Whiplash

What a fantastic movie! I was skeptical at first, assuming it was nothing more than a flick about some little drummer kid with a bald music teacher. And his head is SHINY. He must stick it in whatever they use to polish bowling balls because I could swear I saw the Big Dipper on his baldness.

There's a lot more to the movie, though. It's a modern classic, one of those movies that keeps surprising you with every choice a character makes, luring you in deeper with its twists and turns (even if you don't want the characters to make those turns). The best part is, it all pays off in the ending during the final boss battle. And who doesn't love a good boss battle?

J.K. Simmons says: "Boss battles are A-Ok."

If I had to compare it to another movie, it's a drumming-based Full Metal Jacket... mixed with the groovy swagger of Curtis Mayfield. J.K. Simmons' character torments the hell out of his music students, exactly like R. Lee Ermey with his platoon. The music is hypnotic, to the point that if you watch the movie and don't smile, you're probably a Dalek.

The film also made me wonder what J.K. Simmons is like in real life. Maybe he's nice. Or maybe he's just like the character he plays-- an idealist, endlessly cruel on his path to perfection. After all, the guy called his kids "above average" in his Golden Globe and Oscar acceptance speeches. He was probably just kidding Simmons, but how are we ever going to find out?

I'll tell you how. We won't.

Maybe he's a saint. I heard he covered lunch for three cops at a restaurant a few days ago. Is that kindness? Could be. But getting on powerful people's good sides sounds more like something Kevin Spacey would do in House of Cards.

Speaking of Kevin Spacey, is he a nice guy? Seems sketchy, but maybe he's secretly a good guy. Like an incognito postman or something, always dedicated to delivering packages earlier than Amazon says they should arrive.

Then there's Sam Rockwell, Matt Dillon, and Ty Burrell. Just look at their expressions. Villains, obviously. I'm basing these accusations on absolutely nothing, so don't quote me on this.

And go see Whiplash. It does a great job of not relying on "good" or "bad" guys, but just "guys"... albeit extreme guys. Its ethical debate goes into such a grey area, it makes 50 Shades of Grey look like "Some Grey Window Shades from Walmart".

Miami Vice

You've heard about it. It's the most 80s show to have ever 80s'd. But have you seen it?

Supercops Crockett and Tubbs

Miami Vice is addicting in a lot of ways with its iconic 80s music, expensive action scenes, colorful costumes and lighting, but it has its flaws. The stories are convoluted, while the dialogue is watered down for network t.v. The pacing can be slow and as drawn out as this run-on sentence and just when you think the episode you're watching will pick up its pace, it doesn't and reading this sentence is what it feels like to watch the show. Then there's the editing, which is more of an endurance test than anything else. Here's the intro via YouTube (thanks, NBC!). I broke it down in the paragraph below.

...What the hell was that? You just filmed a bunch of palm trees before showing a nauseating bird's-eye view of the ocean. Why did you do that? What is this?-- Pelican Vice? But I'll keep watching to make sense of this psychological experiment. Maybe we can piece this intro together and relate it back to the show. Okay, flamingos, yes-- wait, what!? The bird's point of view again? I'm getting woozy, man. Don't show me that view anymore. Okay, yes, now you're showing us jai alai, that's a fine sport, underrated. Cars, yes. Thank you. Nice pool. Guy's on his phone in the water, cheating death, yes. Dogs are racing, very good-- hey... WHAT THE F*CK DID I JUST SAY ABOUT THE BIRD'S POINT OF VIEW!? It's making me nauseous! I TOLD you this twice, already! Jesus Christ, NBC, didn't you test this intro with an audience to see if it is or isn't tolerable? Okay, a building, yes. Girl windsurfing, very good. Nice hair dip, let's see if that has anything to do with any of the upcoming investigations. Okay, a federal building, thank you for that view, yes. Horse racing, very good for the Miami economy... what!?--GODDAMN THAT BIRD'S EYE VIEW! ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE ME FEEL HUNGOVER, MIAMI VICE!? BECAUSE YOU'RE DOING A GREAT JOB OF THAT!!! Ah, yes. Valet is parking a car. Okay, a sailboat, very stylish. I guess that final shot of a rippling wave is important, thank you for showing me that.

Despite the fact that one viewing of the intro will cause incurable PTSD, what we love about Miami Vice is the sense of wonder we get when thinking about all those possible Miami nights. It's a fantasy. Who doesn't want to cruise around a neon-lit beach in a custom sports car or a fast boat, solving crimes with your buddy cop? Everyone wants that. Especially the unseen bird from the intro.

Breaking Bad

You're probably expecting a rundown of the series: The premise, the acclaim, and why you should watch it. But you know it, already-- nice guy becomes cancer guy becomes drug guy. There's also a chicken guy that he fights for a while. No need to be ashamed for not watching it, yet. Take your time.

This is the most common "You've never seen Breaking Bad?" response.

Instead of spoiling the plot or redirecting you season one on Netflix, I'm going to tell you how many similarities the show happens to have with a critically acclaimed book. It can be found in paperback or on the Apple app store and is simply called the Bible.

• In the Bible's New Testament, heavily whiskered Jesus Christ is introduced as a man who turns water into wine. In Breaking Bad, mustachioed Walter White turns methylamine into methamphetamine. Coincidence?
• Then in Breaking Bad, Walter White's brother-in-law Hank Schrader often gets vexed with his wife, Marie. Her shenanigans, sometimes even illegal, usually prompt him to respond "Jesus Christ, Marie!" Is it a coincidence that Hank referenced Jesus Christ out of all of Earth's historical figures? He could have just as easily cried "Herbert Hoover, Marie!" or "Benedict Cumberbatch, Marie!" Why didn't he?
• Walter's wife, Skyler, eventually has a baby on the show. However, her character was already pregnant when the show began, so the audience still has no idea if that baby is the biological daughter of Walter White, or if God granted them a free baby without the two of them having to "know" each other. Baby Jesus was born to Virgin Mary without her "knowing" anyone, so it begs the question-- is Breaking Bad's baby, Holly, going to grow up to be a prophetic character? Maybe we'll find out in the spin-off series: Better Call Saul!

This review was satirical. Before you riot, I'm not pro or anti anything. I also don't wear a tin foil hat.

R.I.P.D.

R.I.P.D. (an initialism for "Rest in Peace Department") is one of those movies that sort of happened. I only cared to see it once I read The Dude and the Zen Master, a really insightful book by Jeff Bridges and his friend Bernie Glassman. In it, the two discuss what it's like to try to be relaxed, with an occasional anecdote from the set of a movie.

Here's Bridges recounting his experience on R.I.P.D.

"Kevin Bacon and I recently worked on a movie together, R.I.P.D. Just before we'd begin a scene, when all of us would feel the normal anxiety that actors feel before they start to perform, Kevin would look at me and the other actors with a very serious expression on his face and say: "Remember, everything depends on this!" 

"It would make us all laugh. On the one hand, it's not true, of course, but on the other, everything does depend on this, on just this moment and our attitude toward this moment."

It's pretty clear that not even the cast was crazy about making the movie, but it was a fun hour and a half. I found myself tuning in and out often simply because there was just way too much CGI-- which looked unfinished and belonged on Syfy channel, Doctor Who, or an early 90s movie. The villains are all poorly computer generated undead creatures known in the movie's mythology as "deados". I guarantee you've seen better special effects on YouTube.

Jeff Bridges played a fun character, reprising his role as 1800s lawman Rooster Cogburn from True Grit. I've been a fan of Bridges since The Big Lebowski, so I laughed heartily every time his character said and did anything. I especially loved the chemistry between him and his hat. Ryan Reynolds is in the movie, too. He plays his convincing movie star character who's reluctantly just "doing this for another paycheck". He successfully said all of his lines while keeping his face and emotional investment in the story as static as possible.

The story is simple:

Man loses identity.
Man meets supernatural police agency who wants to employ him.
Man partners up with old cowboy who speaks in wild west jargon.

And of course, Bridges and Reynolds have to save world from a conveniently placed doomsday-based plot point. It's screenwriting 101 meant to make you laugh until you choke on your aromatic, but stale popcorn.

On the plus side, their guns looked really cool and shiny!

As for the tone, R.I.P.D. is in every way an amalgamation of Men in Black and Patrick Swayze's Ghost. See it if you like scraping the bottom of the entertainment barrel.

Starcrash

Starcrash is a Star Wars knock off far worse than any B movie you can possibly imagine. It briefly stars David Hasselhoff as the token Han Solo character, and it makes Howard the Duck look like No Country for Old Men.

Starcrash was released in the late 70s, a year or two after the original Star Wars, fitting into a genre I like to call "Disco Sci-fi" (which to me is any sci-fi/outer space movie from the late 70s to 80s, trying to mooch off the success of Star Wars' mass appeal). But as pretty as some of the backgrounds were, it's clear that the filmmakers did not put in the necessary effort to make the movie powerful enough to stand on its own hind legs.

Yeah, that's totally a lightsaber.

The intro consists of some idiots wearing what looks like aluminum foil hats, as they fly around in a spaceship, only to get overtaken and blown up by a cheap lava lamp special effect superimposed onto the screen. I'm not kidding. It literally looks like footage of a lava lamp, which is later revealed to be a "powerful weapon of space monsters". The worst part about this is that somewhere, an executive saw that and said "yeah, that's good."

Then there are the characters. Obviously, they're not real people, but it would be nice if the filmmakers gave us some sort of impression that they had lives off screen, that they don't suspend themselves on clothes hangers when no one can see them. They live in a sci-fi universe, which is great, so I can understand if their customs are different than ours. They can speak differently, dress differently, but Christ alive, they're so weird. The male lead looks like an unkempt, confused, supersized hobbit. And the main woman dresses very... very minimally. It's like she lives in an orgy. Side note: SHE'S SUPPOSED TO BE A PILOT! Any frame of her in the film can easily be used on a Maxim cover.

The dialogue must have been written by a three year old. In the beginning, the two main characters, Akton and Stella Star (yes, that's her character's actual name), are just cruisin' around the galaxy when a police ship tries to pull them over-- for speeding, I guess. The space cop shows up in their magic t.v. and some bald guy yells at them, saying "As Thor, chief of the Imperial police, I order you to surrender at once". Real original name, by the way, Thor. Naturally, I expected one of them to retort with, "Come and get us, doo-doo head!" Sadly, they didn't say that. They just happily jumped to hyperspace, which is evasion and a goddamn felony, something they should have taken into account.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the movie. I had a great time watching it, but for all the wrong reasons. It mimicked Star Wars in as many ways possible, but it lacked heart. In fact, Starcrash had about as much soul as a dead sociopath, but I found every subtle mistake and careless nuance hilarious. Like in the intro where they cut off the intro music abruptly at the end of the credits. Or how they solved every plot point with a deus ex machina-- the main character just reveals new "powers" (a.k.a. force powers) whenever the good guys need to move the story along in their benefit. I love the campy substitute they had for Darth Vader. You know, the bad guy with an evil beard and a cape. I loved how he had a "Doom Machine" instead of a "Death Star". In a non-ironic way, I genuinely loved the stop motion, the fantastically multicolored constellations, and the fact that all the ships were models instead of CGI. At the end of the day, it's Spaceballs, the only difference is that Starcrash, though a whole lot funnier, took itself way too seriously.

American Horror Story: Freak Show

The fourth season of American Horror Story is not horror. If you want real horror, watch the first two seasons, or a little movie called The Conjuring.

That aside, let me get to the real meat of this review. What separates American Horror Story: Freak Show from some of its previous seasons is that, although it's riddled with gore, the creeping, invasive feeling of something lurking from behind the shadows is just not there. For whatever reason, they try and humanize the villains, giving them some sort of "evolutionary arc".

But if there's one thing we've learned from Star Wars, it's that when you show the origins of a villain, that character easily loses what makes them the most menacing-- their mystery. Darth Vader was goddamn terrifying before we saw his past. All we knew about him up 'til the '90s was his old name, and that his head looked like an egg. The rest was up to our imaginations... then we saw him as a little punk with a bowl cut.

As a kid, I felt like Jar Jar right here.

Another major problem with Freak Show is the musical numbers. I mean, Jesus-- I know it's by the same makers, but if I want to watch Glee, I'll watch Glee. I once had a girl insist on us watching that show together a few years back, and let me describe it for you now-- it's one hour of filler.

You probably know I wasn't a fan of American Horror Story: Coven, so if you're wondering why I'm watching this new season, it's because I've got a heart of gold and I always give people and things chances. Hell, I give too many (people and things) too many chances. That's because deep down, I expect everyone to try their hardest to do their best.

But it's clear by now that American Horror Story is nothing more to its makers than a nine-to-five grind. They under-utilize their cast, ignoring characters for episodes on end. Malcolm-Jamal Warner guest starred in the last episodes for mere seconds!

Aside from all that, the series is becoming way too meta, assimilating into pop-culture as a "must-be-iconic" show for being "edgy", caring less and less about the content they create. The show ignores major plot points for so long, the audience forgets and loses interest by the time they even tease at resolving them. The show is pretentious, predictable, and chickens out of killing characters by bringing them back to life, which Ryan Murphy (one of the producers) specifically said they would stop doing and I quote: "This season, once you die, you're dead. There's no supernatural thing to bring you back like last year."

Of course, being them, they resolved that little issue by bringing characters back as ghosts and even-- I can't believe I'm saying this-- projections from the minds of other characters.

Still, I am curious to know what happens next. I'm weird like that-- I still enjoy watching the show, even if it is mostly filler.

Kinect Star Wars

If you're wondering what kind of blog this is, it was originally supposed to be a place to playfully judge movies. Then I changed that rule by reviewing t.v. shows.

Today we're looking at a video game based on one of my favorite childhood sagas:

Kinect Star Wars.

Why critique that game? Because I finally gave it a go and it's more accidentally hilarious than I could have ever imagined.

Kinect's technology is surprisingly good. It's not perfect, but it works. My biggest concern is the fact that you can't sit down without C-3PO thinking you've abandoned him. There's a Podracing minigame that you control with your arms, which is great, but if you try and sit down (which would be more realistic), the game goes haywire and the controls get all wonky.

The main storyline lets you choose from a list of new Jedi that never say a word. I vowed to not take the game seriously because I wanted to have as much fun as possible, so I chose an alien called "Cho Zeh'Bra" since his face looks like a... well... do I have to say it?

This is Cho Zeh'Bra.

I genuinely can't look at this character without laughing. I never laughed this hard watching the same-looking guys during the cantina scene in "A New Hope", but seeing him as a jedi is so far-fetched, I just can't help it. He apparently has a sense of purpose, and it's so much funnier to think that he has aspirations to help others than to imagine him as a struggling musician.

My favorite part of the game is probably the dance-offs. This consists of you dancing to modern pop as Han Solo, burlesque Leia, etc. I like this minigame because it's ridiculous and would never happen in that universe, but I'm sure it fulfills someone's long-awaited fantasies. Heck, I got a kick out of it.

There's another minigame called "Rancor Rampage" in which you're a giant beast, the one that tried to eat Luke in "Return of the Jedi", terrorizing towns and eating people. I had a blast playing it the first time, but eventually, it just became busy work. That's probably the best way to describe every mode in Kinect Star Wars. It's all fun at first, but when you need to reach a point quota, it's almost torturous.

My advice to you is this: If you can find a way to play Kinect Star Wars, go for it. It's even more fun with friends, if they're open to having their perception of Star Wars further skewed.

May the choice be with you,

-Philip