Ouija Review Part 1
What’s better than a horror movie where lots of scary stuff happens? How about a horror movie where no scary stuff happens?
This is a film that suffered from the Curse of the X-Files. The problem the X-Files suffered from was every time you were 100% convinced you were about to see an alien, ghost, Bigfoot, or chupacabra only to have it turn out to be a cat or some damn thing. X-Files was 85% set up, 14% misinterpretation of data, and 1% actual aliens.
That’s not to say it’s a bad formula. The X-Files was wildly successful and that formula rocked for setting atmosphere and that is what this film also does. If setting up creepy situations is your goal this film could be your YouTube instructional video. The problem is when it actually came time for something to happen the creepy atmosphere stopped off at the Hum Drum Truck Stop and took a little snooze in the back seat of its car.
The story is pretty much the love child of an episode of Supernatural mated with Scooby Doo (image courtesy of the cartoon t shirt category). I have to admit serious disappointment in the level of creativity displayed here. The story was every bad horror/ghost cliche done in a dead boring order. Why not have the Ouija board be a key to a portal to the Lost City of R’Lyeh and the kids have to wander around trying to avoid Cthulu and his minions. Of course at that point the movie would have been a rip off of Hellraiser II but honestly it would have been a lot more fun. How about the Ouija board is connected to the ghost of a girl killed by a serial killer and she is trying to give them clues to who it is before he kills off half the local high school? The police are desperate to find him but no one believes the kids except for one desperate cop out for revenge for his daughters death (in this case played by James Woods). Either of these stories would have been better than the formulaic dross this film is comprised of and I just thought of them while sitting here at my desk.
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Ouija Review Part 2
There is one thing about this film that I love and that is it shows that once in a while Hollywood can learn a lesson. You see this is another Hasbro property and after they massive success they had with the Tranformers series they clearly thought that the nostalgia of their toys and games is what sold that Micheal Bay brain drain and so they sank a ton of money into Battleship, the worst navel film since the Final Countdown. When their nine figure exxxxxxxxxxxxxxtravaganza went on to suck and die they must have had a “What the hell are we doing??” moment and took the budget for their huge horror release Ouija down from a ridiculous $100,000,000 budget to a much more reasonable teenage slasher $15,000,000. Net result: a decent box office return on a reasonable property. Let’s hope they keep this lesson in mind when it comes time to do the Candyland movie. (Image courtesy of the Transfomers t shirt category)
But the warm feeling I get from that lesson does not diminish the issues with this film. Characters in films are appealing when they act smart in the face of difficulty. These kids were freaking idiots. A key plot point was in order to appease the ghost they twice had to sneak into a basement and find the corpse of a girl and either free or burn it. At no point did any of them think to call the police and say something like “Um, we think there’s a human corpse in the basement over here. Could you like send over the coroner and take care of it?” Nope instead let’s load up on flashlights Goonies style and creepy crawl into your impending deaths. Everyone keeps dying solo and so let’s all split up to expedite the killing. Of course beautiful early 20 year olds playing high school students (plus guys who more or less look and act like more like chicks) are at the top of my list of people I like to see die horribly in horror films so by the end of this movie I was seriously rooting for the ghost.
Of course it should go without saying putting a PG-13 stamp on a movie that claims to be horror is laughable in every sense of the word. PG-13 is the worst. In fact you can rearrange the letters in PG-13 and get it to spell suck.
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Ouija Review Part 3
The story. A girl (Shelly Hennig) plays around with a Ouija board by herself and kills herself. Her best friend Laine (Olivia Cooke), Laine’s sister Sarah (Ana Coto), and three other Red Shirts (Daren Kagasoff, Bianca Santos, Doughlas Smith) try to use the board to contact Debbie but instead contact the ghost that killed her. The kids start dropping off one by one like participants in a game of musical chairs and it’s up to Laine to figure out what is going on. At this point just switch over to any vengeful spirit episode of Supernatural and substitute two hot sisters for the two hot brothers and you are good to go. Turns out the last occupant in the house was a medium who had two daughters and killed one of them while talking to spirits and the other daughter killed the mother and the girl is buried in the basement and they need to release the spirit and then they need to burn the body Supernatural style and…
I’m sorry did I fall asleep there? Looks like there is a limit to how many cliches I can recount in a day before falling into a coma. So how about this movie you ask? Meh. The atmosphere stuff works really well and if being startled by a door shutting and showing you a creepy man/boy who wasn’t there a second ago (it was just one of the boyfriends) gets your blood pumping you won’t regret it. However if you are looking for either an original story or a body count movie this will bore the crap out of you. Acting wasn’t bad nor were the special effects given the budget (I can literally see the PA in my mind they had thumping on walls and floors). However the formulaic nature of the film and the gore smothering PG-13 rating will leave you with nothing to grab onto. See it if there is nothing else good on but honestly I’d rather have seen John Wick a second time. 2 of 5 Phasers.
Looks like kind of a lame movie weekend honestly. I have a couple of cultural commentary blog I have been thinking about so maybe I will do those this weekend. I suppose I should go see Box Trolls and am excited about Nightcrawler so I will have something for you this weekend. Thanks for reading.
the Infamous Dave Inman
(BTW the image is actually a t-shirt we have in the horror movie t-shirts category. Even I get surprised by what we have sometimes).
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John Wick Review Part 1
The story of a man and his dog.
I have decided I want to be kinder in my thoughts towards Keanu Reeves. Sure it’s easy to jump on the “His current movies suck” bandwagon but I read in interview with him where he wished he got better roles and people liked working with him more and suddenly I was struck by the realization that he actually has provided me (and the movie world in general) with a ton of kind of awesome entertainment. Obviously the Matrix is a no brainer and in spite of the Wachowski siblings taking a left turn into the Dark Valley of Unplanned, Unnecessary, and Ungood Sequels he did an admirable job with the role he was given. For all everyone laughs at Point Break that was more about the live action stage play. Devil’s Advocate was great, as was Constantine and it’s easy to forget Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Speed set the barometer for dumb fun action adventure. I even liked Johnny Mnemonic once I got over how badly they translated the story and found a lot of things to like in 47 Ronin. I won’t go so far as to say I’m a fan but honestly I’m appreciative of the many hours of entertainment Keanu has given me.
So what about John Wick? Honestly shockingly good. Keanu managed to pull the cold heartless killer off well and the action made this movie kind of rock. This is a movie that plays out like a video game and that video game happens to be Max Payne. Lots of guns, lots of shooting, and the story of a grizzled burnt out killer of men trying to get revenge for…well more on that later. 
Most of the action scenes were so Max Payne-like that I kept expecting to see a Bullet Time meter in one corner of the screen (Bullet Bill image courtesy of the video game t shirt category). This is definitely one of those movies that when they come out with the special DvD release one of the special features will be a body counter that hits three digits.
However I am going to rail against the whole name a movie out of some jackass no one has ever heard of thing. This failed miserably in Jack Reacher. It failed again in Jack Ryan. Does Hollywood think 3rd times the charm? At least those two had some kind of literature tie in and popularity but I am no pop culture slouch and I couldn’t have told you who those two were to save my life. Making up someone entirely new and then expecting us to flock to the theaters becuase the name sounds vaguely like a sexual innuendo is asinine. Also why is it all these name as title movies have to have a one syllable name starting with a J? I don’t see Hollywood lining up to do an action movie called Barnabas Grossweiner.
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John Wick Review Part 2
That attitude of “You Suck if You Never Heard of the Character We Just Made Up” marketing carries through to the film and is one of the parts the movie kind of falls into the laughable zone. Every character in the film more or less soiled themselves every time the name John Wick was mentioned and it took like half an hour of film time before we were given a clue as to why he was being treated with the same fear and dread as as Voldemort with the One Ring. I’m sure having everyone look like their mother found their porn collection (my own personal terror) whenever John showed up or was mentioned in passing sounded a lot more ominous on the script or even in shooting but on screen it just looked stupid. The really bad ass hitmen are the guys you never heard of.
The other issue I had was John’s motivation. He basically goes on a mass shooting spree killing and shoots dozens of armed goons and risks his life because some kid stole his car and killed his dog. Granted the car was super cool (vintage ’69 Mustang) and the dog was super, duper, uber cute but still it seems like a lot, especially when he could have probably called the kid’s father and gotten his car back and a chance to beat on the guy pretty heavily.
For all that the film was beautifully violent and extremely well shot. 
Keanu Reeves knows how to film fight scenes (image actually comes from the Karate Kid t shirt category) and the director must have had lunch with a fight choreographer because they did not fall back on the flicker vertigo inducing quick cut action sequencing most of Hollywood is falling back on to cover the fact that modern action heroes these days can not only not act but also can’t fight. They seemed to embrace their R rating (although no nudity in spite of ample opportunity). None of it was grossly over the top but all super fun, and John Wick is an interesting enough character to draw you in and root for his success. Also the Mustang was not the only great vintage muscle car and I appreciate cars.
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John Wick Review Part 3
The recap. John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is a recently widowed husband who’s wife died of some unnamed disease (I love this part where I get to make up a disease. For this review I am going to say she died of loupus garou, although given what’s going on in the world I should probably go with feebola) who gave him a puppy to remember her by and he spends his day doing donuts in his Mustang. The piggish son (Alfie Allen) of the local Russian mob boss (Michael Nyqvist) wants the car and steals it. 
He also kills the dog (sorry I know the image is in bad taste but I couldn’t resist. It comes from the funny t shirt category BTW). The mob boss has a ton of goons and deploys them. At that point the story boils down to shoot-stab-shoot-stab-shoot-stab and by that I mean it gets awesome. Oh yeah, some guys get hit with cars and for some reason William Dafoe and the hot girl from Red Dawn (Adrianne Palicki) show up to shoot and stab a few guys.
3.5 of 5 Decent
So what did I think? I had a blast and so did most of the packed theater with me. It’s the kind of mindless violence all men secretly crave (ladies, any guy who denies this is lying to you. We all want to shoot and stab things) without turning into a stupid joke portrayed by a dude with an English accent and no hair. It’s not mind blowing or even good from a story point of view and if I hadn’t enjoyed the violence so much I could find dozens of loose threads with which to unravel the entire film but I won’t. Want to see a bunch of guys get shot and/or stabbed? This is the movie for you. Want to have a complete story with character arcs, complexities, people having feelings besides anger, and very few guys getting shot or stabbed? Go see the Grand Budapest Hotel. 3.5 out of 5 Phasers.
the Infamous Dave Inman
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St. Vincent Review part 1
Feel good movie of the year!
Well, not really at least for most of it. In fact large swaths of it will bum you out like a fire at an anti-depressant and super soft bunny factory. This is not the movie to see while on an alcohol bender or having been miserable, single, and bitter for a few years and bitching about it incessantly in your nerd blog (dodged that bullet).
However not every movie has to draw a smiley face on your spelling test and give you a gold star for the achievement of not breaking your hip falling out of bed this morning. Life is hard and it’s OK to show us a movie that reflects that once in a while if only to give all the happy happy joy joy movies some contrast. And I’m not saying that St. Vincent is totally a bummer. If watching a irascible old man drink, whore, smoke, cheat, steal, and gamble his life away while secretly having a heart of gold (well, silver or perhaps silver-ish. There might be some copper in there too. Coppers good, right? Very useful in electronics) and bond with the wimpy kid next door this movie will work for you.
I am of course a huge Bill Murray fan and love him in any role. Like the late great Robin Williams he is known for his comedy but honestly really shows his talents when doing a serious role. The writing on this film was top notch with a special gold star for the dialog which was brilliant.
Most times a kid in a movie (even kids movies) is the first sound of the suck train leaving the station but this kid Jaeden Lieberher did the impossible for me: he managed to really entertain and engage me while not giving my suspended a disbelief a nose bleed. 
Kids in films tend to suck because they just don’t have the acting chops and you can’t take a serious situation with appropriate seriousness knowing Hollywood would never let a kid die or have anything really bad happen to him or her. Kids always feel fake and out of place and destroy any gravitas a film might have had like a rodeo clown Photoshopped into DaVinci’s Last Supper (I’m looking at you, 8 year old Anakin Skywalker. Image comes from the many Star Wars t-shirts I have in my collection)
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St. Vincent Review part 2
Not to say this film is in all ways brilliant. Pacing dragged at points (it certainly felt a lot longer than a mere 102 minutes) and the supporting pregnant hooker Daka (Naomi Watts) tended to dominate every scene she was in and had a very thick layer of unrealism about her. The director seemed to have a thing for accents as she had a thick Russian one and Bill Murray had a Brooklyn accent that felt just off enough to be annoying (probably my West Coast bias, but my mom is from Brooklyn so I grew up with that accent and Bill’s didn’t quite nail it). I seem to be using the word misogyny a lot in my reviews later but the dominating secondary story about a Russian hooker who has to quit her job because she is pregnant is not going to inspire the next modern Belva Lockwood (look it up). The story tends to meander from set piece to set piece without much guidance from the overriding story arc.
But those are mere piffles on an otherwise fun and well executed movie. Melissa McCarthy took all the serious, non comedy work she did in her last comedy Tammy and nailed a great single working mom performance. The kid was great too and Bill Murray his usual brilliant self. Chris O’Dowd was very fun as the priest. The best part of this film was the dialog and you can really feel yourself pulled out of the theater into a fly on the wall of a grumpy old man’s interesting life (kind of like a less scripted reality TV show).
Quick movie recap: Vincent (Bill Murray) is a broken husk of an old man who spends his time drinking, smoking, sleeping with pregnant prostitutes, and gambling at the race track. He wakes up one morning to find a moving van wrecking his tree and thus does he meet his new neighbor Maggie (Melissa McCarthy) and her son Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher). Maggie and Oliver just moved to Brooklyn to get away from her cheating ex husband. Vincent takes an immediate dislike to both of them but later on she has to pay him to watch Oliver after school.
At that point the bonding begins a la Mr. Miyagi and Daniel-san (only with more alcohol. Image courtesy of the Karate Kid t shirt category). Vincent teaches Oliver how to box an Exacta, drink in a bar, and deal with crazy pregnant Russian strippers (I felt a kinship on the Exacta thing as the only two games my father ever taught me to play were chess and blackjack. I might not know thing one about baseball except it’s the game with the bats but I know what to do on a 12 when the dealer is showing a face card). Oliver’s father surfaces to cause trouble and uses Vincent as an example of Maggies unfit mothering. Meanwhile Vincent has a heartwarming secret but at the same time owes a bookie lots of money. Things go up and down, people get sick, and lots of other stuff happens.
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St. Vincent Review part 3
So should you see this film? Yes, yes you should. I can highly recommend it. 
In a world full of explosions and giant robots it is a true character study (image courtesy of the Transformers t shirt category). A very rare egg indeed. If you rate your movies by how many cars get wrecked and arms get broken accompanied by the sound of celery being bent odds are you will not want to see it but I say to you, sir, that this film experience is even more valuable. See what happens when characters are not armed and hardly ever fight. However for you there is a scene where Vincent teaches Oliver to fight a bully with hilarious results and another scene where Vincent gets drunk, slips on some ice, and ends up unconscious on the kitchen floor that you should find hilarious.
4.5 of 5! Really good.
I’m even going to rate this one a good date movie BTW. It’s got enough touchy feely stuff to keep her engaged while being funny enough to keep you happy. Plus seeing Bill Murray in a good film will soften the blow for when he finally capitulates and does Ghostbusters III. Is there even the slightest chance that film will do anything other than suck? If you believe so contact me immediately as I have some Nevada beachfront property and a big bridge I’d like to discuss with you. 4.5 of 5 Phasers.
Incidentally let me know if you like these shorter, more broken up reviews. I actually find them easier to read. Those big ones I used to do could get ponderous and I like to think I still keep my rapier like wit and manage to retain more of my day to engage in my rock ‘n roll party lifestyle. Thanks and have a great day.
the Infamous Dave Inman
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Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 18 Arena
The difference between Seasons I and II verses III is pretty staggering and as I get closer to the beginning of the series the difference becomes even more apparent. It’s not just that they ran out of ideas but the basic was better early on. Arena is nigh flawless, with a complete arc, clearly understood motivations, a twist, and an underlying message regarding morality. In general a great episode.
By the way, I keep meeting Bobby Clark the man who wore the Gorn suit. He is super cool.
Anyway, one cool thing about this episode is when the crew debates whether the Federation was wrong to set a colony on Cestus III. It’s nice to see that it is run by fallible creatures. I think it added a nice humanizing touch to the society of Star Trek. It’s also fun to see Kirk not be the biggest, baddest guy around. The Gorn captain pretty much curb stomped him the whole time and only by inventing gunpowder (the great equalizer) was Kirk able to save himself.
The influence of this episode is felt even today in shows like Firefly where a ship Captain opted to prove his greater humanity by showing mercy to his defeated opponent in the episode Shindig. Star Trek is pretty much the precursor of everything. (Mal image courtesy of the Firefly tshirts)
the Infamous Dave Inman
