Trailer Tuesday: Eddie the Eagle
A weekly look at upcoming films through the lens of a brief study of their trailers. Previous entries can be found here.
What’s the film?
Directed by Dexter Fletcher, Eddie the Eagle is a sports drama gunning for the modest February success of McFarland USA. Coming out on February 26th, 2016, it stars Hugh Jackman and Taran Egerton.
What’s it about?
The story of Great Britain’s first ski jumper to enter the Winter Olympics. (x)
(These official summaries continue to be amazing. Though, I guess it’s hard to really find fault with this one, since the movie is about the first British ski jumper.)
My Awareness of the Film Before Trailer:
I feel like this story has been in the works forever (wasn’t Rupert Grint going to star at some point?), but I had no idea it was actually made until I saw the trailer in theaters.
Does the trailer make the film look any good?
It looks about as good as any other standard underdog sports story. There’s nothing really flashy about the trailer, but it does fit in a good emotional moments that let you know that this movie will tug at your heartstrings.
My Excitement for the Film After Seeing the Trailer:
Underdog sports movies are something of a secret fave of mine, so I would be seeing this even without my weird self-pressure to see all the movies.
Review: Ride Along 2
If I was a lazier person, I would have just copy and pasted my review of the original Ride Along in this space. Some of the details may not have fit exactly, but it would have been good enough because for all intents and purposes Ride Along and Ride Along 2 are the same exact movie.
Every beat is exactly the same. Ice Cube takes Kevin Hart (they have character names, but honestly they’re just playing their typical personas) on a job reluctantly. Kevin Hart acts crazy and messes things up. Ice Cube gets annoyed. The government gets annoyed. Repeat the cycle repeatedly until Kevin Hart and steps up and saves the day. Ice Cube is impressed. Bonding! Curtain. I honestly believe that the screenwriters just went through the original script, wrote down every major beat and just changed the details slightly enough so that they were able to call it a sequel instead of a remake.
“If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” is the common maxim and I can see why the people behind Ride Along 2 were reluctant to tamper with a winning box office formula. However, this is a movie franchise and not a television set. If you don’t have new ideas or stories for the characters, than why should anyone care? Plus, while the original Ride Along was a massive moneymaker, it was less successful on a critical level. I wrote in my original review that I hoped that the sequel would up its game in terms of joke telling, which makes the lazy scripting even more disappointing.
All the moviegoers who paid to see more of the same when they bought a ticket for Ride Along 2 won’t be disappointed. I just hope they’re okay with having it be the exact same.
Final Rating: ★ ★ (★) ☆ ☆
Director: Tim Story
Starring: Kevin Hart, Ice Cube, Benjamin Bratt, Olivia Munn
Trailer Tuesday: How to Be Single
A weekly look at upcoming films through the lens of a brief study of their trailers. Previous entries can be found here.
What’s the film?
From the people who brought you He’s Just Not That Into You comes How to Be Single, starring Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson and Leslie Mann. Directed by Christian Ritter, the guy responsible for the terribly boring Love, Rosie, it comes out right in time for Valentine’s Day Weekend – February 12th, 2015.
What’s it about?
There’s a right way to be single, a wrong way to be single, and then…there’s Alice. And Robin. Lucy. Meg. Tom. David. New York City is full of lonely hearts seeking the right match, be it a love connection, a hook-up, or something in the middle. And somewhere between the teasing texts and one-night stands, what these unmarrieds all have in common is the need to learn how to be single in a world filled with ever-evolving definitions of love. Sleeping around in the city that never sleeps was never so much fun. (x)
Honestly, this official summary is terrible, but all you really get from the trailer is “People are single and flirting and Rebel Wilson is being Rebel Wilson!” The plot is not really explained therein, so I guess we will have to rely on this crap plot summary.
My Awareness of the Film Before Trailer:
How to Be Single was an “adaptation” that seemed to be in development forever. As a result, I knew it was happening, I just had no idea when. Turns out the when is now though!
Does the trailer make the film look any good?
It makes the film look pretty mediocre! There’s a limit to how much Rebel Wilson doing Rebel Wilson I can take, and the entire trailer just being Rebel Wilson gags does not thrill me! My hope is that just like He’s Just Not That Into You, there are 1-2 good subplots in between the six other terrible ones. The fact that my expectations are so low, really shows you how bad this trailer is at selling the movie.
My Excitement for the Film After Seeing the Trailer:
I am a trash person who will be at the first available screening, and we will all have to live with these bad decisions.
Review: The Forest
The January movie-going season is, in some ways, a blessing. After trying to keep your head above water in October-December and their glut of new releases, January comes along with its bare schedule. Even better, while October-December movies require, for the most part, your rapt attention, a January movie is thankful just to keep you awake for the majority of its running time. Mediocrity reigns in January, and it’s the kind of low-level engagement requirement I need to slowly amp myself up to watching and writing movies again.
Which brings us to The Forest, a horror film set in the Aokigahara Forest, an alleged “suicide forest” in Japan that is slowly becoming the new hot place for Hollywood movies. The premise seems simple enough: girl’s sister goes missing in forest, girl decides to go find her in the forest even though everybody tells her that it’s a terrible idea, bad things happen to girl in the forest.
The major problem with The Forest though is that the first two plotpoints take up an hour of the movie, while the last plot point, the one that should be interesting to a horror film takes up thirty minutes. It’s an hour of boring prelude and then a half hour of “action”. It’s an incredibly frustrating sit as a result.
Not making things better is the performances from its leads. Natalie Dormer is laughably bad in this movie in her dual role as the sisters. She doesn’t craft a single distinct performance, let alone two of them, instead letting her hair coloring do a majority of the acting for her. On top of that, her acting in the last half of the movie when she’s being tortured by the forest brings more laughs than screams. If Natalie Dormer wants to forge a career as a legitimate leading lady, than she better hope nobody sees this movie.
Taylor Kinney, meanwhile, plays an American journalist whose motivations are supposed to be an enigma. Is he evil? Is he nice? Is he just a horny dude who wants to bang married lady Natalie Dormer? Nobody knows! A great performance would keep a viewer constantly on their toes and unsure of what his true aims could possibly be. Kinney however is less a charming manipulator, and more a bland, slightly happy dude. There’s no inherent mystery involved with that character, which drains a lot of the tension straight out of the picture.
The Forest is the January movie in a nutshell: it exists and it requires nothing of the viewer who is watching it. However, viewers also shouldn’t expect any rewards from the time spent with it either.
Final Rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Director: Jason Zada
Starring: Natalie Dormer, Taylor Kinney, Yukiyoshi Ozawa, Eoin Macken
Trailer Tuesday: The Choice
A weekly look at upcoming films through the lens of a brief study of their trailers. Previous entries can be found here.
What’s the film?
It’s the newest Nicholas Sparks adaption, y’all! Starring Benjamin Walker, Theresa Palmer and Tom Welling and directed by Ross Katz (Adult Beginners), it comes out on February 5th, 2016.
What’s it about?
The Choice tells the story of Travis Shaw and Gabby Holland, who meet
first as neighbors in a small coastal town and end up pursuing a
relationship that neither could have foreseen. Spanning a decade and
tracing the evolution of a love affair that is ultimately tested by
life’s most defining events, this story features a memorable ensemble of
friends and family in Sparks’ beloved North Carolina setting,
culminating in the question that every couple must ask themselves: how
far would you go to keep the hope of love alive? (x)
My Awareness of the Film Before Trailer:
There is always a new Nicholas Sparks movie coming, so I knew that this was going to exist in a general sense. In the same way that I know that one day I am going to die. It’s an inevitability.
Did I know that it was going to be this movie with all of its life support glory? No, I did not. I would not have predicted that one.
Does the trailer make the film look any good?
The kindest thing I can say about this trailer is that it is a better advertisement for the film than its hilariously bad poster. The second kindest thing I can say about this trailer is that as soon as I saw it, I went apeshit on Twitter and told everyone how excited I was to see it. The Choice may be the unintentional comedy of the year. It may be the unintentional comedy of our lifetimes.
My Excitement for the Film After Seeing the Trailer:
There’s a new Coen Brothers movie coming out the same day as The Choice, and I am going to see The Choice first because I am garbage and I need to see Benjamin Walker crying over a life support machine for two hours while a wise person moans on about love in supposedly deep, but really quite simplistic terms. The Choice is going to be so wonderful and offensive and awful and great!
Top 10 Films of 2015
2015 got away with me in many ways, but mainly with my writing. There was many reasons for the disconnect ranging from the simple answers (there isn’t enough time!) to the more nasty ones (major depression makes you forget about the things you love!).
I still mainlined a ton of films; I saw 195 films in total. However, I wasn’t engaging with film the way I used to do, and over time I have come to realize I miss it. Hopefully in 2016, I will remember what I learned in 2014. That I enjoy engaging with movies on a deeper level, even if the only audience who cares to hear about is myself.
For the time being though, let’s remember the year that was with my Top 10 movies of 2015. Jump through the read more and learn about what I saw and loved throughout the year.
Recap: Blood & Oil’s “Departures”
I had high hopes after seeing the first episode of Blood and Oil. Not that it was going to be good, but that it was going to be interesting. The pilot was an amazing trainwreck featuring a hilarious amount of car accidents, a wrestling match in a pit of oil and Scott Michael Foster’s character being introduced as a man yelling at everyone to step away from his moose. There was nothing about it that screamed “Prestige Television!” but it seemed like with the right tinkering it could be a fun Dallas or Dynasty-like clone.
Sadly, that never occurred, and Blood and Oil quickly became a dull tale about people talking about land swabs and geological surveys. Occasionally, there was a long drawn out murder. It’s as if nobody on the staff got the message that soaps are supposed to be fast paced and insane.
I’ll remember the pilot of Blood and Oil because it hit that insanity button repeatedly. I’ll forget basically everything else because it didn’t.
Rest in peace, Blood and Oil. You came, barely anybody saw, and nobody conquered.
Recap: Blood & Oil’s “Rats, Bugs & Moles”
Last week I was in Times Square, when I saw on ABC’s giant ad screen the Blood and Oil ad playing. You know, the expensive one where everyone is bathing around in oil symbolically? Watching Amber Valetta dive into oil made me feel nostalgic for the days when I had hope for the show. Maybe it wasn’t going to be something good, but I wanted it to be a terrible camp disaster of the highest order. I think ABC wanted it to be a campy smash hit too, and that was why they were wasting Times Square ad-time on a show that is breathing its last metaphorical breaths.
Sadly, Blood and Oil, was never good or “so bad it’s good.” It was just bad.
Recap: Nashville’s “Unguarded Moments”
Juliette is gone, but Nashville continues to soldier on this week as we dive into the deep, dark world of … teenagers. That’s right, the children are our future and they took center stage in this week’s incredibly boring episode of Nashville. Let’s get some answers on this nonsense before we all fall asleep from how dull the majority of this episode was.
Recap: Nashville’s “Can’t Get Used to Leaving You”
Making you way in the world today takes everything you’ve got. Taking a break from all your worries sure might help a lot! Wouldn’t you like to get away? Sometimes you wanna go … to Deacon’s bar he made in tribute to his dead abusive sister! Dun dun dun!
Wait is that not how the song goes? Are you sure? Because Nashville seems really committed to rebranding itself as a country-western Cheers with Deacon as the new Sam Malone, an alcoholic who used to be great at something until the alcoholism ruined it, and his AA sponsor as Coach. Novel idea, right?
Anyway, the opening credits of Cheers tells me that I’m supposed to be into the bar life, because it’ll make me realize that “our troubles are all the same”, but that doesn’t seem to be true in Nashville’s version of the show. Problems seem to be a little more exaggerated in Deacon’s neck of the woods.