How it Ends (2018)

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How it Ends is one of the new movies from Netflix so of course I checked this out. The idea is simple, Will (Theo Younger) has to go meet his girlfriends father, Tom ( Forest Whitaker. While there they get into a fight because they don’t get along and Will is asked to leave before he even asks if he can marry his daughter.

When Will wakes up the next morning after a night of drinking, Samantha (Kat Graham) wakes him up and reminds him he is late for his flight. This is when the real story kicks in. Samantha hears a noise in Seattle, gets really scared and the power goes out. Will rushes to the air port to discover the flights are all cancelled. In response to this he will return to Toms home. Tom’s wife Paula (Nicola Ari Parker) will go to her son’s house, and Tom the former Marine and Will shall go to Seattle to save Samantha.

The movie itself is interesting, but at the end of the day it is just basically a weird apocalypse survival movie. Most of the movie is simply them driving, occasionally either hiding from another person or shooting them. Then they talk, eventually the car breaks down and they hire a Native American chick to help fix the car. She comes with, they continue the trend, argue a bit and so on. The movie is rather unexciting. The movie has moments of being interesting and it does a good job of showing that the biggest issue n a survival scenario would be other people. I don’t regret watching the movie, but I can’t say I would watch it again. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

It (1990)

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The 1990 version of It has been a classic since, well since 1990. When the remake was announced people kind of lost their minds. Who could possibly play Pennywise better than Tim Curry? Well this isn’t about all that, but if you are interested we did cover that you can read more here.

Watching this movie made me remember that this wasn’t truly a movie, but a made for t.v. series. This does show by the lack of swearing and blood, something the 80’s and 90’s usually didn’t shy away from. This being made for t.v. tho, they did have to find a way to tone down what is actually a pretty violent and disturbing book. This is where they succeeded quite well.

In fact this may actually be the most successful part of the whole thing. When I was younger this movie actually was pretty freaky, but as an adult there were things that actually annoyed me more than anything. For example the constant jumping back and forth between childhood and being an adult as they introduced characters seemed completely unnecessary. It was also a 3 hour series that easily could have been two hours with much of it being feeling stretched out for no reason I can think of.

That isn’t to say the whole thing is bad, each character is played magnificently and Tim Curry still plays an amazing Pennywise the clown. I also feel comparing the two may be a bit unfair seeing as how one is made for t.v. and the other is a full-fledged movie.

At the end of the day however I have to admit, the 1990 version of It just doesn’t hold up very well for me. It’s still solid enough but it just doesn’t compare to the remake for me which I would much rather watch. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

 

Set It Up (2018)

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Set it up is one of the new movies from Netflix, and as such I of course sat down and watched it. I actually didn’t expect much.I can’t say why, I just didn’t. The concept was good tho. Essentially it comes down to A female sports writer isn’t very nice to her female assistant. They work long hours, she never has time, and she never gets the chance to write which is all she wants.

A important VP also has an assistant, and he also pretty much gets treated like crap,also works a ton and has no time for his beautiful model girlfriend. One night they both forget dinner,and have a chance meeting. Not much longer later on another late night, they end up having a few drinks in the office and a drunken plan jokingly takes place. One she takes a bit seriously when she misses another date.

After he almost gets dumped he also gets on board. The plan is simple, since they have their bosses entire lives planned out meticulously. They will use this to get them to hook up, so that when they are sleeping together they will have some time off to go do what they want. This of course has varying degrees of success. For example getting them stuck in an elevator goes horrible since a claustrophobic delivery guy ends up stuck with them. The Yankees game however goes well, because as well all know a Yankees game is the sexiest thing ever. Read that with heavy sarcasm.

The movie does have plenty of funny parts to it. This is actually the part that surprised me. The actors are all funny enough, but usually these types of movies just don’t end up being funny. This one however is and that made me happy. The movie isn’t great, but its fun. It is also funny. It is very much worth watching. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Real Genius (1985)

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Real Genius is one of those 80’s movies that for some reason most people I know haven’t seen, and that greatly upsets me. The story is simple. Mitch is recruited to a school for super smart people, he works with Chris the smartest person in the school turned slacker. They are tasked with a school project to build a laser. They aren’t the only two doing this but hey they are the main two.

As the story goes on we see all sorts of shenanigans, from the turning an entire section of the school into ice for a winter carnival.

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To throwing a massive party with the local beauty school.

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The movie is first and foremost, a comedy. This starts out pretty early with the scene where Mitch meets Chris, and he asks about him being prepared for gravity reversing itself and even trying to convince him the antenna on an odd remote control is in fact a penis stretcher, and offers to let him try it.

The movie does eventually take a more serious turn however, as early on you the viewer will discover the laser is actually being developed by the school for the government as a weapon to be used from space to assassinate targets. Mitch and friends eventually find this out as well, but not until the laser is finished and in the hands of the government.

They will of course go on a quest to put an end to the weapon and take revenge on the dean of the school for lying to them in the fist place, which will involve filling a house with popcorn. He hates popcorn. Regardless the movie is currently on Netflix, go check this out. The movie is amazing and has a great soundtrack. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

American Hero (2015)

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American Hero is the story of an alcoholic and drug addict man who as spent his entire life doing the wrong thing. The wrong thing for himself, his friends, his wife and his son. Well I should say now his ex-wife and son he no longer gets to see. There is a twist, he was born with a sort of power, a super power if you will. He can lift things up and move objects with nothing more than a wave of his hand.

Being the slacker that he is however this has mostly gone to waste with the exception of using it for fun and to make some money when he needs it for booze and drugs, and occasionally to stop small time criminals so he can steal their stolen stuff. This all changed when he has a small personal issue. By that I mean a heart attack. Then his best friend for his whole life gets shot by the local drug lord over something he did.

He then attempts to turn his entire life around and go straight, we are also treated to a scene of what his powers can actually do. The movie itself however has very little action which surprised me. With a name like American Hero I was expecting a lot more action and much less drama. It is all well thought out, well planned and well done. At no point do you ever get the feeling that it is forced or even forced.

This is a mixed bag however. I was disappointed in the movie for its lack of action, but I did enjoy its story of redemption and watching the main character, Melvin, grow from loser to less of a loser. The movie isn’t for everyone, in fact I would bet most people won’t enjoy it. Drama fans will enjoy it, everyone else should probably avoid it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Bad News Bears (2005)

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As a kid I loved the Bad News Bears, the 1976 version. I wasn’t old enough to see the original release, I wasn’t born for almost a decade after, but I still loved the movie when I saw it. I grew up playing baseball, and while I was never on any teams like that I have seen some bad teams, most of which got better over time and I always would have liked to have seen a story like this. I always liked a good underdog story. I was always wondering how this stacked up to the original but I was always kind of out off since I was never really a fan of it being remade. That being said I finally got the chance to watch it especially since I do enjoy Billy Bob Thornton.

The opening scene did fill me with some hope, as Billy Bob comes out of a basement drinking some beer rats crawling out behind him, and he tells the lady there are indeed a shit ton of rats down there. He then simply leaves, door wide open and rats escaping, and tells her he has a thing to do and to just call for a follow-up. We then end up at the field where we meet the team.

The team is about what you would expect, we got the token black kid, the nerd, kid in a wheel chair, two Latino twins that don’t speak English,or so we are lead to believe and of course we have the kid with the mom that makes him do all kinds of ridiculous stuff and sued the league to let the kids play in the first place, after all it is the 2000’s and everyone gets a trophy. That is actually one of the main sticking points in the movie between The 2 main coaches, one wants a pay check ( Thornton) and the other thinks the bears shouldn’t even be in a serious league.

The movie is odd to me, I can’t say I don’t like it. Billy Bob plays his role amazing and the kids do an honorable job replicating the roles they are given. That is where my issue comes in, the movie barely counts as an updated version of the movie. Many scenes are practically copy and pasted from the original. The ones that aren’t are pretty much the same scene just slightly changed. While this isn’t truly a bad thing, honestly the original is a classic and it does for the most part equal the original in my eyes, it doesn’t give fans of the original any reason to watch it really. The movie is by no means bad, just not very different. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

47 Meters Down (2016)

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47 Meters Down is the story of two sisters on vacation in Mexico, both of them having their own personal issues. These issues however honestly aren’t even important except maybe to push them towards some bad decisions. Not really a bad decision tho, sort of. They meet two friend guys that invite them scuba diving in a cage to see some sharks, which they do every weekend on their friends boat.  This is actually pretty common. Not the running off with strange men in Mexico to dive with sharks, that is borderline retarded. Just the actual act of diving in a cage with sharks.

So they end up the next day, on a boat with three men they really don’t know, now I have to say this, I was expecting this to get real bad for these two women, and it does. For a lot of reasons, but not these dudes. By the end of the movie I actually felt bad for assuming these guys were complete scum. As the movie goes on tho they are doing typical boat stuff, throwing dead fish in the water, getting gear set up, telling jokes. Typical boring stuff. In fact the movie is actually a pretty slow build. Its cool tho, we will get a pay off right?

Eventually the men go down in the cage and we get to see some huge sharks as the ladies get changed. Nothing odd here, just some general conversation and the dude left on the boat politely keeping his eyes and hands to himself. The men come up, the sister that lied about knowing how to scuba dive gets a crash course on how to do it which the owner of the boat was oddly okay with being lied to about. Now its time to get in the water.

After getting some cool time with the fishes and sharks, and dropping the camera into a shark’s mouth like she promised not to do things get bad. The cable starts to slip, they start to bring it up and…snap.

We finally get to the good stuff. The cage plummets to the bottom. I won’t spoil the rest of the movie, but the rest of the movie has to do with them stuck at the bottom of the ocean, getting out of the cage and discovering they actually need to stay in the cage, because the sharks are still in the water, and oxygen is running out fast.

Sadly while the movie has its moments of being extremely exciting and fun, you spend most of your time waiting for it. Most of the characters are hardly worth caring about and I never much cared if anyone lived or died. The movie was fun, but there are better movies out there. I won’t say don’t watch it, just be aware you may be disappointed. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Switch (2010)

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The Switch is an interesting movie in the sense that it is listed as a comedy but it never made me laugh, but it never tried to. It is simply the story of an ageing woman who wants a baby, and her best friend that is in love with her getting hammered and switching the samples. I do mean HAMMERED by the way, he doesn’t even remember doing this for about 7 years. She moves back to town, he gets to know the kid notices some similarities people make some comments he puts two and two together his friend mentions some comments he made when he showed up drunk at his house and there we go.

While that does sum up the plot of the movie, and it really isn’t a funny movie, that doesn’t make the movie bad. Aniston and Bateman are both great actors and have amazing chemistry together. You can believe their friendship as it slowly builds to the inevitable love we know was coming as it always does in these movies and Batemans growing friendship with the son Sebastian is natural and well done.

The script is also great, the only real question here is do you like the kind of drama with a little humor thrown in, not the kind that makes you laugh just the kind that lightens the mood. If the answer is yes by all means check this one out, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Slumber (2017)

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You guys know I don’t always like to say bad things about the things I review. So I will start with the good things. For starters, the acting was great. Alice Arnolds played her role amazing as did the rest of the cast.

That is it, I am done. If you came here for a positive review stop reading. I have nothing left positive to say. I am about to list why you should not watch this movie. For starters, the story of sleep paralysis has been done in other movies. Those movies have pretty much universally in my experience done it better. They all also pretty much involve the same story. A family goes to a sleep doctor that tries to convince them its all a normal occurrence, finds out it is a demon and tries to help and oh yea, has personal experience as a child that a member of their family had a similar issue. In this case it was her brother.

The demon in this case also isn’t even scary, it’s just a shadow that occasionally pushes people in what looks like a special effect straight out of the 70’s. It is very badly done.  Also it will sometimes lift them up almost exorcist style about a foot off the bed, also badly done. Most of the special effects are badly done. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention the tip off on the demon comes from a janitor that our main character knew was stealing sedatives from the hospital but she never said anything about because she is apparently a horrible doctor.

Now the ending. In the next paragraph I will spoil the ending. I will post a couple of pictures to break up this paragraph and the next paragraph. You have been warned, after the pictures I AM GOING TO SPOIL THE ENDING IN THE PARAGRAPH AFTER THE PICTURES, STOP READING NOW TO AVOID THIS, AND MAY THE GAMING GODS BRING YOU GLORY.

Ok seriously, last chance to avoid me ruining this ending…and here we go. The ending is god awful. Basically we get the family in a small country home where they attempt to save the families little boy, because despite the entire family being tormented by this demon the little boy is really hated by this thing. So they decide to send the daughter off with the sedative thief on a car ride to protect her while the rest stay behind to protect the boy, which hey fair strategy. During all this the demon mostly attacks the good doctor while everyone else is slowly driven off the deep end. He posses the sedative thief’s grandpa because he owns the house, I guess and he escaped him once before and delivers a sick headbutt to the good doctor and attempts to kill the boy. At the last second she grabs a kitchen knife and stabs him. Thats how they kill the demon, a damn kitchen knife through the heart of gramps, who tells her she did the right thing and now he can finally get a good nights sleep.

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You didn’t think that was the end did you? Oh no, we fast forward to a beautiful hotel room and a Skype call between the good doctor and her husband and daughter. Things are good they are playing a game things are grand. Until the lil one starts humming a lullaby, mom freaks out and hubby says he can’t do this anymore and the camera swings around as two guys in lab coats rush in and the big reveal is, she is now in the nut house. Yup a horrible kill scene for the demon and a horrible twist ending that wasn’t even needed that is meant to leave you wondering, is she there because she killed a man, or because she is obsessed with this demon and her job? Thanks for reading this long, so long, and may the gaming gods protect your slumber.

It’s a Disaster (2013)

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This is an interesting movie, basically a couples brunch gets pretty weird. One is a new couple, he a teacher, her the one that has a horrible taste in men. Another couple is forever engaged and twist, she won’t set a date. Watch the movie, you will understand why, seriously I wanted to punch this guy in the face. He is a paranoid conspiracy nut. We also have a couple that is, ok them I can’t explain without spoiling stuff.

The brunch actually starts pretty ok, until things aren’t ok. We find out the couple throwing this usual brunch are about to get divorced. So when the cable and stuff start going out it is assumed this is just a petty move to be vindictive. This is not the case however. What is actually going on is the our brunch happens to be taking place in the blast radius of chemical weapons. America has been attacked.

The weird part of all this? The movie is a comedy. Quite a decent one I might add. The movie isn’t amazing by any means, but it is worth a watch. There also some pretty good plat twist that I won’t spoil. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.