Movie Round-Up Tuesday
Tuesday followed almost the same format of Monday accidentally- bad movie, sci-fi movie, good comedy movie. I watched Dark Rising, Surrogates, and Fired Up!
First up was Dark Rising. The Cinemax summary was a 14 year old boy is told he is the last a group of immortals and he has to travel through time to stop evil person. I first noticed something was wrong when the warnings including Adult Content and Nudity. I knew the movie was rated R but I figured that was for violence and language. I then figured the nudity would have nothing to do with the teenage boy, like it would be happening elsewhere, so I was all sure fine whatever.
Movie starts with straight to video credits and filming, not what I was expecting for what I thought was a feature film, but still whatever. Dad is translating something out of a book when little girl in tiara shows up. He puts her back to bed with a story about a princess and a prince, "But why does a princess need a prince to make her happy?" "Because." (And thus her quest for a prince to make her happy begins. My grr! on this knows no bounds). Dad goes back to translating, portal opens up, daughter rushes down to noise, everyone disappears.
Some 15 or so years later, emo college boy is telling random tween girl about his high school sweetheart sending back his ring. I'm still waiting on the main character teenage boy, so I'm thinking younger brother, boyfriend of poor tween girl, not-so-random passerby, something. Nope, just emo college boy who goes to pick up horror movie prerequisite horn-dog BFF. Emo boy gets a call from blonde girl who promises his ex-gf will be at the camping trip planned. Blonde girl then hangs up with emo college boy and proceeds to make out with his ex-gf. The 2 lesbians plus main character girl are practicing witches who are going to do a seance in the woods to try to contact little girl who they think is dead (but was actually taken through portal earlier). Girls are at used book store buying Tome of Spells and are warned that this stuff could be deadly. Ex-gf lesbian to book-seller,"Then why are you selling us this book?" "I need the money." "Our lives are worth $15?" "Well, technically, there are 3 of you, so that's 5 bucks a piece." Yes, the dialogue in this movie is golden.
The 2 guys and 3 girls meet up at camp site and as night falls, the girls go off to get their witch on in the deep woods. Girls chant, nothing seems to happen, main girl goes back to camp while the lesbians have gratuitous lesbian sex.
It's at this point I stop the movie and go IMDB it, cause I'm almost certain the 14 year old time traveler is not showing up. I discover the movie I have the summary for is "The Seeker- The Dark is Rising", while what I'm actually watching is just "Dark Rising" about an emo college boy and his disastrous camping trip that somehow leads to a girl with a battle axe and a demon. I wonder how bad can it be and go back to the movie.
Main witch girl is trying to stop emo boy from asking too many questions about lesbians when a scream of terror instead of pleasure is heard. Blonde girl comes running back because something in the woods bit poor ex-gf. Emo college boy goes to get her and confronts demon that looks like something from bad college drama department. Girl in chain-mail miraculously appears and fights off demon and then leaves. (At this point, I'm thinking girl in chain-mail is actually main witch girl because she's been having strange dreams about chain-mail girl and I'm hoping for past-life reincarnation. Anything to redeem this). He retrieves ex-gf and the idiots argue about staying there or going to get help. I'm confused about the why of staying, but don't worry it gets more confusing. As they argue, blonde girl gets impaled by styrofoam pike thing attached to demon. Chain-mail girl comes back, emo boy blacks out.
Chain-mail girl then goes to the apartment building literally right next to deep woods and remembers this is her bedroom, where everything looks exactly like it did before (except for the missing book, because the witches have that. That's the least of the biggest plot holes). Emo boy wakes up, follows chain-mail girl to apartment, where she's twitching for some spelly reason. He goes to find main witch girl to bring her to chain-mail girl to get her to fix it. Main witch girl realizes she's been dreaming of chain-mail girl, there's some classified documents, and a flash-back of MIB stealing little girl through portal. IDEK. Then a tracking device gets removed, demon appears and is fought, and a plan to reopen portal and send back demon is hatched.
Meanwhile, back in the woods, ex-gf is turning into demon and seducing horn-dog. Chain-mail girl explains these demons reproduce through biting, and emo boy is sad that they might have to kill his ex-gf, still love of his life. Until main witch girl tells him ex-gf's been cheating on him for months. Then he's all hand me that battle axe. He works out his problems violently after a heart-to-heart with ex-gf. "We were high school sweethearts." "What changed?" "I turned 23."
Horn-dog is used for bait, fails badly. Emo boy then steps up and demon gives chase. Portal opens, chain-mail girl fights demon, loses axe, emo boy retrieves axe and pushes demon into portal, following it in. Portal closes and chain-mail girl is the last one standing. (When I discovered chain-mail girl is real-life executive producer of the film everything makes much more sense). She walks out onto road, talking about life and hope and I'm thinking she's 23 and has no marketable skills. My thoughts are realized when the next scene shows her modeling in the chain-mail for a 900 number. Portal opens on set and emo boy is back in armor warning her about the coming war of demons. Reinforcements with glowy eyes show up and the movie ends and my head hurts.
Next up was Surrogates. In which science created something for the betterment of the few but the masses and corporations decided robots were easier than dieting. (Isn't this what happened in WALL-E?). People have decided life as robots kicks much more ass than being human cause you can be whoever and look however you want. A few people object to this and live in slums around the world, but the majority spend their days in bed letting a surrogate do everything for them.
College kid goes to club and hooks up with hot blonde in alley. As they're getting their freak on, a real live person shows up and proceeds to electrocute them with a dust-buster and drives his bike into an SUV before he escapes. Bruce Willis (looking blonde like in Jackal but with longer hair) arrives with partner and discovers college kid doesn't have a registered operator. They track down blonde girl and find operator is a 30 year old fat guy whose brains have been fried. This might be the first murder in years!
Bruce Willis and partner head to the main manufacturer of surrogates, where the CEO tells them operators are perfectly fine, nothing to worry about, but I'm not an engineer or anything. So Bruce heads to engineering, where Army surrogates have come back fried. Army drone played by Michael Cudlitz (John Cooper fuck yeah! Is it January yet?) backs the party line of nothing to see here, move it along.
Meanwhile, human college kid is discovered dead in his dorm. He turns out to be the son of the guy who invented surrogates, James Cromwell. Bruce goes to deliver the bad news, and it turns out he had a son that died too. There is much empathizing and Bruce finds out Cromwell has multiple surrogates and he was the one being targeted, his son was just wrong person, wrong time.
Back at the cop shop, Big Brother run by a real live hacker dude is tracking real live bad guy and plot point is revealed that the FBI has a way to shut down people's surrogates remotely (and that there's a camera literally everywhere, including hotel rooms). Bruce runs off in helicopter to apprehend bad guy, who is surrounded by cops. Bad guy takes out dust-buster and zaps the cops and the helicopter. Bruce was only kinda hit by the blast, but the pilot is dead and the helicopter crash-lands into Human Only Territory, where the bad guy just happen to flee. Bruce one-armedly pursues bad guy but is blasted to pieces by Momma Duke and the rest of the Hazzards just as he was about to make an arrest.
Bruce, the human who is bald and has a goatee, wakes up in his apartment and is found unconscious hours later by his wife. He's rushed to the hospital. When he wakes up, his boss tells him his unauthorized crashing caused a shit-storm and not to come to work for the next however long, but don't worry, I'll take over your caseload. He AMA's himself and heads back to the Human Only territory to bring his bad guy in. Unfortunately for him, said bad guy got dead by the leader of the Human Only movement after they stole his weapon. Bruce gets the shit kicked out of him by leader minions and learns nothing of value, but young surrogate Cromwell appears and tells him to check out the Army better.
At the Army base, Cudlitz comes clean that yeah, there was a weapon designed by the surrogate manufacturers but when it started killing real people, it was scrapped. Except obviously someone kept one and now the resistance movement has it and it's all hands on deck for an invasion to get that shit back. The Army invades, humans fight back, no weapon is found, human leader is killed, except human leader is a robot is disguise. How did the metal detectors miss that?
Weapon is now in the hands of the dude that killed Bruce's partner the night before and stole her surrogate. Her surrogate finds out the cops had bad guy on payroll and tells Bruce. Bruce goes to confront boss-man about jumping ship to manufacturing company and don't you feel bad about the kid that died from that hit you ordered? Bruce gets the hardcopy proof he needs at the expense of his boss's surrogate, and flees with partner. Partner gets Bruce to look up all the codes she needs, but Bruce gets suspicious and then almost dead.
Partner goes back to cop shop to use weapon to take out all surrogates and oh, well about the humans attached to them. Bruce goes to Cromwell who is revealed to be the one in control of the leader of the Human Only movement and also the dude that killed Bruce's partner and is now using her surrogate. Partner takes out boss-man with weapon for revenge for his son then goes back to uploading program. Bruce tries to reason with Cromwell about millions of dead people. Cromwell decides death is a better option and takes it himself. Bruce takes over partner's surrogate and gets hacker dude to tell him how to stop everyone from dying. They get the humans safe, but Bruce wavers over saving the surrogates. He finally makes a decision, just as his surrogate is shot by SWAT. All the surrogates collapse.
Humans in jammies start opening doors and lining the streets as Bruce goes home to his wife, because he just wanted to see the real her the entire movie. Billions in property damage and a whole way of life destroyed, just so he could see his human wife again (who has been majorly depressed and popping pills like candy). We are left with reports that all the surrogates are down and no one knows if they will ever be reactivated again. (Until the Army needs them for something and accidentally forgets to tell the American public).
I read that the director of Easy A also directed Fired Up! and as I've read good things about that, I decided to give this one a try. I'm glad I did. I was expecting something along the lines of American Pie, and as that one set off my embarrassment squick hard-core at times, I was a little wary. While the plot was mostly standard, the dialogue was much more witty, and the sight gags weren't too over the top.
So the movie starts with Nick and Shawn at random girl's house, where they work their moves on two different girls. Said girls' dads come home and they escape post-haste to the car. Dads follow, leading our guys to abandon vehicle and run through back yards, where they end up at a pool party filled with girls in bikinis. This is the type of luck our boys have.
The next day at school they kick ass on the field and are reminded about football camp, 2 weeks of guys only in El Paso instead of Florida. As the whole point of becoming jocks was to get girls, not play sports, the boys are bummed. Later that night, they overhear the cheerleaders bemoaning their own camp and the 300 other girls there who are better than they are. The boys have a lightbulb moment where they decide to go to cheer camp instead. The only problem is the head cheerleader is wise to their ways and ain't going to fall for it.
Insert schemes to get the football coach off their backs, the other cheerleaders to gang up and agree, and the cheer coach to ok everything. Shawn's little sister is a shark in pink clothing but not above bribery, so a camping they go.
Cheer camp is everything they hoped for, but Shawn is starting to fall for the head cheerleader and Nick can't seem to land the head counselor's wife. They still work their charm on numerous girls so things aren't looking too bad.
Cue the douche-bag bf of the head cheerleader. (Just once I'd like the bf of the main girl in these things to be perfect and do the right things and just have the girl choose based on feelings and not that the other guy's a total asshole, but that wouldn't be this kind of movie then). Yes, he's an asshole with bad taste, cheating on her, etc., moving on.
The guys had only planned to stay 2 weeks even though cheer camp is 3 because one of their football buddies has a beach house without parental supervision. But then Shawn feels bad about leaving everyone, especially since the team has improved so much with their help. Nick tries to convince him to leave, but Shawn decides to stay and Nick's his BFF so he's not going anywhere either.
Douche-bag doesn't like Shawn near his girl so he snoops and tells the team the guys were just there to hook-up with cheerleaders. Everyone goes Duh! Then he tells them the guys were going to leave them high and dry, and that pisses off the head cheerleader, so she sends them packing.
At the beach house, the guys aren't enjoying it as much as they thought they would and miss their teammates and kinda grew as people, so they decide to go back to camp and beg to get back on the team. The head cheerleader finally agrees and then we have the cheer competition.
Their main rivals are the team that comes in first every single time and the girls feel they just aren't good enough. Shawn convinces them they are and to prove it, they're going to successfully complete the dangerous, forbidden stunt. Their execution is flawless until the end when Shawn misjudges and takes a header into the moat surrounding the stage.
When Shawn comes to, he learns that they lost, but they came in 10 places higher than last year, and if they hadn't done the stunt, they might have come in top three. (I really like that they didn't go the expected route and win). The head cheerleader kisses him, dumps her bf, and asks him to go out. Meanwhile, Nick gets date with the counselor's wife because she heard his poetry about her and really liked it. Unfortunately, their date goes badly when her husband shows up, she runs off, and he gropes Nick. The End!
First up was Dark Rising. The Cinemax summary was a 14 year old boy is told he is the last a group of immortals and he has to travel through time to stop evil person. I first noticed something was wrong when the warnings including Adult Content and Nudity. I knew the movie was rated R but I figured that was for violence and language. I then figured the nudity would have nothing to do with the teenage boy, like it would be happening elsewhere, so I was all sure fine whatever.
Movie starts with straight to video credits and filming, not what I was expecting for what I thought was a feature film, but still whatever. Dad is translating something out of a book when little girl in tiara shows up. He puts her back to bed with a story about a princess and a prince, "But why does a princess need a prince to make her happy?" "Because." (And thus her quest for a prince to make her happy begins. My grr! on this knows no bounds). Dad goes back to translating, portal opens up, daughter rushes down to noise, everyone disappears.
Some 15 or so years later, emo college boy is telling random tween girl about his high school sweetheart sending back his ring. I'm still waiting on the main character teenage boy, so I'm thinking younger brother, boyfriend of poor tween girl, not-so-random passerby, something. Nope, just emo college boy who goes to pick up horror movie prerequisite horn-dog BFF. Emo boy gets a call from blonde girl who promises his ex-gf will be at the camping trip planned. Blonde girl then hangs up with emo college boy and proceeds to make out with his ex-gf. The 2 lesbians plus main character girl are practicing witches who are going to do a seance in the woods to try to contact little girl who they think is dead (but was actually taken through portal earlier). Girls are at used book store buying Tome of Spells and are warned that this stuff could be deadly. Ex-gf lesbian to book-seller,"Then why are you selling us this book?" "I need the money." "Our lives are worth $15?" "Well, technically, there are 3 of you, so that's 5 bucks a piece." Yes, the dialogue in this movie is golden.
The 2 guys and 3 girls meet up at camp site and as night falls, the girls go off to get their witch on in the deep woods. Girls chant, nothing seems to happen, main girl goes back to camp while the lesbians have gratuitous lesbian sex.
It's at this point I stop the movie and go IMDB it, cause I'm almost certain the 14 year old time traveler is not showing up. I discover the movie I have the summary for is "The Seeker- The Dark is Rising", while what I'm actually watching is just "Dark Rising" about an emo college boy and his disastrous camping trip that somehow leads to a girl with a battle axe and a demon. I wonder how bad can it be and go back to the movie.
Main witch girl is trying to stop emo boy from asking too many questions about lesbians when a scream of terror instead of pleasure is heard. Blonde girl comes running back because something in the woods bit poor ex-gf. Emo college boy goes to get her and confronts demon that looks like something from bad college drama department. Girl in chain-mail miraculously appears and fights off demon and then leaves. (At this point, I'm thinking girl in chain-mail is actually main witch girl because she's been having strange dreams about chain-mail girl and I'm hoping for past-life reincarnation. Anything to redeem this). He retrieves ex-gf and the idiots argue about staying there or going to get help. I'm confused about the why of staying, but don't worry it gets more confusing. As they argue, blonde girl gets impaled by styrofoam pike thing attached to demon. Chain-mail girl comes back, emo boy blacks out.
Chain-mail girl then goes to the apartment building literally right next to deep woods and remembers this is her bedroom, where everything looks exactly like it did before (except for the missing book, because the witches have that. That's the least of the biggest plot holes). Emo boy wakes up, follows chain-mail girl to apartment, where she's twitching for some spelly reason. He goes to find main witch girl to bring her to chain-mail girl to get her to fix it. Main witch girl realizes she's been dreaming of chain-mail girl, there's some classified documents, and a flash-back of MIB stealing little girl through portal. IDEK. Then a tracking device gets removed, demon appears and is fought, and a plan to reopen portal and send back demon is hatched.
Meanwhile, back in the woods, ex-gf is turning into demon and seducing horn-dog. Chain-mail girl explains these demons reproduce through biting, and emo boy is sad that they might have to kill his ex-gf, still love of his life. Until main witch girl tells him ex-gf's been cheating on him for months. Then he's all hand me that battle axe. He works out his problems violently after a heart-to-heart with ex-gf. "We were high school sweethearts." "What changed?" "I turned 23."
Horn-dog is used for bait, fails badly. Emo boy then steps up and demon gives chase. Portal opens, chain-mail girl fights demon, loses axe, emo boy retrieves axe and pushes demon into portal, following it in. Portal closes and chain-mail girl is the last one standing. (When I discovered chain-mail girl is real-life executive producer of the film everything makes much more sense). She walks out onto road, talking about life and hope and I'm thinking she's 23 and has no marketable skills. My thoughts are realized when the next scene shows her modeling in the chain-mail for a 900 number. Portal opens on set and emo boy is back in armor warning her about the coming war of demons. Reinforcements with glowy eyes show up and the movie ends and my head hurts.
Next up was Surrogates. In which science created something for the betterment of the few but the masses and corporations decided robots were easier than dieting. (Isn't this what happened in WALL-E?). People have decided life as robots kicks much more ass than being human cause you can be whoever and look however you want. A few people object to this and live in slums around the world, but the majority spend their days in bed letting a surrogate do everything for them.
College kid goes to club and hooks up with hot blonde in alley. As they're getting their freak on, a real live person shows up and proceeds to electrocute them with a dust-buster and drives his bike into an SUV before he escapes. Bruce Willis (looking blonde like in Jackal but with longer hair) arrives with partner and discovers college kid doesn't have a registered operator. They track down blonde girl and find operator is a 30 year old fat guy whose brains have been fried. This might be the first murder in years!
Bruce Willis and partner head to the main manufacturer of surrogates, where the CEO tells them operators are perfectly fine, nothing to worry about, but I'm not an engineer or anything. So Bruce heads to engineering, where Army surrogates have come back fried. Army drone played by Michael Cudlitz (John Cooper fuck yeah! Is it January yet?) backs the party line of nothing to see here, move it along.
Meanwhile, human college kid is discovered dead in his dorm. He turns out to be the son of the guy who invented surrogates, James Cromwell. Bruce goes to deliver the bad news, and it turns out he had a son that died too. There is much empathizing and Bruce finds out Cromwell has multiple surrogates and he was the one being targeted, his son was just wrong person, wrong time.
Back at the cop shop, Big Brother run by a real live hacker dude is tracking real live bad guy and plot point is revealed that the FBI has a way to shut down people's surrogates remotely (and that there's a camera literally everywhere, including hotel rooms). Bruce runs off in helicopter to apprehend bad guy, who is surrounded by cops. Bad guy takes out dust-buster and zaps the cops and the helicopter. Bruce was only kinda hit by the blast, but the pilot is dead and the helicopter crash-lands into Human Only Territory, where the bad guy just happen to flee. Bruce one-armedly pursues bad guy but is blasted to pieces by Momma Duke and the rest of the Hazzards just as he was about to make an arrest.
Bruce, the human who is bald and has a goatee, wakes up in his apartment and is found unconscious hours later by his wife. He's rushed to the hospital. When he wakes up, his boss tells him his unauthorized crashing caused a shit-storm and not to come to work for the next however long, but don't worry, I'll take over your caseload. He AMA's himself and heads back to the Human Only territory to bring his bad guy in. Unfortunately for him, said bad guy got dead by the leader of the Human Only movement after they stole his weapon. Bruce gets the shit kicked out of him by leader minions and learns nothing of value, but young surrogate Cromwell appears and tells him to check out the Army better.
At the Army base, Cudlitz comes clean that yeah, there was a weapon designed by the surrogate manufacturers but when it started killing real people, it was scrapped. Except obviously someone kept one and now the resistance movement has it and it's all hands on deck for an invasion to get that shit back. The Army invades, humans fight back, no weapon is found, human leader is killed, except human leader is a robot is disguise. How did the metal detectors miss that?
Weapon is now in the hands of the dude that killed Bruce's partner the night before and stole her surrogate. Her surrogate finds out the cops had bad guy on payroll and tells Bruce. Bruce goes to confront boss-man about jumping ship to manufacturing company and don't you feel bad about the kid that died from that hit you ordered? Bruce gets the hardcopy proof he needs at the expense of his boss's surrogate, and flees with partner. Partner gets Bruce to look up all the codes she needs, but Bruce gets suspicious and then almost dead.
Partner goes back to cop shop to use weapon to take out all surrogates and oh, well about the humans attached to them. Bruce goes to Cromwell who is revealed to be the one in control of the leader of the Human Only movement and also the dude that killed Bruce's partner and is now using her surrogate. Partner takes out boss-man with weapon for revenge for his son then goes back to uploading program. Bruce tries to reason with Cromwell about millions of dead people. Cromwell decides death is a better option and takes it himself. Bruce takes over partner's surrogate and gets hacker dude to tell him how to stop everyone from dying. They get the humans safe, but Bruce wavers over saving the surrogates. He finally makes a decision, just as his surrogate is shot by SWAT. All the surrogates collapse.
Humans in jammies start opening doors and lining the streets as Bruce goes home to his wife, because he just wanted to see the real her the entire movie. Billions in property damage and a whole way of life destroyed, just so he could see his human wife again (who has been majorly depressed and popping pills like candy). We are left with reports that all the surrogates are down and no one knows if they will ever be reactivated again. (Until the Army needs them for something and accidentally forgets to tell the American public).
I read that the director of Easy A also directed Fired Up! and as I've read good things about that, I decided to give this one a try. I'm glad I did. I was expecting something along the lines of American Pie, and as that one set off my embarrassment squick hard-core at times, I was a little wary. While the plot was mostly standard, the dialogue was much more witty, and the sight gags weren't too over the top.
So the movie starts with Nick and Shawn at random girl's house, where they work their moves on two different girls. Said girls' dads come home and they escape post-haste to the car. Dads follow, leading our guys to abandon vehicle and run through back yards, where they end up at a pool party filled with girls in bikinis. This is the type of luck our boys have.
The next day at school they kick ass on the field and are reminded about football camp, 2 weeks of guys only in El Paso instead of Florida. As the whole point of becoming jocks was to get girls, not play sports, the boys are bummed. Later that night, they overhear the cheerleaders bemoaning their own camp and the 300 other girls there who are better than they are. The boys have a lightbulb moment where they decide to go to cheer camp instead. The only problem is the head cheerleader is wise to their ways and ain't going to fall for it.
Insert schemes to get the football coach off their backs, the other cheerleaders to gang up and agree, and the cheer coach to ok everything. Shawn's little sister is a shark in pink clothing but not above bribery, so a camping they go.
Cheer camp is everything they hoped for, but Shawn is starting to fall for the head cheerleader and Nick can't seem to land the head counselor's wife. They still work their charm on numerous girls so things aren't looking too bad.
Cue the douche-bag bf of the head cheerleader. (Just once I'd like the bf of the main girl in these things to be perfect and do the right things and just have the girl choose based on feelings and not that the other guy's a total asshole, but that wouldn't be this kind of movie then). Yes, he's an asshole with bad taste, cheating on her, etc., moving on.
The guys had only planned to stay 2 weeks even though cheer camp is 3 because one of their football buddies has a beach house without parental supervision. But then Shawn feels bad about leaving everyone, especially since the team has improved so much with their help. Nick tries to convince him to leave, but Shawn decides to stay and Nick's his BFF so he's not going anywhere either.
Douche-bag doesn't like Shawn near his girl so he snoops and tells the team the guys were just there to hook-up with cheerleaders. Everyone goes Duh! Then he tells them the guys were going to leave them high and dry, and that pisses off the head cheerleader, so she sends them packing.
At the beach house, the guys aren't enjoying it as much as they thought they would and miss their teammates and kinda grew as people, so they decide to go back to camp and beg to get back on the team. The head cheerleader finally agrees and then we have the cheer competition.
Their main rivals are the team that comes in first every single time and the girls feel they just aren't good enough. Shawn convinces them they are and to prove it, they're going to successfully complete the dangerous, forbidden stunt. Their execution is flawless until the end when Shawn misjudges and takes a header into the moat surrounding the stage.
When Shawn comes to, he learns that they lost, but they came in 10 places higher than last year, and if they hadn't done the stunt, they might have come in top three. (I really like that they didn't go the expected route and win). The head cheerleader kisses him, dumps her bf, and asks him to go out. Meanwhile, Nick gets date with the counselor's wife because she heard his poetry about her and really liked it. Unfortunately, their date goes badly when her husband shows up, she runs off, and he gropes Nick. The End!