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.
                                                                                                                 www.pinterest.com

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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