Sleepers- Underrated

I read Sleepers on the recommendation of my friend in middle school, Dan Shelton. It's the autobiographical tale of Lorenzo Carcaterra, and it's painful and amazing (Side note: His book A Safe Place is of similar quality). I don't want to reveal a lot of the plot but it's a tale of best friends from a neighborhood in New York who get into some serious trouble and get thrown in juvenile hall. Most of the story stems from their horrific abuses at the facility and the lasting effects on the four, and their road to rectification and redemption. The movie is very good with some very good acting from a lot of well known actors including: Minnie Driver, Jason Patric, Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro, Brad Renfro, Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt, Billy Crudup, and Ron Eldard. You'll recognize a lot of people in the film even if you don't know the actors by name, like Eldard who played Colt, Boyd Crowder's right-hand in Justified this season. All I can say is that the less you know about the story, the better it will be for you. Carcaterra's tales are just brutal in ways that you hope and pray it isn't true autobiographical detail he's rehashing. Bottom Line: 8.9 out of 10. Having read the book I've always been an enormous fan. The cast is amazing and the story is excellent. If you haven't seen this movie it is unquestionably worth a rental. It's far from a comedy or date movie, but it's rock solid & excellent. Reading the book is also highly recommended.

The '99ers

I watched the Nine for Nine, or whatever ESPN's tribute to Title IX is called. It was a celebration of the 1999 Women's USA world cup team. Mia Hamm being the star, but you see Julie Fowdy, Brandi Chastain, Michelle Akers, & Brianna Scurry and recognize them still. It was a HUGE moment and I watched that last game from near the end of regulation throughout the shootout and was captivated. They were a phenomenon and I still love the Nike commercial where Fowdy comes out of the dentist office and says she got two fillings and Mia Hamm springs up and deadpans "Then I will have two fillings." and everyone joins suit simply saying at the end "We will face the world together". It brought me back to a few special teams that I was on in 2001 & 2003 when we won state in tennis. Both experiences were very unique from each other. One I was a sophomore playing #3 doubles and it was my first time on a varsity team period. By 2003 I was a senior playing #1 doubles and the vocal/emotional leader of the team. Experiencing winning always brings a team closer and winning a championship really binds you together. The struggles and hard work pays off, which is so rare in sports. Everyone feels the vindication and it really brings everyone together. If you don't win, I don't think it's possible to have the same feeling of togetherness. If that team loses the shootout to N. Korea things would have been completely different I feel. Losing is destructive by nature and no matter what there's hard feelings in losing. Failing to win automatically breaks things apart. Feelings of blame, etc naturally follow losses and it sabotages the togetherness. It's unspoken, but normally crippling to unity. It sounds obvious, but without the championship there's no way to have the same feelings of joy/accomplishment & unity I feel. It was just a nostalgic journey for me that made me think of those rare instances where you win at the end of the season. There's no "what-ifs" or questions. I remember watching the pain after my brother's teams in basketball took back-to-back loses in the state championship game. The team was very close, but I can imagine things being totally different if they won either of those years. I'm babbling, but I think I enjoyed the documentary seeing their home videos thinking of the bus/van rides & similar moments on a much smaller scale. It was nostalgic and almost heartwarming in a way. Sorry to waste everyone's time on this one. More movies to follow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe I'll dive into some Breaking Bad talk or some talk of the old favorites coming back this fall.

Ray Donovan

Liev Schrieber has always been rock solid and significantly underrated in my opinion. He's awesome in a side job as HBO Sports' main narrator. The guy just seems tough as shit, but also excels in comedy. I'm a fan. Anywhoo he's in a new series on Showtime called Ray Donovan where he plays a big-shot lawyer's "cleaner". He fixes strange problems. He's believable in the role to the point it's a little scary. You don't doubt he's beaten the shit out of someone with a wooden bat before. He is married with two kids and living in Beverly Hills, or something very similar. He's from Boston and him and his wife carry a hint of that fucking awesome Southy accent. He has some weird shit going on with his father, played by Jon Voight. He put his own father away 20 years ago on a murder conviction. It's deeper as Ray has always hated his father for cheating on his mother and contributing to his sister's suicide, but you don't know much about either. His dad's released and an FBI agent keeps tabs on him and tries to get him to flip. All the while Ray juggles family life with his crazy job AND this weird shit with his dad swirling in the background. You never know if Voight truly wants a real relationship with his grandkids, or if he's just pissing Ray off in various ways. The acting is phenomenal and besides a creepy YOUNG teenage relationship that honestly makes me uncomfortable to watch, it's been excellent. I seriously hope I didn't already write about this, but it wouldn't surprise me. Bottom Line: 9.0 out of 10. I've been a big fan of this one and sincerely think you should start watching this shit ASAP. Schreiber is going to get some well-deserved praise for this one and hopefully more starring roles in some big movies.

That's My Boy- AKA The Piece of Shit from Samburg & Sandler

I DVR'd this lump of shit hoping for some form of cheap laughs. There are so few to be found it's just pathetic. They try cheap shock tactics and stupid shit constantly. I found myself attempting to read various ESPN articles and online stuff rather than attempt to focus on the shit on the TV. There aren't highlights to speak of. Nothing really stands out as decent. The parting shot at the end to get shock laughs is just painful and stupid beyond belief. Really I'm thinking the "highlight" is the cameos of Robb Van Winkle, AKA Vanilla Ice. That honestly is probably the only thing that made me not angry while watching this. Sandler is the worst of the shit. He's just awful as a dipshit, drunk, fuckface. His accent is fucking awful. His character is so painfully stupid and un-entertaining you want him to be murdered by everyone else. Bottom Line: 2.2 out of 10. It's hard to imagine a worse major motion picture to watch for an hour & a half. Don't ever watch this, ever.

Two Guns (Sorry Chutch)

I checked out Two Guns based on the fact it had Denzel and Mahk Wahlbahg in it. It was just SOOOO pithy and ridiculous with the dialogue between Mahky-Mahk and Denzel. Wahlberg is just unbearably stupid and annoying for the most part. It does flirt with some decent action scenes and has some interesting plot moments, but it really isn't the crazy, fast-paced action film it promised to be. It sadly is in love with the exchanges of Wahlberg and Denzel and it's barely stomachable. The plot is that two agents, one undercover for the DEA and the other for the Navy somehow find each other completely separate from the fact they are undercover. If that's not implausible enough nobody at their respective departments know what the fuck is going on either. In any case they visit a Mexican drug lord trying to swap passports for cocaine, this fails, they then decide to get back at him by robbing the bank he stores his money at. It twists and turns all over the place and you try to keep tabs on the double-crosses and various characters, but you end up not caring and just wishing death upon everyone. Bottom Line: 5.4 out of 10. Really struggles to be entertaining, funny, or action-packed. Just barely serviceable and certainly not worth paying any amount of money for. Even the great Denzel couldn't salvage this lump of shit.

Elysium

I shelled out $10 in IA to see Elysium in IMAX, which I tend to forget how fucking awesome IMAX is, so it was nice. ANYways Elysium is the story of a young poor kid named Max (Matt Damon!!!!) who dreams of a floating wonder-world for the rich called Elysium. In the ridiculous category all disease and essentially everything has been cured. SO, if you live there you stay perfect and never die. Somehow you don't run out of money or anything, which seems strange because Elysium seems to have no industry or anything besides beautiful homes and lawns. Robots are your servants and protectors and the evil people of the poor, dumpster-like shit palace Earth cannot reach you. People from Earth try to get there, but are either destroyed at the command of the creepy Jodie Foster (who sometimes tries to carry some form of shitty accent, sometimes not, but in either case has MASSIVE calves, which is scary), or are immediately apprehended by robots and sent back. Max is a career criminal who is finally doing the 9-5 thing working in a factory making the robots that police Elysium. There's a foolish & time consuming love story dating back to when he was a kid and promised the new girl, Freye (I think), that he would get them to Elysium one day. He mouths off to robots and gets his arm broken. For some dipshit reason he has to get it cast like a regular schmuck at a hospital where he meets Freye again. She promises to get coffee, but also says her life is complicated. Damon goes back to work, eats a Hiroshima ground-zero sized dose of radiation and is given 5 days to live. He goes on a crazy mission to get to Elysium by working with local gangster/hacker Spider. He has one friend, (Side note: I'm happy Diego Luna to get an OK role in a big motion picture, it's not Spider, but it's a decent one as Damon's best/only friend.) who attempts to help him and that's when shit gets crazy and Willus from District 9 (Sharlto Copley) bulks up huge and plays a crazy Eastern European-ish psychopath who is Jodie Foster's dude who does dirt. It's a pretty standard Summer blockbuster, but there's less action than you'd think. Bottom Line: 7.3 out of 10. Pretty good acting, but less action than I expected. Love story got in the way, though I'm a cynical asshole, so I should preface that. Probably not worth paying $10 to see in theaters, but worth seeing at some point at a cheaper price.

Life of PI

I watched Life of PI last week due to a recommendation from my cousin and some interest in the cinematography and a unique story. The story is actual the story of a story being told. In present time a writer is meeting with an Indian-Canadian professor. His tale encompasses his journey from the East to America. The journey talks about his youth with his family running a zoo. Their journey on an boat to America that pulls a Titanic and leaves the main character as a boy stranded on a life boat with minimal supplies, and a few various zoo animals. Presumably Noah had a better time on the arc. It's an interesting story, but a little childish and ridiculous. There's some cool cinematography, though surprisingly the CGI isn't mind-blowing. Bottom Line: 6.6 out 10. Interesting and pretty unique, but nothing mind-blowing. Certainly worth a rental at some point, or I'm sure it will be available on a movie channel or Netflix SOON.