Shmee.Me

April 12, 2016

These Sisters Should Have Been More Fun To Hang Out With!

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are comedy super-friends, and they are two of the funniest women working today, so a movie featuring them as dysfunctional sisters should have been hysterical. Instead the result is sadly uneven. When Sisters commits to being silly it works well, but when it tries to slow down and get serious it doesn’t just slow down it grinds to a halt. Like many comedies Sisters falls in to the trap of thinking it needs personal drama to go with its over the top zaniness.

Sisters is about two sisters (go figure) who have to rush to their childhood home to pack up all their stuff because their parents are selling it. When they get there however they decide that since their parents didn’t make this decision with their approval that they are going to throw the biggest party in their old neighborhood’s history. Oh and one sister is by-the-book (Amy Poehler) and the other is a free spirit (Tina Fey) (conflict), and the free spirit is having troubles with her daughter (drama).

The two sisters throwing a crazy party is a lot of fun. The two sisters settling their old differences and dealing with an upset daughter is kind of a drag. If Sisters would have focused on what Fey and Poehler do best, be funny, Sisters would have been great, but instead they insist on shoehorning in all sorts of extra drama, and the film suffers for it. Comedies need to remember that people come for the laughter, so it is okay to cut out everything else.

Fey and Poehler are great when cracking jokes, but much like the movie, less great when it is time to get serious. I don’t doubt that they can be serious actors, but the script doesn’t really help them out. They did the best with what they got, but that wasn’t much.

If you like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Sisters is probably still worth watching, but if you were hoping to laugh non-stop you will be disappointed. It seems like I am always deriding comedies for trying to get serious, but the sad fact is that the inserted drama is always worse than comedy, so they should have just stuck with the jokes. Sisters is unfortunately no different.

April 11, 2016April 11, 2016

Thanks To The MTV Movie Awards It Is Trailer Day!

First up we got the new Suicide Squad trailer!

With Batman v Superman underperforming DC/Warner Brothers are doing everything in their power to make sure that the Suicide Squad is a hit, and I do have to say it is looking very fun. This trailer mostly has longer shots of things we have already seen, but that is alright with me. I think we can safely say that Enchantress is the big bad guy in this movie.

Next we have Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them!

Again Warner Brothers is really ramping up the hype train, and this movie looks great! We get to see a little more magic in this trailer, and we learn a little more background info about Newt. On thing is for sure I will be in the seats come November!

Now how about a video game with Gears of War 4!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3f8VgQ_dqk

Clearly the people over at Microsoft are paying homage to the classic ‘Mad World’ Gears of War trailer with a very somber cover of ‘Sound of Silence’. This trailer sets up the new character and the setting for Gears 4 pretty well, and I have to say after not playing the last two Gears of Wars games this makes me pretty excited for Gears of War 4.

Happy trailer day everyone!

April 7, 2016

Trailer Time! Rogue One: A Star Wars Story!

I have to say I didn’t think there was anything they could do to make the Death Star cool again, but I was wrong! This looks great! I guess Disney is getting even more of my money this Christmas. They way things are going maybe I should just start giving them money on an installment plan.

April 5, 2016

The Paladin thinks they named it Spectre because there wasn’t anything there

This weekend I had an excellent bag of toffee covered popcorn. It was in small bags, tasted fresh, was satisfyingly crunchy, and the toffee flavor was delightful. It was Cascade or River something. I don’t seem to remember the name, but the experience easily made up for it.

Unlike the movie we watched, Spectre. I can remember the name, but beyond that I can’t really think of much else. It was a James Bond movie? It had Monica Bellucci in it very briefly, which was as shame. Voldemort let Moriarty fall off a balcony. Stuff blew up and bad guys were dispatched in the usual ways.

I wonder if the new Bond films have the Star Trek movie problem where every other film is good.. Only they’re on the odds and not the evens? But Spectre is not like Star Trek V: Final Frontier bad; it’s just forgettable, a lot like Quantum of Solace. And its not Daniel Craig’s or the director, Sam Mendes, fault. Casino Royale and Skyfall were a renaissance in James Bond films, that were both more grounded and yet mindful of the past cinematic experiences. I think it was just the story, whatever it was, was just boring.

Really, I just want to talk more about my mystery bag of toffee covered popcorn. It was that good.

P.S. I do remember one thing about the movie – the opening title was THE absolute worst James Bond song ever; even beating Moonraker by a huge margin.

April 4, 2016

Batman V Superman Take Two!

So even though I had middling feelings about BvS:DoJ I decided to go and check it out again over the weekend, and I have to say I thought it was better the second time around. Understanding where all the plots were going really helped out. Plus I knew all the stuff I could tune out. Though I will say if I was the editor I would have taken a hatchet to Batman v Superman.

I love Amy Adams, but I would have killed her whole story arc. It never made any sense. Superman’s mountain walkabout? Gone. He already gets advice from Ma Kent there is no need for more soul searching. Justice League cameos? I would have just copied Marvel and thrown them all after the credits. That would have just left Wonder Woman (okay and someone else too), and that would have been enough. Then if there was anything left that would have smoothed out some of the main stories on the cutting room floor I would have re-added those clips. This movie would have been much better at two hours long.

Anyway like I said, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was actually better the second time, and I am now curious where everything goes from here. Obviously we know the big bad guy will be Darkseid, or at least a Darkseid minion for Part 1, and he brings with him a whole bag of trouble. I just hope audiences will not have to see the movies twice for them to make any sense.