Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE OUTPOST

It’s pretty easy to declare THE OUTPOST as the best direct to demand action war film ever made, but I’ll go one further: this is probably my favorite since either American Sniper or Black Hawk Down. The main question I post to the filmmakers and studio behind it…how the hell did this not get a theatrical debut? And I do understand COVID-19 and all that mess but in doing my research I think this was always meant to be straight to demand. Then my second guess of an answer would be that there aren’t too many recognizable faces in this, and the main one that is isn’t in the film too long. Director Rod Lurie needs to flex his muscles, get out of his mostly television work, and maybe take on some big budget action films because some of the shots, especially the one take shots, and action in this movie are mesmerizing. IMDB describes the movie with the following: “A small team of U.S. soldiers battle against hundreds of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.” To explain it a little bit better in my own words, The Outpost tells the gripping real story of Camp Keating, which was one of several outposts placed to control the Taliban movement and their supply chain during the war in Afghanistan. The camp was situated in a valley surrounded by mountains, and for the 400 Taliban that rallied for a surprise attack that takes place during the entire last hour of this two hour film, for them it seemed like it was shooting fish in a barrel. It was up to these soldiers to leverage their poor defenses, lack of ammo and manpower they had, to ultimately survive and go back to their loved ones. The film is a fantastic tribute to military heroes, even if one of my complaints about the film is that you don’t really get to know them specifically and only catch fleeting glimpses of personalities. This movie is a direct to demand technical feat.

If you are a war film buff, this is essential viewing. You may be wondering what the hell I’m talking about with the first hour, as it showed what military life was like at Camp Keating, stories that have been depicted many times before in other war films and do it with about the same level of authenticity, but when you get to that hour mark, hold on to your butts, because you are in for a non stop action packed ride the all the way to the end credits. I would say to see this in a theater, but since you technically can’t, try to see this on the biggest screen you can with the best sound, possibly someone that has a nice movie theater living room. The movie stars Scott Eastwood, Caleb Landry Jones, and Orlando Bloom and they all do an adequate jobs, even though the former just acts like the tough guy he’s been in all of his previous films, the latter is barely even in the film to really critique his performance, and Landry Jones plays the cliched scared guy out of his element, working up the courage to show what he’s really made of. While most of the camera work is masterful, there are one or two shots that gave away that something really bad was about to happen, would’ve rather it been more subtle for more shock value. But you aren’t here to read my nit picky hard critiques I judge films for, you just want to know if the action in this war film is worth your time. Abso-fucking-lutely. The last hour of this film is a sight to behold and is worth the cliched military life hour set up, and even though the lingo and dialogue seems legit, like I said, it’s just been done a little too many times before for me to get into it. That last hour man…DO. NOT. WATCH. THIS. MOVIE. ON. YOUR. FUCKING. PHONE. It is currently on Netflix if you have the service and don’t want to pony up the dough to rent it. But I’d say a rental is worth it. In fact I could see me revisiting this specific outpost in the future and constantly point to it when someone is in the mood for a good war film that they haven’t seen before, especially one this adequately made for direct to streaming.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE SWING OF THINGS

If 2020 is a giant dumpster fire, then THE SWING OF THINGS is a mini dumpster fire inside said dumpster fire. HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT. I was laughing throughout this whole movie so hard… and not because of the movie itself, but by how awful it was. This film is one of worst sound edited, worst acted, one of the worst edited in general and one of the worst directorial efforts of ALL time. The only reason why I watched the whole damn thing was because…it was a literal dumpster fire and I wanted to watch the entire thing burn to the ground. I’m not listing this as my worst film of the year list because I wanted a title or two you all probably knew at the top, as this is a film I guarantee would elicit a few, “what the fuck is The Swing Of Things?” if it happened to come up in conversation. This is not even a so bad it’s good movie, like Anaconda or Snakes On A Plane, this is a bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad fucking movie that the guys at Red Letter Media would be watching and putting up in competition with other bad movies in one of their ‘Best Of The Worst’ segments. If you happen to catch this movie where it is playing on Hulu, or God forbid, be a giant dumb fuck and spend money to rent the mother fucking thing, it’ll probably remind you of really really bad late 90s/early 00’s gross out comedies such as Freddy Got Fingered, Tom Cats, Say It Isn’t So and Slackers. But those films and my worst film of the year so far, The Wrong Missy, are masterpieces compared to this abortion.

IMDB describes The Swing Of Things with the following: “A groom-to-be accidentally books his destination wedding and honeymoon at a swingers resort in Jamaica.” What is even more embarrassing than that awful film premise is some of the names that they actually got to be in this thing. Supermodel Olivia Culpo, Adelaide Kane, Jon Lovitz, and even fucking Luke Wilson are in this, albeit Lovitz for probably an hour of work and Luke Wilson looks drugged out of his mind just to get through the shoot to get that nice paycheck at the end of the day. I wonder if he joined as part of a lost bet? This is one of those “Sandler Vacation” films, meaning that all involved probably jumped on board because a free vacation was in the cards along with the shoot. The jig is up if you go to Olivia Culpo’s Instagram and scroll down to right before COVID-19 hit, as you can see exactly when the shoot took place. One of her stories has her in the same white bikini she wears in the film, talking about vacationing with her real life football player fiancee. By the way, her and and Adelaide Kane were completely hired only for their looks and scantly clad swim wear and other outfits. I’m surprised that neither one of them filed a sexual harassment suit against any of the other cast or crew. The story is really just a back drop to watch how poorly made this movie is. The only way to describe all the bullshit to you is to give you a list of bullet points of the beats that go down in the film:

A seagull has a cigarette in its mouth and says “God Damn!” as a woman in a yellow bikini runs in Baywatch slow motion type fashion across the beach. Remember how I said the sound editing was terrible? They couldn’t even match the “God Damn!” to when the bird opened it’s beak twice.
A flock of regular little birds, instead of chirps, keep repeating “TITS TITS TITS TITS TITS TITS TITS TITS TITS N ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS” in two scenes for what seems like forever.
Dolphins rape people on this island. I shit you not.
For this movie having a premise of accidentally holding a wedding at a swingers resort, there is little to no sex in this movie. No smart sexual humor either.
The sexual humor that is in this movie has been done before, is cheap, ans is resorted to small dildos and little whips being strapped to pens when signing up for activities on the island. One of the older women in the wedding party can’t decide what she wants to do, so instead of tapping just a pen to her cheek to simulate that she’s thinking, she’s tapping the dildo and/or whip on her cheek. Ha…Ha.
For what little nudity there is in this movie (I’m surprised Culpo or Kane didn’t show anything), the camera obnoxiously zooms in on naked body parts of extras. That joke is about 21 years old, first done in Road Trip…no originality.
Does anyone remember Jack Black’s awfully annoying and racist character, Jamaican White Guy, in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer? There is one here too, but add on about 1000% annoyance.
The audio has an echo and/or tries to readjust itself several times in several scenes. If the movie needed any additional ADR, which it did, Luke Wilson obviously said no, as there seems to be someone impersonating his voice in parts that were probably hard to hear audio wise and needed several more takes.
It’s just a bunch of incoherent scenes strung together, and when a possible plot is brought into the mix, whether or not the male fiancee cheated on Olivia Culpo, it’s solved in less than 5 minutes flat.
A girl character loathes this other male asshole character the whole movie and then has sex with him and blows him underwater to get some secretive info out of him and then for no reason is in love with said asshole at the end of the film.

See what I mean? This movie is COMPLETE BULLSHIT. And very misogynistic and degrading to women. How director Matt Shapira, who replaces Uwe Boll as the worst director of all time for me as this movie compared to ANY of Boll’s make them look like masterpieces, got financing for this thing is anyone’s idea. I honestly think everyone knew each other in some way shape or form, and wanted a vacation, and Shapira got Culpo and Kane because he is a giant fucking pervert flashing dollars bills and a fun time in the sun in their eyes. The screenplay was written by five people…let me repeat that…FIVE PEOPLE. It’s like they were on pot and wrote it together over dinner one night, passing the screenplay to the left and instead of trying to fix and expand upon the previous ones work, just added on to it without reading the scenes that came before. Then once shooting began, everything was shot in one take and the editor had absolutely nothing to work with but the bare bones of dailies. The framing is bad, the actors seem as though they tried to memorize their lines 2 minutes before “Action!” was yelled…it’s basically a feature length porn movie with no sex scenes…and even some of those are better than this trash. When you are on Hulu or if you are wanting to rent a comedy on another streaming site and come upon this abysmal disaster, swing the other way. Swing FAR the other way.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: SPONTANEOUS

SPONTANEOUS not only easily enters one of my top 5 films of the year so far, but it is easily the best blind buy I have ever made on VUDU. Ever. It also joins Palm Springs and The Devil All The Time as two of the best straight to streaming movies I have ever seen. And…you’ve probably never heard of this film. That’s okay, that’s what I’m here for. It stars 13 Reason’s Why Katherine Langford (she played Hannah Baker) and IMDB describes it with the following: “Get ready for the outrageous coming-of-age love story about growing up…and blowing up. When students in their school begin exploding (literally), seniors Mara and Dylan struggle to survive in a world where each moment may be their last.” It sounds sort of like schlocky fun right? WRONG. This movie takes itself as seriously as it should, blending a pitch perfect trifecta of tone, romance, and dramedy (mostly drama). I was enthralled the entire hour and 41 minute run time and I couldn’t believe how invested I was in the story, characters, the atmosphere of the movie, everything about it. It was also very eerie, because when you watch it you can easily make sound parallels with what is happening in the movie to the bullshit year we’ve been having because of COVID-19. The movie is bloody fun, but it is also very moving, tense, and I was choked up with moments by the end credits. It breaks the 4th wall a couple of times, but not enough to be annoying, and I’m a breaking the 4th wall connoisseur. This movie is better than it had any right to be. It’s a horror film, a sci-fi film, a romance film, a teenage angst film, a quarantine film, a riveting drama, it’s an almost everything film, definitely not for young kids. It’s as if David Cronenberg’s Scanners fucked and had a baby with any John Hughes film you happen to have in your video library.

Any other year, if this movie had played in theaters, and I was a member of the Academy or a producer of this film, I would try and get Katherine Langford an Academy Award nomination. She completely sheds Hannah Baker from her persona…fuck, she sheds any other character she has ever played in other films and completely gives in to Mara’s weird yet lovable teen angst phase. I loved her in this movie. Charlie Plummer, who plays Dylan, is very solid, although I couldn’t tell much of a difference from his performance in this and another film I saw recently where he was also one of the main protagonists, Words On Bathroom Walls. I want to describe why this movie is so great and why it resonated with me so well, but to do that, I would have to divulge a lot of the surprises this movie has in store for you, so this is going to be one of my rare two paragraph reviews, even though I want to scream its praises. Let’s just say if you don’t like this movie, then it’s probably hard to please you with most movies, and you should stick with mind numbing cheap fare like that new American Pie Girls’ Rules movie, which I just reviewed earlier today. This movie was adapted from a novel I now want to read and directed by Brian Duffield, who has been more miss than hit in his career. He wrote the one time watch Underwater earlier this year and he also wrote Insurgent…the second shit film in the Divergent Series (which didn’t even finish the 4 film plan it had)…but he also wrote Netflix’s fun The Babysitter film. Spontaneous is easily his best and another film he wrote comes out next week that I’m definitely going to check out because of this, called Love and Monsters (he didn’t direct it though). He’s a great director here and wish he would try his hand at more. The spontaneous combustion is quite scary and serious, and he films it in a way where it looks real and not schlocky. I spontaneously wanted to watch this movie when I saw a trailer, but I encourage you to skip that and check it out after you spontaneously read just this review.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: AMERICAN PIE – GIRLS’ RULES

Is it wrong of me to not think this movie was THAT terrible? I mean, yes, it’s very inauthentic when you consider that it is supposed to be a girl centric version of an American Pie story and it is written by two guys. The film did keep my interest the whole way through…and I chuckled throughout it… so to me it was just…harmless? And better than all the other 4 straight to video American Pie Presents films? So am I recommending AMERICAN PIE – GIRLS’ RULES? The only answer I can come up with is ‘sort of’, as I appreciated more for what it was trying to do than Adam Sandler’s new bullshit Netflix Halloween film. It tried to gender swap the American Pie movie because of today’s overly ridiculous political correctness debacle, and it did it…politically correct…and to be fair, I think teenager girls will get a kick out of it, even though there is no way that they talk to each other likes the characters talked to each other in this movie. And if you are much older than a teenager, I guess if you have nothing else to watch and need something to quickly kill and hour and a half. It certainly isn’t boring, just don’t go in expecting any greatness spawned from the original four films. The only aspect that makes this an American Pie Presents movie is that one of the 4 main girls’ last name happens to be Stifler. Out of the five direct to video films, which I’ve only now seen this and Band Camp, I think there has been a new Stifler(s) in each one, and I couldn’t tell you how the fuck they all relate to each other. Maybe that’s the joke, each movie becomes so much more convoluted involving the Stifler family tree that it wants viewers to take the Tenet approach, “Don’t try to understand it, just feel it.”

IMDB describes this film with the following: “It’s Senior year at East Great Falls. Annie, Kayla, Michelle, and Stephanie decide to harness their girl power and band together to get what they want their last year of high school.” That harnessing their girl power turns into a way too coincidental plot of them accidentally falling for and going after the same guy. And since this new guy at school happens to be cool and not an asshole, us viewers know that he isn’t going to try and end up with all four girls. The plot is so ridiculous and convoluted that you know exactly what girl he ends up with when they meet on screen for the first time, and you know what other guys the other three girls end up with as soon as they first show up to share the screen as well. For me, the movie was all about the crude and sexual humor jokes surrounding the outlandish plot. They involve the girls saying weird stuff about their bodies, sex toys including vibrating underwear, randomly screaming obscenities, and I’ll admit it, I chuckled, so sue me. The movie isn’t just dirty humor the whole way through at least, it knows when to lay it’s sweet and charming chips on the table and actually bring some humanity into the mix. The acting is decent for a direct to video debut as well, as it seems like more of a real movie than the other spin offs brought us. Sara Rue plays the school’s new principal and her scenes were probably the best of the bunch with that picture perfect blend of crude humor and charm. And Danny Trejo seems to have filmed his scenes maybe after production was done as a silent Janitor, but those didn’t work for me as it felt like an excuse to have one recognizable face in the credits. There’s nothing more to say about this film other than that if you go in expecting a harmless crude and sexual humor romp that in no way masters the greatness of the original four American Pie films, you maybe won’t be disappointed. Who knows, my brain might be a pie chart right now whose sanity is just a tiny, incoherent, sliver of a piece.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: BLACK BOX (Amazon Prime)

You ever watched one of those movies where you guess what is going on and what will happen the rest of the movie about a third of the way into it? And then once ALL of your predictions start coming true, one by one, even though the movie is still a half way decent one time watch, you kind of zone out a bit and you emotionally lose investment in the characters and what is happening on screen? That’s BLACK BOX, which is basically just Get Out (funny, because it’s from Blumhouse, the producers of that movie too) but on a much smaller, more personal scale and absolutely no racial undertones (in fact I think there was only one white character in this and she has about two lines). Yeah, I probably just gave a clue to many twists and turns within this film, but there is really no way to describe how I feel without hinting to you why I lost interest, even though there was nothing wrong with the execution of the story, what was wrong is that it didn’t go anywhere that other movies haven’t been to before. SSDD, Same Shit, Different Day. Black Box is part of a Blumhouse set of four ‘Welcome To The Blumhouse’ movies that the first two, where this and The Lie (reviewed it yesterday) came out Tuesday, and then Nocturne and Evil Eye come out next Tuesday. IMDB describes the movie with the following: “After losing his wife and his memory in a car accident, a single father undergoes an agonizing experimental treatment that causes him to question who he really is.” What really kind of irks me about the whole thing is that it stars one of my top ten favorite rising actors, Mamoudou Athie, and he’s just not getting the more than solid projects that he is capable of being masterful in. I mean…maybe in another two years, as he apparently has a substantial role in Jurassic World: Dominion?

And you know you always got to get into a blockbuster movie before you are offered other and better roles I guess nowadays. He has starred in much more smaller fare throughout his whole career. He was in Underwater that came out in January of this year, but he was in the film no more than 10 minutes before getting killed off. I know him from and started gaining keen interest into his career from one of his first independent feature debuts, called Patti Cakes, where he plays the weird love interest. He was also the only good thing about Brie Larson’s directorial debut Unicorn Store, and his best film so far, was earlier this year on Netflix, called Uncorked. Highly recommend you check either the latter out or Patti Cakes. He’s good in Black Box too, probably the best thing about the movie as it does stretch his range as an actor, it’s just the script and story around him is very plain and dry, so much so that the plot could be used in a beat by beat example in a Screenwriting For Dummies 101 book. The movie basically slaps you in the face early on of what is going on before it is revealed midway through, and the clues definitely could’ve been more subtle. I hate it when movies scream in your face in order for you to “get it” once it shows you it’s hand after the river card. Then once all is revealed, I pointed at the screen and said, “okay now this character is going to do this and this and this and this, and this other character is eventually going to come into the fray and do this and this and this and this, and then redemption story arc complete, obligatory sequel scene, end credits.” And I was 100% on the mark.

The film also stars Clarie Huxtable herself, Phylicia Rashad, and as the doctor trying to help this man gain his memories back she was adequate, but then once some things come into the light, she seemed a little too low key and under qualified for the role. Though maybe it’s just me on that one. The acting is good all around other than that, and when he enters the black box, his memory like sequences that come back to the protagonist are nice and creepy like any Blumhouse movie should be, there just wasn’t enough of them. There are only two, when there should’ve been 4 or 5, and the movie also should’ve been a bit longer than an hr and 40 minutes, where they could’ve saved the big reveal a little bit more than just halfway into it. They hired that dude that can contort his body all around to be an evil entity in the memory sequences, Troy James (used him better in the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark movie), there just wasn’t enough of him to make a creepy enough impact like he’s been in other movies. In summation, you’ve seen different iterations of this movie done plenty of times before, and done much better, which is probably why this film went straight to streaming instead of into theaters, regardless of the pandemic, in my opinion, it is where it needs to be. The film very much lags in the second half of the film when the protagonist goes to visit one of the people he sees in his unearthed memories. It was a 15 minute scene that needed to be about only half that. When you have a movie about trying to conjure up lost memories, you need just more than two for the audience to get emotionally invested with what is happening. Only two feels like a budgetary and screenwriting cop out, and for a movie titled Black Box, it was a little disappointing to open up and discover no surprises.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE LIE (Amazon Prime)

THE LIE’s twist ending, which I predicted a mile away, might make or break your opinion of the whole film, and that ending will unfortunately overshadow how many stupid actions the characters make during the course of it. There are many idiotic mistakes and decisions that A. don’t make any logical sense and B. cause too many plot holes. For me, even though I predicted the ending, it was still frustrating because some of the scenes earlier in the film contradicted the reveal when revealed. The movie was written and directed by Veena Sud, who I just gave great praise to in Quibi’s The Stranger and I loved her television show The Killing, and while the way the film is shot, the desperate tone, the dark mood, atmosphere, and acting are all top notch, the screenplay for me was a giant problem here. You will constantly be screaming at the screen the correct decisions the characters needed to make and then wondering if anyone is legitimately that idiotic in real life (spoiler alert: there is, anybody deeply involved in politics). There are no politics in this however, only moral dilemmas, but the characters are so horribly underwritten that their moral decisions are unfocused, blurry, confusing, and make no sense in contrast to scenes that have just played out for the audience. This was filmed in 2018 and has been sitting on Blumhouse’s shelf for a couple of years, nobody really knowing what to do with it. Nothing like a pandemic delaying the blockbusters to just dump stuff like this on streaming services to give lazy pussies something to watch, am I right???

IMDB describes THE LIE, originally titled ‘Between Earth and Sky’ (WTAF?!?), with the following: “A father and daughter are on their way to dance camp when they spot the girl’s best friend on the side of the road. When they stop to offer the friend a ride, their good intentions soon result in terrible consequences.” Since the inciting incident happens no longer than ten minutes in, I’m just going to tell you what happens so you can gain some context into my review and the stupid decisions and things that happen afterward. The daughter and friend get the father to stop the car to go off to pee in the middle of a snowy forest and bridge that happens to be on the side of the road of the route they are taking, and the daughter, after a minor argument in the car moments earlier, pushes said friend into the chilly river and lake below. The rest of the movie is the father (played by Peter Sarsgaard) and the mother (Mireille Enos) trying to cover up what happened so that way their daughter (played by Joey King) won’t go to jail for murder and ruin her future. The stupid decisions literally start right after you hear a scream from the forest and the father comes upon his daughter on the bridge alone (he was respecting their privacy and waiting by the car for them to do their business, so he doesn’t see what happened). From there you get dumb decisions and actions such as:

1. When one character runs away from another in their neighborhood and seemingly gets away, the character that ran off immediately afterward starts walking slowly down the middle of the road in their neighborhood.

2. A character doesn’t answer the front door from a other angry character and thinks he/she can’t be seen in the house even though the windows behind he/she are all open for the world to see. Any sane person, if wanting to see if anyone is home combined with being really angry, can and WILL just go around to the back of the house to see if anyone is hiding.

3. The parents constantly tell their daughter to stay put, not to show herself, don’t come outside, etc etc other smart things that the daughter constantly disobeys not two seconds later.

4. Possible evidence at the crime scene is not only left and not looked for stupidly but the evidence that hasn’t been disturbed and needs to stay there is moronically taken back home by one of the characters.

5. The parents don’t interrogate the daughter correctly and ask the right questions, and the police are really really really dumb and their investigation is borderline malpractice here.

There are many more than just those five listed, and I don’t want to go into spoiler territory, but you should catch my drift. There are a few good things about this film, as I have mentioned earlier. It’s filmed really well. The mood, atmosphere, and tone is dark and dreary. The situation that would present a huge sense of dread among those involved in the real world is perfectly replicated here I think. All three key players, Sarsgaard, Enos, and King are all top notch here and their acting is great as always. The movie is certainly watchable, because even though I had a problem with it I can’t deny I was entertained for 95 minutes and wanted to see everything play out. And in a film that could’ve been written and handled much better than this was, the twist probably would’ve worked for me (I bet you can guess what the twist is already, I’ve provided enough clues as to what it is). But alas, it didn’t because of the contradictions to what came before combined with some pretty big plot holes. What it all really bogs down to is whether or not I give this a recommendation. While I was entertained, I really just can’t give it one, because when I try and think back fondly on it, the stupid character decisions and the loose screenplay keeps sinking into my brain to the point where I can no longer lie to myself. The truth is that it’s a frustrating miss and mess, plain and simple.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE (Shudder)

Probably the last thing I’ll ever watch on the Shudder streaming service (yet you know me, don’t quote me on that), RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE had at least somewhat of an interesting well rounded idea, some awesome gory, disturbing special effects, and a solid ending. Too bad most of the execution leading to said ending was botched to shit by co-writer/director/co-star Jay Baruchel. I don’t get why this project wasn’t handed to someone with better experience. It’s a short (1 hr and 21 minutes) and watchable film, but I don’t have any desire to ever watch it again because the execution of everything wasn’t very memorable. IMDB describes the film with the following: “A pair of comic book writers begin to notice scary similarities between the character they created and horrific real-life events.” The entire film’s message is about the glorification of violence and criticizes how the depiction of it and the glamorization of serial killers in media can often negatively impact an audience when in reality they are just twisted people driven by no logical motives. That message is very unfocused, blurry yet somehow ham-fisted until the film’s last ten minutes. The other hour and ten minutes is filled with underdeveloped and unlikable characters, and some cringe worthy dialogue. Whoever was responsible for all the blood, guts, and glorious practical effects in this movie deserves a raise and better projects to work on, as some of those images were some of the most realistically disturbing I have seen since last year’s Midsommar.

Recognizable faces Jessie Williams, Jordana Brewster, and Jay Baruchel star in this movie and while Jessie Williams does a decent job with his underdeveloped protagonist, unfortunately for Jordana Brewster, who has always been nice on the eyes and always seems like she wants to be in the movies she’s in, her dialogue makes her performance hammy and too unrealistic, and Jay Baruchel is completely wasted here, playing yet another just depiction of himself. I’m sorry, but other than having a great voice for the lead in the How To Train Your Dragon series, Baruchel is not a great actor, and after this, Goon, and Goon 2, he isn’t a very good writer or director either. I would only want to recommend this movie to you if practical effects and some realistic disturbing images and violence are your jam. One guy gets stabbed about thirty times during the movie and it actually showed each and every jab of the knife into his torso and I cringed every time before impact. I’ll even recommend it to you if you want a decent ending with a decent message of the glorification of violence, but other than that, you are better off watching something else on the streaming service, such as Host or Spiral (NOT Saw 9). This movie is based on a graphic novel, but I have a feeling if a complete rewrite of the script were to have happened, maybe a bit longer with more developed and likable characters, and a bigger yet subtle focus on the film’s messages, there could’ve been something great here. I have a feeling though that Baruchel was just out of his league with this one, throwing random shit on the wall just to see what would stick.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: BABYTEETH

BABYTEETH, a drama with a few comedic bits that you can stream on Hulu for free today (otherwise you can rent it streaming), was a nice refresher of mild quirky-ness after the overload of garbage that was my previous movie I just reviewed, Kajillionaire. Babyteeth is still not a perfect or great movie by any means, I think out of 1 hr and 57 minutes about 15 to 20 could’ve been shaved off, the movie has a very strong beginning, very strong ending, and very strong performances. It does lag a bit toward the end of the beginning of the film and the middle of the film, but it makes up for it in the other qualities I just shared. It stars Eliza Scanlen, who has been in a ton of things recently such as HBO’s Sharp Objects, Little Women, and Netflix’s The Devil All The Time and IMDB describes the movie as: “Milla, a seriously ill teenager falls in love with a drug dealer, Moses, her parents worst nightmare.” She is pitch perfect here as a girl that just wants to live her life to the fullest in case she dies. Her parents are played perfectly by Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn, the latter of which is becoming one of my favorite actors of all time. He plays it quirky and weird when his character calls for it, but serious yet calm when those scenes come along. It’s because the honest script and dialogue helps the performances, written by first timer Rita Kalnejais, and she doesn’t force the characters to be too abstract and weird. While the characters and situations have their quirks, it is grounded in a sense of dramatic realism where you feel like all of them make true to life decisions and actions.

The movie is directed by Shannon Murphy, who I’m not familiar with, although she directed two episodes of the hit tv series Killing Eve, and she is definitely an actor’s director and has a spark of visual flare, something I hope she can translate to future projects. Unlike Kajillionaire, there isn’t one unlikable character in this, as even though Moses has his fare share of problems, his good heart ultimately prevails. He is played by Toby Wallace who apparently is really good in Netflix’s most recently cancelled beloved series The Society. I’ve seen a few clips of him in that, and needless to say, he’s a damn fine actor when you compare that with this role. My only complaints for this film come before the living situations of all involved are permanently set in stone (that’s all I can say without giving anything away). Milla trying to get Moses interested in her as more than just friends (when they are the only two onscreen) are the scenes that didn’t really have any emotional weight or context for me, compared to the scenes where Milla’s parents are also involved. I think that maybe point A, point B, & point C were the structure of the screenplay, the solid ideas of the story that were cemented in stone before the screenplay was even written, before the connections were made by filling out the tiny details. While getting from point B to point C was fleshed out and solidly told, more time was needed on how to get from point A to point B, as those scenes dragged on too long and didn’t really work for me. But, Babyteeth is still a decent one time watch, if not for the strong ending and beginning, and for all the performances. You won’t be grinding your teeth, wishing for this movie to end, but I suggest to bring some tissues so that tears won’t be hitting them constantly throughout.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: KAJILLIONAIRE

KAJILLIONAIRE gave me (an my wife) a kajillion headaches. Not because it was confusing but it was a slog and a half (considering the 1 hr and 47 minute run time) to get through. A quirky film just for the sake of being quirky, which made it overwhelmingly quirky and unbearable. And a really annoying and bizarre performance with an annoyingly bizarre low tone of voice by Even Rachel Wood. There are only really two scenes of actual levity and earnestness in the film, one that doesn’t happen until the last 10 minutes of the movie, and one in the middle that lasts only about 10 seconds before it goes back to being monotonous. This comes out in theaters today (only really Alamo Drafthouse and other independent theaters), and then streaming VOD in about a month, and I am here to tell you to save your fucking money and your fucking time no matter how it’s available to watch to you (even if free). I won a free digital 72 hour screening from Focus Features and decided just to get it out of the way last night. This is supposed to be a comedy (really a dramedy) yet neither my wife nor I laughed once. And when I put on a 2005 comedy that definitely couldn’t be made today (Waiting) and laughed more in the first minute than the atrocity to cinema I just watched…then something is truly wrong. You may go on Rotten Tomatoes and see the critic score to this is in the low 90s, which is a really good score, but I no longer ever trust Rotten Tomatoes, because I think most critics are high off of being able to stay home and avoid COVID-19, so they are giving anything a good review based on that bias.

And you may be saying, “Zach, maybe you just don’t like quirky movies?” Not true, I’m going to review another film later today that just came to Hulu but was released earlier in the year called Babyteeth, where its quirky-ness was in contribution to the story and wasn’t just there to be there. It’s all about context people. Me, movies, and context. If you haven’t gotten that by now with all of my reviews that I write then I don’t know what to tell you. I even warn you whenever I throw context and my brain out the window and just enjoyed what I was watching, so I can’t be any more blunt with you than I usually am. To put this all in another way you’ll understand, Kajillionaire sucked to me. Per IMDB, it describes the movie as: “A woman’s life is turned upside down when her criminal parents invite an outsider to join them on a major heist they’re planning.” This whole family is filled with terrible, terrible con people. Terrible not jut morally, but that they also execute all of these “cons” terribly. What was really offensive about this film to me isn’t just its fake, unearned quirky-ness, it’s also it feels like a cheap knock off of a very good international film that came out a couple of years ago called Shoplifters. That movie even got nominated for an Academy Award. I’ll scoff if this does and protest. Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger are completely wasted as Evan Rachel Wood’s (who is the main protagonist by the way) parents, and they are completely unlikable characters from the get go. Evan Rachel Wood is supposed to be likable but her bizarre bat shit performance made her extremely unlikable to me.

The actress that sort of saves this from being a complete clusterfuck (even though this film right now is in my top 20 worst of the year list) is Gina Rodriguez. She plays the stranger in IMDB’s description of the film above. Her quirky-ness in this film almost works, and she saves a little bit of the movie by being the focus of the two only earnest moments in the movie (These moments are technically spoilers, but you’ll know them when you see them). She is the only one unscathed in this production. I have never seen writer/director Miranda July’s other “quirky” movies or short films, and this movie definitely will not have me search any of them out, any time soon. I mean, this film is just weird to be weird without any context. They live in a cheap little place that overflows with bubbles (they clean this place constantly that’s why the rent is so cheap) from the ceiling because it’s an attachment to a bubble factory called Bubble, Inc. No explanation to what they do other than make bubbles apparently. I understand the films message about family and human attachment, it just went about it in a very awkward, non pleasing, and off putting way. It is very slow pace, with a major heist that in all honesty didn’t make a lick of sense to me. If you watch this movie and end up enjoying it like the critics did, I won’t hark on you. Clearly this movie just wasn’t meant for me. I didn’t connect with it on any emotional level, and the only emotion I shed during it were the kajillion tears of joy that I wept once the movie finally got to the end credits.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: ANTEBELLUM

I feel a little bad for ANTEBELLUM because when it comes to movies playing on the big screen, or mostly at home if the year is 2020, doesn’t really matter when, it is extremely hard for a film to keep its secrets. Especially if the marketing doesn’t do it any favors. But on the other hand, I don’t know how they could’ve marketed this film. The film literally has two faces. If they would’ve only shown footage from one side of the coin, it would been written off as a 12 Years A Slave rip off. If they would’ve only shown footage from the other side of the coin, when the movie started, audiences members would’ve been really, really confused that the theater was playing the wrong film. And because of the coin, it’s going to be really hard to review this movie without giving anything away, but I’m going to try. Let me just say this, if you’ve seen the trailer with Janelle Monae, you can probably guess from the very beginning where the film is going, because the trailer shows footage from both different aspects of the movie. You know what this would’ve been great as? A novel. Holy shit, if this would’ve been a 500-600 page novel by Stephen King, it could’ve been a fucking masterpiece piece of literature. As a movie though? Well, the more I think about the movie, the more I’m beginning to…how would I say this without recommending it? Okay, got it, the more I think about Antebellum, the more I appreciate what it was trying to do. Except the execution of the really neat idea, the hell of a great premise, is almost completely botched. When the movie hits the 40 minute mark it lags and then it seems like it just coasts through the climax, without any type of scares whatsoever. Yes, this is being marketed as a horror movie, and it really isn’t.

Well it is, in a way. It will always be horrible to see white slave owners in the civil war days brutalize, rape, and treat African Americans like absolute shit. But to call this a horror movie, is like calling 12 Years A Slave a horror movie, and THAT film definitely isn’t. There are no jump scares here, so I’m guessing the real horror aspect to put Antebellum in this film category is when the movie fully reveals its hand. Like the thought of what is really going on is the true horror. And that I can agree with, I guess. Anyway, let’s look at IMDB’s description of Antebellum…whoa…yikes…never mind it basically gives away the whole farm. Uh…let’s see, I guess I’ll do it myself! Eden, played by Janelle Monáe, is an enslaved woman on what is a southern plantation and is brought back on horseback after attempting to escape at the beginning of the film. There, that’s it, that’s all I’m going to tell you. Anymore and I’ll ruin it. If you go and search for some real critic reviews of this film, they aren’t very kind (and some are really spoiler heavy). Some critics are calling it the worst film of the year, saying that it “exploits black trauma, says nothing about the obliterating function of whiteness and anti-Black racism which makes its approach to horror and social commentary become deadened.” Yeah, I can definitely see why people would think that. But I don’t know if I necessarily agree. If this movie was made completely by a white guy, I would 100% agree. But the movie is written and directed by a white and black dude duo…so I don’t think their intentions were for people to feel that way about this movie.

The problem with this movie for me was on a film making level. There are films that have had these kind of 180 completely changing the narrative twists before, and they have been executed much better. I realize that they wanted the story to take its time, and its fine, but about 40 minutes into the movie, when we get into a different narrative for a bit, it takes its time a little too much, and then rushes the climax. The climax should’ve been more fleshed out and maybe the longest part of this concrete three act structure. The movie is and hour and 45 minutes long. The first 40 minutes is a slave plantation awful treatment of black people movie. The next 40 minutes is something else, and then the climax is only 20 minutes with 5 minutes of credits. The climax should’ve been 40 minutes as well and I think the film would’ve been tighter. The movie is filmed extremely well by both writers and directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz. The cinematography in this is sometimes too gorgeous for its own good. It has some horror shots and elements in this that clash with the tone. It’s the script that needed more work, and only in bulking up the narrative, story, and climax. And possibly one or two of the characters. The villains, especially the one played by Jena Malone, normally a fantastic actress, are too cartoon-y and too over the top. Here the script did her no favors. The standouts from this film are of course Janelle Monae, followed by Gabourney Sidibe, and Kiersey Clemons. Sidibe seems like she’s having fun and chewing up the scenery in her two extended scenes, and Clemons small performance will break your heart.

Monae is the powerhouse in this movie and just proves she needs more projects to lead in hopefully better films than this and Harriet. I’ll give you one small hint about the ending. If this shit was done in real life, there would be no turning back in our country. If it was found out, there would be endless rioting in the streets, endless violence, and a ton people would be killed, and not just the guilty party. That’s all I’m going to say. So am I recommending this film? Eh, hard to say. I guess how you take it in. This is going to be a really hard watch for anyone. It’s a hard watch that makes you think long after the credits roll. But it’s so botched in how it tries to pull everything off, its like eating a cheeseburger without the meat. A dry cheese sandwich. So no, I’m not recommending it. But it certainly is not one of the worst films of the year by any means. Have these critics not seen Bella Thorne in Infamous or Ludacris in John Henry? How they even put this movie in the ranks of those I don’t think I could ever understand. And I don’t think this movie will be that divisive either. I think everybody is going to agree that they had a hard time watching it and that they can see what the filmmakers were going for but it just didn’t work for them. I think Gerard Bush said he got the idea of this movie in a whacked out dream of his. Good God that must’ve been horrifying to experience. But maybe it should’ve stayed as a dream…or had struck a deal with a novel writer like King.