, who takes OCD to the next level. One day, he witnesses a heinous assault happening to a Russian-owned prostitute he just met named Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz). Teri is at the end of her rope, daring to dream but knowing those dreams will never come true. Then she’s put in the hospital by her Russian pimp and Robert can no longer look the other way.

There are times when a bad thing happens and you can’t ignore it, and you get restless knowing what you have to do. What follows are sleepless nights making the decision to do the right thing or to look the other way. For some, looking the other way is the only way to survive. But for very few, there is no decision… there’s only response. Especially if they’re the only person who can do anything about it.

You are what you are and this world brings to you what you are meant to deal with, and so Robert wanders through his extraordinarily organized life working in a hardware store and straightens things up around him. This is what any mild mannered superhero does. And yet Robert doesn’t really know it, he’s just doing what he feels is right. So I would consider this a superhero movie. Lives are saved, renewed, helped along the way by someone who is able to help against extraordinary odds, yet remains hidden in the shadows as if he didn’t even exist.

The Equalizer is a superhero movie for regular folks, for those who live in inner city areas and are just trying to do the right thing. Once in a while, a superhero appears and helps out quietly, then lets you live your life the way you were meant to. Superheroes appear where you least expect them to, and save the world one person at a time.

Right now, I’m willing to bet you, yes you reading this post, are a superhero to someone. You may not know it yet, you’ve just been doing what you thought was right. That, my friend, is how we change the world! One person at a time.