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Applesauce (2015)
An Artistic approach to Murphy's Law
I don't know how to express in words what this movie is "about" because it is about A LOT of different things. It's about the world, it's about life as an adult, it's about marriage and love; it's a story that is prime example of Murphy's Law.
It's life itself shown in an entertaining way with at times very funny and shocking moments. It's "moving" art in a very abstract way (not Kubrick abstract, more of a Shakespearean irony).
This (after 1 viewing) has become one of my favorite movies of the year because of how different it was.
A good movie that's hard to summarize yet I get exactly what it's about, that's one of those movies where you don't mind talking about it with friends later (you may not want to watch this with your significant other) or just chatting online about it.
I could actually see this being done as a Foreign film so it's surprising that this isn't a Foreign film (although now i am going to see where the screenplay came from). It had that story that we neglect these days in our films.
Honestly I can go on and on about the things in this film that just were fantastic but I'd be saying things vaguely because I just don't want to ruin the film for anyone.
This is a movie meant to challenge your way of thinking; yes it is very funny at times but it does a lot of things very clever and if you just pay attention to the surface story you will miss a lot of these things that impressed me so so much.
It's one of the best B movies / Indie films you will ever see
OzLand (2014)
The idea was good; The execution, very not so good
The idea of this movie is in a way an interesting one since it basically puts this book "The Wizard of OZ" as a religion believed in so passionately by Lief that he believes that Ozland (a children's story) is an actual place and defends this belief throughout the movie; even when his friend and companion keeps trying to be the voice of reason to this kid .who isn't a kid in age but his mentality is that of a child.
It's a very good idea; I mean even believable in theory. Take a post apocalyptic setting and with no trace of other Humans except for our two main characters. I mean it's not hard to see that the idea of something like a book like that could be such a huge influence for certain people who just need a break from the very harsh reality that is their life. Survival is the only things that these two exist for; one day after the other, surviving.
Not much silver lining going on and both of the characters have some way of coping; both use their imagination as an escape. However, one goes a bit further and starts to have some moments where every chapter he goes through there are things that he believes to be some sort of similarity between the book and his life.
I'm sure this can also in some ways be viewed differently depending on if you are a "glass half full" or "half empty" type of person. For the dreamers that view this movie; the directors intent is to have them lean in favor for Lief's ideas.
For those of us that see the more realistic viewpoint we will see things through Emril's viewpoint. (think that's how you spell his name)
Now in theory this is a very great concept and the story itself isn't horrible although towards the ending it gets a bit predictable. The problems here however, are the actors abilities along with the story taking much too long to get to worthy events that capture the viewers attention.
I can look past the slower pacing and even the actors being sub-par (that is being generous). However the pretentious nature of the directing and script is what kills this movie.
The director/writer is trying SO hard to show how talented they are that they make drastically over-simplistic settings appear to be over- exaggerated. I have never seen a movie like this where it's set in the future, you get extremely rustic settings (think 1890 farmland) and then somehow trying to sell that visually you are making this to be a visual beauty when every setting is the same.
The pacing is god awful, I don't find that many people will finish this movie unless they are just movie critics watching it to tell everyone else to stay away from it.
This is why it's not recommended for 1 person to do so much with the filming of a movie.
This is like if Birdman's Michael Keaton character was REAL and actually made a movie trying to show off his skills to everyone else. The pretentious-ness is so dripping off of every frame.
The acting itself, well; it's bad, it's SO bad that it almost makes this movies director/writer/producer look GOOD, that's how bad this movie is and I almost think that they were cast specifically to NOT take away from this person trying to be a triple threat behind the camera.
Idea is good, solid original idea which is what caught my attention
Everything else however is either sub par or well below par or over done /over produced, under-directed actors but over directed settings.
I wrote this because whatever that review is on the page that has like 9/10 stars and PRAISES this movie, it has got to be someone on the cast of that film or the writer/director/producer themselves trying to talk up the movie.
Stay away from this movie, even if the idea sounds neat; it's not worth the nearly 2 hour run time, the horrible acting and directing and i didn't talk about the ending but WOW dripping with bull crap like the guy couldn't find a way to end the damn movie (nearly 2 hrs of nothing) and then just said OK and gave the most cheesy ugly anti-everything climatic ending in the history of film!
Straight Outta Compton (2015)
An Ambitious Movie that Nails it on almost every level possible
This isn't just about NWA and it's Members and their lives.
This is about everything America is, everything America can be and everything America was. For that I give this movie a 9/10 because if it were just a movie about NWA like a VH-1 "Where are they Now" well, I would've hated it.
At the core of this Movie is something special. I'm sure people want to focus on the language but it wasn't nearly as graphic as I thought it would be and in fact as the Movie progresses and as we see the Members become more Mature the Language and the Violence lessens and lessens. The language wasn't half as bad as what some folks have written and I wonder if they actually watched the movie or if they watched the first 30minutes and said "Well there's a lot of potty mouths in this movie". I've watched movies that were popular and have had dramatically less foul language than this.
I'm saying that the language as a negative is pretty much bullshit. There wasn't really that much bad language and a lot of scenes it was quite the opposite, probably 80% of the movie has nothing to do with being "Gangster" or really anything to do with anything illegal.
What this movie shows are people with a dream trying to rise out of the social accepted "norm" set for them. It's not just about the movie tackling social-political issues but at the core it's about people, people just like me, just like you, just like anyone who wants to be better than just "Surviving", or "Getting by".
It is at it's very core a success story about the American Dream and it doesn't matter the setting or the race of people or anything of that nature. It's about these people struggling to find what all of us are motivated by and what this Country was founded on and how they pressed the times to change and by doing that created a path for them and others who are ambitious enough to try.
I can't say enough about the movie and it's positives FAR outweigh it's negatives (at least anyone willing to look at this for what it is and not what they WANT it to be).
I could write more about everything it did right and it did almost everything right, it is as close to perfect as it could be.
Now for the negatives, very few (hence the 9/10) the only 2 negatives I really have are: Pacing and some of the Characters got lost.
Even though the movie was about 2 hours and some change it didn't really lag at any point, it was very fast and went straight to major events in each characters lives. Some Characters (Dre/E/Cube) had more events of interest and so they got more time but it makes sense because honestly if you know NWA then you know it was those 3 who were the most interesting but having said that, to be unbiased I have to say that Ren (who had some notable scenes and story) got lost as well as Yella and even though DOC wasn't in NWA he was in the Movie and was a bigger deal to the group then the 2-3 scenes we saw him in. Also those 3 had very little speaking lines and felt more like a glorified extra's.
That's fine though because like I said; Cube/Dre/E were the 3 people that were the most interesting and so because of that I only took a few pts off for that but still an overwhelmingly GREAT FILM.
If you have an open-mind, a decent brain and want to see a movie that can inspire as well as provide GREAT ENTERTAINMENT; then I highly recommend this because this movie IS the American DREAM come TRUE and not something from the 1920s either; literally we get to see how people turn nothing into something of legend.
Anyone who doesn't "get" this movie is doing so because they have their own biased to deal with.
Jurassic World (2015)
Not as horrible as some of the past sequels / prequels
It's a decent Jurassic Park movie that uses a similar formula from the first Jurassic Park.
The problem that this movie suffers from that the originally didn't, is that we have seen this type of movie already and not just from Dinosaurs anymore but also from Alien-Machines that turn into Cars, Mutants and let's not forget about every disaster movie that has happened since the first Jurassic Park up until the time of this Jurassic World sequel.
Is it bad? No, it's not a "bad" movie, he has the same feel and pacing as the first and it doesn't try to be innovative at all really but as it stands people (us) are just not entertained by this genre of man vs. nature anymore and because of that the overall feel of this movie will not be as "awe-inspiring".
It's still that franchise that can entertain the family though and does it without having to go complete Disney/Pixar. This is the type of movie that a family with kids that have outgrown the cheesy overdone Pixar stuff but a more adult type of feel to it.
True Detective: The Western Book of the Dead (2015)
Season 2 Episode 1 fails to deliver
What is there to actually like about this first episode?
+ Farrell showing that he still has something left in the tank. The episode suffers from horrible editing (the cutting so far is horrid) and lack of pace. The only thing that makes Episode 1 not completely suck is Farrell and his role as an officer who...well let's say there were somethings that blurred the lines of Right and Wrong for him.
That's essentially it for the positives.
- All the other actors, it's a disaster that suffers from a pretty common flaw with "sequels", that being; too many characters and not enough time. After the episode ended I found myself saying: Really? That's it?!
To go a little more in-depth, Vaughn (who has been one of my favorite actors since "Swingers") puts up some choppy dialog and even choppier acting. Everything about his character seems "forced" and unnatural. McAdams and Kitsch are just as bad but have less scenes in Episode 1 so it's not quite as glaring. McAdams reminds me of Mireille Enos's role of "Linden" from one of my favorite underrated shows "The Killing" but she (so far) pulls off a very generic version of it and all I kept thinking was how they should have gotten Enos to do this part and one of the best parts of Enos's role in that show was her ability to essentially make the audience NOT like her (one of the common complaints that show suffered from). McAdams despite her so-called "Talent" just never really sells it in the limited scenes we saw from her and by the end of the episode I felt with even more conviction that they made a mistake casting her. Kitsch...I don't even know what to say about this guy. He has the least amount of scenes in the first episode and even worse execution than McAdams. Just watching him and his limited range trying to pull of the mental turmoil his character is suppose to be going through was just like watching a child being tossed into a lake and told to "Swim". The pacing of the "story" was probably the worse it could've been and that has a lot to do with how many characters they decided to go with in this season. I give it a 5 out of 10 because even with the actors horrid dialog and performances and the horrible editing, the director still had some pretty nice visual shots and there is room for the story to develop and eventually find it's groove which is what I am hoping will happen, that factor is the only reason why I make it a 5/10 rather than something lower.