American Sniper: Bradley Cooper= Big Time Star

American Sniper is an amazing and true story about Chris Kyle, most possibly the greatest sniper in American history. He was, by all definitions, an American hero. He served 4 tours in Iraq during the most dangerous times of our war, had over 120 confirmed kills, and saved a lot of american troops in the process. This film does much more than just touch in his incredible service record though. This film dives into the toll these feats took on Chris in his life back home, and to his family, particularly his wife played by Sienna Miller. Miller does a VERY good job as his wife. It actually, and quite disappointingly, took me until the end credits to find that out. The movie does an incredible job of filling in some back story on Chris, then handling his military and civilian life, all in 150 amazing minutes. Cooper is incredible in handling not only the incredibly difficult job of playing a believable Navy SEAL sniper, but in showing the difficulties of handling civilian life. His performance is incredible and just adds to the amazing best actor category at the Oscars this year, which I spoke about the disappointment in David Oyelowo not being nominated, but it's just a stacked category full of deserving performances. Cooper proves he's capable of being an incredible and blockbuster carrying leading man. His career, though it's been on a seemingly meteoric rise since The Hangover, is now firmly hanging out in the mega-star stratosphere. The hope with this film is highlighting the need for care, and in your own life, just a willing heart & ear to help returning veterans deal with PTSD and the after-effects of their service. Chris found that helping other veterans go to the shooting range and spending time together not only brought him joy, but made a positive impact on the other veterans. The difficulties with this are that it's impossible to know and understand what happened to the men and women in combat without having experienced it yourself. Their is a brotherhood among those who have served, especially in combat. I hope the movie leads to greater communication between veterans who can gain strength, friendship, help, and comfort from talking with each other through the issues and struggles they are experiencing. Ideally it will also help veterans feel comfortable and confident in seeking out help from others if they are struggling with life after combat. It's something very near and dear to me as my Grandpa almost certainly suffered from undiagnosed PTSD from WWII and the total inability to deal with, or communicate with all the issues from it. It lead to depression, anger, and ongoing racism that plagued his "civilian" life. I also have a friend from high school who has struggled and continues to bravely deal and live with PTSD from his service in Enduring Freedom. Bottom Line: 9.3 out of 10. Excellent film highlighted by Cooper's timeless performance. It's certainly worth seeing in theatres and reflecting on. It will linger in your thoughts after the film and you will never find a more silent movie during and after the credits. Phenomenal, Oscar-worthy stuff. Similar to the 2014 Best Picture category, this is another great year from what I've seen in Selma, the Imitation Game, American Sniper, and in a different way Birdman.

Chef: Food as an Art Form

Chef follows the tale of Jon Favreau as an executive chef at a high-end & successful L.A. restaurant. He SOMEHOW has a child with Sofia Vergera, which is the most unlikely thing about any movie in history. Favreau plays a standard role of schlubby looking dude who is usually chill, but has an intense side. John Leguizamo plays his line cook, Bobby Cannavale his sous chef, Dustin Hoffman the owner, Scarlett Johansson as hostess, so the cast is excellent. Throw in Oliver Platt as a big-time food critic and a sprinkle of Robert Downey Jr. as Vergera's uber-rich ex-husband and you've got talent. Favreau is getting ramped up for Platt showing up to review their restaurant. Hoffman clips his ambition and convinces him to cook the standard, but boring and uninspired, standard menu. Platt rightly shreds the menu, and particularly Favreau, which spirals him into an angry mess. He starts experimenting with social media to further ruin the situation and gets into a fight with Hoffman, where he promptly quits. He ends up getting a food truck and cooking what he likes. There's some redeeming father stuff tossed in there as well. Most importantly this movie highlights that great food is available anywhere. Passion in cooking food is HUGE and chefs are empowered more than ever in the pursuit of culinary excellence and experimentation. Bottom Line: 7.8 out of 10. Funny and entertaining enough to pull through with limited story to work with. The fact that Favreau had Vergera and Johansson as lovers in this film shows that he is the director, because that's completely fucking ridiculous. In a related note I'd cast Anna Kournikova to be my wife/lover in any movie I cast even if she couldn't speak English.

Boyhood: More Oscar Stuff

Boyhood was the incredibly BOLD and DARING move by Richard Linklater to film a movie across 12 years following the same group of characters as their lives evolve and change through the year. I struggle with these movies a lot because I really enjoyed school and high school, so the whole teenage angsty thing is pretty much lost on me. I played sports and wasn't particularly emo-y or artsy, so I roll into this biased. The movie follows a divorced Mom (Patricia Arquette, who is VERY hot in the early years I want to mention), her daughter (played by Linklater's actual daughter), son, and their biological father (Ethan Hawke, who rocks). It goes through the trials and tribulations of primarily the son with a dash of everyone else. It is really fascinating to see the physical changes in the characters throughout the years and how their lives are moving along. There is some drama from Arquette marrying dude's with some issues. Hawke is flawed in the regard that he is all about having fun, living life, and not being a responsible parent in the kids earlier years. The problem that I have is that the gimmick of being filmed for 12 years is what makes this special. It's following around people, almost documentary-like and that about sums it up. Bottom line: 7.2 out of 10. I was largely unimpressed by this film due to the fact of the sizzle outweighing the substance. Ellar Coltrane will be working in Hollywood for a long time and Arquette and Hawke are both excellent, but it really is a rather boring slice of life film at it's core. My inability to empathize with the characters really has a negative effect on my rating I'm quite certain.

The Imitation Game: More Oscar Bait for Me to Enjoy!

The Imitation Game came out of relatively nowhere, but I heard it referred to a "Top 10 movie all-time" by a guy on Colin Cowherd's show and I noticed it's amazing scores on Rotten Tomatoes. Those coupled with Benedict Cumberbatch= Must see movie for this guy. The film follows the tale of Alan Turing, a British mathematics genius who worked on deciphering the German Enigma machine during WWII. I, being a history nerd of sorts, knew that Britain decoded the Enigma machine, which led to valuable intelligence, specifically the D-Day landing and towards the end of the war. Alan Turing is your standard unsung hero lost from the pages of history that possibly played a larger role in shaping our modern world than any other person of the 20th century. I realize how incredibly bold this statement is considering the likes of Einstein, Oppenheimer (guy who is most credited with the Atomic bomb), Tesla, Edison (more 19th century though), Gates, Jobs, ETC all have been involved in that century. Turing decided in 1940 already that the key to decoding the German encrypted messages was to create a machine that could run through all 159,000,000,000,000,000,000 possibilities of the Enigma machine to decode everything instead of trying to decode individual messages. His views weren't shared by many, particularly his Col. on sight, but he gains a powerful ally in MI-6 agent (JAMES BOND SHIT) Stewart Menzies who has a direct line to Churchill. He receives funding and eventually controls the others in his unit. The sole focus becomes making a "computer" that can run all the potential combinations quickly enough (before Midnight every day) to decode the intercepted messages in enough time to be useful. The Germans didn't even try to hide their messages because of their absolute trust that the Enigma was unbreakable. Turing faced a LOT of challenges and even after cracking the code he faced every kind of dilemma and stress imaginable. I don't want to release the secrets of the film, but his life was tragic and he truly held the weight of world at times. This was all secret until 2013 and THAT'S an incredible accomplishment to keep the accomplishments of that group hidden from the world. Amazing that those responsible for such heroism and feats of greatness couldn't share it with ANYONE. Bottom Line: 9.5 out of 10. Another incredible film that could again be "Oscar bait", but it was incredibly well done in all aspects. Cumberbatch plays the genius socially awkward guy perfectly. Knightley does VERY well in a complex role, Mark Strong is perfect as the mysterious MI-6 agent, Matt Goode is awesome. I was impressed by the effort by all and deeply saddened by the facts uncovered by this film and how we couldn't celebrate the great accomplishment of Alan Turing, the Grandfather of the computer. Hats off cast & crew of The Imitation Game. Oyewolo deserves Best Actor over Cumberbatch for the record.

Selma, AL: A Snapshot of the Civil Rights Movement

Selma, AL I jumped on board after seeing the Golden Globes. I consider myself wise about history, but I couldn't have told you what occurred in Selma, AL in 1964. It's utterly impossible to understand what the 1960's (and anytime before as well) would have been like for African-Americans. History is often written with blood and the civil rights movement is certainly an example of that. Selma was just a snapshot of the violence experienced in the South, but this film did the best job of depicting the horrific violence of the time. David Oyelowo should certainly be getting Best Actor props for his portrayal of Dr. King. Just a phenomenal job from Oyelowo. All the acting in this film is fantastic, particularly Tom Wilkinson as Lyndon B. Johnson (the B is for Baines!), Tim Roth as Gov. Wallace, Oprah, Common, Wendell Pierce (BUNK from the Wire!) Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King and Giovanni Ribisi were all phenomenal. Disappointing that a lot of the people mentioned are British actors playing americans including Oyelowo as Dr. King. The tale of Selma would be awesome in a mini-series because SO much was going on that I was completely unaware of. Selma, AL was chosen by Dr. King and his supporters as THE place to fight for voting rights. I forgot how crucial the ability to vote is. Selma was over 50% African-American, so the ability to vote= real representation immediately. Voting also= the ability to be selected to a jury, which would finally be able to convict white criminals of the atrocities against blacks. I couldn't have been more impressed with the way they handled all the historical aspects. Bottom Line: 9.2 out of 10. I was an enormous fan of this film. I'm a history nerd, so maybe this is biased, but I was very impressed with all aspects of this film. Great job all the way around. I honestly wish this would've been a longer movie so they could dive even deeper into more of the events in Selma. I'm totally cool that this was possibly "shameless" Oscar pandering, but it's awesome. Go see this in theatres.

Dumb and Dumber To: Long Awaited for No Reason

I, like most human beings my age, loved Dumb & Dumber. The sequel was due 15 years ago, but here we are. Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey are both tremendous actors both comedically and all-around. This movie catches us up on Harry & Lloyd in the present by making it seem like Lloyd has been faking being catatonic for the last 18 years. The plot is created by Lloyd snapping out of his catatonic "joke" state and having Harry tell Lloyd he needs a kidney to survive. They return to Harry's home, catch some cheap laughs, as they do throughout, and find a postcard exclaiming Harry has a daughter from 22 years ago with Fraida Felcher. They go on a cross-country search to find her, reconnect, and get a sweet, young kidney. Rob Riggle, Laurie Holden, Kathleen Turner, and secretly Bill Murray in a tiny cameo, all lend their talents to this film and they can't save it. Albeit from some very funny, cheap laughs it's clearly impossible to replicate the greatness of the first film. It's funny at times, there is some charm and bits from the original here as well, but it's fleeting moments. Bottom Line: 6.4 out of 10. It's something that you can get some cheap laughs out of, but sadly that's about it. Watch when it's free on TV in the near future.

The Equalizer: Denzel Boner

I am a shameless lover of Denzel Washington kicking ass. If I'm wrong that it's great entertainment, I don't want to be right. With that preface out of the way, I eagerly saw Equalizer. Denzel is a widowed man working at a Home Depot-esque store, reading classic literature, helping a couple people with life, and drinking tea some evenings at a 24/7 diner because he doesn't sleep. There he meets an underaged "call-girl" played creepily by Chloe Grace Moretz because she was 16 during filming, but she does a good job and will continue to get work. She turns 18 in February, so all creepy/pederast-like stuff comes off the board, which will help her out I'm sure. They chat for a bit, she is called to a limo where a large man she refers to as a "pig" of a client shuttles her away. She comes back with a bruise next time at the diner, Denzel asks what happened, she lies, next time he sees her is at a hospital where she is staying because she was severely beaten. Denzel now takes special interest, which is all you've wanted to see since the opening credits. He stops by the pimps place of business, offers $9800 to buy her freedom. Slavi (the Pimp) makes the last mistake of his life and Denzel kills 5 dudes in 25 seconds unarmed. You find out those 5 guys ran a decent portion of a Russian crime bosses' Boston syndicate. Russian crime boss is angry, he sends his "Get Shit Done" guy named Teddy, played by admirably by Marton Csokas, who I remember as the King who fucks up horribly in Kingdom of Heaven. Teddy uses the local crew (crooked Boston Cops) to help track down Denzel. Denzel now decides to make his pet project fucking up the Russian's crime syndicate and things are finally to where you want them to be. Denzel is great in this role of aged, but still crazy lethal, hitman. Bottom Line: 7.6 out of 10. If you enjoy supreme badass Denzel, you're going to like this. I was actually GIDDY waiting for him to kick someone's ass. There are a few too many details outside of him kicking Russian ass for my liking, but they needed to fill some time.

Parkland: The $1.99 Black Friday Pick

I took a shot at Parkland for $2 on Black Friday because I am deeply fascinated with the JFK assassination and it has a very good cast of Billy Bob Thornton, Paul Giamatti, Ron Livingstone, Zac Efron (He isn't terrible in this actually), and others you'll recognize throughout. The story attempts to show others besides JFK, his family, Oswald, or the others you'd expect. It follows Kennedy's body into Parkland Hospital and focuses on a couple doctors/nurses for a stretch. It follows Abe Zapruder as he takes the famous footage of Kennedy being shot. It follows Oswald's brother & mother for a stretch. It follows the head of the FBI in Dallas (BILLY BOB!). There are more, but you obviously get the point. Following these characters does help give a different perspective and depth to the assassination that was interesting, but it's spread WAY too thin. You don't care enough about anyone's story since they aren't on screen enough. It also fails to REALLY have a point or a solid direction throughout. It's very unfocused sadly and I think it was possible to have a very good film with what they had. Bottom Line: 6.8 out of 10. It was entertaining and I especially liked Giamatti's performance as Abe Zapruder, but I'm a big Paul G fan, so it's probably biased. It has some interesting things about the assassination that I didn't know, so I enjoyed those parts. It's worth a viewing if you're a JFK fan.