Year: 2016

Art House Asshole, Articles, Review

Art House Asshole : Winter on Fire

You know how when you’re wanting to go to the movie theater and you look up all the films that are showing and there are alway at least three that you’ve never heard of, let alone have any interest in seeing? Well, good news! I’ve seen those movies. I spend most of my theater experiences in art house theaters watching those movies that you’ve never heard of and then never watch. Yeah, I’m that hipster asshole. My goal with this is to spread information out about these films, that way you can decide one of the following. “That actually sounds pretty cool! I want to see that now!” or “Man, I’m glad I decided to go see the new superhero movie!”. So without further ado, here is my article and review of Winter on Fire.

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I’m glad I decided to dedicate this month to documentaries. As much as I like documentaries, I rarely go out of my way to actually watch them. But one thing I’ve always said about documentaries is that it is almost unfair to compare them with Narrative Fiction Films. Last year in my Filmsplosion, I had one documentary on my list. And this year there will be at least one documentary in my last. Documentary has a certain power to it. The power of knowing, this is real. Even when you see a “Based on a True Story” film, it still feels like a movie. Documentaries tend to hit me like a ton of bricks. And this one is no exception.

Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom is a Netflix produced documentary on a lot of different things surrounding Ukraine, but primarily Euromaidan Protests. At the end of the day, though, this film is basically a “How Ukraine Got This Fucked: The Movie”. It gives a brief history of Ukraine from its independence in the early 90s, to basically just before the Russian Invasion. And the end of the film is basically “Ukraine is fucked and no one cares”.

This film is good for the same reason Last Days of Vietnam is good. It gives you a peak into this world that you aren’t part of, and are also unaware of how bad it is. If you have been participating or supporting or complaining about all the political protest happening around the 2016 US Election, understand those protesters are nothing compared to the protesters in this film. What starts as a simple college protest in this film evolves into was would be described less as a protest and more as a full out war. When you see the brutality of the police and the people, it is honestly horrifying. It shows how the police were told to switch from plastic batons to iron batons when the protests were primarily peaceful. There isn’t much to say about the film besides the fact that it is both horrifying and powerful.

One major downside to the film is that you start to get lost in what is happening in the film. For an American Director, Evgeny Afineevsky whom also directed Oy Vey! My Son Is Gay!! (No really), it tackles a lot of Ukrainian history. To the point where it is very easy to think “Oh are we still talking about this president or this president?” or “Are we still learning about the Orange Revolution or is this a separate thing?” The film is painted with a very broad stroke. I’ve seen some people say that the film is only telling one side of the story. I didn’t think this but then again I knew almost no Ukrainian history prior to watching this film. So I was essentially spoon-fed Ukrainian history with this film, and it is very easy to give one side of a story if you are teaching it.

There really isn’t a lot for me to say about this film. If you aren’t following the events, or if you knew about the events but didn’t really understand it, or if you didn’t know Ukraine was a country, then I recommend this film. It gives you a nice one-two punch of quick history, even if you won’t follow some of it. You might walk out with a couple questions, but you will also be much better informed about the basics of the situation in Ukraine. Which is a horribly interesting situation.

Fantasy Movie League

Awards 2017 Fantasy Movie League – Week 1

It’s time to embark on another thirteen weeks of box office hypothesis! The Awards 2017 season begins now!

Sadly, the Reel Nerds Podcast league lost a member this week when Jason’s Farthouse Cineplex shuttered its stinky, elitist doors. Too bad, but more American money for the rest of us!

Apparently, historically, the week after Thanksgiving sees a dive in box office returns, however, The Edge of Seventeen saw a better than expected bump, making it this week’s BP. Unfortunately, no one in this league played it, which is why without that advantage, all our teams hovered around the same total. A PC of 1x Moana, 3x Arrival, 4x Edge would have netted you $69,504,808.

ColoRadJoe claims the first win of the season, while Doctor Acula’s Movie Funhouse claims 2nd despite not changing his lineup for the third week in a row. Fall Champion Radley Cinemas starts this season in 3rd after foolishly believing in Allied while PeterParker, again, begins on the wrong foot, this time leaning on Doctor Strange. He’d almost be last if not for Movies After Ass who apparently is chasing another bag of tacos.

FML Awards Week 1

Episodes, Volume Six (261-312)

Ep. 278: Sea Men and a Little Lady

The Reel Nerds welcome Corinne to the show when they review The Edge of Seventeen and Manchester by the Sea.

Art House Asshole, Articles, Review

Art House Asshole : Welcome to Leith

You know how when you’re wanting to go to the movie theater and you look up all the films that are showing and there are alway at least three that you’ve never heard of, let alone have any interest in seeing? Well, good news! I’ve seen those movies. I spend most of my theater experiences in art house theaters watching those movies that you’ve never heard of and then never watch. Yeah, I’m that hipster asshole. My goal with this is to spread information out about these films, that way you can decide one of the following. “That actually sounds pretty cool! I want to see that now!” or “Man, I’m glad I decided to go see the new superhero movie!”. So without further ado, here is my article and review of Welcome to Leith.

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As a heads up, I’m dedicating December to Documentary Films. Sorry if you hate documentaries and or the month of December. But that’s what’s going to happen.

—

I think horror is a fascinating genre. I think the same thing about Documentaries. When the two blend together, I usually have a good time. This is exactly what happened with this film in particular. Welcome to Leith tells the story of the small town of Leith, North Dakota. Leith was a quiet, nice, and friendly town. No one was really interesting, but they were happy. Then a white supremacist came and decided to buy out the land of the town and turn it into a Neo-Nazi World Hub, forcing the town out of their own homes. That’s right. It’s the same thing that Ray Croc did. But instead of Hamburgers and French Fries, it’s Swastikas and Hatred.

The film is attempting to tell you something that isn’t as obvious as you might think. Yes, Neo-Nazis are really bad. And what this guy is doing is absolutely disgusting. You see him talk about his beliefs and they are shocking. You read what he has written online and that’s even worse. The subject matter of this film is honestly disturbing and haunting. That being said, he never did anything illegal for the most part. The takeaway for this film isn’t “Nazis are bad.” Everyone already knows that Nazis are bad. And as interesting and haunting as the story is, that isn’t the point. If you just wanted to tell a story, you make a narrative film. This was made because the point isn’t that “This is bad” but that “This is legal”. That is what makes this film impactful. The film is showing this to you as a way of saying “This shouldn’t be legal, but currently it is.”

Another aspect of this film that should be mentioned, is that the film isn’t just bashing Neo-Nazis throughout. The film is clearly against Neo-Nazis, as it should. But it doesn’t appear to paint the rest of the town in a glowing light either. You are on the side of the town for most of the film, or at least you should be if you aren’t a Neo-Nazi. But, despite their clear hatred and bigotry, the Neo-Nazis are just living for most of the film. They are flying their flags and are clear in their plan to take over the town. But when a fight breaks out, they are not the ones who start it. The real horror of these people is their control and their organization. At one point in the film, one of the Neo-Nazis says “I want to kill these people, but I’ll wait until they hate me enough to kill me.” Which is scary, but his completely legal.

You also see the town, and rightfully so, fight back and try to stop what is happening. At one point, and spoilers I guess so skip to the next part of the review if you don’t want spoilers, but they burn down one of the Neo-Nazi’s homes. With all of this, I thought to myself, what would I do if I was in the Neo-Nazis shoes. Now hear me out on this. I’m not a Neo-Nazi. But if I was living in a town, where everyone was a Neo-Nazi, but I believed in equality and whatnot, I would be pretty pissed and think it would suck if they burned my house too. At one point at the end of the film, the main guy tells the camera crew “I just want to be left alone. Why can’t they just let an odd old man be to himself”. Which is a good point. I’m not for the man, but the film does show the perception of his sympathy, whether the filmmakers intended that or not.

I can’t remember if it was in this film or another, I watched this as a series of multiple films on Neo-Nazis and white supremacy, but there is a quote that says “The biggest key in fascism is victimhood”. And part of what this film does is give both sides victimhood. You see each member of the town outside of this conflict. You also see members of the Neo-Nazi movement outside of this conflict. The film humanizes the Neo-Nazis to a point that would make some people uncomfortable. It is really easy to look at Neo-Nazis as cartoon villains. But once you see them raising their kids and see them beyond their horrible beliefs, that’s when the horror really sets in. Because that’s when you realize they aren’t that different from you.

Fantasy Movie League

Fall 2016 Fantasy Movie League – Week 13 Conclusion!

With the Thanksgiving holiday in play and opening days set outside the FSS weekend, it was tricky to plan your lineup around what would be the falloff totals for the week. Moana set records out of the gate, but dipped considerably by the weekend, the three days that mattered to players. With its expensive price tag, it wasn’t worth the play. Probably the difference maker was Arrival’s strong hold in its third week. Mid-weekend, Almost Christmas led for Best Performer but that might have been a reporting error. Either way, it too held well and messed with the standings for a few hours.

With the final results in, Radley Cinemas is the winner of the Reel Nerds Podcast Fall 2016 League! For the second consecutive week, he managed the Perfect Cinema, this week being: 3x Doctor Strange and 5x Arrival (also the Best Performer) with a final season gross of $1,138,364,647! The Nerdy will grace his shelf for the next 13 weeks.

ColoRadJoe and Jason’s Farthouse Cineplex join him in the Billion Dollar Cineplex club after a close fought season at 2nd & 3rd place.

Despite stumbling to start the season, PeterParker climbed his way to 4th Place to finish, followed close in 5th by Doctor Acula’s Movie Funhouse who didn’t change his lineup at all from last week and scored 2nd place for Week 13.

Detonatormonkey was not far behind this pack in 6th, and little farther back is mid-season addition Tyler Perry’s A Medea Cineplex in 7th not having played all the weeks. Lastly, Movies After Ass is our league Taco having disappeared since week… whatever. Hopefully the consolation prize of actual tacos will bring him back to play the winter season.

Hopefully everyone had fun will return for another 13 weeks that’ll include what will surely be a crazy Rogue One release and a chance to wrestle the Nerdy from Brad’s cold, dead hands!

FML Fall Week 13

Episodes, Volume Six (261-312)

Ep. 277: Moanamatopodcast

The Reel Nerds celebrate Henry’s birthday by reviewing Moana and Allied.

Art House Asshole, Articles, Review

Art House Asshole : Incendies

You know how when you’re wanting to go to the movie theater and you look up all the films that are showing and there are alway at least three that you’ve never heard of, let alone have any interest in seeing? Well, good news! I’ve seen those movies. I spend most of my theater experiences in art house theaters watching those movies that you’ve never heard of and then never watch. Yeah, I’m that hipster asshole. My goal with this is to spread information out about these films, that way you can decide one of the following. “That actually sounds pretty cool! I want to see that now!” or “Man, I’m glad I decided to go see the new superhero movie!”. So without further ado, here is my article and review of Incendies.

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Denis Villeneuve is something else. I decided to watch this film after seeing Villeneuve’s most recent release Arrival. I will talk more about that film on the podcast, but I watched this thinking “There is no way he can top Arrival”. I was wrong. I’ve seen all but two of Villeneuve’s films, those being his first two Maelström and Polytechnique. And this film, Incendies, is without a doubt the best I’ve seen thus far. The film is also his darkest film, which is saying something as he has made films on child murder, actors, and the cartel. Villeneuve is, in my opinion, the only “non-established” director who I believe will be known as one of the greatest directors of all time by his death.

Incendies was what many people consider Villeneuve’s breakout film, earning him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It is also the last film Villeneuve made before transitioning into making English Language films. It is safe to say that this film is what got him Prisoners and launched his career into not the mainstream but just below it. And if you have seen his other films, you can see that this is, in fact, a Villeneuve film.

Incendies follows two twins, who after their mother’s death, attempt to find their secret brother so he can know of her death and have some kind of closure. The film follows the twins as the go to the Middle East and investigate who their mother was and who their brother might be. I believe that Villeneuve is one of the best suspense directors since Hitchcock. Villeneuve knows how to capture an audience and move them through a story. And he does so with ease and perfection in this film. The film is separated into chapters and bounces back and forth between the daughter investigating her mother’s past, and her mother living her past. And then there is a reveal toward the end of the film that completely blew my mind. I’m not sure if I would call it a plot twist, but between this and Arrival it is clear that if anyone can do twists it’s Villeneuve.

This film is almost perfect in my mind, but there are a few things that I can see someone else having problems with. The first is that this film is very emotional, the most of all of Villeneuve’s work. It is extremely depressing throughout and I can see someone calling the film “Misery Porn”. Personally, that doesn’t bother me. The film never went into an area where I thought the horribleness wasn’t earned or helped the story. But if you can’t handle some heavy subject matters like torture, rape, and death of children, then maybe this film isn’t for you. The second problem I had with this film is less of a problem and more of a double-edged sword. The actress who plays the daughter and the actress who plays the young mother, look incredibly similar. To the point where when it would switch between the two I would get confused and it would take me a bit to adjust and realize that we were in a different time period. Eventually, I adjusted and was able to hear the beats the signified that this was a different time period, but there was an adjustment period that was a bit confusing in the first part of the film. But at the same time, though, I would much rather the actresses who play mother and daughter look similar than the opposite so like I said, it’s a double-edged sword.

If you like Villeneuve’s other work, I strongly recommend you check this one out. It is clear that this was something that he was given almost creative control over with the darkness, something I don’t think we will ever see again from him if he continues to work in American Film. This isn’t necessarily bad, but it is something different we might not get another chance to see. So check it out because it is incredible.

Also as a big overall suggestion, if you haven’t already, start exploring Canadian Cinema. Between Villeneuve, Xavier Dolan, Jean-Marc Vallée, and much more, Quebec is producing some of the best film directors out there today. And it is hard to go wrong with a lot of them.

Fantasy Movie League

Fall 2016 Fantasy Movie League – Week 12 Recap

Here we are, nearly at the end of the season. Next week will decide the Fall 2016 Reel Nerds Podcast League Champion! And currently it looks like it’s Radley Cinemas’ to lose…

While the past few weeks saw better than expected returns, something about the release of Fantastic Beasts had a very negative effect on the rest of box office, while it itself performed better than everything else by a wide margin, it still came in slightly below industry predictions. Meanwhile, all the other newcomers like Edge of Seventeen and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk crashed out of the gate and crippled two teams. Four teams with different arrangements came in with very close totals to each other, three teams relying heavily on Arrival and variances made by one or two screens.

But Radley Cinemas picked up the win by rolling the dice on Moonlight to fill almost all of his lineup. Thanks to the doubling of its theater expansion, Moonlight earned enough extra cash to make it this week’s Best Performer, and with 1x Fantastic Beasts, also the Perfect Cinema.

FML Fall Week 12

Episodes, Volume Six (261-312)

Ep. 276: Beast Wars

The Reel Nerds discover an all-new wizarding world when they review Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them.

Art House Asshole, Articles, Review

Art House Asshole : Zero Motivation

You know how when you’re wanting to go to the movie theater and you look up all the films that are showing and there are alway at least three that you’ve never heard of, let alone have any interest in seeing? Well, good news! I’ve seen those movies. I spend most of my theater experiences in art house theaters watching those movies that you’ve never heard of and then never watch. Yeah, I’m that hipster asshole. My goal with this is to spread information out about these films, that way you can decide one of the following. “That actually sounds pretty cool! I want to see that now!” or “Man, I’m glad I decided to go see the new superhero movie!”. So without further ado, here is my article and review of Zero Motivation.

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I feel like there is a time for everyone where nothing seems to make sense. Not like a time in your life. But like “Thursday” for example. That time for me is the middle week of November. It not right after Halloween and me still living in that spooky land. It isn’t the end of November and my birthday. It’s smack dab in the middle of the month that most people don’t give a crap about. It is also the week where I can’t seem to get anything done. I just want to sleep. So that’s why I chose this film for this week’s Art House Asshole. Because I have Zero Motivation for this article. And yes this first paragraph is just one big stupid pun.

Zero Motivation is an Israeli workplace/military comedy. This is the first Israeli film that I have done as part of this series and boy could I have not chosen a more Israeli film for the first. Zero Motivation follows a group of girls serving their mandatory service with the IDF. Before you do anything with this film, you need to realize that this film is based on a solely Israeli conflict. In America and most of the rest of the world, we don’t have a mandatory service that we have to serve. So unless you are Israeli, you probably won’t have the greatest time with this film. This film is very good, however, despite not being as relatable as you might imagine.

Like I said in my Toni Erdmann review, foreign comedy is a very difficult type of film to review. A lot of comedy comes down to timing, something that is lost if you are reading subtitles. The being said this film is funny. The best way I can describe the film is that it feels like Orange is the New Black meets Office Space. The Orange is the New Black might just be my sexist mind seeing that all of the main characters are women, but whatever you get what I mean. It’s about a bunch of girls in a workplace environment that none of them want to be in. It has a very Kafka-esque feel to it, something that a line in the film makes me believe was very much on purpose. The comedy is witty and smart. And where there are some jokes that don’t land as much, the second act gag is somewhat or a chore to get through, it is a very well written comedy.

The acting in the film is great for a bunch of fairly undiscovered or “new” talent. Everyone did their job well and I didn’t think anyone did a bad job. The only issue from the acting standpoint is that one of the main characters (I’m not sure if she is supposed to be the main character or one of the main characters) is just unlikable in my mind. I understand that her circumstance makes her bitter toward the world and not give a crap in general, but at the end of the day I was just annoyed and was displeased when she did some of the things she did. I wanted to shout to her “Please care about this for once!” throughout the film. And some of the characters do this, they mention that while she is messing around others are dying. The film, where it is silly, does do everything with a grain of salt. It doesn’t let you forget that while the situation that the characters are living is goofy and funny, there is the overall conflict and literal war that is present the whole time. It is done so in a way that I haven’t seen done in a comedy before. And I give the film a lot of props for that.

My biggest and at this time only issue with the film is the second act. There is a point in the film where one of the main characters leaves for one reason (I won’t say why because it is one of the best gags in the film). But when she leaves, the second act is completely void of that character. And the film grinds to the pace of a snail. There is one gag that is a little too goofy for the film and is out of character. I usually write these reviews on Monday and check them throughout the week before they go up on Friday. I’m writing this Thursday night before it goes up tomorrow because this second act was so hard to get through that I almost didn’t finish the film. Which is a shame because the third act is so good that it makes up for the strange and pointless second act. I understand why the second act exists. It needed to show a sense of time passing for the third act to work and make sense. But it really brings the film down. A lot.

Overall this is one of the better foreign language comedies I’ve seen in a long time, probably since Toni Erdmann. I’ve been meaning to watch more Middle East films. If you aren’t aware, the Middle East is currently going through their own huge film movement, rivaling the French New Wave and far bigger than the Czech Yellow Wave. And if you want to start exploring that movement, this is a great place to start for Israeli cinema. So check it out if you can, because I don’t think you’ll regret it.

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