Category: Home Video

DVD, Blu-Ray, Digital Downloads

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Shmee Tours 1977 LA With The Nice Guys!

Shane Black specializes in a certain type of movie, and that type of movie is Lethal Weapon.  You know, two guys against the odds taking down something bigger than themselves.  One is guy is funny and the other is the straight man who might just be too old for this.  The Nice Guys fits very well in that mold, except it takes place 1977.  Though credit were credit is due, no one does Lethal Weapon better than Shane Black.

The movie begins with hired muscle Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) ‘convincing’ PI Holland March (Ryan Gosling) to stop bothering Amelia Kuttner (Margaret Qualley).  March quickly complies because he was actually looking for porn star Misty Mountains (Murielle Telio), who he knows is dead, but he is making a quick buck off Misty’s aunt, so he was just tracking down Misty’s friends to make it look like he was working.  It turns out a lot of Amelia’s friends are dead.  Of course this all leads down a crazy rabbit hole neither Healy or March are prepared for.

The time and the place of the film do help The Nice Guys feel a little different from Black’s other action comedies, but in all honestly, I knew what I was in for as soon as I started the movie.  It would be like expecting something new from a Guy Ritchie gangster film.  They are all the same, but they are also all very good.  If you do something well and people like it, why try and reinvent the wheel.

Crowe and Gosling were perfect for this film.  They are both talented actors who nailed their roles.  Crowe’s Healy is an old pro who wants to do his job well and get things done the right way.  While Gosling’s March is just trying to get paid while getting as many free drinks as he can, but that doesn’t stop him from knowing what he is doing every now and than.  Much like other Shane Black films all the women in this film were pretty much props with the exception of Angourie Rice who plays March’s spunky teenage daughter Holly.

The Nice Guys is a funny film with plenty of action, and if that is what you want, you will be very happy.  If you are expecting something new and fresh, you will have to look somewhere else.  This film is Shane Black doing what Shane Black does and having a good time doing it, and I had a good time watching it.  One word of warning though, since the background of this movie is the 1970’s porn industry it does earn its ‘R’ rating.  I would hate for you to say I didn’t warn you.

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Here Is The First Trailer For The New MST3K!

MST3K has been off the air for eighteen years, but that is about to change!  With a new cast and a new channel (platform?), they are ready to make fun of terrible movies for our delight, and I for one cannot wait.  Check out the trailer above then start counting down the days until April 14th!

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MST3K Is Back On Netflix And I Watched Time Chasers To Prove It!

Oh how I have missed MST3K not being on any of my streaming media accounts, but that ends now!  Some classic MST3K episodes are now on Netflix, including Manos: The Hands of Fate, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Eegah, and Time Chasers!  This of course is the lead up to the new MST3K episodes coming out in April, but I will take all the MST3K that I can get!  To celebrate this wonderful occasion I watched Time Chasers.

Time Chasers is about a guy who turns his crappy plane in to a Time Machine, and then sells it to an evil corporation.  Who in turn destroys the world, so he has to go back to before he sells the time machine to set everything right again.  Also, the movie was filmed in Vermont.  Which I have been lead to believe is important.

Pretty much everything about Time Chasers is bad, but not in that nothing happens kind of way, which makes it perfect for MST3K.  The show also includes a fun set of sketches about the robots going back in time to stop Mike from getting a temp job as a janitor, so he will not get shot in to space.  It kind of works.

Time Chasers is very funny episode, though for me it ranks in the middle of the pack.  It is definitely one of the best Pearl and Mike episodes though.  If your life has been lacking MST3K, it is time to let it back in, and I couldn’t be happier!  These classic episodes will make the thirty day wait for the new episodes much easier.

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Why Does X-Men: Apocalypse Exist?

After watching Logan it occurred to me that I had never seen X-Men: Apocalypse, and now having watched it I am angry at Fox, Bryan Singer and Co. for not learning anything from X-Men: The Last Stand.  Now granted X-Men: Apocalypse doesn’t kill any major mutants off screen, and it isn’t anywhere near as bad as the Last Stand, but it is still overstuffed with characters, it has a plot with too much going on, and a bunch of actors that are there just to pick up their paychecks.

I would try to summarize the plot, but honestly it wouldn’t make much sense, but needless to say Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) shows up to destroy the world so that only the strong can survive.  He is like a hardcore ancient Egyptian Darwinian terrorist.  Of course I would forgive you if you didn’t figure that out from watching the movie.  He mumbles about it a little, but he never truly explains why he wants to destroy everything, I just know from the comic books and the cartoon show.

I think Apocalypse is a lot of the problem with the movie.  There is nothing really interesting about him.  He is super powerful and he wants to destroy everything.  That is all you need to know, so the writing team decided to try to add some interest by throwing in the old and tired, “Magneto your not really that bad!”, B plot.  Let me tell you, I never need to see Professor X stare at Magneto with sad puppy-dog eyes ever again.  They also threw in just about every fan requested mutant they could, but none of them are given any screen time, so they are all wasted.

You could tell Isaac gave Apocalypse everything he had, but his costume and makeup made him look like an evil Smurf, not the biggest X-Men villain of all time.  Not to mention Isaac isn’t that tall, so other characters were towering over him.  Apocalypse is supposed to be huge.  This would have been fine ten years ago, and I generally commend teams for using CG sparingly, but Apocalypse should have been a CG character.  It also didn’t help that Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence looked like they were falling asleep the whole time.  It is probably hard being in what you know is going to be a bad movie, but please don’t make it worse by phoning it in.

Luckily Bryan Singer is a better director than Brett Ratner and Gavin Hood, so X-Men: Apocalypse is better than The Last Stand and Origins Wolverine, but it is worse than the rest of the X-Men films.  X-Men was on a good streak too.  It seemed that they had learned from Ratner’s mistakes, only to fall victim to the same traps.  More is not better, and everyone should have known better.  That way X-Men: Apocalypse wouldn’t have had to exist.

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Arrival Isn’t The Movie I Thought It Was!

After Sicario I should have known that Denis Villeneuve doesn’t like to conform to conventions, but I just assumed I knew how Arrival was going to turn out before I watched it.  I was so sure it would just be a tense movie about Amy Adams trying to talk to aliens, and to an extent I was right, but I was also completely wrong.

Amy Adams plays linguist Louise Banks who is so good at her job that she is the first person the Army calls when beings from another world show up.   The Army is hoping that she can find a way to communicate with these aliens.  She of course takes on the task even though she is haunted by the death of her daughter.  She is teamed up with a charming scientist named Ian Donnelly played by Jeremy Renner.

I don’t want to give anything away, but this movie is all about the ending.  It is almost impossible to talk about without discussing how the film ends.  It is almost like an early M. Night Shyamalan film where the ending changes everything, so that just leaves me with what the trailers show.  Which is squid-like aliens and whiteboards.  You will see a lot of those two things in this movie, along with Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.  I will say it was very nice to see a movie with aliens that didn’t involve a bunch of shooting.  It was refreshing that everyone’s first thought was, “Let’s try to talk to these squids!”.

While the movie had a lot of talented actors in it, this movie belonged to Amy Adams.  She must have had like 80% of the screen time.  Thankfully she is very talented, so she is a joy to watch.  Renner, Whitaker and Co. are pretty much there as human props for her to play off of, and they do their job well.

This movie is kind of a slow burn, but it pays off in the end.  I am a big fan of original Sci-Fi, and Amy Adams gives a great performance, so this film is well worth watching.  Next time however, I am not going to let Villeneuve catch me off guard!  Though his next movie is Blade Runner 2049, so … maybe he will?