I haven't seen her since the w00tstock show.

The Wrecking Crew

Mrs. Ich and I saw this Saturday at The Magnolia. Awesome story of a core group of musicians on the west coast who recorded many albums for artists in the 60s and the 70s. Very entertaining.

St. Vincent - A little sappy, but Bill Murray delivers. 3.5 stars.
Fury - pretty good, not your typical war movie. It had TWD's Shane in it. Close to 4 stars until the ludicrous last 30 minutes. 3 stars overall.
Draft Day - The trade scenes were more unrealistic than Moneyball's and there wasn't much in the way of plot, but it was fairly entertaining. 2.5 stars.

Edge of Tomorrow - I dug the shit out of it. (out of 5)

Dumb and Dumber To - Maybe I went in with low expectations, but this wasn't near as bad as everyone is saying. I thought there were some very funny lines.
(out of 5)

The Imitation Game - 4 stars (out of 5)
The Theory of Everything - 3.25 stars (out of 5)
Birdman 4.25 stars (out of 5)

The Babadook - It was good. (out of 5)

Boyhood-it was ok i guess. It's kinda cool see the actors age over the years. Plus it was based in Texas out of 5

Super Robot Action Smash 2 - It was good. (out of 5)

Big Hero 6 - Really fun. Really confusing though that DC also has their own Japanese wunderkind named Hiro.

1/2 out of 5

Mad Max: Fury Road--Holy fucking shit. A million stars out of five.

Fucking loved it.

Watched the 3rd Hobbit. It was the worst of the 3. I looked at my phone a lot while it was on. The end.

Saw Selma last night. It was good. Here are my rankings for the 2014 best picture nominees.

1. Whiplash
2. The Grand Budapest Hotel
3. Birdman
4. The Imitation Game
5. Boyhood
6. Selma
7. The Theory of Everything

it was a very weak 2014 in films

Tit, is that true?

I've only seen the first and last films on this list so I guess I've got a well rounded view of 2014.

Here are the movies I saw from 2014:

Whiplash
Lego Movie
Grand Budapest Hotel
Captain America 2
Guardians of the Galaxy
Spider-man 2.2
X-men: The Latest
Birdman
Big Hero 6
Interstellar
Hobbit 3: The Unnecessary

Whiplash, Birdman, and Grand Budapest were each excellent. The rest ranged from entertaining to suck.

I can only conclude that 2014 films were weak sauce.

d Birdman sucked
Whiplash was good
Grand Budepest was weird but not bad

Birdman was good, though the one-take thing was kinda distracting and didn't add anything to the story. It was a neat trick, but that's all.

Love & Mercy - a two-prong bio pic about Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. It bounces back and forth from the '60's with the band figuring out that he's (played by Paul Dano) going bonkers to the '80's where he (played by John Cusack) was bonkers but was being over-diagnosed and over-medicated by a deranged new age therapist (Paul Giamatti) who had managed to get complete control over Wilson's life. The scenes from the '60's deal mostly with the recording of Pet Sounds (and their attempt to record Smile) and Wilson's bizarre obsession with using odd instruments and noises. There's a lot of trippy drug use and voices-in-his-head scenes that captures how Wilson was really losing it. The scenes from the '80's deal with post-recluse Wilson and a girl's (Elizabeth Banks) attempts to get him out from under the therapist's thumb. It sounds spastic but it works. Both actors do a great job playing Wilson. I would imagine both get some Oscar buzz and I would give the slight edge to Dano. He gets a little more screen time than Cusack and does a lot with a challenging role. There's a scene early in the movie where he plays the piano while singing a slowed down early version of God Only Knows for his overbearing dad that is hauntingly good. If you like Pet Sounds like I do, you'll dig this movie. It also is another of Hollywood being at its best when it looks at mental illness.

our of 4.

Tit Jr wanted to watch the Alien movies, so we watched them all over the past few weeks. He wanted to start with Prometheus for some reason. I didn't feel like arguing.

Prometheus - Looks really cool, but it's really dumb. (out of 5)

Alien - Still great. More horror than action. More on that later. (out of 5)

Aliens - Depending on your taste, this might be better than the first. (out of 5)

Alien 3 - I never saw this one before. It's dogshit. (out of 5)

Alien: Resurrection - Only saw about half of it before. Wasn't missing much. That baby alien was fuckin' dumb looking. (out of 5)

I asked Tit Jr to rank them when we were done. This is what he said:
1. Aliens
2. Resurrection
3. Alien
4. Prometheus
5. 3

He thought Alien was too talky. Kids these days. But it's a different kind of movie than the others. The others were about monster action and Alien was about atmosphere and tension and mystery and scaring the bejesus out of you.

There are two other Alien movies you have to watch for the complete series.

AvP?

We're not watching no damned AvP movies. That shit's dumb.

Quitter.

Then I'd have to watch all the Predator movies, including the one with Danny Glover.

that movie is underrated

And then there's also the Predators movie with Adrian Brody from a few years ago. You have your work cut out for you, Tit.

I'll get back on it after I finish the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series.

The second one is the best. They go with corduroy.

Jurassic World - pretty much follows the formula of the other 3 movies: people make dinosaurs, someone questions the ethics, people go see dinosaurs, dinosaurs start tearing shit up and eating people. I can't decide if the acting was shit or if they were just given shitty material. There's a girl that talks in cry voice a lot and I actually laughed out loud at one of her scenes. Even Vincent D'onofrio, who's usually good in just about any role, ends up looking like a buffoon. Despite all of that, it was a damn entertaining movie. The action sequences were great. There were a few nods to the original movie and it was kind of cool to see a movie in the series get made where the original idea was carried through. The velociraptor taming scenes weren't nearly as goofy as the trailer made them look. And Kitty Sanchez makes a couple of quick appearances. She gets things going in my pants area for some reason or another. Overall, not bad for a summer popcorn flick.

Jurassic World - Saw it twice. Once with me and the wifey, second time we took the kiddo. This was her first big kid movie. She only had to close her eyes a couple of times. Overall, we dug it.

Inside Out - Really liked this one. The kiddo got caught up in the story and bawled a couple of times which of course got me a bit verklempt.

Terminator 5 - Not bad, but nothing special.

How was young Arnold? In the preview that looks incredible.

It didn't look bad. It was a small bit in the beginning and was over before you knew it. They go a little Back to the Future 2 on us. I would've liked more of that, maybe with two Reeses running around and just barely missing each other.

I'd also like to say that I had a pretty good grasp on this series after the first two movies, but after these last 3, I don't know what the fuck is going on.

Jupiter Ascending - Ned Stark, Meg Griffin and Magic Mike go to space to try to stop from bad guys from doing some evil things like harvesting time from planets. That's not a typo. It sucked. Stay away from this movie.

(out of 5)

I love dogs. I've always loved dogs.

[quote="or somesuch"]Dumb and Dumber To - Maybe I went in with low expectations, but this wasn't near as bad as everyone is saying. I thought there were some very funny lines.
(out of 5)



Spy: another surprisingly funny and entertaining movie.

The Drop - Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini and a bar in Brooklyn with mob connections. There's also a dog. Written by Dennis Lehane. If you like crime novels, you should read some Dennis Lehane because he's really good. I've read most of his stuff. His stuff I haven't read is on my to-read list. The movie is good too. (out of 5)

Also, over the weekend we had to spend a day at the in-laws' for a birthday. After dinner, they asked if anyone wanted to watch a movie. The response was meh, but they sallied forth with their plan. They opened the Dish menu for free movies and perused the shitty selection offered there. They chose Ed starring Matt LeBlanc and a chimp who plays baseball, a movie asked for by no one ever. They think this is wholesome entertainment that the kids would want to watch because the kids are 5 years old and retarded. Reality, however, says that the kids are ages 15 and about-to-turn 12, and they've seen Mad Max: Fury Road a few times and no fucking chimp movie is gonna overload their Movietime Jollies Meter. The 5 minutes we saw were awful, bordering on incompetent filmmaking, which a smarter person would've shut off on general principle, but these are my in-laws we're dealing with. Fortunately, there were streaming issues, most likely caused by a server thinking, "Really? Someone ordered 'Ed'?" The movie was shut off after much frustration, and re-runs of Big Bang Theory were watched instead until we reached the magical hour of Time to Go.

Interesting note on Fury Road. I haven't seen it yet, but I went back and watched the other 3 to get ready for the new one on Blu-ray. I'm just saying (so you can't be mad), but those were disappointing. Not the badass movies I remember.