Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: MEN IN BLACK INTERNATIONAL (no spoilers)

And the June Gloom continues. For the past decade summer blockbuster have been getting a bad rap, mainly the ones that come out in June, hence the Gloom. June summer movies are basically now considered the January dump month movies. Summer blockbusters that studios don’t have a lot of confidence in. I’m not saying ALL of June movies are like that, but some. Other than probably Toy Story 4, look at the films that are coming out: yet another reboot of Shaft that didn’t get good reviews, The Dead Don’t Die which didn’t get good reviews, Dark Phoenix sucked ass, Secret Life of Pets did not get good reviews, the remake of Child’s Play which probably won’t be good, Anna (the poor man’s John Wick), and Annabelle Comes Home. You literally just have Toy Story 4 and Yesterday. Which brings us to MEN IN BLACK INTERNATIONAL, from where I said the “June Gloom continues” you can probably put 2 and 2 together on my thoughts. This new soft reboot (it’s very obviously a sequel but only has an Emma Thompson cameo as a continuation, she obviously walked across the street from the Late Night set, also new out this week), isn’t terrible, but it’s not good either. It has a strong first 30-45 minutes and then struggles enormously with its story, pacing, climax, and overall entertainment value.

During the first act of this I was wondering what the fuck critics were talking about. If there is one strong thing in this film that remains constant it is the wonderful, joyful performance from Tessa Thompson. She completely steals the show from everyone and makes me wish that a. she was in more things and b. made them fix the script before actually signing on to star in it. The first 30-45 minutes is mostly all her story, with her trying to track down the MIB all her life after she saw her mom and dad get neuralized after they see an alien in a house and she doesn’t. An alien which she sees, interacts with well and then lets go out into the wild, which you know will be brought back later in the movie at a crucial life saving time. She finally tracks them down, lets them know she has no attachments to life left, and she gets hired on a probationary basis at headquarters. Right off the bat she gets her first mission and that there might be something fishy going on in London near their other headquarters there. When she finally teams up with Chris Hemsworth is when everything falls off the rails.

And the problem isn’t with Hemsworth at all. While their chemistry in Thor 3 was better, they still work pretty well here where the script switches it up as she’s the rule following rookie and he’s the senior slacker. I liked that. It’s the story that I didn’t give a shit about. At the beginning I thought it would finally bring a main villain to the series (aka their Voldemort) with an alien race called “The Hive,” where this alien race can transform into anyone can manipulate the form of non-living things, but nothing really cool or interesting is done with it. Basically there are these twins at the forefront that can do all this and, it mentions this right at the beginning, they aren’t really Hive they just have their DNA in them or something like that. That part was a little confusing. Anyway, they are after this handheld Death Star like weapon and the whole journey to get it is bland and boring save for this one sequence out in the desert where they meet an ex-alien four armed girlfriend of Hemsworth, played by the great Rebecca Ferguson. She breaths a little life into the ho-hum dragging pacing of the story.

And the climax really isn’t all that great either. I was constantly being reminded of the ending of the much much much much superior first film, and it kind of felt like a bit of a rip off. Also, if you’ve seen the trailers, and you were one of the ones to point at the screen at one of the new characters and said, “whatever bad thing is happening in this film is probably this person’s fault or they’re behind it all,” you are probably right. Right when the first teaser trailer came out for this thing, I guessed the ending, and I was correct, and when it was revealed that I was correct, I got really bummed out. I thought of several other different options they could’ve done, several different paths I was praying they’d take, and they took the most boring option and made it more boring believe it or not. And while I liked Kumail Nanjiani’s voice little small pawn chess piece alien character, he honestly didn’t do much other than being in one of our main MIB pockets for the rest of the movie, and Liam Neeson’s talent is completely wasted here.

The action is bland, boring, and not exciting at all, but I’m not going to blame director F. Gary Gray. He has proven that he is a pretty solid director and can even bring some excitement to the most bland of sequel scripts (see Fate of the Furious). The blame completely falls on Sony Executives and the script. It feels like they went with a first draft just to get it into production. And even though you might look up the screenwriters and see that they co-wrote the first Iron Man, the rest of their filmography is one giant pile of shit, as they also wrote Punisher: War Zone and Transformers: The Last Knight. So yeah, no wonder this movie felt uninspired. When you write action scenes where two protagonist characters are standing on one part of a set, and the bad guys are standing on the other, and our two heroes are just blasting away at them with different guns, going to the next one when one of the weapons doesn’t work, and nothing else happens in that action sequence, THE STUDIOS NEED TO MAN UP AND HIRE OTHER WRITERS TO PUNCH UP THE FUCKING SCRIPT.

And again, the movie isn’t terrible, it’s just bland. And it makes me not want another Men In Black film for quite some time, if ever. The best thing I can say about this movie, is at least it was better than Men In Black II. You want to talk about horrid… Tessa Thompson, Christ Hemsworth, and all the big names attached to this movie, it isn’t going to ruin any of their careers. In fact, any movie makers that do see this will see the spark in Thompson and maybe attach her to a fantastic script where she can do multiple wonders and even get nominated for an Oscar one day. It’s just a minor speed bump in the road of failing franchises. But hopefully its a noticeable speed bump in that maybe studios will take a closer look than just try and rush things into production. But you know Hollywood. The same or some other studio will make the same mistakes in just a few years, and then be like the MIB using their memory wiping Neuralizers, and then try and use those devices multiple times to make you forget that these ho-hum projects exist.

Rank of Men In Black Movies:

Men In Black
Men In Black 3
Men In Black International
Men In Black 2

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: WINE COUNTRY (Netflix) (no spoilers)

When I say no spoilers with WINE COUNTRY, I have to ask myself this question: are there really spoilers in a film about women around the age of 50 just drinking wine, making jokes that land completely flat on their face, and bitching about their youth and current lives for an hour and 40 minutes? No, there really isn’t. As a critic, and as a male, I try to find the value in all movies of all genres. There are chick flicks that I enjoy, and there are action films that I hate, so other than Star Wars, Spielberg, and Tarantino, I don’t feel that I am that biased when it comes to reviewing movies (you can argue with me in a private chat). In my reviews, I always try to say “this movie is for you because of this, this, and this” or “stay away because of this, this, and so and so” but what I truly hate doing is putting a specific movie into two very easy, yet distinct (and possibly controversial) categories: “only if you are a male you are going to love/hate this movie” or “only if you are a women are you going to love/hate this movie.”

If I’ve “triggered” you with that statement, I truly am sorry, but follow along with me in that I do have a point to all this. We can debate the whole gender/sex issue another time. I generally like anyone as long as their heart and attitude are in the right place. No biases or preconceived notions from me. If you are a good person, then I have the up most respect for you, no matter the age, race, gender, sex, etc. etc. etc. The point I’m trying to make is this: you are probably only going to like Wine Country if you are a woman. And I hate saying that. But to me, it feels true and right when I replay this awful film in my mind. Because I truly did not get one minute of it. Throughout the whole hour and 40 minutes of this absolute abysmal slog fest, I did not once laugh out loud, I rolled my eyes about 100 times, and I was wondering how and couldn’t fucking believe that this script was green-lit for the cameras in the first place. The answer I came up with was simple, “I probably would’ve loved this if I was a woman.”

And I am going to stand by that statement, for several reasons. I am going to give two examples from two recent Netflix films where one could say that you would only enjoy them if you were a woman. I almost thought that the recent Netflix film Someone Great (which is currently on my worst of list but I don’t suspect it will be there by the end of the year) was one of those movies, but then the movie got better with a strong third act that contained a really moving dialogue rich speech from Gina Rodriguez that made me ponder life in general. Even though I didn’t ultimately like the film, I, as a man, still got something out of it. Same goes for Unicorn Store (which, thanks to Wine Country, just got kicked off my top ten worst list of the year), halfway through the movie I thought the movie was a little too weird and quirky for my taste, but then Brie Larson’s budding relationship with Mamoudou Athie’s character came in half way thru the film, and the acting in general and Brie Larson’s eye for the camera, made me get a little something out of it even though I ended up not liking it all too much and would probably never watch it again.

I did not get one thing out of Wine Country. I did not get laughter. I did not get insight. I was bored to tears. I did not care about any of the characters. The one male character in the movie, played by Jason Schwartzman, literally had no usefulness , was there for only for a paycheck and his comedic talents were wasted as when he was on screen he was just slapping a raw squid more than half the film (you’ll see). And I started to think about if me and a group of my male friends were to watch this movie alone and then maybe my wife and a group of her friends watched the movie alone, which target group would the filmmakers and Netflix want to talk to to get the best feedback possible. The answer is easy. After the film was done, I went back to a couple of parts of memorable bad jokes that I just didn’t laugh at and wondered, would I have laughed at this if I was a woman and if I was a woman of older age would I relate to the joke better? The answer to all my questions are basically yes at this point.

I’m not trying to be controversial at all. I’m not trying to stir up shit. I’m not trying to be an asshole. I’m trying to prove not just to you, but to myself that when I say this movie is only meant for women and would only be liked by women, that I know I’m telling the truth. I think about every single male friend that I know, and I can’t imagine one of them liking this. I imagine them all the same as me: bored to tears, not laughing, thinking about other female centric films, like Bridesmaids, or a better wine centric movie, like the masterful Sideways, that they would rather be watching. And I think of my wife and her female friends, and I can imagine every single one of them eating this up. Maybe the jokes would be smart to them, maybe they would relate to those jokes and to the characters more. I don’t know. I can’t imagine a woman hating this film, and if you are reading this, saw Wine Country, and hated it, please let me know and let me know in detail why you hated it. Because I really want to prove my notion/theory wrong. This movie is Rated R and while I do appreciate crude humor and good dick and fart jokes as long as they are smartly written, none of the jokes are just smartly written. The women in this movie just blurt out curse words and talk about their vaginas and how they queef or need phallus love, all of the jokes completely missing their witty target. It’s just being crude for shock value, which never works.

This review is already painstakingly long, so real quick, what can I say about the movie specifically? It’s basically a bunch of alum Saturday Night Live women celebrating the birthday of one of them, while drinking wine out at a nice place out in the country, trying drugs they haven’t done before, getting buck wild and talking about life’s quandaries. Some of them get mad at each other at some point but you know how the movie is going to end. And let me check, was the movie written by SNL writers? Yep, it was. Writers that wrote for the show right when it started not being funny anymore and while it is currently not funny anymore. Should I change my opinion to you will only like the movie if you are a woman and if you still somehow think SNL is painstakingly hilarious? Eh. The actresses are all fine in it though, and try to do the best with the shitty script they were given. This film doesn’t tarnish my review of the likes of Amy Poehler, or Ana Gasteyer, or Rachel Dratch. Maybe a little bit of Tina Fey though, she’s annoying and awful in this even though she is barely in it. I think they are all funny women in general and have all shined in some rare funny moments on SNL but especially their non-SNL projects.

But not this. And was there really even a script? Or did a bunch of SNL women stars and writers make up something real quick to get an all expenses paid wine vacation to spend time together and they just happened to bring a camera along so they could honor their part of the film making contract? Basically, if you read my last review, did they fucking Adam Sandler it? Very possible. The only difference is that it looked like the women wanted to be there and tried where Sandler looks like he wants to kill himself after every scene. But I literally got nothing out of this movie, and will never, ever, ever, ever, ever want to watch it again. I guess Netflix is getting the last laugh on me, as I thought their film that went on the streaming service in January, would be sole contender for worst film of 2019. Nope, Wine Country came out of left field and has now taken that title. So in summation: if you are a man, you are going to fucking hate this movie, and if you are a woman, you are going to love it. I decided that the hard maybe of this film catering to SNL apologists turned into a no. Sorry.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: MURDER MYSTERY (Netflix) (No Spoilers)

MURDER MYSTERY is Adam Sandler’s best Netflix film. But it’s still a piece of shit and one of the worst films of the year. Other than the wonderful Chris Farley tribute song Sandler’s has been doing with his stand up tour and just redid on a recent episode of SNL (the whole episode wasn’t bad either), he has been on autopilot ever since after Funny People bombed at the box office. So when you think hard about his filmography, what is Adam Sandler’s last best film? I myself unfortunately couldn’t come up with just one answer but instead three different films in three different categories: 1. Sandler’s last film where he wasn’t on autopilot but the film wasn’t all that good – Funny People. 2. Sandler’s last film that was good fun but not great and he wasn’t on autopilot – Click. 3. Sandler’s last great best film – 50 First Dates. So if you want to go with option 3, that means Sandler hasn’t made a good film since 2004….Holy….Shit….a decade and a half. Abbie Doobie!!!

If you laughed at those last two jibberish words you probably could’ve once called yourself an Adam Sandler fan. At least when he was doing his jibberish routine in Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, and The Waterboy, he actually made us laugh and was trying to bring the funny. Every film he does now he is either doing it for the paycheck, the ability to take his real family on vacation while he works….or both. And it seems like every time the director yells action in a Sandler film now, Adam pops a Xanax right before he mumbles his first line. Murder Mystery is no different. I don’t want to even explain the plot so I’m just going to give credit to IMDB.com and just copy and paste their one line summary: “A New York cop and his wife go on a European vacation to reinvigorate the spark in their marriage, but end up getting framed and on the run for the death of an elderly billionaire.” See the key word there? Vacation? If you like films that struggle to find endless jokes about Claritin Vs. Allegra, random goats in the road, and aged ham combined with really dumb physical comedy that has absolutely no point, this film is for you. And unfortunately you are also to blame for these types of movies being made.

Unless you are living under a rock you probably know that Jennifer Aniston is in this movie too. And with this and Dumplin’ now under her belt, are we to assume she’s going to be the next once big celebrity stuck in this endless loop of Netflix assembly lined manufactured bullshit? Probably. In my opinion, I don’t think Jennifer Anison has ever been that great of an actress. She showed some potential in the movie Cake, but in everything else she seems like the same character. Again, in Murder Mystery, it is no different. She plays a bumbling wife on autopilot. So you are probably asking yourself if I hate Adam Sandler’s recent movies so much, why in the fuck did I bother even watching this? Gemma Arterton. Probably one of the most gorgeous women on the planet and was the only one in this that felt like they actually wanted to be there and actually tried. I will literally watch everything she does. And in the back of my mind did I have an alterior motive where I wanted another film to add onto my worst list of 2019? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Now I said in my opening that this was Adam Sandler’s best Netflix film, which is true, I wasn’t lying. I will give it two commendations. One, I did not guess who the killer was correctly. I had two theories, both were proven wrong. Two, Adam Sandler’s dumb friends don’t show up in this movie to ruin it. Well, to be fair, one of them makes a cameo as a disgruntled tourist, but the person has two lines, is far off, and I couldn’t tell at all it was Allen Covert until I looked it up, and those lines weren’t memorable for being stupid. So we’ll still count number two as a commendation. The rest of the movie is just filth. Adam Sandler’s arc is that he’s a cop (Sergeant) that has failed his detective exam three times, so I assumed that the movie would use his detective skills to prove he should actually be one in the end. WRONG. Sandler does maybe real detective work in only one scene and that is at the climax in a room where all the survivors are gathered. And that’s a HARD maybe. The rest of the movie characters just come to him and spout off bullshit and in another scene him and Aniston are making up dumb questions to ask the suspects in order for them to possibly confess. There is no real detective work done throughout the entire movie (save for the climax where he is literally putting two lines of dialogue/information together) , and in fact, if I was Sandler’s boss in that fictional world, I would fire his ass for being the most inept lazy cop in existence.

The whole time while watching the movie I was thinking of different and better ways the film could’ve gone, and obviously it didn’t go with any of those options. This entire film was an excuse for Sandler to go on vacation while he does some work on Xanax, while the director gets some gorgeous shots of a foreign city and country side. So other than Sandler, who is to blame? When looking this movie up I was surprised to find out that Sandler didn’t even write the fucking screenplay. But I wasn’t shocked by who it was, James Vanderbilt. He is responsible for Amazing Spider-Man 2, Independence Day 2, Darkness Falls, Basic, and White House Down. Literally the only film he has written that was great was Zodiac, but I have a feeling that was more because of David Fincher’s direction than it was the actual script. So in the end, with Netflix and Sandler, if you have the choice of watching Ridiculous 6, The Do-Over, Sandy Wexler, The Week Of, or Murder Mystery, which one should you choose? Always know that there is the option of not watching any of them at all. Think outside the box, something that Sandler hasn’t done in 15 years.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: DARK PHOENIX (Major Spoilers)

Answer the question, which is worse? Retelling a story (film wise) that was great to begin with and it results in so-so to terrible results? Or retelling a story (film wise) that was shit to begin with and it results in being even shittier than the first outing? Need more information? The first question for example would be Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn and Star Trek Into Darkness and the second question for example would be X-Men The Last Stand and Dark Phoenix. When given those options, I would say the latter question is definitely, definitely worse. Other than this first paragraph and the last paragraph, my review will contain major, major, major spoilers. Like I will talk about the 20th Century Fox X-Men Franchise as a whole, how the timeline is fucked up, the ending to this movie, the entire outcome of this movie and so on. So if you still want to read my review having not seen this movie, you’ve been warned. But if you want to stop but you want to ultimately know what I think, only read this and the last paragraph, but I’ll leave you with this: DARK PHOENIX is easily the worst X-Men film and one of the most boring experiences I’ve ever had with a superhero comic book movie in general.

Still with me? How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways. Needless to say, Dark Phoenix should never have been made in the first place. X-Men Days Of Future Past was supposed to basically restart the entire timeline and essentially get X-Men The Last Stand and X-Men Origins Wolverine completely erased from canon (and unfortunately erasing from canon the original X-Men, X2, and The Wolverine but that’s another topic for another day). DOFP is a near perfect X-Men Film, with an interesting ending where Mystique supposedly fishes Wolverine out of a body of water instead of William Stryker, hinting that the franchise could go anywhere and tell new stories. Then came the so-so X-Men Apocalypse, co-written by Simon Kinberg who is now the sole person to blame for fucking up this franchise, that while it gave us a new villain with the younger cast of X-Men characters, said “Fuck DOFP’s ending because we don’t know any interesting way to write ourselves out of it,” had Stryker ending up for some reason still getting the Wolverine in their possession because cool cameo because they couldn’t come up with anything new or interesting because lazy.

X-Men Apocalypse isn’t that bad of a movie though. It has some interesting sequences, some good action and a climax that while it has an epic scale feel to it, it is basically everybody standing in one place trying to kill the villain, and ends up feeling anti-climatic. The ending to that film also has a weird thing of Jean Grey getting her Phoenix powers quite early but being able to control them very quickly because reasons, but I digress. My point is that if you want the franchise to end on good terms, after having watched Apocalypse, you could watch Logan (it being the film that has the furthest alternate timeline with events affected by DOFP) and then be done with it. But no, they are ending it with this. And the reason this makes me upset is that they could’ve done any story they wanted to. Bring in different villains, different threats we haven’t seen before and these different threats. That’s what an alternate timeline is supposed to do in movies! But writer/director Simon Kinberg felt bad about his part with the Dark Phoenix plotline in The Last Stand that he felt redoing that story for this was his “apology.” His “apology” is really a “gotcha” moment of Lucy taking away the football right at the last second so Charlie Brown can’t kick it.

So basically, yet again, we are getting a Star Trek Into Darkness type situation. The writer couldn’t come up with anything different, and decided to redo something that didn’t need to be redone. The only difference between Into Darkness and Dark Phoenix is that Into Darkness was at least half way decently entertaining. Dark Phoenix is the most bored I’ve ever been in a superhero comic book film. Yes, that even includes Ang Lee’s Hulk, Elecktra, and the reboot of Fantastic Four (another fault of Simon Kinberg, did 20th Century Fox not learn from that shit?!) At least X-Men Origins and The Last Stand had some entertainment value and they also had Hugh Jackman bringing his A game to very lackluster scripts. Dark Phoenix doesn’t have Hugh Jackman at all and doesn’t pick up at all until the very last re shot third act on the train, and yet even that sequence ends in the ultimate whimper. Sorry, this review is so long, but there is so much more to talk about. Side note: Hans Zimmer so called score that all these critics are saying is the really only good part of the movie, is “meh” at best. It isn’t memorable AT ALL.

Everybody in this movie sucks except for Michael Fassbender as Magneto (who doesn’t show up until the movie is half over and is the least he’s ever been in an X-Men film, YOU DON’T WASTE FASSBENDER…EVER!!!), Tye Sheridan as Cyclops (the movies still don’t know what to do with his character, but at least Sheridan is charismatic and does what he can in the role), and surprisingly Sophie Turner (who was terrible in X-Men Apocalypse but in defense her character wasn’t given much to do). Jennifer Lawrence looks like she wants to shoot herself (like she did in Apocalypse) for even agreeing to be in this movie, and phones it completely in again, making you wish she had the intensity she brought in First Class and DOFP. Thankfully, as the trailers basically spelled out, it kills her 30 minutes into the movie. James McAvoy seems like he is completely somewhere else and is on a lot of painkillers just to get through shooting this thing. Same for Nicholas Hoult. But the one truly wasted actor here is the villain, played by Jessica Chastain. She phones it in as well, not knowing who her character is supposed to be, because frankly, I don’t even think the script knew. It has the least developed villains I have ever seen in a superhero motion picture, and that includes Steppenwolf from Justice League and Drax the Destroyer from Guardians of the Galaxy. They have a two sentence dialogue of their back story, which completely went over my head, as I just didn’t give a shit.

The plot? All over the fucking place. At the beginning of the film the X-Men go off into space with just a few lines of dialogue as to how their jet can make it combined with some duct tape for make shift astronaut suits so they can breathe (I shit you not) to rescue some astronauts whose shuttle has come into contact with some solar flare mass pink thing. Anyway, Jean Grey gets stuck in the doomed shuttle and ends up absorbing this solar flare thing and she just becomes Dark Phoenix. Oh, and some alien villains we never get to know were monitoring this mass this entire time because it destroyed their home world yet they want to absorb it and keep its power as well. Then some shit goes down, Mystique is killed kind of by accident, and character motivations go completely out the window. Magneto is basically living in peace on this secluded piece of land with other mutants with no modern technology, but completely changes his tune and becomes an asshole again with a snap of the fingers just because Mystique is killed, because he “loves” her even though he really just banged her once. At least Fassbender tries and does his best with pulling off that too quick emotional transition fast.

The movie ruins most of all the other characters that were cool well acted in the past films as well. Xavier is painted as a egotistical bad guy for most of the movie, Mystique doesn’t do any awesome physical fighting in this and Lawrence tries to get out of the blue paint again as much as possible, they ruin Beast by having him turn bad with not that much motivation other than Magneto’s. They manage to completely waste Quicksilver. Writer Kinberg knew that Quicksilver was too powerful (just like the writers knew that Captain Marvel was too powerful and she was hardly in Endgame) so instead of doing another shocking moment and killing him off he is just disabled after his brief fight with Jean Grey. His moment at the beginning trying to rescue the astronauts from space was okay but no where near the heights of his sequences in DOFP and Apocalypse. Storm says like 5 lines and just does her lightning thing which all felt wasted. Nightcrawler has a couple of cool action beats but his characterization…wait, what characterization? The only two characters that get a bump up from previous films characterization wise are Cyclops and Jean Grey/Dark Phoenix. Sophie Turner actually does an excellent job here with her acting skills (and one would argue she is better in this than she was in her entire run on Game of Thrones). It was the only time I felt like an actual character was trying to illicit genuine emotions from the audience, even though in the end it ultimately didn’t work because the story completely fell flat.

At the end of the film you have Jean Grey taking Jessica Chastain into space, destroying her, and then just going off into parts unknown as a fiery phoenix symbol. Xavier leaves the school and meets up with Magneto, who offers to take him to a place where he will be accepted and they play another game of chess in France. Beast is now the headmaster of the school and the school’s name is changed from Xavier’s School For Gifted Children into Jean Grey’s School For Gifted Children because even though she killed a bunch of people as the Phoenix, why the hell not for forced story’s emotion sake right? I guess the ending does co-align with what we saw in the changed future in Days of Future Past, but since Disney now has the X-Men you will just have to fill in the gaps instead of getting another story with a proper ending with this cast. In your mind you will have to imagine that Jean Grey comes back to the school and still ends up with Cyclops. Xavier at one point comes back to head the school. The only person we didn’t see in DOFP changed future was Mystique, which was probably why Simon Kinberg killed her off, feeling that it would be “shocking,” even though he couldn’t literally kill anyone else. I don’t know, the whole aging timeline thing was fucked up when Apocalypse was a decade later than DOFP and literally Dark Phoenix’s ending is supposed to be hopeful, but the rest of the movie is a dark, depressing, and damaged mess that you can’t help but feel ultimately let down from a franchise you have been with for 19 years. That’s where my solution of just ignoring this films events and going straight from Apocalypse to Logan comes in. Logan is dark and depressing as well with a very hopeful ending, but at least it was all packaged into a masterpiece of a movie.

And I’ve already said it several times throughout this film. The film is very, very boring. I almost fell asleep several times as my eyes were the heaviest they have been in a long time while watching a movie. There are really only two to three minor action sequences before the big linear train climax and those action sequences were directed and shot really poorly by Simon Kinberg. The worst one being the mid film mini street battle outside a townhouse that Jessica Chastain’s alien character and Jean Grey are staying at. I couldn’t tell what the fuck was going on action wise. The one thing that the final act train sequence does correctly is that it lets Cyclops use the fuck out of his laser blast eyes and it shows Magneto finally going full Wolverine “bezerker” mode and killing a bunch of aliens in the most bad ass way possible that we haven’t seen in other films. Those 5 minutes can easily be watched in a future clip on YouTube.

Before I get to my last concluding paragraph, because I’m tired of being disappointed by this movie, let’s get to whose fault this really is: Simon Kinberg. Sure, he co-wrote Days of Future Past and the first Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr., but you are meaning to tell me that 20th Century Fox was putting their full faith in the guy to redo the Phoenix story that also wrote/co-wrote Jumper, XXX: State of the Union, This Means War, the FANTASTIC FOUR REBOOT AND FUCKED UP THE STORY ONCE ALREADY WITH THE LAST STAND?!? Come on, this guy was showing ALL the warning signs. I guess you can blame the Fox executives as well but I’m just going to write that off as ignorance at trying to polish a turd. A turd that has already avoided being polished a dozen times previously.

Why is my longest review yet at 11 paragraphs long and it is a negative review? Shouldn’t long spoiler filled reviews be about films that you love and just can’t stop talking about? You would think so. But alas, no. It’s just the culmination of the 19 years and 12 films we’ve had in this franchise all coming to an end. It’s been one hell of a roller coaster. When the franchise hit its highs, it REALLY hit its highs, and when it his those mediocre bumps and those terrible terrible lows, well…it really shit the bed didn’t it. It is just kind of depressing to end things this way. I know, I know. We still have one last Fox one when The New Mutants finally decides to do their re-shoots and edited it all into something coherent for April 2020, but given how long that film has been delayed, do you really think it is going to make much of a difference. Also, it doesn’t really contain any sort of continuity with the other X-Men films at all, and in the end I just have a feeling the 13th and final film containing X-Men is going to be at the bottom of the barrel with the worst of them. If 20th Century Fox (now owned by Disney) wanted to recoup some of its money on these disasters it should’ve just released the initial watchable cut of The New Mutants on Hulu this very weekend. Whoever didn’t think of that should be fired. While on the one side it sucks that this series ended with a shitty whimper, on the bright side maybe it is now something that Disney can actually reboot and do something special with WHILE incorporating it into the MCU. My suggestion? Make it have the spirit and panache of the X-Men Animated Series. Oh shit, I just realized, with The New Mutants, they really are ending on 13 films. Really? They are going to end the entire series on an unlucky number? Even if you take away the two Deadpool films, that would make it ending on 11, as in filing a CHAPTER 11. Pffft, figures.

My Ranking of X-Men Films (including Deadpool)

X2
Logan
Days Of Future Past
First Class
Deadpool 2
Deadpool
X-Men
The Wolverine
Apocalypse
The Last Stand
Origins Wolverine
Dark Phoenix

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: ROCKETMAN

ROCKETMAN is a zany, guilty pleasure, new Disney classic for me. It stars Harland Williams as this idiot geek who actually gets his dream comes true and becomes an astronaut and gets to go on the first mission to Mars. Wait a minute, oh shit, wrong movie. Sorry, suddenly I was having good ol’ flashbacks to 1997. No, THIS Rocketman is a hard Rated R musical look at the crazy life of one of the best musicians to ever grace the world, Elton John. As you probably know because its been reported a dozen times, the director of this, Dexter Fletcher, directed the last two weeks of shoots on Bohemian Rhapsody after Bryan Singer went AWOL, so Rocketman is being compared, both fairly and unfairly, to that film. The question on everyone’s mind is, is it better than Bohemian Rhapsody, as reviews on Rotten Tomato, CinemaScore, etc. would allow you to believe? It is, but not by much. However, if you are one of those people that said “fuck the critics” and enjoyed the hell out of Bohemian Rhapsody, then you can basically tell me to fuck off, because you’ll probably love this.

And it’s not like I hated Bohemian Rhapsody. I just thought it was okay, elevated more than it should have been by Rami Malek’s incredible Oscar winning (and well deserved) performance. But just like Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman is your standard bio pic fare, only elevated by the fact that it is more of a musical than Rhapsody was, Taron Egerton gives an award worthy performance, and this also dives deeper into the sexuality of Elton John than Rhapsody did with Mercury. But that’s about it. If you seen one rock star/musician/singer bio pic, you’ve seen them all. Even with earlier this year’s The Dirt on Netflix, all of them are Rise To Stardom, Fall From Stardom because of drugs, sex, alcohol or a combination of the three, and then usually Rise Back To Stardom and in the end either that person dies of a tragedy, or they overcome their demons and lived and long and happy rest of their lives. Well, since most of us know that Elton John is still alive, how do you think the ending to this one plays out?

When the movie isn’t a musical, it drags considerably. It starts out well enough, in that it has a bunch of musical song and dance numbers at the beginning, but somewhere in the middle of the film I think the filmmakers forgot it was a musical and tried to turn it into a hardcore drama, and the musical numbers were few and far between, IMO of course. It just didn’t have that balance to make it a great film, and if you are telling a rock bio pic story that has been told a billion times before, you HAVE to be different and you HAVE to have that balance if you are trying to tell a story a different way but at the same time still having that same point A to point B narrative. And the movie has balance, but not enough for me to consider it a great film. The movie does do a good job of putting Elton John’s demons in the forefront of the film, and it explores his homosexuality a great deal more and a great deal better than the PG-13 Bohemian Rhapsody did. However, at one point in his life Elton John got married to a woman, and I thought the film would be a bit longer and delve into that relationship more, but alas, it was over in two seconds, with it just skipping about 5 years later, and not explaining the conflicting details. The movie was only about 2 hours, it could’ve went a little longer in that area to make it tighter.

I promise though, the movie isn’t terrible at all. I liked it well enough and that’s because I love Elton John’s music. They go through most of all of his hits and it was a joy to hear them on screen, much as it was a joy to hear Queen’s music on screen in Bohemian Rhapsody. Taron Egerton also gives a hell of a performance and it is elevated by the fact that he sings all the songs and actually sounds and moves like Elton John. If there is only one reason to see this movie, it is for Taron. While I hope that the movie doesn’t get a best picture nomination at the end of the year, I will be a little sad if Taron is forgotten and not recognized. And when the movie is a musical, all the song and dance numbers are fun and directed very well by Fletcher. It’s the quiet moments that needed a lot more work.

But anyway, seriously, if you loved Bohemian Rhapsody, fuck my luke-warm review. You’ll love Rocketman. It’s definitely better than Rhapsody in that it actually tries to do something a bit different. Uneven, but different. You’ll especially love this film if you love Elton John and his music. Oh shit, I forgot to mention the supporting cast. Richard Madden completely shed his Robb Stark image and was harrowing as Elton John’s dick manager/lover. Bryce Dallas Howard was good, and much better than the Jurassic World movies, as Elton’s mom, but the true standout with Jamie Bell as Elton’s song writing partner Bernie Taupin. Jamie Bell needs to be in more things and if he was possibly nominated for supporting at the end of the year I can see why. Anyway, now that we got three rock biopics within the span of half a year, it’s probably going to be a long long time before we see another one. And you could do worse than this film.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: ALWAYS BE MY MAYBE (NETFLIX)

Thought this was going to be the Rocketman review didn’t you Sarah? Nope, first I want to talk about briefly the new Netflix Original film ALWAYS BE MY MAYBE that released on Netflix this weekend. And I don’t want to talk about it for the reasons you may think. Just to get it out there, the movie is okay. Not great, but not bad. It is your typical rom-com Netflix fare, with not being as terrible as the recent Someone Great, but not being as great as the recent The Perfect Date either. It stars Randall Park and Ali Wong. Randall Park you might know from Fresh Off The Boat, or as Kim Jong Un in The Interview, or even his great cameo in that episode of The Office where he pretended to be Jim to confuse Dwight. Ali Wong is the great stand up comedian who has some great stand up specials on Netflix and other platforms right now. If you really want to laugh and enjoy her in something, I would suggest to watch those specials, because she isn’t as outrageous in this as she is in those.

The set up is quite simple. They were best friends during their childhood growing up for a time, and then after Park’s characters mom tragically dies in an accident while they are in high school, she hits on him and in a vulnerable moment they have sex with each other. Right after they have sex he says some stupid shit and they stop talking and seeing each other for years. They then run into each other again when Park’s father and him end up installing air conditioning at Sasha’s new home. She’s just getting out of a relationship where her fiance dumped her because he never wanted to get married. They start hanging out again and start to develop their friendship and maybe more over a period of time, until they both end up getting someone else. And that’s where we get into the review where I don’t really talk about the rest of their story. Just know that it is cute yet predictable as hell.

If you haven’t watched the trailer to this film, and this sounds interesting to you, just watch it, as you won’t ruin a fantastic cameo that elevates the film from mediocre to actually decent. And if you are reading this I’m about to ruin the cameo so turn away or scroll to the last paragraph to read my final thoughts. **MAJOR SPOILER WARNING** Keanu Reeves shows up as Ali Wong’s beau about halfway into the film. He plays himself, but a hyper realized fictional version of himself where he is a weird self centered asshole that keeps mentioning his movies and career and likes to eat at weird places where you listen to animal sounds on headphones of the meat you are currently consuming (you’ll see). I’ve never thought of Keanu Reeves as a great actor (even though he tries to bring his A game to every role, here is no different) and even though he is completely over-the-top unbelievably cheesy in this, he is the best part of the film. I literally had a huge smile on my face for the 15 total minutes he is on screen and was wishing there was a spin off where he was playing this fictional asshole self of his. I won’t ruin anything else that happens during the meet and greet, but if he brings this insane energy to the next Bill & Ted film, we are in for a treat.

Anyway, there isn’t much else to say about the film. It’s sweet, and cute, yet completely predictable. The title more plays on the song, “Always Be My Baby” than it actually refers to him always being a maybe to be the man in her life, but that’s okay, it’s a unique title. Other than the cameo moments, I really didn’t laugh out loud that often, just chuckled and thought the film had some charming moments. Randall Park and Ali Wong are good and adorable in it though and have great chemistry and some sweet moments. It’s an easy 1 hr and 40 minutes to kill on Netflix if you are trying to waste some time on the weekend. It is neither offensive to watch or make you feel like you waste your time, but it isn’t the greatest end all be all best romantic comedy ever. It just exists, and isn’t harmful, and I guess with Netflix, sometimes that is the best we can hope for.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: GODZILLA KING OF THE MONSTERS (minor spoilers)

As human beings, we literally almost ruin everything. Even movies. Well, more specifically, large destruction and/or monster movies. Filmmakers should know that no matter how many times they try, the human element in these types of films is moot. Yes, I realize that we have to use us for set up to get these giant titans fighting, but once the set up is complete, we should get out of the fucking way and be just bystanders to the spectacle that is about to unfold in front of our eyes. All these recent American made monsters movies (this is the third movie in this American Monster Verse), Godzilla 2014, Kong Skull Island, and I’m even going to stretch my reach and even put Godzilla ’98 in there, all have one big major problem. We just don’t give a shit about the human characters. And you say, “well we just need better writers or hire additional ones to make changes, tighten their story, or do something different.” Eh, I don’t think so. With all these destruction movies, they have literally tried everything human wise. Family drama, long lost loves reunited, bad guys searching for power, military trying to stop the end of the world, these scenarios have been done dozens and dozens of times and haven’t worked. I could go on and on, but needless to say GODZILLA KING OF THE MONSTERS suffers from the human element, and almost drags the movie down into mediocrity.

The keyword in that last sentence is almost. I still was entertained and some of the monster battles and shots are incredible, but I was a bit disappointed by this one. In fact, I’m almost willing to say that Godzilla 2014 and Kong Skull Island were better. And I’m going to get chastised for this, but in some ways, even Godzilla ’98 was more entertaining. But I digress, I need to warn you that I am going to spoil minor things in the movie, mainly about the human element, that almost completely killed this movie. I don’t reveal any deaths or what happens monster battles wise, but I have to throw in some concrete examples in order to get my disappointment across to you. Let’s start off with the actual set up/plot of the movie that instigated just so we could see all these titans wake up and start beating the shit out of each other. Basically Godzilla has been dormant for 5 years….since the last movie, but now that company Monarch, that is studying Godzilla and all these other creatures, have found about 17 more titan/monsters and counting and they are dealing with the government possibly shutting them down and just trying to kill all these creatures while they are hibernating.

Well, Norma Bates, after a tragedy shown at the beginning of the film where her and Coach Taylor lost their oldest son in the 2014 battle in San Francisco, develops this ‘ORCA’ machine that can somehow, whatever few throwaway lines of dialogue can explain it away, mimic the call of other monsters/titans which makes the humans can gain the upper hand on the creatures. She betrays her ex-husband and her only surviving daughter, Eleven, and teams up with Tywin Lannister to release all these monsters, because they both feel the world is overpopulated, and after releasing them the titans will fight, battle to the death, in their wake destroy half of the world, so that way the human race can be cleansed and we would have to start over from scratch. Also, they theorize that in the wake of their destruction, ecosystems will regrow and the Earth will eventually heal itself environment wise. UHHHHHHHHH, AVENGERS INFINITY WAR PLOT ANYONE? So already you have a problem with the plot being another, overpopulation/trying to cleanse the Earth bullshit type narrative we’ve seen a thousand times before. That’s already strike one in making me not care literally about any human being in the film.

Strike two is the dialogue and character choices. All the dialogue is just bland, stupid cliched stuff we’ve heard of before. The family drama is just cloned and replicated garbage that one could argue was just of a clone of boredom left over from the 2014 Godzilla AND Kong Skull Island. Eleven from Stranger Things is taken hostage for most of the movie by Tywin Lannister and his rogue army, but near the end of the film, for script convenience sake, she is able to steal the ‘Orca’ device everyone is circle jerking themselves over and just walk out the front door. I literally laughed out loud when that happened, combined with the fact that she travels pretty far and uses the damn device before anyone realizes she is gone. The film wastes one of my favorite actors right now O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Ice Cube Jr.) in a military role that all he does is shoot a couple of things and say a couple of stupid one liners. Eleven, Norma Bates, Coach Taylor, and Tywin Lannister are all fine, not terrible actors at all in this, it is just the material that makes everything they do dumb and laughable. The only human saving grace in this is Ken Watanabe, a left over from the first film, that has that one scene I wish was in all the Homo Sapien scenes in this movie. You’ll know it when you see it, it is literally the only two minutes in the film where I actually cared about a human being.

Strike three would be having these gorgeous, wonderful shots of Godzilla, Mothra (who is the best damn monster in the whole thing and is VASTLY underused) and other fighting, but then right in the middle, cutting back to the human drama, cutting back to Eleven running with the device and trying not to be hit by debris, cutting back to the human element that I just don’t give a shit about. And like I said before, I get that you need set up, but once the device and freeing the Titans came into play, END THE HUMAN STORY, and just have them sitting on the sidelines, out of danger, watching all these monsters just beat the epic living shit out of each other. It would’ve worked well, I guarantee you that. Combined in my analysis of the movies third strike is the weird way they incapacitated Godzilla for a third of the movie. They basically rip a plot point out of the ’98 Godzilla, and the movie suffered for it. When your movie is called Godzilla King of the Monsters, don’t write something in the script to take him out of it for a third of the movie, that son of a bitch should be in the entire thing.

Now that my three strikes and complaints are out of the way, here are reasons why I still liked and enjoyed what I saw up on the giant action screen. The sound and soundtrack is fucking amazing. They even use the original Godzilla theme for several moments and all the musical cues and sound editing and mixing from the destruction gave me goosebumps the entire time. The cinematography and camera shots are absolutely gorgeous to look at and the CGI seemed pretty tight (although I’d like to see the monsters actually fight during the day, without being hidden by rain, storms, and darkness to see if the CGI still holds up, I have a feeling it wouldn’t). And the monster action and destruction was pretty impressive. Maybe only one or two holy shit moments, but those are one or two holy shit moments more than the 2014 Godzilla and say what you want about the ’98 Godzilla, but the holy shit schlock cheesy moments were through the roof in that movie. Not so much here.

So in the end, am I recommending Godzilla King of the Monsters? Yes. If you can ignore the bullshit human element and love Godzilla movies and want to just see carnage and destruction on a giant, loud, screen…this is definitely the typical summer blockbuster for you. If you are wanting something deep and meaningful, where you actually care about the human characters, I suggest looking far elsewhere. This is writer/director Michael Doughtery’s third film (direction wise), and while I consider it better than Trick Or Treat, it is in no way shape or form gets to the wonderful pedestal that Krampus was put on. He has an eye for destruction, weird little horror demon thing and monster/titan fighting to be sure, but his screenplay talent on human characters leaves much to be desired. And while he isn’t directing Kong Vs. Godzilla (that is already in the can and set to release March 2020) he did still co-write it, and seeing that some of the human cast in this was revealed to be in next year’s movie, doesn’t give me much hope. I have a feeling we will just end up seeing the same thing: Kong and Godzilla going at it in some epic fight sequences, but tied with another boring, cliched human/family/military/rogue story that I still couldn’t give two shits about. Is there no way to just make a Godzilla movie from his point of you and just completely wiping away Earth with no plot and absolutely no point of view from the human beings because we ruin a lot of good shit? That could be fun.

Zach’s Zany TV Binge Reviews: THE TWILIGHT ZONE (2019) Part 5 of 5 – The Blue Scorpion and Blurryman

Two weeks ago I started Part 4 of 5 with a **sigh** but thankfully I’m starting this one with a **whew**. Two weeks ago brought us two of the worst Twilight Zone episodes of not only this revival run, but of all time. They were ham-fisted with over the top social commentary which dragged the episodes into the gutter. I was crossing my fingers that these last two episodes were saved for last because everyone there knew that they were something special and wouldn’t disappoint. And thankfully, they were right. They are the two best episodes right under Replay, my favorite episode this season. Especially the very last episode, which I really can’t tell you anything about, as the trailer for it doesn’t ruin a damn thing. And neither will I. So until next year, let us enter one last time into my review of the reboot of…The Twilight Zone.

The Blue Scorpion

Thankfully, The Blue Scorpion really doesn’t have any kind of social commentary to it. And the episode is very straight forward with an ending I didn’t really expect. All of this worked in its favor. The tale is simple: a man named Jeff (played by the great Chris O’Dowd) inherits a rare and mysterious gun from his father, who had just killed himself with it. A special bullet comes with the gun, and on the bullet a name is inscribed, his own, Jeff. The gun also comes with a set of rules with how to handle it, weird rules, one of which being, don’t ever keep it in darkness as the gun is scared of the dark. Also in the middle of a nasty divorce, Jeff now has to navigate through this hard time in his life with a gun that seems to be speaking to him with Jeff becoming obsessed with it every moment it is in his possession.

Like I said, the story is pretty straightforward, and the episode is brought to life by Chris O’Dowd’s performance, which other than Sanaa Lathan, is probably the best performance in this new run of 10 Zone episodes. He has to display grief, obsession, compassion, fear, any emotion you can think of he goes through it here, and pulls it off in spades. I was also surprised by the end of the episode. I thought for sure I knew what direction it was going to go in, but the episode slapped my face in the end, and went in a completely different, more thought provoking direction. I kind of loved that my expectations were subverted in this instance.

The rest of the episode is pretty great too. I’ve said it a dozen times times, but the one constant great thing in these episode is the cinematography. Every shot is wonderful to look at. This episode felt like it could’ve made a run with the classic Twilight Zone episodes of long ago. It felt like all the pieces of the puzzle were put together with no strain on trying to make pieces fit that wouldn’t. It is definitely an episode I would like to revisit down the line.

Blurryman

I really can’t talk about this episode all that much. I can only describe it by the log line on IMDB.com “A writer is haunted by a mysterious figure.” I can tell you that Seth Rogen and the great Zazie Beetz are in this episode, and I can also tell you that while I was worried about Seth Rogen’s acting at first, the episode pulls the rug out from under you very early in where you don’t have to worry about it anymore. Have I said too much? I don’t think so. The real star of the episode is Zazie Beetz, who other than being in Atlanta and playing Domino in Deadpool 2, is fantastic and needs to be in more things in general.

My third paragraph I’m going to describe how they can make season 2 of The Twilight Zone better, as I don’t know what to say anymore about this episode. I guess I can say the writer of this wrote the so-so episode The Comedian and this is definitely an improvement. This episode was also directed by Simon Kinberg, who next week makes his theatrical directorial debut with Dark Phoenix. He did a pretty good job and everything about the episode looked and felt cool. But yeah, I could tell you to expect the unexpected in this episode but my jaw was almost on the floor and my interest piqued less than 5 minutes into it. The last thing I will say is that if you think you’ve gone meta before in different television shows, this episode brings a whole new meaning to that word. But yeah, I ranked it high on the list of new episodes because Blurryman did something different, which I appreciated. The only thing that took away from it was the horror element that didn’t really work in the middle of the episode.

Anyway, we already know that Twilight Zone has been renewed for a second season. But where do we go from here? Another clue I can give you is the last episode might put a wrench into things…maybe. Whether it is a good wrench or bad wrench remains to be seen. Will they take it in a new direction after certain revelations are brought to light. I do hope that Jordan Peele comes back, and that maybe he even has time to write and direct his own episode. We’ll see…will he come back? That’s a question I hope is answered soon. My advice for season 2? Get better writers. The directors and actors are notch but a lot of the stories and scripts could use some work. Out of ten episodes, only 3 are great, 3 are good, 1 is so-so, and 3 are absolutely terrible. It needs a better batting record, and maybe have no terrible episodes next season. Bringing back a beloved series is always going to have a bumpy start, but with careful consideration and care, it could rise up back to greatness. In The Twilight Zone, anything is possible.

Ranking of Episodes

Replay
The Blue Scorpion
Blurryman
Six Degrees of Freedom
A Visitor
Nightmare at 30,000 Feet
The Comedian
Point of Origin
Not All Men
The Wunderkind

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: BOOKSMART

I don’t want to hear anymore whining. Especially from hypocrites. Could that hypocrite be you? Let’s see. Have you complained recently of Hollywood not having any original ideas for movies anymore? This weekend did you see either Aladdin, a live action remake of what is probably the far superior Disney Classic, or Brightburn, essentially just another superhero/villain origin story that rips off Man of Steel but just sprinkled with some horror elements? Did you see BOOKSMART this weekend or plan to see it while it is still in theaters? If any of your answers end with question #3 being yes, you are okay in my book. If you see remakes yet still go out and support and see original films, congrats, you aren’t a shit eating hypocrite. However…if your answers were, yes, yes, no…youuuuuuuuu can definitely go fuck yourself if you ever find yourself complaining about originality. And no, your answer to #3 cannot be, well, I’ll see it on video but not in theaters….FUUCCCCKKKK YOUUUUUUU.

Booksmart is not a just a rip off of Superbad but with girls, no matter how much it looks like it to you. Superbad, while I still love that movie to death, is a bit over-the-top with its situational comedy, and I will even admit that the script and story has some major problems midway through the film, with some pay offs feeling forced and not being set up very well. In fact, the movie almost grinds to a halt when our main characters end up at that weird redneck like adult party where one of them ends up putting alcohol in Tide Gallon jugs. The set up with that movie is that one guy wants to hook up with one girl, the other guy wants to hook up with a girl, and they think they can score if they bring alcohol to an underage party. Booksmart is so much more than that. Two girls about to graduate find out that while they stuck to the books and didn’t do much socializing, that the same people they thought were losers that socialized too much, are still going to the same colleges as they are. So the two set out to prove that they can be just a socially relevant in those inner circles, and get a little practice so they aren’t sticks in the mud with they eventually go to college.

These two girls are played by the wonderful Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein. Oddly enough Ms. Feldstein has a direct connection to Superbad herself, in that she’s Jonah Hill’s real life sister. Kaitlyn Dever has more of a filmography, and while you might know her for her weird loyalty to that awful Last Man Standing show starring Tim Allen, she has raised the roof in her roles on Justified, Detroit, Short Term 12, and Beautiful Boy. Their acting in this is what sets the movie apart from most teen comedies. Actually the acting in general feels more real than most. Booksmart has more than a dash of realism when it come to being compared against Superbad. You have zany characters in both, but in this for example, the motherfucking scene stealing son of a bitch Skyler Gisondo (the teenage love interest and best part of Santa Clarita Diet), while hamming it up in another memorable over-the-top role, has a few down to Earth moments that flesh out the entire movie. It isn’t like Superbad where the cops played by Bill Hader and Seth Rogen are all over-the-top and have absolutely no realistic substance as police officers, not even one little scene featuring a down to Earth moment.

All the ingredients for a great movie are right there, and fortunately for us, the one putting those ingredients together and serving us up an incredible dish is Olivia Wilde, in her directorial debut. Yes, THAT Olivia Wilde. The really really really really really really beautiful actress that has been in a TON of things (just look her up on IMDB), and as you probably know in her social life she is currently with and has kids with SNL alum Jason Sudeikis (who has a small yet, hilarious role in two scenes). What could’ve been just another point and shoot kind of affair, is completely elevated by Olivia Wilde’s stylistic choices and her unique eye for the camera. Her narrative construction for each scene is incredible. For example, there is a point where Kaitlyn Dever’s character swims under the surface of a pool to catch up to her possible love interest in the movie, and the way everything is framed and the music selection tells it’s own unique story in those 20 to 30 seconds that most directors wouldn’t think to do. Also, at one point the two friends are fighting and instead of them just arguing back and forth in a steady shot, Wilde uses the camera to go in and out of each opposing argument and even at one point cuts their argument off with music to play up another dramatic element in their year long friendship. It’s quite exhilarating to see a seasoned actor/actress knock it out of the park stylistically with their directorial debut.

However, on the flip side, it’s infuriating when something as good as this movie gets all the praise, yet gets none of the money it so rightly deserves. Especially when you look at other seasoned actor/actress directorial debuts getting all the money, AND getting all the award attention…for a fucking remake. One that had absolutely no unique eye or any unique narrative choices. I won’t name the movie, but it rhymes with A Scar Is Corn. The director, rhymes with Fadley Pooper, didn’t do anything behind the camera to elevate the material. Anyone could’ve made it. AND THAT IS A BELOVED AWARD CONTENDER?!? Please. Anyway, this movie flows through point A to point B to point C, introducing us to characters (including a fun and zany role played by the late Carrie Fisher’s daughter Billie Lourde) and situations that have great payoffs throughout the entire run time, not just the end. The two leads are focusing on getting to a specific party, but the detours along the away actually make sense and aren’t random due to forced narrative sake.

Anyway, Booksmart is the film you should’ve seen this weekend, not Bad Superman or The Fresh Prince Of ‘Woke; Agrabah. I hope for your sake that you discover it on your own in the next couple of weeks if you can. It is more charming than laugh out loud hilarious like Superbad was, but the several big laughs you get in this, are well earned and will have you laughing for minutes after the joke is already over. And it’s a comedy that has some emotional weight, that actually makes you feel for the characters due to its subjective realism, not telling you to shed a tear because Jonah Hill and Michael Cera happen to have a weird tender moment that wasn’t really earned in the first 2/3rds of the film. Booksmart is script-smart and director-smart, which is what we should be getting nowadays from Hollywood, not the same lame brain live action regurgitated Disney shit.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: JOHN WICK CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM

Do I really need to review this film for you? I mean seriously, this review should just say “go see it” and you should want to escape to a theater for a little over two hours with Keanu Reeves. Just like Chapter 2, JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM is one of the greatest actions sequels ever made, and probably one of the best action films ever made in general. It is the best of the three (only by a small margin though as I really think Chapter 2 is very special) and completes a rare reverse trilogy for me. A reverse trilogy is that the 3rd is the best, then the second, then the first, and it will remain a rare reverse trilogy until the inevitable 4th one comes out. And if you think it’s a spoiler saying that John Wick doesn’t die in this, you haven’t been paying attention. Like Die Hard, this is now a franchise, and as long as the same people come back, and as long as the movies don’t lose any steam, they are going to make more.

Keanu Reeves (son of a gun is 54 years old) is back as John Wick, the movie continuing mere moments after Chapter 2 left off (one could also argue that Chapter 2 does the same for the first one) where he as a one hour grace period before becoming ‘Excommunicado’ after breaking the assassin Hotel Continental’s rules and killing a newly appointed member of the high table on the grounds. He’s on the run with a $14 million dollar bounty on his head…trying to figure out a way out of all of this. Now if anything of what I said was confusing, then that means you haven’t watched any of the John Wick movies and need to do so now. They are all great films, with Chapter 2 and this being cinematic action masterpieces. I was afraid that with a third film there was no way that it could top the world building and action set pieces from the 2nd. Boy was I wrong.

It not only expands upon the awesome assassin world only hinted at in the first film, and touched a little more in the second, it really comes full circle and fills in almost all of the details (you gotta hold back for the 4th one though, am I right?). I LOVE THIS WORLD. I wish I could see spin off after spin off after spin off with an occasional John Wick original adventure every now and then. It is just that diverse and interesting and I think that the world could even find tune itself to the point of having a giant fictional book about the history of the Wick-verse. The first spin off I’d love to see is a movie with Halle Berry and her dogs. Even though she is in it not as much as I’d like, when she is, she steals the show. Every reservation you have had about her in other recent crappy movies is washed away in this. The film makes it known that she has her own story to tell, and even though I’m not a prequel fan, I would eat it up if they made one.

The action in this is nothing short of masterful. You will be talking about Keanu Reeves using a book to kill somebody and the knife fight, and the horse sequence, and the motorcycle sequence, and the climax sequence for days. You can almost feel each punch and shot done to somebody in any given sequence in your seat. The sound editing and mixing on this is the best I’ve seen since….well, I guess that would be Chapter 2 huh? Some of the sequences had the audience in Alamo Drafthouse screaming giant OOOOOHHHH and AHHHHS, laughing and clapping. It was a pretty unique experience. Everything technical about this film is done so well. I’m going to be a little pissed if the Academy doesn’t give this at least a nomination for Best Cinematography. The cities, the landscapes, look absolutely gorgeous on the big screen.

And then there is Keanu Reeves. While I will even admit his range is limited, at least he is known for characters other than just John Wick (don’t forget, you got Ted and Neo). Also, even with the limited emotional range he tries to bring his A game to EVERY film that he is in. Have you seen the training video they release of him for John Wick? (They just released a Halle Berry one which was awesome too). The guy is deeply compassionate for his craft and it shows. This movie has no stupid shaky cam or any editing tricks to try and pin point all the action. The camera is super steady and relentlessly fluid. All of this make the shots seem cinematically magical. You see that it is Reeves doing most if not all of his stunts and he is pretty fucking impressive ‘beating’ the shit out of people. These movies wouldn’t be this special without him.

While there was one or two action sequences that went on a bit too long, I didn’t really care because I was enjoying each and every second of it. The John Wick films are cinematic experiences you need to see on the big screen before watching on your big screen (hopefully) at home. They are great action films and are better than most of the other action films we get today (not too surprising since most of them are CGI garbage with no more practical effects). These films are better than they have any right to be. Please keep screenwriter Derek Kolstad on (even if he has to share the spotlight like he did in this film) and especially former stunt double for Reeves now director Chad Stahelski. Without those two these movies wouldn’t be what they are. I’m done talking about this masterpiece and would rather discuss it in person with those who know me. I’ll conclude with this ‘duh’ statement: John Wick Chapter 3 – Parabellum is the best film of 2019 so far…and I don’t even know if at this point Tarantino or Skywalker could dethrone it.