REVIEW: American Sniper

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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!
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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.

Chris Rock's Top 10 (Movies of 2014)

Chris Rock's Top 10 (Movies of 2014)
By Erik Luchsinger

1. Interstellar

     Of course this is at the top. if you're a sci-fi nerd like me, there should be no question. If you like excellent acting, convincing visuals, (mostly real) scientific theories, and a bitchin' deep-space adventure story, you know what I'm talking about. Interstellar was amazing, and it gives me hope that intelligent sci-fi might not be dead.

2. Nightcrawler

  This movies really made me feel like I was a grimy LA news stringer and made me pine for late-night highway drives and the random carnage of the city. It's a real thriller and incredibly engaging. It kept me enthralled the whole time, which is saying a lot considering the run time. Jake Gyllenhal's incredibly convincing role as a sociopathic news stringer was just icing on the cake, and that's why it gets such high marks.

3. The Drop
  

James Gandolfini's last film was not a disappointment, as The Drop was one of the best movies I saw this year. It was a mob film that wasn't trying to be Goodfellas or Godfather. It had a fresh take on mobsters and wannabes, and a vein of gallows humor that ran quite deep. I had no idea what I was going into when I went to see The Drop, but I was pleasantly surprised. It didn't get the fanfare that it deserved, and if you haven't seen it I recommend that you get it on DVD/Blu-ray/VOD, as it was great.

4. Gone Girl

Unlike The Drop, this movie got a lot of fanfare, and rightly so. Gone Girl was a thrilling mystery, not to mention a (probably unneeded) reminder that Ben Affleck can act with the best of them. The characters were deep, the plot was well constructed and wholly engrossing, and overall the movie was a great watch. Bonus: seeing Barney Stinson/NPH get murdered during sex was really, really satisfying.

5. Fury

    Between Fury and Inglorious Basterds it seems like Brad Pitt belongs in WWII movies. Fury might look like a run-of-the-mill WWII movie, and in a lot of ways it is, but it is fantastic nonetheless. It may not seem like a movie about a single tank crew could be interesting, but the characters in Fury are so deep and emotionally intense that every scene is engaging, even when things are exploding and dying all over the place. When they are, though, the movie really shines, The final battle in Fury is among the best I've ever seen, and all of the action scenes are just really fucking sweet.

6. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
  

Despite having too many "of the's" in the title, Dawn was a great movie. I've been quite disenchanted with the current trend of rebooting old movie franchises, but this gave me hope. The human characters are good, but the apes really makes the movie. Despite being CGI (and excellent CGI at that), they have a lot of emotion and depth to them that makes the whole struggle between the two camps so much more real. Awesome battle scenes and great dialogue contributed to this being one of my top 10 as well.

7. Edge of Tomorrow

    I am very wary of Tom Cruise. I really dislike how he's always the "save the day badass" guy, and a lot of his movies seem to be the same action crap. Not to mention that he's a crazy scientologist. I didn't even see Edge of Tomorrow in theaters because I was so wary of it. When I did see it though, I was surprised how awesome it was. It had a really interesting concept and it was explored and presented in an interesting and easily understandable way. The aliens were cool and the visuals were quite stunning. The best part about it was seeing Tom Cruise play a wimpy bitch of a character and then progressing into the confident character he usually plays. Character development in a big budget sci-fi action movie, imagine that!

8. Guardians of the Galaxy

    I had some gripes about this movie, but overall I liked it. Despite a completely asinine plot to escape jail (space cops can shoot in zero gravity, dumbasses!), Guardians had a lot of witty dialogue and humor, not to mention cool characters. The characters really drove the movie for me, so much so that it still made top 10 despite a generic Marvel plot.

9. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1

    I really liked the first two Hunger Games despite not being a 14 year old white girl, and Mockingjay Part 1 was no exception. This one was a bit darker and more mature, featuring a lot of political intrigue, posturing, and propaganda-slinging. While it lacked some of the emotional shocks present in the first two, and Katniss only has one shocked/sad/angry face, it was a good watch and promises an awesome finale, hopefully featuring President Snow getting brutally murdered and an R rating. What, a guy can hope, can't he?

10. The Giver

    Ok, I didn't really see that many movies this year. In all honesty I've just started taking movies seriously enough to write about them every week. So yeah, if I'd been to the theaters more often this year I might have a different number 10. Nonetheless, The Giver was a cool adaptation of a favorite childhood book. It's a simple story and undoubtedly a cash-in on the popularity of converting YA fiction into movies, but it was fun to watch and really brought back some memories. As far as YA distopias go it's not the meanest by any means, but that made it kind of refreshing. It's not just brutal for brutality's sake, and it's got a nice message behind it. Plus, it was leaps and bounds better than Sex Tape, Annabelle, and As Above, So Below, so here it is.

Honorable Mentions

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For: It's good, but it's not as cool considering we've already seen the visual style in the last Sin City.

Godzilla: Cool monsters! Explosions! Sweet visuals! No guys in rubber suits.

Exodus: Gods and Kings: Seeing the 10 plagues in crisp, 2014 CGI was really fucking sweet.

PS.
    Transformers: Age of Extinction was the highest grossing movie this year and the 10th highest grossing movie of all fucking time. Guys, come on. Upgrade your tastes, and maybe Michael bay will stop insulting everyone's intelligence with schlocky crap every fucking year.

The Interview Review

The Interview Review
By Erik Luchsinger

                                                                      www.ropeofsilicon.com 

By now everyone is familiar with the cyberterror fiasco/brilliant marketing scheme surrounding the latest James Franco and Seth Rogen buddy comedy, The Interview. Whether or not it was actually the North Koreans who hacked Sony, it was dubious if the movie would come out. Despite the sheer number of testicle-less movie studios and theatre companies, The Interview still came out on Youtube on Christmas day, and you better bet that we here at the ManChild Movie Blog jumped on the opportunity to see it.

As I ponied up the $5.99 to rent the movie on Youtube for the day I was about 70% sure I was wasting my money on another expendable buddy comedy. I really do like Rogen and Franco, with Pineapple Express and Superbad (fuck you it still counts) near the top of my list of favorite comedy movies. I was fearful of spending 2 hours watching them phone in a terrible movie.

Luckily, that was hardly the case. The Interview had some legitimately funny jokes, as well as the kind of ridiculous situations you would expect from a Rogen and Franco movie. The scenes where Dave Skylark (Franco) is hanging out with Kim (Randall Park) are the very hallmark of Franco's brand of humor. There's tanks, basketball, hot asian ladies with big ol' titties, copious drugs, and serious talk about approval by peers and parents. This is all set to everyone's favorite Katy Perry songs, just to top it all off. Not only is the whole sequence pretty funny, but it really gives the relationships between Skylark and Kim Jong Un quite a bit of depth. Considering how important that is to the story, I'm really glad that they decided to spend some time on it.

                                                          Baby, you're a firework. Or whatever.
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The time invested in their relationship pays off too, and not just in laughs. The actual interview scene is pretty tense in addition to being sprinkled with funnies. There is a betrayal between Kim and Skylark once Skylark finally gets that Kim has been hiding all of the bad things going on in North Korea from him. If they hadn't spent so long broing out over Katy Perry and margaritas together it would have felt totally phony, but instead you kind of feel for Skylark despite all of his arrogant stupidity. It also makes Kim more thoroughly hate-able, as he almost seems human while chilling with Skylark.

There is no lack of sex and genital gags in The Interview, ranging from the "hide it in your butt" joke from the trailer to Skylark yelling loudly about his "stink dick" with the CIA at the door. My favorite of them was during a prep scene, where Rapoport (Rogen) and Sook (Diana Bang) are arming themselves for action. They reveal some large machine guns, grenades, etc. then, in the same way, Sook takes off her shirt and Rapoport pops his dick out, and then they're fucking. While it's just a sex joke (literally, Sook and Rapoport have sex), it's revealed in such a way that I thought it was really funny.

                                                           Fun fact: Kim loves Interracial flicks
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While the plot is predictable in a lot of ways, it's not the kind of schlock that an equivalent movie by Adam Sandler would be. Instead of just flying off to North Korea, Rapoport has to go meet Kim's ambassadors in China first, which proves to be a complete waste of time for him. In Korea, our protagonists constantly lose their poison strips and lose sight of the goal, with Skylark decided to abandon it entirely at one point. When they do decide to go through with the plan they have to do things differently, which results in an intelligently crafted plan to discredit Kim on national television instead of just killing him, thus empowering the Korean people to revolt. Honestly, I was expecting the Sandler approach to the whole thing: some lowbrow asian penis jokes, Rob Schneider telling Skylark that "he can do it, kill Kim Jong Un!" and then Kim dying due to pooping his pants. Instead there is a plot that moves with jokes. Almost like a real movie, but a comedic one!

                                               What, poop isn't funny anymore? POOP ROCKS!!1!1
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The Interview was not the best Franco/Rogen movie ever, nor the best buddy comedy. It was good but not great. The reason I spent most of this review discussing the good points is because I was quite surprised that it didn't totally suck ass. I was worried my favorite stoner duo had lost their touch entirely. That is not the case, as The Interview is quite watchable, even if it's not quite worthy of all the hoopla surrounding it. I kinda feel like North Korea should have been OK with it, as it humanizes Kim in a way that's basically impossible to do in real life. It'll make you laugh, it might make you cry (if you break your leg somehow while watching it), but it's not an Oscar-worthy masterpiece by any means. I give it 3/5.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies REVIEW

The 6th and final film of the Middle Earth saga and the finale of The Hobbit series is finally here and holy shit is it action packed! The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies or TBotFA starts immediately where Desolation of Smaug left off. A really pissed off and undiagnosed mentally ill dragon heads towards Lake Town to do one thing and one thing only. FUCK. SHIT. UP. But a giant fire breathing dragon isn't the only thing that the thirteen dwarves, Gandalf, and Bilbo Baggins have to deal with. Five armies consisting of Dwarves, Elves, Men, Orks, and a special mystery guest group are about to descend upon the Lonely Mountain to take it's vast amounts of treasure and secure its strategic position within Middle Earth.






TBotFA had a lot of hype going into the theaters, and it lived up to quite a bit of it. Smaug silently stalking Lake Town before setting it ablaze was absolutely bone chilling, intense, and probably one of my favorite scenes. The different armies showing up all at once at the base of the mountain and clashing together throughout the film was epic! From the Orks taking first place on making an entrance, to endless amounts of battle trolls, to Orlando Bloom and Evangeline Lilly doing crazy elfish fight scenes, the battle really was one of the best from the entire series.

(OH, SHIT!)

That being said, the final Hobbit isn't without some fault. One being that Bilbo is kind of sidelined for parts of the movie. A character as greatly portrayed by Martin Freeman could have used a little more screen time.

Another fault was the consequences of expanding one book into three different films finally catching up with us. In the book, Smaug going ape shit and the entire battle is probably the last quarter of the story, so there wasn't much to really stretch out into an epic large film. It's 2 hours and 20 minutes long so I didn't feel like the movie flew by too fast, but the ending felt a little sudden to me. Seeing as it was the last film in the entire saga (For now) I was expecting an emotional gut punch that we had experienced with Return of the King, Instead the battle ended, goodbyes were had and a quick journey back to the Shire occurred, all in the span of a little over 10 minutes. Though I will say the ending song did help with the closure.

Overall The finale to The Hobbit delivered exactly what it was titled. Five armies epically duking it out for the fate of Middle Earth and in the middle of it all, one small brave hobbit. It might not have been my favorite film in the series that I really love, but it was exceptionally great experience. To quote my Dad after the movie ended "That was fucking awesome!" I give it 4 orks getting beheaded at once out of 5.