Hot Tub Time Machine 2: Review

                                                                                   www.cameracinemas.com

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to achieve time travel? What kinds of amazing things you could do for world history? All the lives you could save? And have you then considered the implications of your actions, and shuddered at the possibility of doing something that seems right but may completely change the world you know and love for the worse? These are all important philosophical questions concerning time travel, and Hot Tub Time Machine 2 doesn't answer any of them.

Hot Tub 2 is a lighthearted romp through the future that I'm assuming has something to do with the first movie, although I wouldn't know and honestly don't care. It's pretty funny in its own right, and considering the convoluted way everything is handled in this movie I seriously doubt that seeing the first one is integral to understanding the second one. All the stuff you need to know is plainly presented: the hot tub is a time machine that runs on weird blue crystals, and Chevy Chase does... something. Everything else is pretty clear from there.

                                                                 So, so clear.
                                                                             www.whatarethelatestmovies.com

As usual, negatives first. This movie is dumb. It's so goddamn dumb. It's got pop culture references in place of jokes (although not to the extent of a Wayans Bros movie), lots of gross out shit, and people just generally being assholes. If you see this shit with your kids or your stuck-up boyfriend/girlfriend then you're about as stupid as every single character in this movie. Which isn't good.

Is that really anything you didn't know, though? Did you see a commercial for this and think "oh, I love Rob Corddry and Craig Robinson because they are super serious actors and only do art films with integrity and artistic merit?" If you did, go give your boyfriend a ride on your waxed mustache you fucking hipster. This movie is obviously a "bad" movie. Of course it's going to have LCD jokes out the ass, tits for no reason, people getting their dicks shot off, men wearing skirts, and people doing too many drugs. Of course the plot will be as thin as prison-issue toilet paper and the guys will get girls wayyyy too hot for them at the end of the movie regardless of whether or not they deserve them. If this surprises you, I don't think I can help you.

                                                               Go back to Brooklyn, nobody wants you here.
                                                                                     alt-country.org

The good news is that this movie puts on no airs about what it is and that allows you to enjoy it guilt free. Some movies are anticipated to be great in one way or another, but Hot Tub 2 is not one of those movies. It knows it's stupid and it is. It's godawful stupid. While the movie is full of dumb jokes (which are not generally my thing), there are times where they reference their own stupidity that prove to be pretty damn funny. There's a running gag in the movie where the characters describe things as being "like X banged Y." Comparative humor is a big thing in Hot Tub 2. At one point they start up at it and one of them goes "no more of that, ok? We did it on the stairs, and at the mirror just a minute ago. Doing it three times would be tacky." Yes, yes it would. But making fun of it is just great. This is one thing that separates this movie from other recent comedies (such as 50 Shades of Grey): it embraces its own stupidity. While 50 Shades takes itself so seriously it thinks using the title in the movie is clever, Hot Tub 2 just its ridiculous nature to its advantage.

                                                                            This is 50 shades of fucked up.                                                              www.shockmansion.com

Maybe I've said too much. I'm not trying to convince you that this movie is great, because it isn't. Movies that are stupid and ridiculous on purpose are usually trying to say something, or doing it in a way that just makes everything more funny. Hot Tub 2 is not doing any meta shit, it's just fucking dumb, and as a result it's pretty amusing. It's more like Jackass than it is South Park, so if you enjoy constant dick references, awesomely rendered drug trips, and paintings of men fucking tigers, this movie is right up your alley. If you want something with a bit of wit (like a Seth Rogen movie), you'll probably be disappointed. I give it 2.5/5 times I wanted Craig Robinson to stop fucking singing.

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Oscar Predictions

With the Oscars coming up very soon, and with it being the final award show of the season, our Oscar predictions are in. This year has been a strange year and has one of the weakest best picture line ups in awhile. But, it has one of the most heated Best Picture battles. It's down to Boyhood and Birdman. With both winning many awards this season it is a toss up between the two.

This has also been one of the few years where 3 of the acting awards are dead locks. Both supporting categories and Best Actress have been definite locks across every award show this season. These are my Oscar predictions:

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Best Picture:

BIRDMAN

Best Actor in a Leading Role:

EDDIE REDMAYNE for Theory of Everything

Best Supporting Actor:

J. K. SIMMONS for Whiplash

Best Actress in a Leading Role:

JULIANE MOORE for Still Alice

Best Supporting Actress:

PATRICIA ARQUETTE for Boyhood

Best Animated Film:

SONG OF THE SEA

Best Cinematography:

BIRDMAN

Best Costume Design:

MALEFICENT

Best Director:

RICHARD LINKLATER for Boyhood

Best Documentary Feature:

CITIZENFOUR

Best Documentary:

THE REAPER

Best Film Editing:

WHIPLASH

Best Foreign Language Film:

IDA

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

Best Music Original Score:

HANS ZIMMER for Interstellar

Best Original Song:

I'M NOT GOING MISS YOU from Glendale Campbell... I'll Be Me

Production Design:

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

Short Film (Animated):

FEAST

Short Film (Live Action):

THE PHONE CALL

Sound Editing:

AMERICAN SNIPER

Sound Mixing:

WHIPLASH

Visual Effects:

INTERSTELLAR

Writing (Adapted Screenplay):

WHIPLASH

Writing (Original Screenplay):

NIGHTCRAWLER

Fifty Shades of Grey REVIEW

                                                                                       en.wikipedia.org

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 Ok, by now Fifty Shades of Grey isn't really news. The book has been out for a while, and the movie has been out long enough for everyone to complain about the moral situation of America/the death of film as an art form/how much they love seeing A cups on the silver screen. But here I am writing a review about it, because that's what I do.

So, the review. This will be short. Simply said, 50 Shades is just a bad movie. But you're not here for simple, are you? Here's my opinion: I was entertained, but not in the way I was supposed to be.

The first time Grey (not Channing Tatum) and Ana (Dakota Fanning or something like that) meet, it's full of "sexual tension." I put that in quotes because if I didn't know going into the movie that it'd be about weird tie-me-up sex, then the scene would have been totally devoid of tension. The way they talk to each other is so wooden and scripted it reminded me of a reality show. When Grey first says Ana's full name, which is Anastasia Steele, me and the other 3 lonely dumbasses in the theatre started cracking up. It's a porn star name through and through and it just sounds corny and stupid coming from Grey's mouth. The whole first half feels like a comedy, like a really high budget porno that still couldn't find actors worth a damn. It's packed with the kind of thinly-veiled innuendo that's the stuff of party jokes, phrases so lame and cheesy you could say them to your own mother and then have a hearty laugh about it. Did I mention that the acting is, uh... lackluster? Well, it is.

               Ana's behavior is so transparently suggestive it makes it seem like she's read the script. Not cool, dude.
                                                                         dailymail.co.uk

Enough bashing on the poor movie, though. Nobody thought it was going to be a "good" movie, so I'm really just preaching to the choir. I hope. The movie did have a couple of positives, though. The first item on this short list is the scenery and the feel of the movie. They did a great job of making everything very grey, and I counted at least 50 different shades used throughout the course of the film. Bravo, guys. The sets are always rainy and cloudy, which gives the film the right feel. Some of the scenes are also really cool to watch for this reason, such as a "business meeting" where Grey and Ana meet to discuss changes in Grey's proposed sex contract. It's all red and orange and set in a conference room with a glass table. It's sexy and tense and was pretty visually stimulating. No, not like that.

                                                                             Not the best lighting to read in.
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The best part of 50 Shades is the humor, hands down. There are a couple of actually funny lines, and one scene where Ana is drunk in a bar that could have easily been out of a Judd Apatow movie. While I didn't like the way Ana's character would swing from being funny and witty to being shy and vulnerable, she was actually funny when she tried to be. Considering how... lame most of the movie was, the comic relief was much appreciated.

All in all, 50 Shades was not great. It wasn't even good. It had a couple of good moments and visually interesting scenes, but most of the movie is so dumb that it just feels like watching softcore porn the whole time. If it hadn't been for the corn dog bites I bought as a snack I might have even left halfway through to go do something else, like stare at the sun. The main problem is that this movie doesn't go far enough in any one direction be noteworthy. The sex scenes are graphic, sure, but the brother-sister rape scene in Game of Thrones makes 50 Shades seem like child's play. If you're looking for BDSM, the internet is full of porn, anyway. As a romance movie, it falls flat because the writing is horrible and the acting is even worse. Grey doesn't even hang dong in it. I give 50 Shades of Grey 3/10 Tumblr pages devoted to hating on it.

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REVIEW: American Sniper

(Image via http://bit.ly/1ytnizd)

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There have been a lot of post 9/11 war films to come out in the last decade that seem to all blend together. They are always vehicles for freedom, the military, and overall Americana.  Clint Eastwood's American Sniper is one of those films, but it slightly shifts this status quo to make a devastatingly human war film.

Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) is a United States Navy Seal, and he is infamous for being one of the most lethal snipers in American history.  The film is about his true story, on how he finds his way into the Navy and becomes one of the most legendary snipers ever.

(Image via http://bit.ly/1ChtCtU)

The first act is very clunky, it feels like Clint Eastwood is just check off life events right after another to quickly give back story. A scene with his father and him hunting, him as a cowboy, falling in love with his wife, watching the Twin Towers be attacked, joining the Navy, and entering the war. It moves at such a strange pace that it creates a disconnect, and that stabilization is key to getting Kyle's character down.

When the second act hits, Cooper and Eastwood have finally found their footing. This is where the movie really begins and the story telling becomes rich.  When Kyle is in the war on his first tour, he becomes legendary for sniping the most enemies.  There is a haunting scene with Kyle having to take out a mother and child because they have a grenade that they were going to use on a convoy. This is Kyle's first kill, and it takes his toll on him because he never imagined that a child would be his first in what will soon be a very long list of deaths.

(Image via http://imdb.to/1C8MDRp)

When he returns home from his first tour, his wife and their child miss him. He becomes vacant, but wants to be there with his family, but the war is still inside him.  His wife tries to connect with him asking him what happened over there and what he's feeling.  Kyle cannot make a connection with her anymore because he feels like he needs to protect her from the war, but she doesn't care. She just wants her husband back.

As the film progresses, Kyle becomes more acclimated to the war and less to his home life. During his tours he finds a nemesis who is also a sniper. Once this sniper is introduced in the film, Kyle gains more purpose and drive. Its not just he is in the war to eradicate an evil he believes is over there, now he has a main target. Someone who's killed his friends and is almost good as a sharpshooter as him.

Chris Kyle posing for his photo for his book American Sniper
(Image via http://bit.ly/1IKmsm2)

Eastwood has created a magnificent  war film that is pro-military, but anti-war. Kyle's fellow soldiers show their disdain for the war, but they are happy to fight for their country.  Kyle's character is extremely interesting because his humanity throughout the film slowly goes away to cope with the war. It creates a strange dichotomy with his fellow soldiers. The more the war gnaws at his friends, the more emotional they become. The war is bringing out their humanity. With Kyle, his humanity slowly seeps back inside him. He looks normal all the time, but inside he is not. His friends look like they are struggling, but inside they are acting as normal as they can be.  The war left when they got back home. The war never ended for Kyle. Its refreshing to see a war film that focuses on the people this war effects instead of the politics in which it involves. I give American Sniper 5 Hulked up versions of Bradley Cooper out of 5.

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Selma REVIEW

www.selmamovie.com

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Selma covers two very busy years in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. The film opens with the 16th Street Baptist church bombing of 1963 and ends with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The moments in between portrayed landmark events throughout the civil rights struggles including Annie Lee Cooper's attempts to register to vote, the marches on the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma to Montgomery, conversations Dr. King had with President Lyndon B. Johnson, conversations Lyndon B. Johnson had with J. Edgar Hoover as well as Alabama governor George Wallace, a few speeches from Dr. King (no, they didn't include that one), and a whole lot of violence. 

Not that Selma
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Ava DuVernay  directed the screenplay from Paul Webb. The amazingly talented David Oyelowo  (who was snubbed by the Academy...) portrayed Dr. King with the beautiful Carmen Ejogo as his wife, Coretta Scott King. The queen of daytime television, Oprah Winfrey, not only produced, but also portrayed Annie Lee Cooper. The star-studded cast also featured the talents of Giovani Ribisi, Tom Wilkinson, Common, and Tim Roth.

Running 2 hours and 7 minutes, the film covered a great deal of content, maybe even too much. Many critical events in American history were given only a few minutes' of screen time. Malcolm X was introduced to the audience briefly during a conversation with Coretta Scott King and his death was only mentioned in passing during the funeral of civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson.

The film was held together by an incredibly well-cast ensemble of talented actors (none of whom received any recognition from the Academy) as well as emotionally devastating imagery. However, the narrative was somewhat directionless. DuVernay didn't budget screen time as well as she could have. Some critical issues seemed rushed while many bureaucratic conversations were drawn out. Despite this, the film has received the Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. Although I disagree with their decision to nominate the producers and not David Oyelowo, the film is still definitely worth watching. 

3/5

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The Interview REVIEW #2

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So there's this Seth Rogen James Franco comedy called The Interview that caused a ridiculous amount of hoopla last year. It all started when Sony Pictures was targeted in a hack that stole basically all of their information from confidential emails between executives, employee personal information, budgets of different films, silly cat photos, etc. This information began leaking onto the internet for weeks with no stop in sight... unless a certain film, which was suspected to be The Interview, was pulled from its Christmas release date. Things began to escalate when Sony employees were threatened by the hackers, only know as The GOP,  or Guardians of the Peace (Not the Republican GOP). Then it really started to get out of hand right before Christmas when a "9/11" style threat was put upon any theater showing the film. Major theater chains like Regal and AMC backed out of showing the film and ultimately Sony announced that it was scrapping the release. A huge outcry from Hollywood and people alike thought this was a terrible idea to back down from the hacking threat so then Sony was like "JK LOL" and announced that it would release the film onto Video on Demand and into small independent theaters all across the country. Which now leads to the big question. With all this pandemonium surrounding the comedy, is it actually any good?

(WARNING: This film has an adorable puppy named Digby)
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For anyone who has been Tom Hanks Castawaying on a deserted island or been using a shitty internet provider like comcast for the past few months, The Interview is about a big time talk show host (Franco) and his executive producer/best friend (Rogen) being asked by the CIA to assassinate the president of North Korea, Kim Jong-un under the guise of an exclusive interview. So yeah you can see why that might cause some controversy.

Turns out a lot of people ending up streaming the movie
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I came into this movie expecting it to be a comedic misfire of overplayed jokes and maybe having handful of funny parts tops. Something that wasn't special and just meh. Almost like with what happened earlier this year with the big disappointment in A Million Ways to Die in the West. Mainly because quite a few of the early press reviews were pointing in that direction.

 I was wrong. I found it to be hysterical!

"Been spending most our lives living in a dictators paradise!"
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The film is absurdly funny and crass! There's ridiculous death scenes, a large amount of Lord of the Rings references between Franco and Rogen, and there's a lot of honey dicking #FakeBromancing. Plus seeing those two try to be master spies is exactly how you would imagine. What also made it great was the portrayal of the North Korean dictator. In it, Kim Jong-Un (Randall Park) isn't just some bad guy who we can't wait for to die. He's actually just a dude who's got some really messed up daddy issues... and also happens to be a dictator of an infamous rouge country. The Jong-Un/Franco bro down chemistry was great and gave the movie the perfect conflict of Franco having second thoughts about killing his new friend after a fun filled afternoon of tank joy riding, tequila, and Katy Perry. Overall if you are a fan of some of Rogen and Franco's comedies, especially This is the End, then you will definitely enjoy this film. I give it 4 tigers with night vision goggles out of 5.

Into the Woods Review

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Into the Woods is about several different fairy tale characters, Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, all crossing paths in the mysterious woods due to a baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) trying to lift a curse brought on them by a witch (Meryl Streep).

Cinderella's shade throwing game is on point!
(http://www.secretcitycomedy.com)

This isn't exactly the PG musical with classic fairy tales you would expect. There are actually several different darker tones going on. The main being "Be Careful what you wish for?" A majority of the characters get their happy ending half way through the movie and then realize that that's not what they wanted at all. Then there's some adultery, blinding, a giant who comes down from the sky going ape shit on the Kingdom, and people dying.

Boss Ass Witch!
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A large highlight of the film was the fantastic casting. Meryl Streep is outstanding as the witch. She's creepy, eccentric, an over protective mother, and holy fuck does she have an amazing voice! She will more than likely get an Oscar nomination for this. Anna Kendrick was awesome as always. Johnny Depp as the somewhat pedophile wolf was oddly uncanny. Newcomer James Corden was great as the central character, the Baker, and I look forward to him taking over the Late Late Show. And who knew that both Chris Pine and Emily Blunt could actually sing very well as the over acting Prince and Baker's wife respectively.

The Brothers Grimm, however, were not in the musical.

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Overall I really enjoyed this film. Though it felt like it was starting to drag on for a little (2 hour 5 min length) and slightly kidish at times, it is a family film after all, the amazing cast, adult themes, and enjoyable songs (ManChild is surprisingly a sucker for musicals) were more than enough to keep me interested and excited throughout the entire film. I give it 4 Princes tearing off their shirts mid-song out of 5.