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2014 MOVIE OMNIBUS THREAD


RIPPA

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RAZE: If you can make it past the first 15 minutes you're in the clear, well maybe after the exposition kicks in and you know what you're dealing with. That first 15 though actually had me turn my head away from the screen for the first time in years. That NEVER EVER happens to me. Think of when Chris kills the child molesting dad on The Wire. Only fully lit, between two women, for no reason. Yeah. Otherwise a pretty grim film until the ovaries-out ending. I had a hard time finding entertainment in it actually... maybe I'm getting soft since I left my twenties behind. (My liver says otherwise.) Nevertheless, Zoe Bell deserves way more time as an actress than just doing stuntwork and the film is effective as hell, though you might feel like you got hit with a blackjack from behind afterwards.

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Went to the movies with my wife this weekend:

 

Moms Night Out - The chick who plays April Kepner on Grey's Anatomy is an over-stressed stay-at-home mom married to Rudy from...Rudy.  So she plans a night out with Ray Romano's wife, who is the wife of a pastor, and some other woman I didn't recognize.  And much hijinks follow.  Trace Adkins also has a small role as a tough-guy biker.  This is that rarest of all birds - a Christian comedy.  It's kind of a cross between Adventures in Babysitting and The Hangover, only (obviously) a very clean cross between them.  Yeah, there's lots of silliness and ridiculousness but there's also a LOT of laughs.  Adkins, in particular, is great and steals the movie with a scene toward the end.  This is light, funny entertainment and I liked it a lot.  7.5/10.

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I saw FRAILTY on IFC today with Bill Paxton (also the director), Matthew McConaughey, and POWERS BOOTHE. If you like McConaughey in stuff like Mud and True Detective, you'll most likely be intrigued by his performance. Not a completely dynamic performance (I thought Paxton was the MVP here), but very reserved considering this point in his career. With that said, I have to say this movie showcases everything you can get right with the Southern gothic genre in terms of casting and everything you can get wrong when it comes to the story unraveling. I know Paxton was working with a shoestring budget seeing as most of it probably went to McConaughey, but he tried to be too clever with the plot twist. Yes, there is a plot twist and boy is it clunky and obvious once McConaughey goes into Rust Cohle mode towards the end. There are major spoilers below so you probably want to stop here.

 

First off, in order to believe the twist and most of McConaughey's story, there has to be some sort of insane suspension of disbelief. Even for generic small hick moronic town #2065. You would have to believe that no one would spot Bill Paxton clubbing someone in the back of the head with a pipe in BROAD DAYLIGHT in the middle of a grocery store parking lot (the kid even points that in the movie). Also, no one sees Paxton and his oldest son spend several days digging and building an underground dungeon in their backyard. Didn't anyone think it was weird one of his sons was missing for a whole week? Plus, a woman's husband walks out of the house to go talk with strange as shit Bill Paxton and the wife doesn't even come out of the house despite the loud commotion of Paxton and said husband killing each other in a shed. Two little kids can drag the corpses of two grown adult men out of the shed and past the OPEN front door without the wife and anyone seeing it. The cherry on top? The wife doesn't even report her husband missing. In the twenty or so years since the murders happened and a respected community member going missing, there wasn't a single clue until McConaughey's character walked into the town. I don't know if I can buy that.

 

This movie also features an unintentionally hilarious flashback of Powers Boothe and his mother (played by some hideous local woman probably). The mother has to be roughly the same age as Powers Boothe. Paxton couldn't spring for a woman that was in her mid-to-late sixties at least?

 

If you want to know why it was great True Detective didn't go for the most obvious ending to S1, watch this movie and you will get the answer to that. 

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Oculus: Probably the best thing WWE Studios have been involved in, which is damning faint praise, but still.

 

It's got a great first half, and there are some genuinely unsettling moments. But it turns too melodramatic by the end. I wasn't that bothered about all the family breakdown stuff. Also, the heroine was just too idiotic, even by horror movie standards. 

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