The Visit Review

I was so not excited for this movie. I'll admit that I haven't seen every single one of M. Night Shyamalan's films, but his last few were so bad that I had completely given up on him as a writer and director. The Happening? The Last Airbender? After Earth? Oh my freaking gosh. I still get a bad taste in my mouth whenever I think of those movies. And to think that this is the same director that gave us The Sixth Sense? What in the world happened to this dude? I think I'm going to subscribe to the theory given by Jeremy Jahns. I think Shyamalan was abducted by aliens and was replaced by this other robot Shyamalan who couldn't make a movie to save his life. However, there was the hope that this movie was going to be his comeback film. But that's what people have been hoping for several movies now after mediocre reactions at best to movies like The Village and Lady in the Water, but things just kept getting worse. The trailer for The Visit looked interesting. But then it said "directed by M. Night Shyamalan" and I just checked out. Early reviews came in as positive. But I still wasn't buying it because plenty of later reviews counteracted that as the movie is struggling to stay above water with it's Rotten Tomatoes score. But since reviewing movies is what I do, I went to see it anyways. At the very least people need to know my opinion of Shyamalan's latest. And do you know what? I was shocked. This is actually a pretty good movie. Shyamalan just might be back!

I don't want to spoil too much of this premise, so I'm just going to let you know the basics. This is a found footage horror movie. Or at least that's what this is labeled as. This felt more like a thriller than a horror, but meh. Semantics. The movie follows two kids who are going to visit their grandparents for a week so that their mom can go on a vacation with this other guy who is not their dad (he left them). The daughter has decided that she is going to make a documentary of this week long trip to Grandma and Grandpa's because the mom is not exactly on good terms with her parents. So she is filming everything and thus we get our found footage angle of the movie. I'll talk more about the found footage aspect of it in a bit. Everything seems all hunky dory at first. The internet isn't very good. They don't have cell reception. But it's just a week at the grandparents. Nothing bad is going to happen, right? Ha ha! Not. We quickly learn that grandma is not quite right in the head. Grandpa tells the kids that bedtime is 9:30 because they are old. So the kids are up in their room, not being tired and suddenly they realize that bedtime is 9:30 because that's when Grandma goes crazy. This is all just the first night at the grandparents. We got a whole week of movie to make it through and I will let the rest of the week be a surprise.

Found footage. Let's talk about that first. This is a genre that was initially clever and unique. I liked it. But then studios realized that it is super cheap to make a found footage movie and thus it got used over and over and over and over to the point where it was no longer clever and unique, but rather was old and annoying. I still love Cloverfield and Chronicle. Those are two excellent movies where found footage was done really well and added to the plot. Cloverfield without found footage would be lame. Chronicle without found footage would've worked, but not quite as well. But now all the recent found footage movies are lame because found footage is useless. Earth to Echo? No reason for the kids to film their footage. Project Almanac? Same thing. These movies actually could've been a lot better without the found footage. Thus I am extremely picky nowadays when it comes to found footage. Did The Visit need to be found footage? No, it didn't. Shyamalan could've done without found footage in this movie and it would've been a bit better I think. But if you decide to do found footage, at the very least do it right. Shyamalan does it right. Some found footage movies will have extra noise and music that wouldn't exist if you made a your own video. That's dumb. This movie didn't have that. Also, a girl deciding to do a documentary of the week at her grandparents' house was a legit excuse to do it. Yes, there were some times where they should've just put down the camera and run. Some footage was also a bit too professional for her age. But overall it wasn't bad.

I also mentioned that this movie felt more like a thriller than a horror to me. I said that because this really isn't a super scary movie. For most of the first half of the movie, the sequences are light-hearted and even fun. The little brother is quite the funny kid. You know there is something off with the grandparents, but the weird, creepy moments are just small teasers in the first half of the movie for what happens at the end. Even the second half of the movie isn't super scary. So if you are going into this movie with the idea that you are going to be terrified from beginning to end, you're probably in for the wrong movie. This isn't me hating on the movie, though. Horror wasn't required for me here. What we had was a really interesting story about two kids that get stuck in a really bad situation and are trying to figure out how to get out of the situation. This isn't riddled with jump scares. It's not super gory. There are no awful, scary monsters chasing them. But it does get super intense in the second half of the movie and that leads to some pretty good thrills. I'm not going to lie, there were moments in the first half of the movie where I was pretty bored and I thought this was going to be yet another Shyamalan dud, but then it picked up and before too long I found myself fully invested in the movie.

What really helped this movie do well were the great performances from the whole cast. It was kinda risky for Shyamalan to decide to have his next movie be led by two young kids since his last two movies were kid driven and really sucked. There was actually some decently talented kids cast in The Last Airbender, but Shyamalan's directing efforts made me think that perhaps they should go back to school and pick a different career. But then I see them in other movies and realize that perhaps Shyamalan was the problem. Same thing with Jayden Smith in After Earth. I've seen that kid do well in movies. But his acting was worse than a brick wall in After Earth. So Shyamalan is going to try it again with two more kids in the lead? That's sounds like a bad idea. But for some reason it worked out really well. I'll do a little bit of name dropping here and say that these kids are played by 17-year-old Olivia DeJonge and 14-year-old Ed Oxenbould. I've never heard of Olivia and the only other movie I've seen Ed in is playing Alexander in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Great find by the casting director of this movie and great job directing them by Shyamalan. Also the grandparents were fantastic, specifically Deanna Dunagan as Grandma. She was perfect as a lovable Grandma and also perfect as a completely psychotic crazy woman, which made her moments as a lovable Grandma rather terrifying.

Overall, I was rather surprised by M. Night Shyamalan in this movie. If we continue with the belief that M. Night Shyaman was abducted by aliens and replaced with a different Shyamalan that didn't know how to direct movies, we can say here that the original Shyamalan is now back. No, this isn't on par with his best movies that he made early in his career, but following those, movies like The Visit are the movies we all wanted and expected him to make and I am happy that we got him back. When he's on his game, the style of movies that he makes are the style of movies that I personally really enjoy and I really hope he's able to stay back on Earth and give us more movies like The Visit. No, this isn't a scary movie, but it's a movie that does provide a lot of really good thrills and has an intriguing story to go along with that. All of this is made even better by a great cast, led by two young kids and a Grandma that just nail their performances. I thought I was going to hate this movie and I was ready to rip apart Shyamalan once again, but I'm really happy that I'm finally praising Shyamalan once again. My grade for The Visit is an 8/10. 

The Flash Season 1 Review (SPOILERS)

If you've been following my blog this Summer, you'll know that I've been slowly (very slowly) unveiling my TV show reviews from this past season. Once they all ended in May, I initially meant to get all my reviews out right away, but that didn't happen. They ended up being spread out throughout the "offseason," which I actually decided that I kinda liked. You'll also notice if you've been following them that I've taken things from a slightly different angle this time around. Previously my target audience with these TV show reviews has been everyone, thus I wrote things as spoiler-free as possible. This year my target audience has been people who have already watched this season of whichever show I am reviewing because that has allowed me to give you all my thoughts from the past season. I think it's better that way because it's really hard to write a review of a whole season while dancing around spoilers and accurately portraying what you thought of it and why, especially as you go further into the show. As you can see from the title of this review, that's what I will again be doing here with The Flash. If you haven't seen The Flash, my recommendation for you is to stop reading this review right now and go watch it. It's really fantastic. In fact, it quickly rose to being my favorite current show on TV. If you've already seen the first season or you just don't care about it being spoiled, then let's continue and dive into the reasons why I loved this show so much.

First and foremost I think it's important to repeat that my experience with movies and TV shows are really different. I'll go see pretty much any movie that comes out, whether or not I'm excited for it. I won't do the same with TV shows. If I don't think a TV show looks interesting to me, I won't watch it. If it gets really great reviews from everyone and thus I am convinced that I might actually like it, I still might not watch it. Not right away anyways. And then there are TV shows that I want to watch that I just don't get around to watching. I've still only seen the pilot episodes of Gotham, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Agent Carter. I've also only seen half of Daredevil. I like these shows and I have plans to continue them, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I could say that I just don't have enough time to watch all of them because watching a TV show requires a much greater investment of time than a movie, but a more accurate answer is that watching TV shows a much smaller priority for me. Also, I do think it's fun to binge watch a TV show after it's been out for a few years, so that's another reason why I don't always feel obligated to watch every TV show from the pilot episode.

What's the point of all this as concerning The Flash? Here's the point. I've been watching The Flash from the very beginning. The week the pilot episode aired is the week that I started watching the show. That's impressive for me. What's more impressive, though, is that I've stuck with it. The other TV shows that I mentioned are TV shows where I watched the pilot episode on the day they came out, but for whatever reasons they didn't make it into my short list of TV shows that I dedicate myself to every week. The Flash did. Not counting sports and news related shows, there are four TV shows that I watch on a regular basis: Criminal Minds, Supernatural, Arrow, and The Flash. Bates Motel gets added to that when it shows up mid-season. That's it. The fact that The Flash is a part of that lineup should say something. But making that even better, after just two or three episodes in, this felt like a show that I had been watching for several years now. I was fully and completely invested in it. It was my show. Adding even more frosting to this right now, by the time we were halfway through, the show had become so good that this was the show that this was the show that I looked forward to every week. Yes, if you ask me what my current favorite TV show is, my answer for you is The Flash.

It's been over three months now since I watched the finale live on TV. In those months, I've pondered on what it is that makes this a great show and my conclusion is that this is exactly what a superhero TV should be like. Growing up I didn't really read comic books too much, but what I did do is watch a lot of the animated superhero TV shows that aired on Saturday mornings. They were a whole lot of fun for me as a kid. They were mainly light-hearted and fun instead of dark and scary. They had great heroes, great villains, great stories, great character development. They were perfect. When I watched The Flash this past year, it took me on a trip down memory lane because it was done in the exact same style as all of these excellent shows from my childhood. Arrow is a pretty dark show and I do like that for different reasons. But I really liked The Flash because of how light-hearted and fun it was. Our team of heroes were all very likable and had amazing chemistry. Much of the focus this season was a villain-of-the-week setup as they had to stop all the meta humans that showed up in the city. We had a lot of great villains and it was fun to watch our team try to figure out how to stop them. In between all that, we had an amazing story that continued to develop as the season went on that set-up our main villain and main conflict that really took off and became amazing in the second half of the season.

Let's talk more in depth about that story because the way they told that story was rather genius. First of all, it's pretty risky in my opinion to introduce the arch-rival right at the beginning of the show. Usually superhero movies or TV shows will wait until later to introduce the main villain. They'll build up their main character and the universe around them before they introduce the main villain. The Flash, on the other hand, cuts right to the chase. We start the show off with the Flash and the Reverse Flash in this duel at Barry's home when he's young. Then we jump to the present where Barry has been struck by lightning and becomes the Flash. His main mentor that helps him along is a man by the name of Harrison Wells, who we have suspicions right off the bat that there is more to this man than meets the eye. Shortly after meeting him, the show does something really interesting. Instead of keeping the audience in the dark about Harrison Wells, we get clues that Harrison Wells is in fact our main villain. We don't know everything about him, of course, but we know he is bad. Barry, on the other hand, doesn't know this. In fact, it takes almost the whole season for Barry to come to the point where he learns what we as an audience already knew about Harrison Wells from almost the very beginning. As more was revealed, I read a lot of comments where people were happy that they successfully predicted that Harrison Wells was in fact bad. Not to take that joy away from those people, but yeah. That was the point. We knew. Barry didn't.

It was very risky to do things this way. I often like to be in the shoes of the hero and not figure things out until he does. It helps build the suspense. If I know everything that happens before it happens, it often spoils the experience for me. But the fact that this worked so well made this season genius. But making this better was the fact that even though we knew Harrison Wells was going to be the villain, we didn't know his motivations behind everything. We didn't know his background. In fact, we really didn't know much about him at all outside the fact that he wasn't a friendly person like Barry thought for most of the season. This gave us enough of the element of surprise to satisfy my desire to not know everything going in. And man, when we found out what the deal was with Harrison Wells, those were some epic scenes. Harrison Wells was more than just your average comic book villain trying to take over the world or destroy our hero. He had some serious depth to him that made the conflict between him and Barry super interesting. This was made even better by the fact that both actors in this duel were fantastic. Grant Gustin is the perfect Flash, just like Stephen Amell is the perfect Green Arrow. Tom Cavanagh is also an excellent villain.

Outside this main conflict, this is also a very deep show story-wise. What I mean with that is that there are a lot of well-written side characters that all have interesting story arcs. Sometimes in a TV show all the side stories will feel like filler or fluff to get the show to 23 episodes. That's definitely not the case here. Caitlin and Cicso complete our main trio. They both work very well with Barry. You really buy the three of them as best friends. Cisco is possibly the most relatable character on the show. He's our super genius that comes up with all the ideas, but he's also the super nerdy character that fanboys out all the time. There's a moment in Arrow actually where he goes over and meets with Laurel Lance, aka the Black Canary and he just totally geeks out that he's meeting her. He asks for an autograph or a picture or something like that. It's fantastic. Caitlin is the gorgeous one. I'm a very big fan of Danielle Panabaker in many ways. But she's also more than just that. She's a very strong female lead with a lot of complexity to her. I don't know much about The Flash comic books, but I have a feeling that both Cisco and Caitlin are going to have even bigger roles as early as this upcoming season. I think they will both get powers just like Barry's powers instead of just being his team that helps him out behind the scenes. I don't know this for sure. It's just a theory, but I'm excited to see where they take both of their characters.

Relationships. This is a CW show, so we have to have relationship drama throughout. Unlike some of their other shows, though, the relationship drama in this is really interesting. Iris is Barry's love interest. The best friend growing up who is oblivious to Barry's strong attraction to her. Now I did say I like the relationship drama in the show. This is actually the one exception. I don't think Barry and Iris have good chemistry as a couple. I think they work better as friends. But the way they went about it, though, was interesting. I was nervous that it was just going to be forced, but it wasn't. Iris is actually dating Eddie the whole season. Thus we get our love triangle. I like Eddie and Iris a lot more as a couple. They were great. But you know that it's not going to end up that way, especially since Eddie kinda... uhhhh... died. That could change because of the whole time travel thing, but we'll see. To be honest, I did like Iris a lot more as the season went along, so perhaps I'll like what they do. Whatever that is. Personally, though, I was an unashamed Snowbarry. I'm talking about Caitlin and Barry with that. They had fantastic chemistry and would work better as a couple. Except for the fact that Caitlin kinda... uhhhh... got married in the finale. Which is cool with me because she married Robbie Amell. I like Robbie. The Amell cousins are just fantastic. But with this whole timeline thing, that could also change. So we'll see. Robbie, of course, plays Ronnie Raymond, half of Firestorm. Which, by the way, talk about a fantastic character. Ronnie having to learn to work with Dr. Stein to make that character work, because they are kinda the same person, is fantastic. I wanted more of them.

I could go on about all the fantastic characters in this season. There's Joe. There's Barry's dad. There's Captain Cold. There's more I could say about Firestorm and Eddie as well as all the meta humans and other villains. There's the Arrow crossovers. A lot of stuff here that could cause me to go on forever. But I think I hit enough of the highlights to give you a taste in how deep this season was in terms of story. Instead I want to talk a bit about the finale next. I said earlier that it was a bit risky that they used the first season to introduce the arch nemesis because the one question you get with that is this was done so well, where are they going to go next? Well, the finale opens the door to so much more interesting stuff that they could do. It gave me confidence that this will be a great show for many seasons to come. But the thing is I have no idea what direction they are planning on going because of the huge cliffhanger they left us on. It was one of those moments that left me screaming and fake crying for like five minutes after it ended. Right when it was about to end, I suddenly saw what they were doing with the end and I started panicking. Please don't end here. Please don't end here. Please no. Please no! No! No!! NO!!! AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You get how that is. I don't like it because it means I have to wait four months on an awful cliffhanger to see what happens next. But I love it because that's what a finale is supposed to do. If the show doesn't have that experience at the end, I feel gypped.

The only red flag that goes up in my mind as I am thinking about this show is the timeline. We learn at the end that the whole season is based on the events of the Flash and the Reverse Flash coming back in time and changing the course of the future. If they run fast enough, they can do this by jumping back in time. This happens several times throughout the second half of the season mainly and so far they have done a great job with it. No complaints yet. But it is a red flag because time travel is a tricky subject to work with. There's some franchises like Back to the Future that execute this to perfection. When it's done right, it's one of my favorite subjects to dive into. But then you get other franchises that fall flat on their face because they didn't execute well. The Terminator franchise is a prime example of a franchise that did time travel so well when James Cameron was in charge during the first two movies, but got too carried away with the idea that the whole franchise is now one big, convoluted mess that makes no sense. Then you have some movies that don't do enough. Project Almanac is a great example of this. The kids there make a time machine and out of all places to go, they decide to go back in time and attend an Imagine Dragons concert? I mean, I love Imagine Dragons, but that was the big plan out of all the places and things they could've done. Really? So like I said, they are treading on thin ice here and I hope they succeed. They have so far. But they need to be careful is all I'm saying here.

So yes, there are so many things that make The Flash an interesting show. This is usually the point where I give out my recommendation as to whether or not you should see this movie or show, but if you haven't seen The Flash, I really hope you haven't made it this far because I spoiled a lot of elements of the show. Instead, you should now let me know your thoughts on The Flash. Did you love this season as much as I did? What are your theories for season 2 and beyond? Let me know in the comments below. Because I am super excited. Season 1 gave me everything that I wanted out of this show. It's a fun, light-hearted superhero TV show that I just had a blast with the entire time. It had a ton of great characters, major or minor, good or bad. All the story lines, big or small, were excellent. It was deep, it was fun, it was fascinating. No complaints on my end. I suppose it's unfair to compare season 1 of The Flash to season 3 of Arrow because they are on different parts of the show. But if I instead compare the first season of both shows, The Flash totally wins out. I don't have a rating system for TV shows, but if I did, this would get a very high rating, because like I said, this show has elevated itself to the point where it is my current favorite TV show. Out of everything I'm looking forward to this upcoming TV season, whether it be new shows or returning shows, I am most excited for season 2 of The Flash.

The Transporter Refueled Review

Did the world really need or want a reboot to the Transporter franchise without including Jason Statham? Heck, did the world even need or want one with Jason Statham? I guess I'm not really qualified to answer that question since I've never really seen any of the previous three Transporter movies. I could've done one of those movie marathons that I've done this year and watch all the Transporter movies before I went to see this one, but I have to be honest. I wasn't extremely interested in catching up on those movies. Is that a bad thing? If you are a fan of the Transporter franchise, please explain to me why I need to see these movies. I just look at the reviews for each movie and the box office totals (or lack thereof) and conclude that this isn't an action franchise that I really need to catch up on. They don't make much money. Not many people actually enjoy them. Yet somehow they are on their fourth movie? How is it that we get a fourth Transporter movie, yet there's so many movies out there that deserve to be a franchise that don't even have a sequel yet? Like I said, technically I don't have the right to complain or judge this franchise because I haven't seen them yet. Normally I don't jump into a franchise at the fourth movie, but since this one was a reboot, I figured I'd be safe. Whether or not you are a fan of the franchise, I do feel I am safe to say that this movie is one you can probably just skip.

I will say right off the bat that this isn't laughably bad or painful to watch. You can sit through this and be mildly entertained. This was the type of movie where I went into the theater and did my best to turn off my brain and enjoy. But I just couldn't help myself. I had to turn on my brain for this movie because I was trying to figure out what in the heck was happening. It wasn't a situation where I felt I was jumping into the middle of a complex story like would be the case if I jumped into other fourth movies in a franchise. This is definitely a reboot and a standalone story. It was just a confusing one that got unnecessarily complex partway through. Things were happening and I didn't really know why they were happening and I think I was supposed to care about the characters, but I didn't, which didn't help matters. As far as this story goes, something happens in the intro. I didn't really catch exactly what happened or what the point of that was. But then we jump 15 years into the future for some reason and all the characters that I think we saw during that intro were supposed to be 15 years older, but they just had different haircuts and thus all looked the same age. Then we go to a dude that was previously Jason Statham from what I gathered and he's having Daddy issues when a random girl calls him for his help in getting from one place to another. Turns out there's three girls and they're robbing a bank and our main dude helps them escape and then he's planning on abandoning them when he finds out that a fourth girl in their little girl gang has kidnapped his dad and apparently poisoned him, forcing our main dude to take part in some sort of confusing plot to save his dad?

Get my vibe? Whoever wrote this movie did a really bad job with the script, the story, the characters. All of the above. None of it is interesting. As far as our characters go, the actors playing them didn't do a bad job. Ed Skrein was our Jason Statham replacement. He was fine as an action star. But I didn't really care for his character. I don't really know why they thought that getting rid of Jason Statham was a good idea. At the very least, Statham does a good job of pulling off a really believable action star and a very likable character. But maybe the problem was that Jason Statham didn't want to do this. If that was the case, perhaps that should've been a sign for them to NOT go forward with a franchise reboot. The other actors are also fine. We have Ray Stevenson as the dad. Loan Chabanol was our main female. They didn't do a bad job. I just didn't really care for them. Then I look at the choice of director and I see that it is a guy named Camille Delamarre. Having never heard of him, I look up his filmography and I see that the only thing he's directed was that Paul Walker version of Brick Mansions? Outside of that, the dude was an editor for other Luc Besson produced action films like Transporter 3, Colombiana, and Taken 2. That's right. They picked a guy to direct who is mainly an editor and whose only directing experience was a pretty bad action movie that no one cared about. Did they even care about making a good movie or was this just a quick cash grab? The movie only made $9 million in its opening weekend, but the budget was only $22 million, so with a little bit of foreign help and a somewhat decent hold, this movie could actually turn out a profit for them.

If you ever sign up for any film class in whatever level of education, one thing they'll always tell you is to look for the good in a movie. Any given movie is someone's passion project. People spent a really long time putting something together that they really hoped audiences would enjoy. So is there some redeeming qualities in The Transporter Refueled that could be praised? Yes, there are. Being as the director is actually an editor, for some reason that made me pay closer attention to the editing in the movie. All the shots were very well edited. I don't know if that had anything to do with the director or if it was just a coincidence, but that was a plus. Along those lines, the movie is a well shot movie and visually is pretty. So yeah, all the cinematography in the movie was great. And if I'm being completely honest, all the action in the movie wasn't bad either. There are several sequences in the movie that are fun to watch. I didn't really know what was going on or why it was going on. I still thing all the writing in the movie was putrid and the actors, while not bad, didn't do enough to make me care for them, which could partially be blamed on poorly written characters. But the action sequences were done well. It made me think that if the people attached to this project actually put more effort into the story, the characters, the script, etc, this could've been a decent movie. But decent action alone doesn't save a movie when everything else about the movie is crap.

All in all, this is definitely a movie that fits the release date. There's a lot of movies that come out in late August or early September that really just aren't worth your time. This year there's been several action movies that have come out in this time period that have tried to be the next cool action movie, but in every single case except for American Ultra, I have made the recommendation that you should check out Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation instead of seeing this movie and I'm glad that this advice has been followed because after over a month of being in theaters, that movie is still in the top 5 at the box office. Once again, that's the same story with The Transporter Refueled. Don't bother with this. Yes, it's better than Hitman: Agent 47, but that's not a high bar as even The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is a far superior movie, which is rather embarrassing. Sure, some of the action sequences are fun to watch. No, this is not a painfully bad movie. But it's just not worth your time. It's a very forgettable movie. After a really busy weekend, I finally got around to seeing this on Saturday night and even though it's been less than 48 hours, I still struggled to remember what I did and didn't like about the movie. It's that forgettable. So please. Do yourself a favor and watch something else. My grade for The Transporter Refueled is a 5/10.

Movie Preview: September 2015

The Summer for Hollywood is officially over and if you read my August preview, you'll know that I wasn't surprised at all that the Summer ended with a whimper. No new August release outside Straight Outta Compton could do anything, thus the N.W.A biopic ruled for three of the four weekends and it only took a measly $13 million to win that final weekend. In fact, the month was so bad that Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, a July release, remained in the top three for the whole month. In fact, in Calendar grosses, four of the top six movies in August were July releases. Outside Straight Outta Compton, the only other movie to break that top six was Fantastic Four, but even that was a colossal failure as it could only muster up just over $50 million for the month. In comparison the previous two attempts at that franchise still both made over $130 million with all the bad reviews. September always starts slow as the box office suffers from the August hangover, but always picks up at the end of the month. This September, the opening weekend record for a September release is set to be broken... twice. Plus, it's the beginning of Oscar season, so in the next four months there are a lot of smaller Oscar hopefuls to talk about in addition to the big name releases. With all that in mind, let's dive into this month and see what the Fall opener has in store!

September 4th - 7th-

Labor Day weekend has never been a great weekend for the box office and this weekend will be no different as we get two movies that, at best, will be good competition for the fourth weekend of Straight Outta Compton, which is only expected to be around $10-$12 million for the four-day weekend. The first of these is The Transporter Refueled. This is the fourth movie in the Transporter franchise, which has been written and produced by Luc Besson, who is best known for the Taken franchise. The first three movies kinda made some money and were liked by a few people. The first two were directed by Louis Leterrier, who went on to direct The Incredible Hulk and Now You See Me. The third was directed by Olivier Megaton, who has directed a bunch of action movies that no one has cared about. All three movies starred Jason Statham in the lead role. The Transporter Refueled has failure written all over it. First, it is directed by Camille Delamarre, the editor of Taken 2 whose only other directing effort came with the Paul Walker led dud Brick Mansions. Second, for some reason they decided it would be a good idea to continue this franchise without Jason Statham. Third, no one asked for another Transporter movie. Fourth, it's been seven years since Transporter 3 made only $31 million total at the box office. Fifth, early reviews are in the cellar. Yeah, not many people are going to see this movie and those who do probably won't enjoy their time.

The other movie coming out this weekend actually was released on Wednesday and that is A Walk in the Woods. On paper this looks like a much more appealing movie, especially for adult audiences. The movie stars Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, and Emma Thompson and is about a guy who returns to the U.S. after being in England for two decades. Upon coming here, he decides to go for... a walk in the woods. Yes, I just did that. Specifically he goes to the Appalachian Trail with one of his best friends. Despite such a prestigious career, Robert Redford has never actually won an Oscar for his acting. He's won a directing Oscar, but not an acting Oscar. After being such a big star in the 60's and 70's mainly, he has experienced a bit of a career rival recently. He was almost nominated for his role in the movie All is Lost back in 2013 and played the main villain in the Marvel hit Captain America: The Winter Soldier. He is in the conversation for an Oscar nomination again this year, but it's not for this role. He stars as Dan Rather in the movie Truth later this year. A Walk in the Woods did hit #1 on Wednesday, so it could carry that over to a win for the weekend, which would be impressive considering the light marketing push and the mediocre reviews. But like I mentioned earlier, winning this weekend isn't saying much.

September 11th - 13th-

After what should be a slow as normal Labor Day weekend, the second weekend of September is where things start getting interesting. First up is everyone's favorite director, M. Night Shyamalan, back at it with The Visit. There was a point in M. Night's career where he was seen as the guy who could be the next huge director in Hollywood. The next Steven Spielberg, if you will. This came after his first few movies consisted of such hits as The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs. Now he's become a punchline after a huge string of duds. Some have almost been impressed with how consistent he's been with giving us horrible movies. He followed up Signs with The Village, which received mixed reviews at best. That was followed up by The Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth. None of those four have very many fans, to put things lightly. So what's the story going to be with The Visit? Is he going to continue the trend of awful movies with this? The movie is a straight-up horror film where two kids visit their grandparents and things go horribly wrong. This might surprise you, but the movie is actually receiving positive early reviews. So is this actually a return to form for Shyamalan? Helping his case this time around is he has teamed up with producer Jason Blum for this horror movie and Blum has a whole string of successfully produced horror movies under his belt. At the very least, it seems like Shyamalan is heading in the right direction with this by not giving audiences yet another awful movie.

Those not wanting to give Shyamalan's latest a shot, or wanting to get double the thrills on the weekend, have the option to check out The Perfect Guy. While The Visit is a horror, The Perfect Guy is a thriller where a woman experiences a painful breakup. Following the breakup, a new guy shows up in her life and at first seems like the absolute perfect guy. So far so good, right? Well, sometimes in life things that seem too good to be true often are and that's what happens here. There's more to this guy than it initially seemed like. Thus is where our thriller aspect comes in. Having both The Visit and The Perfect Guy come out on the same weekend could end up hurting one or both at the box office, but there is another movie that stands as a good comparison to The Perfect Guy and that is last year's No Good Deed, which also came out on the second weekend of September. Both movies were PG-13-rated thrillers. Both movies come from Sony's Screen Gems branch. Both have a largely black cast, at least in the lead roles. Both movies are about a mysterious guy that ends up being more than meets the eye. Both movies star a fairly popular lead as that mysterious role - Idris Elba in No Good Deed  and Michael Ealy in The Perfect Guy. No Good Deed surprised some by opening to $24 million. Is The Perfect Guy up for a similar weekend total?

The final wide release of the weekend finds Hayden Christensen playing a character who miraculously survives an accident that should've killed him. And no, I'm not talking about a re-release of Star Wars: Episode III - The Revenge of the Sith. I'm talking about 90 Minutes in Heaven. This seems like a movie that is a combination of two movies from last year, one being If I Stay - which was about a girl who got in a car crash and almost died, the other being Heaven is For Real - a movie about a boy who almost died and said he saw and visited Heaven. Unlike If I Stay and very much like Heaven is For Real, 90 Minutes in Heaven is in fact based on the true story of Don Piper who got in a collision with a semi-truck and should've been killed, and was assumed dead for a short while, before miraculously coming back to life and experiencing a long and painful road to recovery. There's a lot of faith-based elements in this one that could once again bring that crowd out to the theaters. As big as Heaven is For Real? Probably not, but if last month's War Room is any indication, these types of movies can come out of nowhere to do well.

September 18th - 20th-

If the second weekend isn't enough to wake up the box office (which it probably will be), then the third weekend is where things will definitely get real with several highly anticipated releases. The biggest of theses is Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. Ever since franchises like Harry Potter and Twilight were huge hits on the big screen, Hollywood has been constantly searching for the next big Young Adult book series to turn into a successful movie franchise. Many of these have failed, but they scored huge with The Hunger Games and had decent success with Divergent. Another one that was a surprising success was last year's The Maze Runner. Last September it opened to a decent $32 million, but the big story was how well it held for the genre as it ended up cracking $100 million domestically. An even bigger story was how huge it was overseas as it's final worldwide total came in at $340 million, which is actually a bigger worldwide total than Divergent. That of course was more than enough money to justify turning the entire series into movies and thus The Scorch Trials was immediately green-lit. Because of all this, The Scorch Trials has received a lot of positive buzz that will lead it to achieving an opening weekend total similar to Insurgent's $52 million from earlier this year and will have a great shot at holding better than that movie did. That of course means The Scorch Trials is headed for the September opening weekend record, which was set at $42 million back in 2012 by Hotel Transylvania.

The next movie of the weekend is a movie that you could call the first major Oscar contender and that is Black Mass. This is a movie about Whitey Bulger, one of the most notorious gangsters in U.S. history. In the late 70's, Bulger was the leader of the Boston Irish mob who became an FBI informant. The FBI ignored his actions in order to get inside information on the rival mob, Boston's Italian Mafia. This secret deal went on for many years and spiraled out of control to the point where Bulger was eventually second on the FBI's most wanted list, behind only Osama Bin Laden. Black Mass as a loaded cast that includes Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger as well as Benedict Cumberbatch, Joel Edgerton, Dakota Johnson, Corey Stoll, Kevin Bacon, and Peter Sarsgaard among others. What's really caught people's attention in the trailers is Depp's performance as Bulger. Depp hasn't exactly had the best track record recently, but this performance looks like it will be a return to form for him and has him in serious Oscar talks for best actor.

Finishing up the wide releases for this weekend we have another faith-based movie and that is Captive. This isn't quite your typical faith-based drama in that it stars two big name actors, David Oyelowo and Kate Mara, and is more of a Christian thriller if you will. Kate Mara plays a single mother who is a recovering drug addict and gets taken hostage by an escaped murderer. Typical thriller, right? Well, you can probably guess where the Christian element of this comes in. In recent marketing, David Oyelowo talks that he really wanted to do this movie because it teaches that people can learn to find faith in the most unlikely circumstances. Like 90 Minutes in Heaven, this movie is also based on true events. As I said earlier, these movies can come out of nowhere to do well and because of the huge success of other faith-based movies such as Heaven is For Real and God's Not Dead, Christian filmmakers have discovered that this medium is a successful one in spreading the word and so they've been jumping on the opportunity to do more of these movies.

While that's it for the wide releases of this weekend, let's talk about some movies currently scheduled for a limited release this weekend that will eventually expand into a nationwide release. The first of these is Sicario. In Mexico, Sicario means hitman. At least that's what the trailer says. The movie is about the war on drugs on the border between Mexico and the United States. Emily Blunt stars as an FBI agent who is recruited by Josh Brolin, who plays an elite government task force official, to aid on the war against drugs. Their team leader is Benicio Del Toro, who is an enigmatic consultant with a questionable past. The director here is Denis Villeneuva, the director of Prisoners. The movie was released back in May at the Cannes Film Festival and based on reviews there, this looks like this will be another successful, audience-pleasing thriller just like Prisoners. Sicario will also be shown at the Toronto International Film Festival a week before it's limited release and will be expanding nationwide on October 2.

The second limited release of the weekend is Everest. The premise here is simple, just like the title. We have a group of hikers climbing Mt. Everest. This movie is based on the 1996 disaster on Everest where several were killed and several more were stranded. Jon Krakauer was one of the survivors and he wrote down his experience in the book he titled Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster, which was published in 1997 and turned into a TV movie later that year titled Into Thin Air: Death on Everest. Now, nearly 20 years after this experience, we are getting major motion picture being released into theaters based on this. An unfortunate coincidence to this is that during the filming of the movie, there was an avalanche on April 18, 2014 where the death total topped that of the 1996 climb that the movie is based off of. Everest stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawks, Robin Wright, Emily Watson, Keira Knightley, and Sam Worthington among others. After it's week in limited release, Everst will expand nationwide on September 25th, where 3D IMAX will be a huge draw.

The final movie that I will discuss this weekend is a movie that was first shown in last year's Toronto International Film Festival and is finally experiencing a theatrical release a year later. That movie is Pawn Sacrifice. This movie is a biopic of chess champion Bobby Fischer who got caught up in quite the chess battle as he faced a Russian named Boris Spassky. This became much more than just a chess match, though, as Bobby was essentially used as a pawn against the Russians in the midst of the Cold War. Tobey Maguire plays the lead role of Bobby Fischer and the word on the street is that he is excellent in this. An Oscar nomination? Maybe not. But he could put himself into the conversation if the movie is received well. The expansion for this one will most likely be a lot slower than the previous two as it will depend on how well it actually performs in limited release.

September 25th - 27th-

In addition to seeing the nationwide expansion of Everest, the final weekend of September will see four brand new movies getting a nationwide release. The biggest of these is Hotel Transylvania 2. I mentioned last week that the current September opening weekend record is held by this movie's predecessor, Hotel Transylvania. That record will be broken by Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. However, there is a very good chance that The Scorch Trial's reign won't last very long at all as Hotel Transylvania 2 will be looking to take the record right back. The original Hotel Transylvania was quite the surprise hit back in 2012 as it went on to make nearly $150 million after its $42 million opening as it was timed very well for the Halloween season. This movie should have similar success. The whole gang of voice actors from the original are back, headlined of course by Adam Sandler, Kevin James, and Selena Gomez as well as a whole slew of others like Steve Buscemi, Adam Samberg, Mel Brooks, and David Spade. The only other family affair for the Halloween season come with Pan and Goosebumps. Even with plenty of space between those and Hotel Transylvania 2, the later still might be the preferred Halloween movie for families, especially when it comes to parents and their younger kids.

Next up for this weekend is a comedy/drama called The Intern. This movie stars Robert De Niro as a 70-year-old retired man who has decided that retirement isn't all that it's cut out to be, so he decides to get back into the work scene by becoming an intern at an online fashion site. Anne Hathaway plays his boss. The trailers remind us that both of these actors are Academy Award winners, which often means that they are hoping for some Oscar nominations. That probably won't be the case with this one, but the premise and the lead actors might be enough for this movie to attract a decent crowd. The movie is written and directed by Nancy Meyers, who's had some pretty good success with movies such as What Women Want, Something's Gotta Give, and It's Complicated. None of these opened super high, but all held very well to end up with a great final total. That's looking like it could be the case here, thus making this movie a bit of a fall sleeper.

Halloween is coming a month early this year it seems as in addition to M. Night Shyamalan's horror film The Visit and the family fare Hotel Transylvania 2 which was just discussed, we have two additional horror films this weekend that will try to get horror fans out again before the bigger horror flicks in October. The first of these two movies is Eli Roth's The Green Inferno. This movie has had quite the journey to the big screen. It was first released back in September 2013 at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was supposed to be released in theaters in September of 2014, but was postponed due to financial issues and now is finally coming to theaters two years after it's initial festival release. The movie is about a group of student activists who go on a trip to the Amazon to save the rain forest. They are met with quite the horrifying surprise which leads to quite the violent, gruesome affair. "No good deed goes unpunished" is the tagline for this movie and they take that quite seriously as part of the hard R rating is for "aberrant violence and torture" as well as "grisly disturbing images." They're going for the "eat you alive" type of horror in order to scare people, which could be very effective. It could also limit their audience quite a bit as many people might not want to deal with that level of violence.

Those not wanting to dive into the violent affair that is The Green Inferno also have the option of checking out a much lighter affair in Before I Wake. The PG-13 rating could provide a bit of counter-programming, otherwise it would seem suicidal for one or both movies to be released on the same day. Before I Wake stars Kate Bosworth in her second movie of the month (90 Minutes in Heaven is her other one) and is about a young couple who adopts a child and learn that his dreams manifest physically as he sleeps. If the kid has a nightmare, the whole household is in a lot of trouble. The movie is directed by Mike Flanagan, who's only other major directing effort is last year's horror dud Oculus, which isn't the best sign. I say that this could provide some counter-programming to The Green Inferno, but it seems more likely that horror fans not wanting to check out The Green Inferno will instead decide to save their money for next month's Crimson Peak, especially since they will have likely already spent money on The Visit from earlier in the month.

War Room Review

I'm going to preface this review by saying that I consider myself an active, faithful Christian. I believe in God. I believe that he plays a big role in our life. I believe that prayer is a powerful tool. So I should love a movie that is all about the power of prayer in our life, right? Wrong. There's a lot of faith-based movies that I really enjoy. I can even excuse some bad acting and lesser-quality production skills if the movie itself presents a good positive message that believers and non-believers can both appreciate and learn from. But at the same time, there are a lot of really bad faith-based movies that just make me cringe when I watch them or facepalm afterwards. Honestly, all of the movies put out by the Kendrick brothers fall into that latter category. We have five of them now. Flywheel, Facing the Giants, Fireproof, Courageous, and now War Room. When I first saw Flywheel, I wasn't impressed. Facing the Giants was kinda fun because it's football, but it still had a lot of the same problems. Fireproof was atrocious and Courageous was almost as bad. Now we their worst one yet in War Room. I know a lot of people will be shocked at these statements, but I'd like you to hear me out and let me explain why I think these movies are flawed and actually harmful to non-believers.

The story line in ever single one of these movies is exactly the same, which is a problem in and of itself. You have someone or a group of someones who is going through a really hard time. Someone else tells them to believe in God and read the Bible and everything will work out. They do so and miraculously everything works out perfectly and they go on with their lives having perfect faith in God. That's it. Every movie. War Room is no different. In fact, War Room also deals with a marriage that is falling apart, which is exactly the same plot in Fireproof. They're like the same movie, just with different actors and a slightly modified story. Tony and Elizabeth Jordan are a couple that have been married for 16 years and have a 10-year-old daughter. Both of them have jobs, but Tony's job as a salesman pays him a whole lot of money and causes him to be away a lot. The communication in their marriage isn't good and Tony is always yelling at Elizabeth for things big and small and doesn't spend much time with her or their daughter. Elizabeth doesn't want her marriage to fail, but she sees it falling apart. One day while she is working her job as a realtor (I believe) and she meets this hilarious old black lady who tells her that she needs to pray and believe in God and that will save her marriage. Can you guess how it turns out? Yup, you're right.

What really frustrates me about these movies is that these are good principles that they are trying to portray. In order to make a marriage work, there needs to be communication. Both parties need to focus on figuring out what they need to do better to help their marriage. You need to spend time with your spouse and children instead of focusing on your effort on your career. So this has potential to be a great message. But the movie portrays everything as black and white with no gray area. If your marriage is struggling, it's because you are only lukewarm at best when it comes to God. If your business is failing, it's because you don't have faith in God. If your football team is losing, then it is because you don't have faith in God. However, when you turn your life over to God, immediately everything will change. Your business will succeed. Your football team will win. Your marriage will succeed. And all this will happen immediately. NO! Not true. I know this may sound like blasphemy, but I don't think God really cares about the outcome of a football game. I think he will allow you to fail in your career or at school even if you are super faithful. A family built on the foundation of God will definitely help a marriage, but it's not going to change over night the second you turn to God. It takes time to fix a marriage and sometimes a relationship just doesn't work out, even when both parties are putting their trust in God. Moral of the story, sometimes life still sucks like crap when you put your faith in God and I think that's a very important thing to learn that none of these movies even touches on.

Shall we get into specifics with this particular movie? That last paragraph was pulling examples from all their other movies. Technically I will be divulging spoilers from the some parts of the movie, but I need to prove a point here and like I said, they make the same movie over and over, so spoiling the movie isn't really possible, is it? Anywho, if you don't want to know anything from the plot, then feel free to skip this paragraph. Otherwise continue. First off, there is a point in the movie where Elizabeth is getting ice cream with her daughter and the old lady. A crazy man comes to them, pulls out a knife, and demands money from them. Elizabeth is about to give in and give him money (smart move), but the old lady refuses and instead tells him in the name of Jesus to go away. He does and they aren't harmed. I'm sorry, in the real world that would be a dumb thing to do and the old lady might end up dead. Next, we learn that the husband is cheating on his wife and is about to go home with a different girl. Well, the wife had found this out and prays that he doesn't go through with it. The second she prays, the husband gets sick and decides not to go through with it. I laughed. Towards the end of the movie, we find out that the husband had been doing stuff that was very illegal and he should've been sent to prison. Well, because he made right with God and was honest about the situation, he was completely pardoned. Ha! That wouldn't happen.

Get my vibe? I won't divulge any spoilers anymore, but stuff like this happened the entire movie where life just worked out perfectly because this couple decided to turn their lives over to God and it got frustrating because of how unrealistic the situation seemed. It was also frustrating because this was their fifth straight movie full of B.S. like this. Like I said, I'm a Christian and I think these are good principles, but situations like this in real life are a lot more complex and want to see more of that complexity. I want their next movie to end with a relationship failing or the business collapsing or the football team losing all of their games and have the movie show what a good Christian would do despite these continued hardships. But I know that will never happen with the Kendricks. Honestly I think that is a bad message to send to non-believers. I can honestly see someone watching movies like this and trying it out for themselves and coming to the conclusion that God actually doesn't exist because their situation didn't improve overnight. In fact, that's a very common complaint. If God exists, why are all these bad things happening? Why do we have such a crappy world? Why is it that people pray to God and it seems like he ignores them? I want a faith-based movie that satisfies these questions and none of the movies by the Kendricks do that at all, especially not War Room. Their message is that if you turn your life over to God, everything will immediately improve and all your problems will be solved right away and that's just not true.

On top of this, there is some dialogue and preaching in this movie that is simply bad. When Elizabeth first decides to turn her life over to God, she starts out by praying out loud in her closet. Why she decided to completely empty everything out of her closet didn't make sense to me, but whatever. I'm fine with her praying out loud in her closet. But then as a part of that prayer, she leaves her closet and is yelling and crying at the top of her lungs in the middle of her front room for Satan to leave this house and never return. This yelling prayer goes on for quite some time and by the end of it I had completely lost it. I was laughing hysterically. I felt bad that I was laughing at a prayer, but it was so over the top and ridiculous that I just couldn't help myself. Then we had our preaching by the old lady. Boy did she preach. Think of what it's like when you go to some Baptist or Protestant church and the preacher is straight up yelling at the congregation. Yup. That's what this old lady does on multiple occasions. I wasn't in the mood to get preached at. I just wanted to watch a faith-based movie. Let's tone it down movie. Please? Pretty please? No? Ok.

After being officially done with the movie, I did look up some of the reviews and apparently there's a lot of people that are disagreeing with me on this. The movie won the box office on Friday and will challenge Straight Outta Compton for the top spot this weekend with over $10 million, which will be the highest opening yet for the Kendrick brothers. The movie also was awarded an A+ cinemascore and is at 88% on Flixter. So if you've liked the previous movies by these guys, you'll most likely love this one. I'm sorry, I just can't get into them. Yes, the technical aspects of this movie are very well done and some of the acting is decent, but that's it for me. This was also way too long. It's the type of faith-based movie that only needs to be 70 or 80 minutes, but it clocks in at 120 minutes. So yes, this is almost an hour too long. At the very least, they could've kept this to 90 minutes because it was at that point where I was begging this movie to end, but it kept going and going and going and going. Moral of the story is that I am not going to recommend this to anyone and I personally would keep it far, far away from any non-Christians. My grade for War Room is a 4/10.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl Review

Oh man. Sometimes in life you bite off more than you can chew. I was attracted to The Diary of a Teenage Girl for two reasons. First, it was a movie that got praised at the Sundance Film Festival. Second, the critics thus far have praised it as it has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. This sounds like the perfect formula for me. I love indie movies and I seek out indie movies that get praised by the critics. However, I was slightly hesitant going into this one because I did know of the subject matter, but I decided to go for it anyways because I figured that I could handle it and I would come out with a positive experience. But holy cow was this heavy. I don't know exactly where the line is for in terms of what exactly is too heavy for me to handle. Usually I'm pretty good. But whatever that line is, it was crossed with this movie. I felt uncomfortable watching this movie. It felt wrong being in the theater and I wanted to leave. But I stuck through it and luckily I was in an empty theater so playing around on my phone was an option to distract me. No, this isn't a bad movie. But proceed with caution. Know what you are getting into before jumping right in.

That was a very vague paragraph, so allow me to go into a little bit more depth. The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a movie where we get very personal with the deep, dark secrets of a teenage girl's life. Specifically, our main girl is 15 years old and has come to the point in her life where she has a huge desire to be sexually active. It's that weird moment in life where she is not quite an adult but her body wants to be an adult and do adulty things and her mother didn't really teach her the power of abstinence. In reality, her mother isn't the best example in the first place. So this girl goes for it. In the most awkward and uncomfortable way. She starts sleeping with her mom's boyfriend who is somewhere between 35 and 40. This is just a sick and uncomfortable romance. No man who is in his 30's should sleep with a teenage girl, especially not a girl who is not a legal adult. But they both love each other, so it's fine, right? WRONG! Call the cops and get that man arrested for sleeping with a minor. That's what was going through my mind. Now let's get one thing clear. The actress who plays our 15-year-old girl is 23 in real life, so nothing illegal actually happened in the filming of this movie. But she definitely has a baby face and pulls off 15 very well, so it's still disturbing, especially since Alexander Skarsgard is 39, which is 16 years her senior. Of course things get very complicated and since this girl has now become addicted to this sexual activity, she goes off with all kinds of people regardless of age, race, or even gender to satisfy her need for physical intimacy.

Yup. Like I said. This is very heavy. I'm not quite sure why so many people loved this so much, but I have an idea and it's a pretty darn good idea. This is an extremely honest coming of age drama that doesn't hold back. It attempts to dive deeply into what goes on in the mind of a teenage girl as she is going through this awkward phase of her life. We all know how it feels like to be a teenager. I don't need to go into detail about that. But this movie feels the need. Quite honestly it does a dang good job of showing what life can be like for a teenage girl and I guess that this honest, raw, unbridled look at the life of a teenage girl pleased a lot of people. So I guess it could please you as well, especially if you are familiar with the source material of which I didn't even know existed until I watched this movie. But personally I don't need explore in detail what goes on in the life of a teenage girl. I don't. But yet I did with this movie and it was uncomfortable.

In terms of the technical aspects of this movie, I do have to be an honest and say this was a very well shot movie. Our main girl is an aspiring artist and as the movie is told from her perspective, it seemed fitting for random artwork to come to life. There were times when animated butterflies started flying around or fireworks shot off in the background. She'd even talk to some animated characters sometimes and other times the whole movie turned animated for a few seconds. I thought that was a clever way to help paint the picture of what was going on in her mind. I also have to admit that the acting in the movie was good. Yes, Bel Powlie as our girl and Alexander Skarsgard as the old boyfriend did a good job. I just didn't care one bit about either of their characters. There was one girl that I did care about, though, and that was the mother who was played by Kristen Wiig. The whole time while her daughter and her boyfriend are doing this behind her back, you feel awful. She's already gone through a lot in her life up to this point. She didn't need to have her boyfriend cheat on her with her daughter. But then Kristen Wiig figures this out and holy freaking cow was her acting phenomenal. She gave an Oscar-worthy performance. I really hope that this movie gets completely ignored at the box office and by the Academy, but if Kristen Wiig were to get a nomination for best supporting actress, I would not complain.

In the end, this is not a movie that I would recommend you seeing. I went into this movie because it had raving reviews and it was an indie movie coming out of Sundance, but this is one of those instances where I actually disagree with critics. Yes, that does happen. This movie took things too far. We could've told a coming of age story that dove into the life of a teenage girl without getting graphic, detailed, and disturbing. There's plenty of those. Off the top of my head, The DUFF from earlier this year is one of them. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is another fantastic coming of age story from this year. The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a movie that just doesn't need to be seen. I felt horrible while watching it. The girl was talking to the tapes telling no one to listen to them and I felt like I was invading her privacy. It was an awful experience. This is not a bad or poorly made movie, so I'm not going to give it an extremely bad grade, but it's just not one that I think the world needed. I really hope it just stays under the radar and disappears from theaters without many people seeing it. My grade for The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a 5/10.

We Are Your Friends Review

This month we've had the pleasure of experiencing several musical dramas. The first is one that I still have yet to see, that of Meryl Streep's Ricki and the Flash. I'll get to it eventually. The second is one that I really didn't think I would like because in general I hate rap music, but despite that I was shocked that I liked the movie Straight Outta Compton. The third one, despite the poisonous release date, was actually the one that I was most intrigued by, that of We Are Your Friends. Intrigued is an interesting word, though. I wasn't necessarily excited to see a movie about Zac Efron aspiring to be a popular DJ, but I was intrigued because I love electronic music. In fact, you could call it my favorite genre of music. My expectations going in weren't actually super high given the late August release date combined with the poor reviews. Mostly I walked out with a desire for them to make an actual biopic of some early pioneer of electronic music. That could be really good. However, I was also surprised that I didn't hate this movie as much as some others have. It's nothing special, but it's also not the typical late-August crap that usually gets released this weekend.

No this isn't a biopic. It's not based on the true story of some DJ. Instead it's exactly what I said in the last paragraph. Cole Carter, played by Zac Efron, is aspiring to be a popular DJ. That's it really. He plays at a lot of small clubs full of mostly high school students and possibly some young college students and hangs out with a weird group of annoying friends that you never really care too much about until maybe the very end. One night he is at a club about to be up to DJ when he runs into none other than Seneca Crane who takes him under his wing to help him be the next big game maker for the Hunger Games. Oh wait, wrong movie. We have Wes Bentley, who plays Seneca Crane in The Hunger Games, show up to the club and invite Cole to come to a party with him. Cole decides it's a good idea to just skip his DJ-ing gig for the night to go to this party with a random stranger where he ends up on some weird drugs that turns everything into a cartoon and before long makes him black out and wake up on this stranger's couch the next morning. There he is reunited with a girl that he met the previous night before Wes showed up that turns out to be Wes's girlfriend. All is well, though, because Wes Bentley is actually a guy named James who is a big name DJ and decides to take Cole in under his wing and help him be a better DJ.

Based on that, you could probably guess what is going to happen in this movie and you would probably be right, especially if I hinted you in on the fact that Cole has the hots for the girlfriend, who is played by Emily Ratajkowski. Like I said, this is nothing special story-wise, although there are some good aspects of the story that I did enjoy. First off, we do have moments where the movie is trying to teach the audience about electronic music. You get some insight on what it takes to be a DJ. Believe it or not, it does require a lot of skill to try to create the perfect song that will get the party moving. And that DJ board is fairly complex. It's a different type of skill than what makes your typical rock star or pop artist popular, but it does require skill. Then there the moments where Wes Bentley is teaching Zac Efron about how to be a better DJ that will stand out, showing him that he can implement actual instruments like drums and pianos instead of just mixing everything on a computer. These were great moments and I was actually liking the direction the movie was taking me. Sadly these moments were few and far between. Instead of going the direction I wanted the movie to go, it got really boring and cliche. I found myself playing around on my phone for much of the movie instead of giving the movie my undivided attention. Yes, this was fine because I was the only one in theater, but the movie lost a lot points in my book because I got bored.

The acting in the movie was actually pretty decent. Zac Efron himself wasn't anything special. He didn't do a bad job, but he felt replaceable as our main character. His group of friends were the same. In fact, they were really pointless for most of the movie. Things would've been better without them or at least with less screen-time for them. The other two, though, were really good. Hitting it out of the park in this movie and almost single-handedly saving it was Wes Bentley. His character was actually really interesting. He had a lot of baggage that we don't really dive into, but we can tell he is a broken individual and thus a really deep character. Things get interesting in the second half of the movie and I think the movie wanted me to think that Wes Bentley was the jerk with Zac Efron being the guy that I care for, but it was actually the other way around. I really liked Wes Bentley's character and I was hoping things turned out well for him. What made this happen was a great acting performance from Wes. Huge round of applause for him. The other character that I really liked was Emily Ratajkowski. I was really skeptic about her because up to this point she's just been typecast as the hot girl who doesn't need to act because she's just there for people to look at. I mean, she's one of the girls in Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines music video if that helps you understand what I'm getting at. But being that she was the lead female in this, I wanted to see some acting out of her and that's what I got. Yes there were plenty of shots where she wore skimpy outfits and the camera made sure to remind us that she has a really good figure, if you know what I mean, but for the most part she actually acted and was a character I cared for, so props to her. Hopefully she can do more of that in the future.

I told you that a lot of this movie was boring and cliche and I stand by that. However, the second half of the movie actually did get fairly emotional. Yes, it still was cliche, but it was done well enough that I started to care for the characters, even the annoying friends that were mostly useless in the first half of the movie. Yes, I knew everything that was going to happy. There were no crazy twists or turns. But I was into it. I also really liked the thing that Zac Efron came up with at the end of the movie because you know the movie is going to end with him doing a huge DJ gig. That's not a spoiler. That's common sense. And it was a lot of fun. In general, the whole soundtrack of this movie was fantastic. This is where me being a fan of electronic music helped me enjoy this movie more. If you hate this style of music, you might think it's just loud and noisy, but I thought it gave the movie just enough energy to keep in interesting. I payed close attention to the end credits where it showed all of the songs that were included in the movie and I was rather blown away by how many amazing artists were included in this. I'm not going to name them because if you aren't a fan of electronic music then it'll just be a bunch of random, meaningless names that you've never heard of. But nevertheless I'm going to have a lot of fun going through this soundtrack and downloading it all to my apple music library.

Overall, I was intrigued when I heard of this movie because I like electronic music, but I wasn't super excited because movies that are released in late-August are rarely good and the early reviews weren't too encouraging. No, this isn't a great movie. In fact it's boring and cliche for much of it. But I ended up enjoying it more than some other people have. It's not a bad movie. Do I recommend it as a movie that you need to see? No. You could skip this and you wouldn't really be missing anything, but if you like going to a lot of movies like I do, then this isn't a bad option. Zac Efron gives a decent performance as the lead male and Emily Ratajkowski gives a surprisingly good performance as the lead female. Best of all, Wes Bentley knocks it out of the park with his performances as the supporting male in the movie and almost single-handedly saves the movie. Also, if you are like me and you love electronic music, then you at least need to look up the soundtrack of this movie because it's rather incredible. My grade for We Are Your Friends is a 7/10.