Review: Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

“I have loved her even when I hated her… only married couples’ll understand that one…”
– Cal Weaver

SYNOPSIS: A middle-aged husband’s life changes dramatically when his wife asks him for a divorce. He seeks to rediscover his manhood with the help of a newfound friend, Jacob, learning to pick up girls at bars. – via IMDB

You know, the more I watch this movie, the more I enjoy it. I watched this years ago at the behest of Natasha, who knows I cannot really stand rom-coms, but does know what type I can deal with. When she told me to check this out, I figured why not? She won’t just recommend me anything in this genre, so it had to be decent. Plus two, the cast is fantastic. Let me tell you, this movie is great, and I grow constantly more fond of it. It is just so much fun.

I enjoyed that this was not some stupid, soppy, desperate love story. This looked at people who have lives that fall apart – midlife crises that aren’t dealt with, cheating, insecurities, all of it. It explores embracing yourself, letting other people in, dealing with issues head on, so many things. I enjoyed the themes of this movie. And yes, love is an extremely prominent theme, but it does not make you want to retch, so that is a good thing! Crazy, Stupid, Love knows what it is and what it wants to be, and goes with it. It is smart, funny, witty, and sweet, and I appreciated all those things.

Let us not even remotely forget the cast. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are absolutely phenomenal here, and have ridiculously amazing chemistry. Really, I could watch them all day together. This is one of two movies where Steve Carell does not grate on my last nerve, and Julianne Moore is, as always, well worth the watch. Kevin Bacon’s moments were also those of pure entertainment, especially as the movie progresses. What a boring man! Also, everyone worked well together. I particularly appreciated Jacob taking Cal out to begin their main training. Oh boy!

There were plenty awkward moments, plenty funny and plenty sweet, but everything works. This is the kind of romantic movie I can revisit without feeling just plain down ridiculous. There is a lot to like about it, and a movie you can get away with watching with your other half without them wanting to slit their wrists. As you can tell, I quite like this one for a variety of reasons, and I can highly recommend it.

Oooh, oooh, before I go. Women across the globe will thank Hannah for not letting him put his shirt back on after assessing his Photoshopped beauty. For science…

Skip the trailer, just go straight to the movie.

Music Video: My OCD – Rhett and Link

Okay, not technically a Sporadic Scene, sure, but holy crapsticks man, I love this! My dear Chop, I am sure that you will find the same type of satisfaction in this, you and I can be so bad. This speaks to my soul. Anyway, I will stop waffling, check this out if you haven’t already, lots of fun and totally worth a few minutes of your time 🙂

Review: The Duff (2015)

“It’s not like a big deal, every group has one, you know the one who doesn’t look as good , thus making their friends look better. The one whose easy to talk to because no one’s trying to get with them.”
– Wesley Rush

SYNOPSIS: A high school senior instigates a social pecking order revolution after finding out that she has been labeled the DUFF – Designated Ugly Fat Friend – by her prettier, more popular counterparts. – via IMDB

All I know about this film is that is was based on a book, and that it didn’t do so well, and got a bit of flak. Having seen it, I don’t get why it wasn’t too popular. I thought it was pretty funny, a little silly and cheesy, but overall not bad. Just remember to check your brain at the door, it might frustrate you if you try to get too complicated. And I haven’t read the book, so for once I am not too concerned about the parallels. In fact, even after seeing this, I don’t think I will be heading out anytime soon to read the book. I enjoyed just watching it, scoffing, and enjoying how light it was. It’s just fun.

Anyway, it isn’t earth shattering or super different, but it is done really well, and carried by a pretty good cast and feels fresh. I absolutely loved watching Robbie Amell and Mae Whitman together. They were just too darn cute, and came across as pretty comfortable with each other. Really great chemistry. Also, I truly appreciated Bianca’s character. She was just so damn cool. I was pleased with the message behind this movie – it wasn’t this whole “change yourself to get the guy” thing, and it also wasn’t all about some dude and how a girl just couldn’t live without him. Man, so over that.

Bianca and her situations can also be so damn relatable, which is really funny and really awkward, all at once. I like that. You can totally get how and why some of these situations would arise, or how one would feel about them. That’s something not all movies get right. I had a particularly good laugh when she achieved something and this went down (we have all had a moment when we felt this):

I also like that the movie is actually a lot smarter than you would think it would be. I appreciate the fact that it successfully balanced humour and heart, as most other movies go one way or the other. It’s also sassy at times. The movie is predictable, but it is fun. I actually enjoyed this a hell of a lot more than I thought I would. It’s a good coming of age movie that is funny, identifiable, sweet without being sickening, and something that I would actually recommend.

Review: The Rosie Project – Graeme C. Simsion

 

Don Tillman #1

SYNOPSIS: Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful” husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical—most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.

Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent—and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don’s Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper. – via Goodreads

Abbi recommended this read for me (of course she did), and it was yet another awesome pick. Thanks lady! I had inordinate amounts of fun with this book. Within the first few pages I knew that this was my cup of tea. We are introduced to Don, and he is weird, most likely suffering from Asperger’s. As a psychology student, I delighted in reading about Don, his Standardized Meal Systems, his rituals and lack of social skills, and how he just managed to step on other people’s toes and not mean to. Simsion did a fantastic job with the writing style, which made this read that much more enjoyable and realistic. It is written in a cold, clinical sense. You cannot help but laugh when you see how Don’s reasoning works, what he perceives to be “minor” social mistakes that he makes but are absolutely unacceptable actually, and get sucked into his life story. Don is funny and entertaining, but he is cut off from the norms of society, due largely to the fact that his skills of empathy are completely non-existent. The moment Rosie entered the equation I was grinning. She was so not what Don had set out to find when he conceived of the Wife Project, and was, in actual fact, not even a candidate, but she sure as hell gave him a run for his money, and that was just something else. Their interactions were amusing, and Rosie’s exasperation at time was perfectly executed. Claudia and Gene were more side characters than anything else, but that also gels with the whole story being told from Don’s perspective, and he is pretty absent around and toward other people. Watching him grow and change, question his life and learn new skills was an absolute joy. I had plenty moments where I just laughed out loud, and other times where Don made realisations that were rather sad. Reading this tried to put you in his shoes, and while we still get the social norms, it was also a great way to identify with Don’s struggle. There were flaws with the book (that end got pretty rom-com like but it was fine, and Don changed a lot of things really quickly with minor distress), of course, but nothing so bad as to cripple the experience. Overall I reckon it is an excellent read that is engaging and zips by, I would highly recommend checking out The Rosie Project.

Rapid Review: Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

“You are not dead until I tell you!” 
– Roger Murtaugh

SYNOPSIS: Riggs and Murtaugh are on the trail of South African diplomats who are using their immunity to engage in criminal activities. – via IMDB

I must say that I enjoyed this one, though I was shocked, too. Now that I am older and I understand the nature of my country, to see a film focused so heavily on South African baddies pre the fall of Apartheid was heavy. Now, if you’re from South Africa, just about any movies that refer back to our country way back in the day are bound to peeve you. They are usually stacked full of white guilt and terribly done, too, or done by people that don’t get the history so it becomes a hollow experience. Well, Lethal Weapon 2  didn’t try to be a very serious drama or anything. In fact, it took South African dudes as the bad guys and their awful racial biases and gave us a comedy. There are ridiculous accents (yes, Luke, it is an age old problem) to boot, though they did get some of the pronunctiation down, and I laughed at the Afrikaans tossed in there. I was shocked at the rate the k-word was dropped because here, by us? Say it in the streets. I dare you. Either you are going to get your ass handed to you or you are going to land up fighting a massive legal battle. True story. The plot was alright here, and I liked the small little things that they did to make it authentic for the South African bad guy – how dangerous the country was then (when Murtaugh went with Leo to “move” to SA) and the shipping containers being “Transvaal Lines” and the Afrikaans cussing… very cool. I actually laughed with Murtaugh at his final joke for the movie – racial punning but it was funny. I am probably going to be shot. I liked the reveal of more of Riggs’s past and the death of his wife, that was a little heavy. I was a huge fan of the partnership between Riggs and Murtaugh, obviously, and there were so many things that made me laugh (that commercial!), which is something I really value in a movie. Joe Pesci is introduced here, and while his character irritated me at times, I think he worked really well overall. It is such a cool thing for me to see how tight Riggs and Murtaugh are, and how Murtaugh’s family has taken Riggs in. He really is a part of them. The humour was good, the action was well worth it, there was some cheese, pretty fucking thin ideas and crazy shootouts and investigation techniques. The plot wasn’t bad either, and there were some pretty intense South African throwbacks. Overall, I think that this holds up really well after all the years, so definitely an action film to check out and enjoy!

For Science: Top 10 Pictures of Luke in a Suit

Hello, all. The Oracle of Film here. I have been perusing your blogs for some time now (some of them are even legible), and I have noticed a trend that I have not been keeping up with. Hot people. Vinnieh’s site has turned into NSFW, Zoë is fascinated with hot men in suits and the IPC… well, I can’t tell if the IPC is also doing this trend, or if he is just doing what he normally does, but still… I seem to be all alone when it comes to the ‘Hot Actors in Suits’ lists. Then, it occurred to me. I’m an actor. I have a suit. So, below, are the top ten photos of me in a suit, hopefully helping you – and any actors watching – learn how to pose in a suit properly.

10th – The Standard Suit Pose

9th – The Scruffy Bad-Boy Suit Pose

8th – (A and B) The ‘I’ve done my buttons up wrong’ Pose.

7th – The photo with a cute animal Pose

6th – The ‘Hey look, no matter how famous I am I can still pull a funny face and be like you civilians’ pose

5th – The Sexy Pose

4th – The ‘How To Properly Have an Understanding of Chairs’ Pose

3rd – ‘FFS!!!’

2nd – The Getting Trapped in an Oven Pose (Classic, amirite?)

1st – Katy Perry

Rapid Review: Life After Beth (2014)

“There’s just like so many things that I wish I had told her.”
– Zach

SYNOPSIS: A hike alone in the woods ends tragically for Beth Slocum with a fatal snake bite. Her death leaves her parents and boyfriend Zach reeling. After the funeral, Zach tries to make friends with Mr. and Mrs. Slocum, but even they reject him, and he’s determined to figure out why. Then he sees Beth. Her parents are trying to keep her resurrection a secret, but zombie Beth provides Zach with the opportunity to do everything with her that he didn’t get to do while she was still alive. But with Beth’s increasingly erratic behavior and even more strange occurrences around town, life with the undead Beth proves to be particularly complicated for her still-living loved ones. – via IMDB

Just sharing some arb scenes from it, I liked it!

This scene… oh man!

Just every scene with DeHaan was awesome, he was so weird.

This one is for me… #ForScience

DeHaan and Gubler were exceptionally amusing together.

Zach and Beth get a second chance… though it is a little dodgy!

Apparently the sweet things aren’t the same anymore when you’re dead…

Undead takes fighting to a whole different level of issues to deal with…

If you thought you had family problems before, date your now-deceased girlfriend.

So I know this ultimately came back with mixed reviews and all, but I liked it. A large part of the movie was based on Dane DeHaan’s performance, and he did not disappoint at all. I absolutely loved how it all came together. I really wish Matthew Gray Gubler had gotten more screen time, but just having him and DeHaan in a movie together was good enough for me. He was such a toolbag – and I totally just wanted to have him grow his hair out a little more! He got some extremely entertaining scenes though, even if he was underused. I thought the cast all did a great job with their roles, and they were terribly entertaining. Zach’s extremely mixed feelings over Beth and her return were funny – he had some serious adjustment issues. Aubrey Plaza was amusing and extremely good as Beth, and the dynamic between her and DeHaan was great. The way the story was told worked for it, too, as it was funny and humorous (for me) in a slightly darker and sillier way. Watching Zach’s plight was comical, and Maury’s reaction to Zach’s relationship with Beth as well as how he didn’t want to hush up about it all was also something that gave me giggles. Beth’s disintegration into full-fledged zombie was something to watch, it was a pretty gradual progression. I thought it was really sweet how Zach grabbed at the opportunity to do all the things with Beth he never got around to doing when she was alive, and their relationship decomposed at the same rate that she was, creating even more hardships for Zach. The Orfman family was just plain down bizarre, but it isn’t as though the Slocums were a step up, either. I loved the way the apocalypse so gradually started happening, as well as the zombie types that were featured. The smooth jazz that popped up from time to time cracked me up. Naturally, the movie has flaws, but overall I had a good time. The end is a little bit of a let down, but nothing too serious. Anyway, Life After Beth is a darkly laughable affair, a different look at the zombie romance thing that seems to be popular at the moment, and well worth the watch if you like anyone from the cast, or enjoy that slightly crooked sense of absurd comedy, even if it has moments where it gets a little slow.

Rapid Review: The Theory of Everything (2014)

“There should be no boundaries to human endeavor. We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there’s life, there is hope.”
– Stephen Hawking

SYNOPSIS: A look at the relationship between the famous physicist Stephen Hawking and his wife. – via IMDB

I have been waiting to see The Theory of Everything for a while, I really have, but we get things late. However, this was something I truly feel was well worth the wait and it was an amazing watch. Eddie Redmayne deserves his Oscar, no doubt. His portrayal of Stephen Hawking was simply astounding, you cannot deny that he went to great lengths to learn all he could about Hawking as well as the disease, and then realise it. There were times where I could easily mistake him for being the real Hawking in his youth. Redmayne had a demanding presence on screen, and he worked wonderfully with Felicity Jones. She truly held her own alongside him, and they had the most arresting chemistry, too. They played off one another perfectly and I was just taken with them every second they were on screen together. Now, this movie does not really deal with the science and the physics of Hawking so much, which I initially thought would hold the story back. However, instead of doing that, it focuses on Stephen Hawking, the man. We all know about the insanely brilliant physicist and his disease, but we don’t really know too much about Hawking, his life, his family, his struggle. The story is astounding, and it is told here with style and feeling. Obviously the physics and science gets touched on – you simply cannot extricate Hawking from his work, but his marriage is the biggest focus of the movie. I know this bothered a lot of people, but it was just fine for me. Redmayne and Jones give it their everything, and it shows. The pacing is fine, and the length didn’t bother me one iota seeing as it managed to fit everything it needed to into the given time. The supporting cast all did a good job with their material. There are so many scenes here that are just shot so well and so arresting, and the way that colour was used and changed throughout the movie also made it beautiful. I had so much fun with the humour in here, it was sharp and witty and fast and sweet, so definitely makes it worth the watch. It was also painfully adorable to watch Jane and Stephen meeting each other, and watching them grow, the changes and challenges they faced, was absolutely stunning. It is a heavy story to tell, and I know people have flaws with the film, and there are a few things that niggle, but overall it is a wonderfully constructed film with an awesome cast and score to carry it. James Marsh really knew how to handle the material, and gave us a visually stunning and heartfelt love story and a bit of biopic in between it, and I, personally, felt that it worked. I was captivated from the off, and never once did my attention wander or dwindle, it was beautiful and inspiring and crushing all at once, even while it gives in to clichés at times, and even though the end was slightly rushed.

Rapid Review: Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

“You don’t have to be a bad-ass to be a superhero, Dave. You just have to be brave.”
– Mindy Macready

SYNOPSIS: The costumed high-school hero Kick-Ass joins with a group of normal citizens who have been inspired to fight crime in costume. Meanwhile, the Red Mist plots an act of revenge that will affect everyone Kick-Ass knows. – via IMDB

After loving Kick-Ass so much, I was wondering if this was going to reek of sequelitis (thanks Tom). I was surprised. It was by no means as good as the first one for me (though my other half preferred the oodles more action in this one), it was not a flop, either. I had a good time with it. There were plenty laughs, but I found this one to be so much less awkward and embarrassing than the first (something I thought was excellent for it), but more forced at other times. Big Daddy may be gone, but it seems that Colonel Stars and Stripes was there to take up the mantle of father figure. He was by no means as organised or as odd as Big Daddy, but it works on some level. I didn’t like the fact that Evan Peters didn’t come back to play Todd (but I can deal, American Horror Story was way more important), and I found Augustus Prew (his replacement) to be really bland. What I did like, and it had me in stitches for hours after, was McLovin Christopher Mintz-Plasse putting all that bondage gear on, and not having the boobs to fill out the rack space (bwahahahaha, it looked hilarious). I was really glad that this one scene that could have potentially ended in rape didn’t go there. It would not have gelled with the movie, and would definitely have left a sour taste in my mouth. There was definitely far more action in this one, definitely some more cheese. I had a good time watching John Leguizamo here, he had his head more together than most, though he humoured Chris way too much. The inclusion of so many superheroes didn’t really work all too well, but they had their moments, and the plot was a little all over the show at times. I think I am being significantly less harsh on this than most people (I don’t get the really bad rap this film has), but maybe because I saw these movies directly after one another over two nights, I didn’t have time to forge expectations, and I knew that no matter what, it was going to be lame, silly, over the top and not as good as the first. Maybe that’s why I still had fun.

Rapid Review: Stretch (2014)

SYNOPSIS: A hard-luck limo driver struggling to go straight and pay off a debt to his bookie takes on a job with a crazed passenger whose sought-after ledger implicates some seriously dangerous criminals. – via IMDB

I hadn’t actually heard much about it, but I liked the cast, and decided to give it a test. As you guys know, I am not really one for comedy or anything, but this was Patrick Wilson guys, come on! Deciding to give it a watch, I found myself laughing throughout the majority of it. What a winner. It was fast, and even though it was predictable, it was funny and witty. Chris Pine makes an uncredited appearance, yet whenever he is on screen he steals the show in a role that is so extremely uncharacteristic of him, and he makes it work. This is typically a movie of everything goes from bad to worse for our lead, Stretch. But he is desperate to make his six grand, settle his debt, and somehow start his life from scratch. Naturally, things won’t be as simple as he was hoping, but alright. Taking a shift with Stretch for the most ridiculously awful evening of chauffeur work you have ever seen is endlessly amusing. Ed Helms was very entertaining as Karl-with-a-K, who kept popping up in Stetch’s mind to have some really whack conversations and I-told-you-so moments with him. There were some awesome cameos littered throughout the movie, what with Norman Reedus, Ray Liotta and an especially bizarre chat with The Hoff, they were definitely worth being featured. Stretch was shot well, had witty dialogue, good performances, some great laughs, some hilarious sequences, some action crammed in, and was just seriously fun overall. I would highly recommend looking into this one if you like some slightly offbeat comedy.