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SCENE IT ALL BEFORE

Don't Breathe Is The Best Horror Movie Of The Year

8/25/2016

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Don't Breathe Reviewed

I'm usually not a fan of horror as a genre, or at the very least I’m not a fan of slasher movies. They are just as formulaic as romantic comedies but with more depressing endings. There's been a revolution in the horror genre, with a recent example being last year’s It Follows. These latest movies have taken on an indie feel. Someone realized horror movies are cheap and easy to make and that audiences like being scared all year long, not just in October. One abandoned house, one old man, four young teens, and your movie is set.  Subsequently, young directors looking to make a name for themselves have been attracted to the genre and are willing to try something different. 

Don't Breathe is about three thieves who break into the house of a wealthy blind man, figuring it will be an easy score. The Blind Man (listed as The Blind Man in the credits) is played by Steven Lang, who was also the colonel in Avatar. It appears he survived his grisly dearth in that movie because this blind veteran is anything but helpless. The Blind Man was prepared for a day when someone might try and take what is his—he has barred every window, put multiple locks on the doors, and trained a large attack dog. Once in danger, the trio find it near impossible to escape from his house. 

Typically you don't find yourself rooting for home invaders. Even with their charms they're still criminals who maybe don't deserve a horror movie ending but also don't deserve our support. It is not until later in the movie, when The Blind Man shows his true motives and the audience questions who the victim really is. A character shift like this is typically tough to make in 90 minutes, but is done expertly here through a well-designed story.

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The splatter movies of the mid 2000's are being replaces by more suspenseful stories
Director and writer Fede Alvarez’s use of a blind man as a threat makes every movement, cell phone message, and yes, breath, potentially life-threatening. One sequence in particular comes off as especially suspenseful, when The Blind Man turns off the lights and the home invaders have to feel their way around the room. It is reminiscent of a scene from Silence of the Lambs’ which still sticks with me. In fact Alvarez borrows from some of the best horror movies out there using flashes of Panic Room, Cujo, and others throughout.

One element I wish was used less in Don’t Breathe is the characters stopping to assess the situation. BITCH YOU ARE STILL IN THE HOUSE. STOP ASKING IF SHE IS ALRIGHT, TURN THE KEY, AND KEEP RUNNING. The pause-while-in-danger is one of the more annoying horror movie tropes out there, but when executed properly it does show how invested the audience is in its characters.

I wouldn’t describe Don’t Breathe as scary; it’s suspenseful. In fact, the scariest part of the movie may be the unconventional use of a turkey baster. Don’t worry horror fans— there are plenty of moments that will make viewers jump or cue up a nightmare, but most importantly Alvarez molds the home invasion premise into a smart and simple story that audiences will scream for.
B+
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The War Dogs Of Iraq And Afghanistan

8/18/2016

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War Dogs Reviewed

To sum up War Dogs is to say it’s a movie that tells a really interesting story executed poorly. It’s clear a lot of heart went into the story, but something was missing. There are a ton of movies you could say this about, the ones not quite Academy Award worthy, the ones that people say are bad, but you still watch whenever they are on TV. I can’t decide what level of movie this is yet, but there were definitely parts I liked.

War Dogs is based on the true story of two 20-somethings, David Packouz (Miles Telles) and Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill), who won contracts from the Pentagon to arm America's allies in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s. It is absurd to think two young stoners, one of them a high school dropout, could be in charge of arming the U.S. military with next to no experience.

Originally a Rolling Stone article that would become a book that would become this movie, I would’ve loved to see this story done as a documentary, a real-life, unflinching straight-from-the-source examination of what actually happened. But I just don't know about the execution of this fictionalized version. For starters, the movie has tons of unnecessary narration. It opens with David Packouz smoking weed in a beat-up car getting pulled over by a security guard. Do we also need a voice over to tell you that he was smoking a lot of weed and was lost? War Dogs is more successful when it lets the characters’ actions speak for themselves. 

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Jonah Hill and Miles Teller are both great in this movie.
War Dogs also has tone issues; it is trying to be a comedy and a drama at the same time. This movie looks at the insanity of the system that provides guns to the military and how some less-than-reputable people could exploit the system. A movie like Wolf of Wall Street looks at something that really happened in a satirical way while making a point about society. That is what director Todd Phillips (The Hangover) is trying to accomplish, too, and War Dogs has a similar tone, but doesn’t pull it off as well as Martin Scorsese did.

Performances by Miles Teller and Jonah Hill continue to impress in the world of young guy dramedies. Jonah Hill has done especially well playing someone who is both a douchebag and perhaps even an anti-hero. His character takes advantage of a corrupt system and is taking money from big corporations, which is something people can always get behind. Much like any anti-hero the lines blur as the story continues, but Hill plays Efraim as disarming. It is hard not to like him at first; from the way he talks to his nerdy laugh, it’s easy to see why his friend David likes him. As the movie goes on and the monetary stakes increases, Hill makes subtle changes to show who Efraim really is.

I knew nothing about War Dogs before going into it and was fascinated throughout the movie, but that still doesn’t make it a great movie. You are probably better off just reading the Rolling Stone article and using your inner monologue to tell the story rather than listen to Miles Teller tell it to you. That doesn’t mean it’s not a movie worth watching, but you can wait for it to come on TV. C+/B-
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The Raunchiest Movie About A Talking Hot Dog

8/11/2016

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Sausage Party Reviewed

Sausage party has some of the most juvenile humor I have ever seen on the big screen, and I loved it. The movie opens up with various food items talking to each other and unleashing a litany of f-bombs. It really sets the tone early that this animated movie is not for the little ones. But in the vein of Disney animation, it then cuts to an adorable song of grocery store foods singing about how nothing bad will happen to them once they leave the supermarket. These food items are in for a rude awakening when they get home.

Seth Rogen plays a hot dog named Frank (natch) who dreams of being selected by the Gods (grocery store shoppers) with his girlfriend Brenda the bun (Kristen Wiig) to live outside the store in the promised land. There they willfinally be removed from their plastic wrappers and be allowed to get down with each other. The language they use is much more colorful—the term ‘raw dog’ is used more than once.

Rogen gets a lot of big names to work with him on this movie; some of them, like Danny McBride and Jonah Hill, are easy to recognize, while others like Edward Norton I never would have guessed My favorite voice actor, though, may be Nick Kroll, who plays a talking douche with a Jersey shore accent. I don’t know why, but for some reason hearing  a slew of swear words is so much better when done in silly voices and stereotypical accents.
​

It is easy to forget how often we use food terms as euphemisms, but Sausage Party finds every last one. I don't want to call Seth Rogen a wordsmith, but I enjoyed the movie’s many many food puns. But much like the humor throughout the movie it won’t be for everyone; the guy next to me groaned loudly every time they used a different food-related turn of phrase.
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Sausage party isn't just a bunch of curse words, it also uses a lot of animated violence to get the audience laughing
The craziest thing about this movie is that while it’s raunchy and at times vile, it ends up being a shockingly deep discussion about faith and theology. Which to some extent I suppose Rogen and partner Evan Goldberg’s last movie, This is the End, was also about. What is heaven? How should we live our lives? Heady stuff perhaps inspired by some late night discussions from this big-time stoner.

The funniest moment of the movie happens late in game. After the climactic fight in the grocery store, there is one scene in particular that is so laugh-out-loud funny that it alone is worth the price of admission. Even if you don’t like juvenile humor I would have a hard time believing anyone under the age of 65 wouldn’t be able to enjoy this.

I regained my composure to catch the final few minutes of the movie which is unfortunate because the ending just lays there. This is completely different from This Is the End which in my opinion has a perfect ending. However, the original ending for This Is the End was initially disliked with test crowds, so they redid it, and through sheer necessity they were able to come up with something brilliant. Perhaps that criticism didn’t happen this time, so instead the movie goes out on a flat note as we reach the credits.

If you are easily offended you may not want to see Sausage Party. Seth Rogen goes for gusto, which makes sense because he has been trying to get this movie made for eight years. If you don’t like curse words you won’t like this movie either. For me the vulgarity, the foul language, the violence—all of it works on screen. I can’t wait to see it again.
A-
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What Went Wrong With Suicide Squad

8/8/2016

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Suicide Squad Reviewed

I was on vacation when Suicide Squad came out so I didn't get to see the preview screening. But I heard good things from some very reliable sources only to get a panicked text message from my brother asking what was up with Suicide Squad. I checked the Rotten Tomatoes score and it had plummeted to a 36. What happened? I had to know, so I went and saw Suicide Squad as soon as I got back.

The idea of this movie sounded so good:  a collection of villains teaming up to save the world. Sure, it's a movie that's been done before, but these guys have super powers. I was excited. The first 30 minutes of the movie are even good.

Suicide Squad takes place after the events of Batman vs. Superman. It opens with Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) telling some bureaucrats that the world needs a team of metahumans for protection in the event that another Superman were to come to Earth and turn evil. She then introduces several super villains with a presentation of vignettes, flashy graphics, and cool music.

We get Deadshot (Will Smith), an assassin who never misses; the clinically insane love interest of the Joker, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie); a Spanish gangbanger that can shoot fire; a crocodile man who loves BET; and a guy whose superpower seems to be that he's really good with boomerangs. Yes, some of this is weird, especially the boomerang thing, but you know what? I'm still in.

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Margot Robbie played a very good Harley Quinn even if it did remind me of a darker crazier version of her Wolf of Wall Street character
​With a team of super villains as protagonists you need a big, bad antagonist, one that can strike fear even to the biggest evildoers. So what do they do? They cast a tiny woman who spends the entire movie shaking her hips to create menacing magnetic clouds. Oh boy, did I not care about this movie's villain. The worst part about all of this is Jared Leto is sitting right over there in full Joker make-up twiddling his thumbs and playing pranks on his co-stars because he has nothing to do in this movie. I didn't even like Jared Leto as the Joker, honestly how could he compare to Heath Ledger, but maybe I would have if there was a point for him being there.

Is it possible that the movie's real problem is that it's for the fans and not the critics? The movie’s antagonist is important to the comic series but otherwise I never heard of and don't care about her; I'm a pretty big comic book nerd but even I know very little about the suicide squad and nothing about Enchantress. There are several allusions in this movie that are lost on audiences unfamiliar with the comic book world. But Warner Brothers did this in Batman vs. Superman, too—what up, parademons—but that is just not going to work in a tent pole movie made for a big audience.

This review was over 1000 words at one point with me going on about problems with the soundtrack and the final battle but all you really need to know is Suicide Squad is kind of a mess. The average movie-goer is not going to like this movie and a lot of that has to do with the movie's story. Director David Ayer admitted he wrote it in six weeks, and on top of that the studio demanded massive reshoots after the critics panned Batman vs. Superman for being too serious.  Ayer tried adding more jokes to the movie, and the result is a total shift in the tone. There are a lot of good ideas in this movie are there; but none of them were executed confidently. I would see another movie with these characters, but the studio would have to do something big and bold, like not make ridiculous demands of a film throughout the movie-making process. C-
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