Category: Netflix

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE SPEED CUBERS (Netflix)

Since it is just a tad past forty minutes, the new documentary on Netflix, called THE SPEED CUBERS, counts as a feature length film, so here I am bringing you a really, really short review to highly recommend this very quick watch to you. The Speed Cubers is about Rubik’s Cube World Competitions to see how fast young individuals can solve one of those puzzles, mainly the 3X3, although they have competitions for the bigger ones as well. Yes, you read that right. Rubik’s Cube solving competitions. The documentary focuses on two of the best if not THE best speed cubers in the world, one normal young adult from Germany (Feliks Zemdegs), and then a little younger adult autistic Chinese kid from the United States (Max Park). I pressed play mainly to see how fast these guys and girls could solve a Rubik’s Cube, and I just couldn’t believe my eyes with what I saw, faster than a fucking bullet it seemed. Absolutely astounding. But with this short feature length documentary, you get more than that, you get a story of two competitors that aren’t rivals at all, in fact they are close friends and both support each other even when one beats multiple world records of the other.

It’s true friendship. And the documentary also dives into the Max’s parents and how they raised him where Max ended up overcoming a lot of the obstacles that come with autism. If this documentary doesn’t put a lump in your throat and one or two tears in your eyes, then you aren’t really a compassionate human being. This documentary is the perfect length, not too short and it doesn’t over stay its welcome. It does warrant maybe a sequel or two where we follow other individuals that compete. I still can’t believe there are competitions with how fast you can solve one of those things, and these guys can solve a 3×3 Rubik’s cube in about 6 to 7 seconds. You literally won’t believe your eyes. Makes me want to get a Rubik’s cube and go on YouTube to figure out the formula for solving one of those. In no way does it want to make me practice over and over and over and over again to solve it in mere seconds. And this skill isn’t pointless, it focuses your mind and harnesses it to be able to solve patterns and strengthen your hand and eye coordination. But I’m 34 God damn years old and although I can still type pretty fast for someone my age, there is no chance in hell these flimsy things could even come remotely close to keep up with these youngsters. Fuck. I’d probably get so frustrated I’d throw the thing out the damn window!

Zach’s Zany TV Binge Watchin’ Reviews: THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY SEASON 2 (Netflix)

The sophomore slump. It happens to 95% of television shows. The second season of almost anything is usually not as good as the first. For example: 24, Lost, Alias, Homeland, Stranger Things, The Walking Dead, and Westworld, to name a few. There is the occasional exception when you think of shows such as Seinfeld, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Friends, and The Americans. Well, the 2nd season I’m about to review of a newer popular Netflix series has just reached that rare 5% where it not only doesn’t have a whiff of a sophomore slump, but completely destroys that cautious train of thought. If THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY Season 1 was the series’ A New Hope, then SEASON 2 is its EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Season 2 eclipses Season 1 in every way imaginable: character development, plot structure, acting, pacing, twists, turns, visuals, and its entertainment value. I couldn’t believe how perfect the second set of ten episodes were. It starts off with a bang and does not let up, the final three episodes being some of the most perfect hours of television I have seen in 2020 along with the entirety of Better Call Saul’s 5th season. This season is a masterpiece, and it doesn’t matter if Season 3 is not up to snuff (which if there isn’t a season 3 after this Netflix is out of their fucking minds), there is no way in hell it could ruin the perfection of what I just witnessed. To put it in a better metaphor: the show’s umbrella did not let a drop of rain ruin the cashmere fabric that is these ten episodes.

I won’t be digging into Season 1 all that much on here, so if you are looking for an in depth analysis on it, I suggest you look elsewhere. I will just say that Umbrella Academy’s first season is a fun, if not flawed first 10 episodes, where the first couple of them are great and the last couple are great, but the middle of the series lags a bit. Only do the acting and characters pull through that slog to reach its grand epic conclusion. If you haven’t seen any of this show…what the fuck are you waiting for? The Umbrella Academy is about a family of 7 former child superheroes, who have grown apart, one of them even dead, that must now reunite to continue to protect the world. Well, that’s the first season in a nutshell. Minor spoiler alert for that season (but don’t worry, won’t spoil the big stuff of Season 2), they end up failing in the end and have to use one of their time traveling abilities to go back in time and try again. The first season ends right as they time travel, right before everything blows up and dies around them. The only thing I will reveal about the 2nd seasons story is at the beginning it is revealed that they went a little too far back into time, the 1960’s to be exact, and they have to prevent another and different kind of apocalypse, this one much sooner than what they had experienced in April of 2019. That’s all I’m going to say. Needless to say, when watching a trailer tease for this 2nd season, I was worried at first about the story line having a copy cat apocalypse angle from the first season and just doing more of the same. Boy, was I dead wrong.

The names of the seven characters are Vanya, Klaus, Allison, Luther, Ben, Diego, and Number Five. Their arcs and screen time were kind of uneven last season, focusing a little too much on just Ellen Page’s Vanya, but this season, everybody gets the exact same amount of screen time, all of them have full, interesting arcs and densely developed story lines. One villain that was uninteresting and in the background too much in the first, Kate Walsh’s Handler, is front and center this time and much more interesting, and a new character Lila, played extremely well by Rita Arya, has a fantastic dynamic with Diego and her own interesting reveals. Plus you have little mini arcs with some interesting characters from last season including Hazel, Pogo, Grace and Reginald Hargreeves, but nothing too distracting that takes away from the main seven. Episode 7 is easily the best of the ten, providing a new look at a list of time paradox ticks that are used perfectly and hilariously (you’ll see what I mean when you get there). I can’t reveal much more, so I’ll end this by saying that the series has a fantastic climax that is perfectly plotted over the course of the last three episodes (making the climax of season 1, that really just took place in the last 15 minutes of the final episode, feel rather tame), the visual effects are much more striking, the characters have a shit ton more to do, and Robert Sheehan’s Klaus and Aiden Gallagher’s Number Five, much like last season, steal every scene they are in. It’s just a fun and engaging second season that is perfectly structured narratively, directed and shot to perfection, and the character development is crisp and acted to new heights. It’s a perfect season of television, an unbreakable, sturdy umbrella if you will, that is sure to make you weather this COVID-19 bullshit of a storm for a bit.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: ANIMAL CRACKERS (Netflix)

ANIMAL CRACKERS journey to make it to the big scr…well…any kind of screen is interesting in itself. I’ll get to that bit in a minute. I watched this movie last weekend with my kid (it premiered on Netflix this past Friday as well) and while the 2nd half is much better than the first (it lost both his and mine attention multiple times as it took a bit to get really into the movie), it ultimately succeeds because of the fantastic climax, the cool set of rules the magical box of cookies come with that reveals itself along the way and not all at once, and the superb voice acting. If only the beginning of the film had a little more focus to make the set up a little less confusing. It goes through several generations of family in the span of only a couple of minutes and it is hard to sort out who is who for several scenes and it also takes a tad too long to get to the animal crackers themselves. But then once those magical MacGuffin’s are introduced, the film blasts off at the speed of light. It is just a little disappointing because if the whole movie was as strong in both parts, it would’ve really been something special. Well, it already is because I loved watching my son pointing out all of the different animals, naming them at the top of his lungs and “ohhh” and “ahhhh”ing at the action. As a avid film goer and fanatic I might only make a couple of more trips to this wild circus of a movie before I start to just fast forward to the good stuff.

Per IMDB.com, it describes ANIMAL CRACKERS as: “A family must use a magical box of Animal Crackers to save a run-down circus from being taken over by their evil uncle Horatio P. Huntington.” This movie was originally intended to be released on April 27, 2017 by Relativity Media, before they went defunct. It then set to be released on September 1, 2017 by upstart film company Serafini Releasing before they also shut down. This movie was later acquired by Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures, but the producers have since come out from that deal. The film almost never came out because it was held up for almost a year due to a lawsuit by a Seattle fisherman named Rodger May who claimed he owned the copyright to the film. The lawsuit was eventually withdrawn. All records of the lawsuit are public and can be found by a search for “Mayday vs. Animal Crackers”. Eventually Netflix bought it and although it was finished in 2017, that copyright states 2019. And then it was just released this past weekend on the streaming platform. I recommend you take a deeper look into its history, it is quite interesting to say the least. More interesting than the first half. Anyway, the point is, it is out there now, which is good because I don’t think any project should be delayed that long to see the light of day…looking at you New Mutants! The voice acting in this is excellent, there are too many celebrities to list but you have Danny DeVito, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Ian McKellen, and Sylvester Stallone. They all do a fantastic job, Stallone’s Bullet-Man character making me laugh out loud several times.

The other two things that make me ultimately recommend this movie is that the action packed climax is perfectly executed combining perfect pacing with plot progression, and then the rules of the animal crackers themselves. To try and explain it to the best of my ability, there is this box of animal crackers passed down from generation to generation that magically never, ever run out. You eat one, it turns into the animal that you eat, and then to turn back into human, you have to find the human cracker of you in the box, and then once you eat that, you turn back to your normal self while the cookie of the animal you had just eaten reappears in the box. There are other new rules that you figure out along the way as well, but revealing any of those would be spoilers and it is best for you to experience the journey for yourselves if you have any interest in watching this thing with your kids and family. I like how it stuck to the rules, and that there were no bending or breaking of them, it was all quite clever, even though some twists at the end I saw coming from a mile away. Again, I just wish the first half was as good. In any kind of movie you just can’t have the interest bits come up when you finally introduce the MacGuffin’s. Your story and movie need to have a beginning hook, and I just found it to be boring plot set up that felt like I was watching a standard biography on a generation of a family. That’s just me though. The animation is nice and pleasing to the eye, and the second half will definitely grab you, it’s just that those first 30 minutes were almost too bland and stale. Key word is almost.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: JOHN HENRY (Netflix)

JOHN HENRY already has my vote as the most awful misogynistic film of the decade, and will probably remain that way by the time December 31st, 2029 rolls around. How this movie got released post #MeToo is downright fucking shocking. It is THAT bad. I can guarantee you though that it just received my coveted “Worst Film of 2020” award. I didn’t think anything would beat the almost equally shitty ‘The Last Thing She Wanted’ (coincidentally but not surprisingly both Netflix films), but this one did by a mile. I think instead of another one of my typical 3 to 4 paragraph reviews explaining why this film is the worst and most offensive film since Surf Ninjas, I think I’m just going to list not only awful shit that is said, but the awful shit that goes down in it. I’ll try to be vague enough not to give away any spoilers in case you were still interested in this after I rip it a new asshole. Per IMDB’s log line for John Henry, it stars Terry Crews and Ludacris and it is described as such: “When two immigrant kids on the run from his former South Los Angeles gang leader (Ludacris) stumble into his life, John (Terry Crews) is forced to reconcile with his past in order to try and give them a future.” Sounds sane enough but a little familiar right? WRONG. Here is some of the shocking bullshit that happens in this only hr and 30 minute movie:

  1. Ludacris has a gold plated jaw. It’s laughably stupid looking. He’s only in two-three scenes.
  2. An entire conversation that involves ‘gay panic’ takes place for several minutes in a van between two gang members. This ‘gay panic’ conversation also somehow incorporates the film ‘Human Centipede’ into the argument.
  3. For about 5 minutes, at the beginning of the film, female vaginas (they use the p word in the most derogatory fashion) are compared to how delicious Red Lobster Cheddar Bay biscuits are. No, that’s not a joke. I. SHIT. YOU. NOT.
  4. Right before a character is about to be blown up, he yells, “I’m ____________, and my dick was legendary.”
  5. When one character is teaching another character how to correctly hold a gun, “Steady now, just like you would place a hand on a woman’s titty.”
  6. Women are called “bitches”…I don’t know how many times. Probably more than Django Unchained used the N word.
  7. A character gets shot in the head, but it turns out he’s okay, bullet just grazed him.
  8. Terry Crews rips his sleeves off while holding a sledgehammer as dramatic Western music plays in the background.
  9. Ludacris forces everybody who works for him to exclusively dress in white track suits.
  10. The film literally stops halfway through so we can get a montage of random places in Compton.
  11. Terry Crews flirts with a woman as he debates what brand of feminine products to buy.
  12. Ken Foree, who spends the majority of the film in a wheelchair, magically stops being a paraplegic during a gunfight because “adrenaline.”
  13. (Enter one of the awful and stupid things that happens in this film I forgot here here, because I’m sure I forgot something.)

The movie is tonally all over the place. If this movie was meant to be a satire, I could maybe, ONLY MAYBE, see one or two things on my list work, like the gold plated jaw. But no, it takes everything that happens in it seriously, and it wants the audience to take it seriously as well. But we can’t. The film doesn’t make any God damn fucking sense. Yes, there are a few allusions in John Henry to the folklore hero John Henry, but very few, and they are more insulting than they are homages. Co-writer and director Will Forbes and co-writer Doug Skinner, who have never written or directed a movie before, shouldn’t be allowed to ever make one again. Terry Crews and Ludacris are decent people in real life and they try and breathe as much life as they can into these poorly written characters, but it was all for naught. The gang accents are laughably bad, the violence is too “looney tunes” to take seriously, and even the original rap music written and made for the film was impossible to get into. It’s just a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very awfully made film. On all levels. There was no saving this screenplay and whoever fronted the money for this thing to get green lit should be banished from Hollywood forever. And I really really really really hope that when Terry Crews and Ludacris, fuck…any actor/actress in this production, cashed their paychecks in from this movie…I hope they felt ashamed. ABYSMAL.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: FATAL AFFAIR (Netflix)

How many times do you think they’ll try and remake Fatal Attraction and just keep making everything dumb and dumber? What have we gotten, copy cat wise, since that Michael Douglas/Glenn Close cult classic of so long ago? Swimfan, Obsessed, The Perfect Stranger, Poison Ivy, Sleeping With The Enemy, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, Fear, Derailed, Sliver, Disclosure, Addicted, Basic Instinct, A Perfect Murder, Single White Female, Unfaithful, Body Chemistry, Killing Me Softly, The Crush, Bitter Moon, Eyes Wide Shut, Final Analysis, Jade, Body of Evidence, Secret Obsession, Say Nothing, The Housemaid, The Last Seduction, Black Widow (1987), Unlawful Entry, and Stone. Get the picture? One could even argue that Fatal Attraction itself is a carbon copy of movies such as Play Misty For Me and Body Heat. The new Netflix film, FATAL AFFAIR, is the lowest of the low. I mean, it just replaces one word of Fatal Attraction and uses another A word to get the title and point across. How lazy is that shit? The characters in this do and say so many dumb unbelievable things you can’t even suspend your belief to try and get through it. And the climax is one of the most laughably stupid things I have ever watched in a thriller like this in quite some time. No matter how many times you try and do Fatal Attraction, whether it be that you switch up gender or race, it is always going to be a half assed product that brings absolutely nothing new to the genre. This easily is one of the worst films of 2020. Netflix will just dump anything on its streaming platform. I wonder if one of these times it will end up being fatal for them?

Doubt it. Netflix isn’t going anywhere. But really, did they think that a film written and directed by the old crusty white dude that wrote and directed last year’s awful, awful Secret Obsession, which is yet another carbon copy of Fatal Attraction, would’ve been any better? Of course fucking not! It’s worse. It will ALWAYS be worse. IMDB describes Fatal Affair as such: “Ellie tries to mend her marriage with her husband Marcus after a brief encounter with an old friend, David, only to find that David is more dangerous and unstable than she’d realized.” This brief encounter it describes was basically almost, but not quite even that, just the tip in a “too clean to believe” night club bathroom. And you can probably guess where the film goes from there without even having to watch a minute more. The only actor/actress that is going to come out unscathed is probably the wonderfully beautiful and never aging Nia Long. She is the only person in this that tries to earn her paycheck and actually sheds tears and scream on the occasions that she needs to. It’s funny that Omar Epps plays the psychopath in this as he and Nia Long have played lovers in a couple of other long ago films. I bet they couldn’t find anybody and Nia and him are such good friends that she just speed dialed his ass and offered a quick and easy pay check. You can tell he did this as a favor and to just hang out with Nia on set and catch up on old times, as he is the most wooden actor in this, he looks bored and tired in every scene, and it seems like he just memorized his lines right before “Action!” was yelled.

I don’t even want to talk about this movie anymore. You get it. If you read the description and watch the trailer before you hit play, you know exactly what you are getting into and it is absolutely your fault if you feel like gouging your own eyes out. I’m even warning you here. It’s just Fatal Attraction cliche upon Fatal Attraction cliche, with a Fatal Attrachtion cliche cherry on top. It is shit cake with shit frosting, with shit, shit, shit, shit, shit all covered in whatever the shit. Anybody that gets their kicks out of a movie like this or The Wrong Missy is the problem with the movie going society today. You eat that cheap shit up and you are going to get more of that cheap shit to eat up, and you punish all the movie going people that look for more in their entertainment. Like me. I only watch this to warn you all not to watch it. I wasn’t going to watch it until this ended up being in the Netflix top ten the almost full week it has been out. I keep tricking myself. I see this in the top ten and I think, “could I be wrong for once and this film end up being a guilty pleasure?” I don’t know how many times I’ve been fooled and it isn’t likely to be the last. This movie is a joke, like me and a very good friend of mine got drunk or high one night and wrote this film in an hour as a joke, and then Netflix executives somehow read it and un-jokingly bought it. If you watch and like this movie, you are KILLING US. Your entertainment value is…pun intended…fatal.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE OLD GUARD (Netflix)

Why does every movie have to have a “new recruit” type story line? That’s where the universe is very much already established and they bring in a new character (someone casual moviegoers can relate to) to learn the ropes. Is it so that the story/screenplay writer can easily and without any kind of effort spoon feed all the information/rules to the audience in multiple uninteresting monologues? Is it so they don’t have to think hard of a new and unique approach where little things are hinted at here and there where movie goers would have to grow a brain and piece everything together on their own? The “new recruit” type story is EVERYWHERE. Men In Black, The Matrix, 6 Underground, Kingsman, Inception, is just a very small list of the thousands of movies out there that do it. However, those movies get past that cliched premise because they have other, much bigger elements that come into play that are interesting enough and overshadow that “same old, same old.” Inception is a HUGE example of that. Anyway, the thing that makes the new Netflix original film, THE OLD GUARD, just a one time half-way decent watch is that the bigger elements presented in this movie…is just more shit that has been done before, namely the “Immortality Old Warrior” type angle. Another problem with it would be that Charlize Theron and company just explain the rules to the “new recruit” in a bunch of uninteresting ways and have “standing close to each other for 5 to 10 minute” monologues. And yet another problem would be that I guessed everything that was going to happen way before they happened and even guessed what the mid credits scene would be only a half an hour into the 2 hour run time. The film only gets a barely passable slight recommendation from me because it has a action packed last 30 minutes, the movie looked good and was well shot, and of course…Charlize Theron is always fantastic in whatever project she takes on.

Still think I’m nuts? Look at the IMDB log line for this: “A covert team of immortal mercenaries are suddenly exposed and must now fight to keep their identity a secret just as an unexpected new member is discovered.” New member. I guarantee you that two word phrase is in the log line of thousand of films that you have seen before. Is there really no way that this movie, and the graphic novel its based on as well, could’ve just had this “Old Guard” be on their own to present a story that hinted at and then gradually revealed the rules while the movie progressed without having one character explain all of it to a new one in a mundane monologue? There had to have been a way, HAD to. I myself can even think of several ways the movie could’ve avoided all those trappings and had been a unique ride. Alas, it doesn’t, it takes the easy way out for you to quickly understand and relate to the story. I’m just tired of it is all. Also, for an action movie, there is not a lot of action, save for the last 30 minutes. It’s really just a bunch of characters getting all the history out of the way so that the sequel doesn’t have to explain everything and just be completely action packed. I’m sorry but you do not want your first movie in a franchise to be just a dialogue bridge film for better sequels. You are already setting yourself up for failure doing that. Which, judging by the mid credits scene, is EXACTLY what this film is doing. Plus, let’s list the cliches shall we? We get another bad guy just wanting to make money off of or harness the groups abilities, betrayals and double crossings, plot points that the group are afraid will happen that they point out at the very beginning of the film that DO happen later on, the works. If you watch closely, this film is BEAT BY BEAT ripping off The Matrix.

Okay, enough with my bitching, it is getting old. Let me get to some of the good stuff. Like I said, Charlize Theron is excellent in this, that there is no doubt. The new recruit, played by KiKi Layne, is good as well. All the acting is top notch, even though Chiwetel Ejiofor is completely wasted with his talents here and should not have been cast in a role that small. I even loved that two of the Old Guard were homosexual lovers. That was a nice dynamic that had some great pay off scenes. The whole movie looks nice and is shot well by director Gina Prince-Bythewood. Give her a better story and screenplay to work with and she could do wonders. The only big fault with this movie is the story/screenplay. This screenplay was written by the actual creator of the graphic novel it is based on Greg Rucka, who is known for the many graphic novels he’s written. I wish he would have more original ideas is all and wouldn’t fall into the trappings of all the cliches he writes himself into. It just takes that one idea to be extraordinary. The real problem is that there is nothing new with this movie. Every element is taken from many other different films that have done those elements better. When you can’t take those elements and even put a small unique twist on them to make them better and new again, what’s the point of even writing those kinds of stories in the first place? Even though it has been happening for years, it has been starting to get old lately just recently for me. Fuck…maybe I’m just getting too old for this shit?

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: DESPERADOS (Netflix)

Good God, can it be next weekend already? Where two new streaming films, The Old Guard & Palm Springs, premiere literally a day before my birthday…and they’ve both already gotten decent reviews? Other than Hamilton on Disney+ this weekend…this new Netflix film…DESPERADOS premiered. And no, it’s not a foreign language film with subtitles. It’s a just a regular, stupid, cheap unfunny, masturbation gag a minute, sex joke romantic comedy about a trio of women looking for something more out of life than they have. And it’s mainly just the three of them, yelling and screaming out dirty stuff every half minute for the entire hour and 45 minute run time. It’s like an R rated version of Ghostbusters 2016, where women who are usually funny in other things improv too much and just yell random shit to see what sticks. And again, none of it does. It literally gave me a headache. And it is disappointing that former Saturday Night Live star Nasim Pedrad would accept this kind of role to play the lead…she must’ve really been desperate (pun intended) to land a job ever since her stint on New Girl went away a couple of years ago. She was great on Saturday Night Live, she maybe should’ve never left, as leaving for that John Mulaney failure of a sitcom was one of the worst career choices I’ve seen out of anyone. This movie is even worse. Speaking of being unable to get separated from New Girl, her love interest in this is the same guy (Lamorne Morris) that she ends up with in the series finale of that show. Did both of them just walk across the studio once the showrunners announced a series wrap for them? Anyway, here’s how to determine if this movie is for you or not: at one point mid way through, Nasim Pedrad gets humped by a dolphin at the edge of a boat and then the dolphin jumps and smacks his giant red aroused sea cock across her face. Did you laugh? I hope not.

Per IMDB, Desperados is described as: “A panicked young woman, with her reluctant friends in tow, rushes to Mexico to try and delete a ranting email she sent to her new boyfriend.” That new boyfriend is played by Robbie Amell, who looked like he did the filmmakers a favor and came over for a couple of breaks while shooting Amazon’s Upload. Completely wasted here. So are Nasim Pedrad’s two friends played by Barry’s Sarah Burns and Pitch Perfect’s Anna Camp. Their plot b and c stories of the former not being able to have a baby with her husband and going to a white woman shaman that’s supposed to give her medicine and/or advice to succeed and then the latter’s decision whether or not to leave her cheating husband are solved in seconds and then thrown to the side just as quickly. The white woman shaman is played by Heather Graham who looks like she doesn’t want to be there, and the ultimate climax (you’ll see pun intended) of the scene that happens between her and Anna Camp didn’t make any sense and was a little tasteless. The main plot of Nasim Pedrad trying to delete Robbie Amell’s e-mail was completely unbelievable and would never have happened. See the reason she wrote the hateful e-mail, is right after they have sex, it seems like he ignores her for 5 days. Instead, right after the e-mail is sent, he calls her and reveals he had an accident and was in a medically induced coma for 5 days. Oh but get this, the doctors don’t want him on the internet or for him to have his computer at all or his phone for a couple of days and just want him to rest and not stress out. The screenplay writers must’ve known this set up was a little hammy, as every few minutes they remind the audience through dialogue and just keep repeating he needs rest over and over. Never mind the fact that there are probably other people worried about him, he needs to rest. Fucking please, even I can’t come up with a way in which it could’ve worked. So Nasim Pedrad has a couple of days to find his phone or computer at the Mexico resort he was staying at, and really stupid shit keeps getting thrown at her so she can’t complete her goal, and that the movie isn’t so short. And she has time to “happen” to bump into a previous bad date at this resort (played by New Girl’s Lamorne Morris) and then start to have great adventures and conversations with him…you see where the movie ends up don’t you? I hope you do.

One of the scenarios that keeps Pedrad from her goal, is that she keeps running into a 12-13 year old that wants to have statutory rape sex with her and then that kids mom shows up a few seconds behind and yells and tries to beat Pedrad’s ass. And she keeps running into them and keeps running into them. It gets very old, very fast. The only decent part in the movie is the chemistry and conversations between Pedrad and Morris. They don’t lose a step going from being charming together in New Girl to being charming together in this, even though he plays it straight, and she’s the mess, where on the Fox show it was vice versa. Lamorne Morris is the best part of this movie, as he’s down to Earth and plays a pretty cool character. This is the second movie he’s stolen out from everyone, even in this shitty year of COVID-19, the first film being Bloodshot. They should give him more stuff to do, and that stuff needs to be in better films. Anyway, this movie is a complete waste of time unless you are an obnoxious woman or man that laughs at this low brow crude and crass comedy that isn’t even smartly written, and your men or women friends are just as stupid and obnoxious as you are. The woman who wrote this hasn’t done anything other than writing for THE FUCKING FAILURE SHOW THAT WAS THE JAMIE KENNEDY EXPERIMENT WAY BACK WHEN. No wonder. The director is a nobody too. Sorry I sound salty, this movie was just a completely waste of talents for everyone involved, and a complete waste of time for an audience that decided to press play. How can Netflix be that desperate (again, pun intended) to put horse shit like this on their platform? This is just one sliver better than Netflix’s The Wrong Missy…but not by much. One of the worst films of 2020.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE F**K-IT LIST (Netflix)

THE F**K-IT LIST, an obviously play on The Bucket List, is not the worst thing to come to Netflix? If that question sounds to you like a back handed compliment, it kind of is. It’s watchable, it’s a movie, it’s not abysmal…but would I ever watch it again? Probably not. It’s just…there. It makes you wonder how movies like this get made yet there are a bunch of good low budget scripts out there desperate to get green lit, but for some reason or another they don’t. This movie could’ve been much better than it is. Instead of being The Bucket List, where Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman actually do a lot of the things they write down, the protagonist in this movie video blogs a bunch of stuff that he ends up not doing, but goes viral anyway to inspire a lot of kids to do their own F**k-It lists in life. If the movie had shown him doing things on his list and then in turn getting more viral, the film’s message might’ve actually been earned and had been clearer. This review is going to be insanely short because I don’t know much to say about it. The actors and actresses are decent and you even got some recognizable names such as Jerry O’Connoll, Natalie Zea, Madison Iseman, Andrew Bachlor, and Peter Facinelli, that do a fine job in their small roles. But the real problem is that you have to suspend belief in a lot of what happens in the film, specifically the choices of the protagonist.

This is a long synopsis, but per IMDB, The F**k-It List is described as: “Brett Blackmore is a high school senior whose exemplary GPA and college resume hides the fact that he’s unintentionally sold his childhood for a future he’s not even sure he wants. When his high-school senior prank goes wrong, his life crumbles before his eyes. In frustration he launches the F**k-It List – of all the things he wishes he’d done but was too afraid. The list goes viral and touches a nerve with teenagers everywhere, exposing the educational-industrial complex as a money-machine designed to encourage anxiety-ridden parents to sell their kids into years of Tiger-Mom style servitude. Brett decides he’s going to break free – and make a run for a future of his own design.” Let’s get to the suspension in belief shall we? It’s really the only problems I have with this “okay” film other than Brett not doing much on his list. First off, the “senior prank goes wrong” scenario, is really not his fault. A couple of kids sneak into the school to hack into the computers, possibly to change some things (doesn’t really say), and one of the idiots steps on a gas pipe and breaks it. They go and get Brett to see if he can help, but he can’t and tells them all to get out of there as the room starts filling up with gas. The whole fucking school explodes (no one is hurt or killed) and he takes the rap. Yet…it wasn’t his fault? If I was him, even with a future I didn’t want, there is no fucking way I would’ve taken the rap for that extreme of shit. Also, the actor that plays Brett Blackmore, Eli Brown, is way too good looking and looks like he has a “fuck it” attitude in his face to be believable as a valedictorian let alone a decent kid.

Also, Brett doesn’t get arrested and the only consequences for his decision to take the rap is that he doesn’t get his high school diploma and that the 7 out of 8 ivy league colleges he was accepted to, take back their offers. But then that doesn’t really matter anyway as Harvard eventually reaches out after he goes viral and asks him to send an essay to possibly get into their elite college anyway. It’s very bizarre and while the film takes it seriously and not as one big joke, there is just no way in fucking hell any of that would happen, other than going viral…maybe. I get the messages of the future of young adults, how we need to make our own life altering decisions and to not just follow the wishes of our parents, but I don’t think the events that happen in this film warrant morals of that type. It’s just a very odd, yet somewhat watchable film. In fact, you’ve seen this teen angst film plenty of times before and needless to say, all those other films do a better job with the content than this one did. Add to the insult and injury? The co-writer and director, Michael Duggan, was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for being a producer of Law & Order. How…what…did….did he like bang his head and get the idea for this weird movie, or did he watch The Bucket List high and thought he should make a teen movie about it but a play on words? I have a feeling those questions would elicit answers that were more interesting than this film. Man, some of these title I keep hitting play on, I’m saying “fuck it” myself. I need to start thinking things through.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE WILLOUGHBYS (Netflix)

Netflix sure is stepping up their game when it comes to animated originals. THE WILLOUGHBYS is a fantastic, fun, original, yet weird kids movie that premiered back on the service in April, yet I didn’t hear about it until a recent visit to a friends place in Oklahoma for the weekend. I saw the release date was 2020, and following a recommendation from those friends’ kids that weekend, I decided to check it out. Boy am I glad I did. I’m glad I also waited to watch it with my young son and my wife, because we got to enjoy it together as a family. It’s based on the book by the famous Lois Lowry (I have never heard of this till now, who knew, right?!) and per IMDB it describes the film as: “Convinced they’d be better off raising themselves, the Willoughby children hatch a sneaky plan to send their selfish parents on vacation. The siblings then embark on their own high-flying adventure to find the true meaning of family.” And the whole story is fast paced loveliness with a dash of weird. It has colorful characters, morals about family that don’t try to hit you over the head with the messages, nice original animation that wasn’t trying to rip off anyone else’s work, and fantastic voice work from everyone involved, including, but not limited to: Ricky Gervais, Martin Short, Jane Krakowski, Terry Crews, Maya Rudolph, Alessia Cara (with a wonderful singing voice as well), and Will Forte (who really needed this, as his portrayal of Shaggy in the disappointing Scoob! just recently released seemed to be trying a bit too hard). This and Onward are the only two memorable animated films of the year so far.

This might only be a 2 paragraph review, as I don’t really want to spoil any of the surprises this film has in store for you and yours. Just know that other than the ending, this families predicament is far from predictable. Some wacky shit happens, some really cute shit happens, some dark shit happens, people are accidentally killed (well, if you see certain scenes from my eyes they did), tears will be shed, and smiles will be spread from cheek to cheek. This 2nd time director, Kris Pearn, whose first effort was Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2, is not a newbie to the animation world, as he worked in the animation departments for a ton of projects like Arthur Christmas, Open Season, and the very underrated Titan A.E. He and his crew do wonderful work here, as this is a film I can see revisiting with my family over and over and over again. After this and Klaus at the end of last year, Netflix really has something going on correctly with their animation productions. Why can’t they take that positive momentum and apply it to the original film department? Or hell, even what they choose to buy from other studios to put on their platform? Needless to say, I’ll always be weary with a new live-action Netflix original. However, I’ll be eager to press the play button if a new release from them is animated.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: FEEL THE BEAT (Netflix)

Instead of my typically 3 to 5 boring paragraph review for FEEL THE BEAT, or what it should’ve been called, “Not Another Competition Movie,” that just debuted on Netflix a couple of weeks ago, I am going to just do a checklist of all Competition & Dance movie cliches and see how many boxes it checks. Per IMDB, Feel The Beat stars Disney’s The Descendants Sofia Carson and describes the film as: “After failing to find success on Broadway, April returns to her hometown and reluctantly is recruited to train a misfit group of young dancers for a big competition.” That’s really all you need to know, you can probably just fish all the cliches out of the one sentence can’t you? Okay, let’s just dive right in shall we?

  • Protagonist fails in his/her career and she ends up trying to train a bunch of misfits (child, teen, or adult) in what she was good at to get back into his/her career
  • Protagonist wants to quit training these misfits at the beginning, but eventually the misfits get better and they all grow an everlasting bond
  • Protagonist has an ‘ex’ that they either left or had a bad break-up with before this career took off, where they spend the whole movie flirting and finally hook up near the end
  • After forming a bond with the misfits, the opportunity arises, MID COMPETITION MIND YOU, to get back into the protagonist’s career, and at first he/she takes the job, but that bond that they established earlier makes he/she have a chance of heart
  • But if you are a really oooey-gooey competition/dance movie, even though you leave the new job to go back to your group of misfits, somehow you still keep that job while still being a teacher to them in the end. Basically, you have your cake and eat it too.
  • One of the misfits the protagonist is trying to train is related to the old/new love interest
  • You have a bumbling moron of a assistant teacher, most likely a mom or dad that is a few tacos short of a combination plate.
  • At the beginning of the competition, where the protagonist’s group of misfits still suck ass and embarass themselves in the first leg of the contest, a technicality or a disqualification from another team will send you to the next round regardless of how terrible the group is
  • The competition sequences combined with the music are the only decent parts in the movie.
  • The Protagonist only has one supporting parent left, either by a tragic death or one of them was an asshole and left them both early in life. (this one parent left is barely in the film).
  • EXTRA #11: The Protagonists lose their career at the beginning because they have a mishap in a giant city like New York with the person that evaluates them not minutes later. (In this movie’s case, Sofia Carson steals the cab of the Broadway dance director that ends up running into her on the stage just minutes later. Out of HOW GOD DAMN BIG NEW YORK IS, THE ODDS OF THAT ARE NEAR FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE).

Alright, I think that’s enough. So how many of those boxes does Feel The Beat give a check mark to out of those ten? EVERY SINGLE FUCKING ONE. It’s kind of funny actually, that Eurovision Contest movie I just reviewed a couple of days ago, this checks off a lot of those cliched boxes as well. There’s a but coming, and here it is: this movie isn’t for someone like me, especially if it is straight to VOD/Netflix. I enjoy the occasional Pitch Perfect every now and then, but a movie like that manages to reinvent the genre just a tad rather than completely sticking to the rule book. Either that or the dialogue and chemistry of the lead and/or group makes up for its misgivings. Feel The Beat is a straight to video Netflix film with a small ass budget. It doesn’t have time to do new shit or reinvent anything. This completely sticks to the rule book and doesn’t change a thing about the genre. It has been on Netflix’s top ten most watched programs the past couple of weeks now, which is why I ended up checking it out (I hadn’t even heard of it until I saw it on the list). Sofia Carson also can’t act. Her transformation is completely unbelievable here, and the dialogue doesn’t help her in the slightest. The ragtag group of kids, save for the one that is related to Carson’s ex-boyfriend, are pretty unmemorable. The ex-boyfriend is also too Tom Cruisey Smiley McSmileson, it was so God damn annoying. This whole movie is annoying, unmemorable and very, very cheesy. However, if you are a sucker for that ooey-gooey feel good shit right now, or these movies are usually your jam, especially in these butt fucking unbearable times, I feel ya if you end up liking the beat.