From One Second To The Next and A Fantastic Fear of Everything are both streaming now: As usual, let me know what you think

From One Second To The Next is a documentary I saw on Youtube a year or so ago and it is great. Not happy at all – like – at all – but important. Very very important.

            I’m not a fan of Werner Herzog (although his character in Jack Reacher was cool enough), his documentaries – to me – tend to become too self-indulgent, which may be why I enjoy this one (as much as one can enjoy such a depressing and powerful topic) as I do, because it is short and doesn’t allow him to become too winded on the topic.

            See this on Youtube, or check it out on Netflix, either way, set aside half an hour and watch it and learn from it.

A Fantastic Fear of Everything is a movie starring Simon Pegg, who I am finding it difficult to enjoy. Shaun of the Dead and Spaced is of course a classic and is the only reason I will forever check a movie out that stars Simon Pegg or Nick Frost – especially if they’re together. That doesn’t mean I’m gonna like it (Paul I’m looking at you). No one’s perfect, I get that, so though A Fantastic Fear of Everything may not look like a great movie, with hopes set low, I’m gonna check it out and hope I enjoy it.

The Last Days On Mars: I Liked It: Made me miss Val Kilmer flipping Mars off in Red Planet

The Last Days On Mars is about the last days on Mars for a team of astronauts planning on returning home. One of them makes a discovery and it becomes a race to escape the planet before the evil alien bacteria kills them all. (Yawn)

I’ll be honest, I fell asleep for a few minutes during this one.

            You can tell that this one has a budget behind it – though not much of it was spent on the dust storm at the beginning – the effects and even the acting are all pretty good throughout the movie with a few exceptions, and unfortunately the exceptions are pretty big ones.

            I’m just gonna say it: Liev Schreiber is not a good actor.

            The only time I’ve felt he was a good actor was in Phantoms, at the end, when he was an evil thing pretending to be human, or a human possessed (not sure about that movie), either way he did a bang up job in that department. Every other movie I’ve seen him in he just doesn’t seem into his work, he seems bored and talks like he’s exhausted.

            The movie has one moment of originality, I thought, when the survivors are stuck outside the NASA building on Mars and the bad guys are inside. I think had the movie stuck with this plot, the good guys trying to get inside before their time was up would have been pretty cool. It’s always the good guys just trying to keep the bad guys out until the time is up, so the reverse would have been pretty entertaining. Of course that’s not what happens.

            Also, like Contracted, the illness in this movie is wasted on something that is very popular now-a-days when they could have gone for something much more original.

The whole movie is a series of missed opportunities to be original.

            I know that I need to keep from getting my hopes up, and I do truly enjoy Netflix, but seriously, after seeing this movie I told my wife that I feel like there’s just nothing good on Netflix. Every new movie they get that is remotely popular, or of a big budget, or just looks good, turns out to be a disappointment. My wife and I spend most of our time on Netflix watching TV shows that we don’t get to watch because we don’t have cable. We were up until almost 4 just the other day finishing the most recent season of Mad Men to arrive on Netflix, and that whole season was probably better than any of the most recent movies we’ve seen. The same goes for Bates Motel, which not as good as most, is still pretty interesting and we usually end up watching a few episodes of Bates Motel instead of a whole movie.

            Like I said, we enjoy Netflix, and I wouldn’t bad mouth it because I have no intention of getting rid of it – I’m mostly harping on Hollywood, and not even Hollywood but the independent part of Hollywood.

            The independent movies seem to have lost the nerve to go original, and that’s a sad and scary thing.

Mansome: I Liked It: Because I'll like anything with Jason Bateman and Will Arnett

Mansome is a funny little documentary by the guy who got famous eating McDonalds all the time in that Super Size Me documentary. I’m not a big fan of Morgan Spurlock. I saw the McDonalds documentary and remember kind of being disappointed and that Morgan Spurlock was in it quite a lot, and I know it was all about him and stuff, but for some reason it bugged me that he was filming himself doing these things. I don’t know why, and I know it doesn’t make much sense, but all I can tell you is that it bugged me.

            So the McDonalds documentary was okay, and then his other stuff I didn’t see but heard that he made another documentary or something, and he had a show on TV where he did stuff for 30 days or something? I even saw an episode I think, but just didn’t care about his experiences living someone else’s lives. I’d rather watch Dirty Jobs do it for a few hours than Morgan Spurlock do it for days.

            As though Mr. Spurlock were mindful of my thoughts and feelings, this documentary has very little of him doing things. It has very little of it him at all, just at the beginning, talking about how his mustache is part of him and shaving it off will be weird . . . whatever. He shaves it off and points it out to his son, who proceeds to just lose it crying that he didn’t want his dad to shave it off! This kind of made me like Mr. Spurlock – damn it.

            I don’t get my hair cut regularly. I shave it in the summer and then let it grow, cutting it only if my boss points out how my hair is getting long, or if there’s a ceremony coming up that I’m in I’ll get it cut. The first time my kids were old enough I asked them if I should shave my hair and they laughed and said no and I laughed and went to the hair cut place and had them shave it off – never giving it a second thought. Upon my return home my kids hated it and I felt like an idiot. It reminded me of what Spurlock went through with his boy, and it was really touching.

            The documentary is not meant to be taken serious. It’s funny, but it doesn’t feel like a documentary, more like a running commentary. It’s a series of opinions and comments on how men are more and more becoming aware of their looks and taking care of themselves. Jason Bateman and Will Arnett offer jokes about the whole thing for a few minutes between sections of the film, and of course they are funny but they make up such a very small part of the film that if you’re checking it out for them then you will be sorely disappointed.

            I have a cousin who every winter grows his beard out and I always kid him about how jealous I am that I cannot grow a beard. I can’t. I tried once and my wife said it looked like I had skin cancer. The one guy in Mansome with his award winning beard is too much. Seriously, I get it’s something you’re into, fine, but the minute your beard becomes a hassle – or something like a pet that you have to watch out for while you’re eating or showering, then get rid of it or admit that you have issues.

            Mansome is an awesome mess that is at times funny but often than not, dull.

Now Streaming: Insidious 2 and Iron Sky Director's Cut

Insidious Chapter 2 now streaming. I really liked the first one, while my wife thought it was good but nothing special. I’m anxious to check the sequel out.

I have Iron Sky on my queue but haven’t seen it yet, but now Iron Sky: Director’s Cut is also streaming so I may have to check it out to see the differences. 

Mr. Nobody: I Really Liked It: A movie that is hurt only by the weirdness that connects the past, present and future, and all of it without explanation

Have I mentioned how I’m not going to get my hopes up about a movie anymore? I think I have, once or twice even, well this time I mean it – except that this time it’s not my fault, really.

            Mr. Nobody is an epic tale, it reminded me of Cloud Atlas in the way it bounces from the future to the past to the present at different points throughout the movie. It isn’t on such a grand scale as Cloud Atlas; Mr. Nobody follows just the one man’s life but it follows his different lives depending on different major decisions he may make through his life. Who to marry? Should I have taken that road that may lead to my death or a major crash, or should I have taken another one? My parents are divorcing; do I live with my mom or my dad?

            I watched the movie with my wife (we started the night watching Dark Blue, which was expiring soon, but Kurt Russell as a racist cop did not sit well with either one of us so we switched it to Mr. Nobody) and we got a late start on it so we made it through half of it when my wife wanted to go to bed but wanted to watch the whole thing so we stopped it and started it up the next night.

            Normally this wouldn’t happen in our house, both of us hate stopping a movie and finishing it another night – if it’s a good movie that is, if it’s not, we’ll flick through movies like changing channels – I was fine with stopping this movie because man that first hour of the movie was pretty dang good. I was loving the movie at that point and was pretty sure that nothing could take away from the movie, not even stopping it and starting it again the next night – and I was right, that didn’t affect it at all, it was the movie itself that just sort of fumbled the ball at the halfway mark.

            This movie made me think of Slaughterhouse Five the way the entire movie is a story told to us by the main character in the future – or is it the present? – and he tells a therapist and then later a journalist all about his life.

            The reason I enjoyed the beginning of the movie was because of all the weirdness going on in the movie. I asked my wife if she was enjoying it or not and she said she was and that she knew I was enjoying it. I asked why and she said: “Because it’s so weird,” and she was 100 percent right, it was weird and kept you guessing as to what was going to happen next – but most of all it had me really expecting a good pay off at the end. Slaughterhouse Five is like that, it starts off telling the story one way and sticks with it right up to the end, and the same with Cloud Atlas, but this movie – yes, it stayed the same throughout, even to the end, and the pay off was understandable it’s just that it wasn’t presented in a way that fit the movie. It explains it all and I’m thinking, “Okay, okay yeah, I get it, that makes sense – wait, what? That’s it? It’s over?”

            Then my wife and I start going over the movie, talking about it, and we start asking ourselves questions about the movie that we know now - have no answers, the weird things going on, be them dreams or whatever – were completely pointless, they were just there for the sake of being weird. People walking backwards? Sure let’s throw that in there. The whole argyle world, what was the point, did my wife and I just miss it or was there simply no point other than to be weird?

            There’s a fine line between being weird and letting it stand on its own, and being weird and needing to explain it. I don’t know how to work the line; I just know what succeeds and what doesn’t. This movie fails because at the end I wanted answers.

I wasn’t happy with what the movie felt

was a good amount of information to leave the viewer with.

            One thing about this movie that really struck home about was in one of Jared Leto’s lives, he marries a woman who has depression. My wife suffers from depression, and holy hell I can tell you that it is horrible. I’ve never been psychologically tortured, but depression is what I can imagine being psychologically tortured would be like. I can only speak from my point of view, and I do not have depression, but I am deeply and madly in love with someone who does – as is Leto’s character in the movie, and he really did portray the feelings – at least for me – that I go through. Now, this whole depression plot line is pretty small, which was disappointing to me because it was somehow comforting to see someone dealing with the same sort of things I go through (yes I know it’s just a movie, but still, it helps seeing stuff like that), my wife on the other hand was really not in the mood to see it. My wife is currently better than she was a year ago. A year ago she was about where Jared Leto’s wife is during the movie.

            It was stuff like that, interesting stuff, emotional stuff that was so good you wanted more but it wasn’t given to you. I can’t fault the movie for having so many interesting stories that it didn’t wrap them all up, but I can fault it for being weird for no other reason than to just be weird. That’s a decision it made that – though it did look good and was entertaining – took a little bit away from the movie as a whole when it all became about nothing.

Netflix streaming: I Hated It: Jobs: A movie more concerned about the products than the man

The whole time I was watching Jobs I was comparing it to The Social Network, which obviously isn’t fair because the two movies are on totally different playing fields. However, they are both about two influential men who were plagued with legal problems as well as social problems.

            I knew very little about Steve Jobs before this movie. I knew he started the Apple computer, the iPod and all that stuff was his, I knew he wasn’t a good father and that he didn’t think he needed to bathe. That’s all I knew about him, and in regards to Mark Zuckerberg who The Social Network was about, I knew even less about, but The Social Network showed me more about him, made him a human – well, an a-hole – and somebody that in the end I pitied and made me glad that I would probably never understand a guy like that. The movie Jobs showed me nothing all the stuff I already knew and other stuff that in the end showed me nothing about the man.

            I saw plenty of the products he was making, though. I mean, I didn’t want to keep track of every time the movie showed a computer board, or a computer, or a drawing of a computer, and played music along with it signifying that something amazing is happening here because it would have given me a headache. I think back to The Social Network and though I’m sure they did show the actual Facebook during the movie, for the life of me I cannot recall if they did for certain or not. In Jobs, though, they sure as shit showed a ton of the products that Jobs is famous for making, I mean seriously, they showed it a lot, and the music was so forced and the acting . . . oh Jesus do not get me started on the acting – too late.

To be brief and to the point: Ashton Kutcher seems to be mocking Steve Jobs

instead of impersonating him.

            Now I ain’t no actor, I just know what I like and what I feel works. Maybe some who see this movie feels that AK got Steve Jobs, I mean really captured him – great, fine, but to me, he did not. To me it was like something you’d see on an SNL skit, and I don’t mean to say that it was horrible acting – though it weren’t good that’s for sure, it just didn’t seem real. That guy who played Zuckerberg seemed to me to be getting the guy and he portrayed him well.

            I don’t know if all of this relies on the story, directing, or if it is just the acting, all I know is Ashton Kutcher a good Steve Jobs does not make.

            The guy who played Steve Wozniak, Josh Gad, that guy did a good job, he was funny and believable; pretty much everyone else in the movie did well (although J.K. Simmons wasn’t in it much, and when he was he didn’t have much to do other than glare at AK, which I can only assume was because of his acting).

            The movie was at times interesting; it’s just that it chose to show more of what was not at all interesting. Jobs dropping acid? I mean, is it ever interesting to see a character high on drugs and all you see is their reaction to things that no one else can see? Not to me, and I’d wager not too many others either.

            The movie starts with Steve Jobs presenting the first iPod. My wife sat through this much of the movie (she lasted up to the acid trip scene) and I rolled my eyes while everyone in the room was applauding the iPod and Jobs and my wife said that when it was released it was a big deal, downloading music and all that. I get that, I said, I mean, I’m younger than my wife but not that young, I was around and remember the iPod (mostly I remember the commercials and how cool it was to have an iPod (according to the commercials)) I know it was big deal when it was released, but at this point it hasn’t been released (at least that’s what I understod) he’s showing off the first one ever completed and all – there is no way all those people knew right then how massive it would be. I’m sure some knew, but I just can’t believe that so many people could see it for what it would become before it was even on the market.

I mean, isn’t everything a gamble until it’s a hit?

            One last problem with the film was that during the acid trip Jobs talks – briefly, like a sentence – in a wondering way about how his mom could have given him up for adoption. I am adopted, and you’d be surprised how this one thing can affect a person. There are some who are adopted and they’re cool, I on the other hand – for whatever genetic or natural reason – was bothered by the fact that my mom gave me up. People would talk to me and tell me she probably had a good reason, and I can understand that, I understand it wasn’t easy for her, but damn it it still bugs me that I couldn’t have stayed with her. My adoptive parents are great and all, I got no complaints, but still . . . ya know . . . it bugs me. I have met my biological mom several times, and even my biological brothers, and managed to meet my biological father once before he passed away, so I know I have it better than some, but still it’s a thing to me.

            Steve Jobs, on the other hand, is apparently bothered by his mother giving him up, but then later in the movie he completely ignores a daughter who is proven genetically to be his. No matter what, Steve Jobs wants nothing to do with her. This is totally wrong and opposite to what we’re led to think about him earlier in the movie.

            Okay he’s a changed man – but that change is not shown at all! He just gets big into computers and making money and all of a sudden doesn’t want kids, only to turn around and start a family later on in life? The movie does a very poor job of relaying any of the drive behind these rather important choices. To go from wondering about being given up for adoption and a few years later wanting nothing to do with your child, it is completely out of left field and a better movie would have covered it in a way that made it meaningful and given it the sort of weight such things deserve (I may be alone, but that kind of stuff is WAY more important than how they came up with the name for their company – which made me laugh so hard in how horrible it was that I had to pause the movie I was laughing so hard).

            Like I said, though, this movie isn’t interested in the man, it’s interested in the legend of the man, and with people like Steve Jobs, the actual man is much more interesting than the legend that we got to see and read about on a regular basis. 

Contracted: Still on the fence between "Liked It" and "Really Liked It" let me know what you thought and help me decide.

I’m not gonna get my hopes up anymore. I probably would have loved Contracted had I not gotten my hopes up. It’s an independent horror movie, and that can mean anything. Toad Road? God I hope not. Absentia? I hope so. It was neither, and though closer to – it still was not a knock-out surprise that my wife and I found Absentia to be.

            I saw the preview of the movie, and still I thought the whole thing was going to be something more than what the preview hinted at. My wife did not see the preview and it wasn’t but a short while into the movie – probably around the time the Day 1 title card appeared – that my wife called what was going on. Again, I held out hope that it would all be something original, but alas my wife was correct once again.

            But then, so was I, to a degree, because it was done in a way that my wife and I agreed was original and an interesting perspective of a tired idea that was done very well for an indie movie.

            A movie is good if my wife will sit through the whole thing while having to look away more than once. If she doesn’t give up after having to look away more than once then she’s interested. I enjoyed the gross parts, crying out in discomfort (the scenes varying from massive menstrual blood – like multiple scenes of massive menstrual blood – to teeth being easily pulled out as well as nails being pulled off) but laughing at the same time.

            With everything that was good about this movie, the interesting take on an old idea, and the acting which was pretty good, the fact that it does still just all come down to something that we see way too much in movies now-a-days was a bit disappointing. The other part that hurt the movie was the fact that it takes quite a big step out of reality to keep the story going.

            The effects of the disease on the girl are intense and gross and her acting is well done so that it all combines a sort of tense dread and sorrow for the girl, but the way the story is written is has her reach a point of grossness that it is nearly impossible for the people around her to ignore or just pass off as her being sick – and yet they do, even the doctor reacts to things in a way that is completely unbelievable, and it is these moments that really hurt the movie.

            It may be unfair, but when a movie is really good, the most minor mistakes seem to be much bigger than they are because the rest of the movie is so good.

            I just did not understand why she had to be at the level of grossness that she was at and still she needed to do things that moved the story forward that made it unbelievable that she would even try to do those things with the state that she was in. Why not have her NOT be so gross, keep the story going, and then at the end reach that level when she essentially becomes the monster? She’s a good looking girl, I can admit that, but there ain’t no girl good looking enough (sorry to my wife) that I’d kiss, much less sleep with, when they got the sort of things going on with their body that this girl has – but in this movie, a guy can get over her teeth (rotting? Hello bad breath!), her skin (nothing a vat of lotion would probably still not help). I mean, at this point it’s clear what’s going on so there’s gotta be some obvious signs, smell, feel, taste, that would turn a guy off. Not the guy in this movie though, this guy powers through all that stuff like a pro and get’s the job done (if there’s a sequel, I’d love to find out if the sex was worth it for that guy).

            This movie is an origin story, and through all the bad parts in this movie, it’s not a bad movie, and though my wife said she’d put she liked it, I was on the line between liked it an really liked it.

            My wife said that this was the most disturbing movie she’d seen since The Human Centipede. Yes, my wife actually sat through that whole movie, and I will forever love her for that and will forever proudly tell my friends, family, and complete strangers how awesome my wife is for doing such a thing. Granted she hated it, but she watched it all, and that says something. Of course she didn’t watch the second one, but my wife and I – we’ll always have the first Human Centipede.

            Now I would not say it’s like the Human Centipede, even the gross factor is not the same, but my wife disagrees, so – whatever. Maybe it is, but I stand by my own feelings that this movie and the Human Centipede are not even close to being similar, this movie is gross and all but not like Centipede gross.

            A total bonus of this movie though is Dave Holmes. The minute he walked into the movie I had this smile on my face, and his one scene is hilarious and I had to pause the movie to fill my wife in on the history of Dave Holmes, and if you don’t know it then don’t read my blog, just get out, seriously. If you do know it, correct me if I’m wrong, but back in the day MTV would have competitions to see who would be the next VJ (trying to make it a big deal since it hadn’t been since the glory days of Tabitha Soren) and Dave Holmes actually lost to some weird guy named Dude, or something like that. Anyway, the weird Dude guy did like a few gigs as a VJ but it was Dave Holmes who ended up becoming like a guest VJ and got all the cherry gigs and went on to star in a few movies. Not sure what happened to Dude.

            Anyway, it was cool seeing him in this movie.

            I digress, though I’m pretty much done anyway. It’s not a bad movie, and with lower expectations it would be a pretty good movie, which, I guess that’s why I’m here, to lower you expectations of movies streaming on Netflix as well as blogs.

            You’re welcome.