The Hangover 3

I went to the theater today to watch the final installment of The Hangover trilogy. To rewind a bit, I loved the first film. It was made on a smaller budget with actors who weren’t quite huge box office draws at the time. It was an unexpectedly hilarious film from the director of such films as Road Trip and Old School. Fast forward through an incredible reception, huge box office success, and a lackluster sequel that was trying waaay too hard to recapture the magic of the original and we arrive back at today.

After hearing some, quite frankly, terrible reviews I went into the movie with low expectations. It started off with a slow setup to the events that would transpire in the film mostly centering around Zach Galifianakis’ Alan, who has been the highlight of the series thus far but didn’t really steal the show this time around. What starts off being a (fairly) normal trip quickly turns to wacky hijinks as usual.

The main cast played their parts as they normally do with Justin Bartha’s Doug absent for most of the film. There are some strong performances from the supporting cast, John Goodman, Mike “Black Doug” Epps, and Ken “Leslie Chow” Jeong. There are even a couple of tearjerker scenes. The overall story is not terrible and the jokes are good enough to make the experience an enjoyable one, plus there is a post ending scene that makes the film a must see. Ultimately no sequel in this series will live up to the original but this film is as close as its come so far. If I had to rate it from totally limp to fully erect I would definitely say 3/4 hard. Enjoy, much love.

-Heath

Arnold’s Return

I just finished watching the film The Last Stand. For those of you unfamiliar, the film is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return to leading roles since he left the Governors seat. Rewind 15-18 years to when I was just a young boy. Arnold was my hero and my all time favorite actor and remained so until he retired to enter politics. I loved T2, Commando, Total Recall, True Lies, and even Jingle All The Way.

Fast forward to 2012, Arnold did an expanded cameo in the Expendables 2 expanding on his cameo from the first film. I was so excited to see him back in the game kicking ass and taking names and it ended up being everything I wanted it to be. It set the stage for his full fledged comeback in The Last Stand, which I unfortunately missed in theaters. The film was everything one would want it to be, Arnold being Arnold with a pretty decent supporting cast in Forrest Whitaker, Luis Guzman, Peter Stormare, and Johnny Knoxville. The script is decent for what it is (I mean honestly, are you really expecting Inception?).

To sum up, it is a really great flick and is the perfect way for Arnold to make his big return. I can’t wait to keep seeing him kick ass for several more years to come.

-Heath

Don’t call it a comeback!

Gave this a watch this morning and wasn’t disappointed(unless you count Peter Stormares attempt at a southern accent). Arnolds return to film, his first leading role since T3, was exactly what I was expecting, only better. There are no twists or surprises, only what I’ve come to love from Mr. “Come with me if you want to live”, ass kicking and the occasional one liner.

This movie is right in Schwarzeneggers wheelhouse, bad guys doing bad guy things and Arnold is the only one who can stop them, add car chases, gun fights, a dash of laughs and bake at 450 or until everyones ass has been kicked.

All in all I dug this flick and look forward to his next
-D

The Office Series Finale.

It has now been just under a week since the series finale of The Office aired so hopefully this won’t contain any spoilers. I was a bit “late to the party”, so to speak, when it comes to The Office. I only began to watch the first season this past fall on a whim. I was quickly drawn in by the richly developed, surprisingly deep, and very well portrayed characters. It was difficult to not become swept up the aggravation over the early Jim/Pam interactions. It was also impossible to not fall in love with, even while cringing at some of the situations he creates, the character Michael Scott so well portrayed by Steve Carrell.

It was definitely love at first sight, and I quickly flew through the first eight seasons on Netflix over the course of a couple of months. I then caught up with the first half of this past season on Hulu before finally being tortured by having to wait a week, or occasionally more, between episodes which was particularly aggravating during the red herring that was Halpert/Beesly marital troubles. That story arc this season was an incredibly effective way to make viewers more interested in their favorite TV couple that were at risk of becoming stale because of just how perfect their marriage was.

Now, to the finale. In my humble opinion it was perfect in every possible way. it wrapped up all of the story lines in an absolutely perfect way. Throughout the series there was one recurring theme, being the feeling that you were in fact watching a documentary and not a TV show. The finale definitely kept this theme going with many heartfelt moments. One particular scene that tugged at the heartstrings was the first appearance of Michael Scott since the gut wrenching season 7 episode “Michael’s Goodbye”. After a classic by Jim for a prank on Dwight, Jim gives a look to the camera that we have seen on so many occasions, albeit in a different context, in the form of an “I know something that you don’t know and I can’t wait until you find out’ look. Immediately cut to stage left where Michael stands with an almost innocent smile on his face that viewers have come to love time and time again. Dwight says, “Michael, I can’t believe you came” to which Michael responds, “that’s what she said”. Cue a bittersweet happiness over knowing that’s the last time you will hear that character utter his trademark phrase in a new context. The first appearance of the cameo could not have been more perfect.

The rest of the episode played out almost as if the writers were reading my hopes about the last episode while they were writing it. Jim and Pam got an amazing ending, after some tear jerking flashbacks with great voice-overs, in the form of Jim finally going back to his dream job at AthLead/AthLeap. It was beautiful. There was also an incredible final quote from Ed Helms’ Andy Bernard that was something to the effect of, “why can’t there be some way to know that you’re living the good old days before you have to leave them?’ Cue some tears. The series ended its always entertaining run with a brilliant line from Jenna Fischer’s Pam Beesly/Halpert, “there’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things, but isn’t that kind of the point” cue credits and some serious feels.

If you found this post overly gushy or sentimental, that’s because it was supposed to be. I have very strong feelings about this show and this episode in particular. In my very humble, yet very cinematically educated, opinion this was the finest hour and 15 minutes of television I have ever witnessed. It was perfect in every possible way and was an amazing send off for the true fans of the show. Good luck to those who attempt to wrap up their series in TV land post The Office, they will be hard pressed to top it.

-Heath

 

Star Trek Into Darkness

Caught Star Trek Into Darkness yesterday in IMAX 3D and felt like writing a review. I’ve never written a review before and one of the reasons my friend and I wanted to start “you don’t know shit about fuck” was to talk about things like normal people, instead of the pretentious asses you often find reviewing films or music or anything they are supposed to be an “expert” on. And now onto the review.

Three of us headed out that day in search of adventure and we weren’t disappointed. Visually stunning, the movie kicked off in high gear, an action packed opening that had me saying “damn!” on more than one occasion and then we begin with the main storyline, which unlike most movie reviews, I won’t go into. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll only give you this: Cumberbatch is the bad guy, Kirk and crew are the good guys, shit starts happening, fights break out, there are some laughs along the way, more shit goes down and the entire movie was enjoyable.

The actors reprising their roles seemed more comfortable in the characters this go around and Cumberbatch gave a brilliant performance and made me actually care about the villain which is a rarity in film.
All in all the three of us enjoyed it and were discussing it long after we had left the theater, which I feel is the true mark of a good film.

I’ve tried not to give away too much in this short review because I hate when someone gives away too many details about a movie, even if they aren’t spoilers, just telling me too much detail about a particular scene can kinda ruin the movie for me. Hopefully I haven’t done that for you.
On a scale of “shitty awful” to “fucking amazing” I’d give Star Trek Into Darkness a Fucking Amazing. Hope you enjoy it as well.

– D