John & Becky’s Movie Review Of The Hateful Eight

thehatefuleightBecky and I went to see the movie The Hateful Eight at the AMC theater in Castle Rock, CO tonight with our oldest son Conroy. The Fandango website at The Hateful Eight describes the movie as follows…

“Bounty hunter John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his dangerous prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) encounter a treacherous blizzard en route to her sentencing in Wyoming. During their stagecoach ride they come across another bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), and former Confederate rebel leader Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins). Seeking refuge from the weather, the group chart a course for a mountain cabin to wait out the storm. There, they meet four other traveling strangers (Tim Roth, Demián Bichir, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern) with whom they must share the stuffy confines until the end of the blizzard…”

The Review:  I had high hopes for this film and thought it looked like a great Spaghetti Western, like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, but I was concerned that it was a Quentin Tarantino film.  Quentin is the most overrated Director in all of Hollywood in my opinion since all his movies move at a snail’s pace as he builds up the characters in the story, only to kill them off with as much carnage as possible.  Which is exactly what you can expect again this time around.  He doesn’t just shoot a guy, he has to shoot them a few times with plenty of blood and then blow their head off, so that you can get the full effect of the murder being committed.

Welcome to the grotesque world of Quentin Tarantino who directs a every movie like he really wants to make a B rated horror movie, like Jason kills Freddie with plenty of blood and guts, while trying to be a Director like Ron Howard with his script and dialogue to captivate his audience.  I’m not buying it and think it’s a pretty lame way to make a movie, but many people love his work.  I keep trying to be a fan, but it’s always the same thing, over and over and over again.  He’s the polar opposite of a great director like Alfred Hitchcock, who could freak you out with a shower scene in Psycho, while leaving something for the person’s own imagination.

The acting in this movie is really great.  The cinematography at times is breathtaking with the mountains and the realism of the blizzard and even the setting in the film is interesting, along with the story at times.  However, it drags on and on and on for almost three hours of getting to know people that are going to be killed in this Hollywood horror film.  Quentin needs to get that shot he knows his audience will love of brains splattering all over a woman’s face because that is quality movie making at its best.  Maybe if you subscribe to Gore Magazine you will love this movie, but most of it is just senseless violence that gets ridiculous after awhile.

After a while, you will just become numb to the killing, along with the movie and you will just want all the characters to die quickly so you can leave, like in that terrible vampire movie he did with George Clooney and Harvey Keitel, From Dusk Till Dawn.  I think that is part of his success is that he always casts really great actors, like in this movie where Kurt Russell, Samuel L Jackson, along with all the other actors did a great job in this film.

At one point, this movie turned into a game of CLUE with one of the murderous gunslingers, actually carrying around a bottle of poison with them in case their guns didn’t work or something.  There is even a narrator who comes in to explain to the audience what is going on because apparently we are all too stupid to figure out this movie, which is really not complicated.  It will have you asking the question, “Which of the hateful eight gunfighters did it in the kitchen with the poison?”.  I almost felt like I was watching Reservior Dogs again only in the Wild West during a blizzard and twice as long, even with many of the same cast members.  We just needed Harvey Keitel bleeding all over the place, along with some of his former cast.

The bottom line is that I was hoping for a Worth The Trip or maybe even a Don’t Miss It, but instead we got a Rental at best and only for the acting.  Conroy seemed to like it the most by the way, until close to the very end and then he started to lose interest in it as well.  I heard people leaving the theater talking about it and trying to convince one another that they liked it.  Which was the same experience for the previous seven films I watched of his.

John – ** Rental
Becky – ** Rental

Conroy – ** Rental

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John Boyd

Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy
John is an auto consultant and owner of CoolCarGuy.com with his license at a car dealership in Denver, Colorado. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase or consign your vehicle – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com or Twitter@coolcarguy

John & Becky’s Movie Review Of Concussion

concussionBecky and I went to see the movie Concussion at the AMC theater in Castle Rock, CO tonight.  The Fandango website at Concussion describes the movie as follows…

“Filmmaker Peter Landesman (Parkland) wrote and directed this sports-themed drama based on Jeanne Marie Laskas’ GQ article “Game Brain,” about the potentially horrific cost of playing football. Pittsburgh-based neuropathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) discovers a degenerative brain disease now known as CTE in the autopsies of several deceased pro-football players, but after presenting his research, he finds himself under fire from the NFL. Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Luke Wilson, Alec Baldwin, Bitsie Tulloch, and Albert Brooks co-star…”

The Review:  I wasn’t really that interested in seeing this film after seeing the Preview for the movie, it pretty much had given the whole film away.  I am seeing quite a few movies like this recently where you watch the trailer for the film and you pretty much saw the whole movie, which takes the mystery out of wanting to see the film.  Nevertheless, Becky and I decided to go and catch this new movie based on a true story about a doctor who took on the NFL to expose their deception concerning concussions in football.

Concussion stars Will Smith as the doctor from Nigeria, who the NFL went out of their way to discredit for his research on a famous NFL player after his death.  The story is really amazing because of the fact that the doctor spent his own money to do the autopsies on the players and spent countless hours researching what happened to these NFL hero’s.  The NFL denied his research and the player’s deaths from brain trauma out of fear, rather than trying to actually prevent the problem and found a solution to the problem for these men.  The movie was really well done, with quality acting and directing.  It doesn’t paint the NFL and their owners in very good light, but it’s an interesting story even if you’re not a football fan.

We both liked it and even Becky thought it was a Don’t Miss It and she is not a football fan.

John – **** Don’t Miss It
Becky – **** Don’t Miss It

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John Boyd

Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy
John is an auto consultant and owner of CoolCarGuy.com with his license at a car dealership in Denver, Colorado. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase or consign your vehicle – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com or Twitter@coolcarguy

John & Becky’s Movie Review Of Joy

joyBecky and I went to see the movie JOY at the AMC theater near Redondo Beach, CA on Friday for Christmas with Conroy, Corban and Bianca before taking a flight back to Denver, CO. The Fandango website at JOY describes the movie as follows…

“Biopic of entrepreneur Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence), a divorced mother of two who risks her life’s savings to produce and market her invention, the Miracle Mop. Joy faces opposition from her dysfunctional family, including her father Rudy (Robert De Niro), as they meddle in her burgeoning business. But when the head of the newly founded QVC network (Bradley Cooper) gives her a chance to sell her product on live TV, the Miracle Mop becomes a household name….”

The Review:  This is a movie about perseverance at all costs and against all odds.  It’s about a woman who has had life hand her a bad hand with a family that is a bit nuts and continually creates chaos in her life after her parents are divorced when she is young.  She sacrifices her own dreams to help her father who is really unappreciative and her mother who is a whacko and lives vicariously through her Soap Opera addictions.  She has a jealous step sister and a grandma who keeps encouraging her that she can be more than she believes she can, which makes for a very interesting film because it is so real to life.

The movie is based on the true story of Joy Mangano, who is the creator of the Miracle Mop that ended up selling on QVC and this film shows the challenges that she went through to make it happen.  It’s very entertaining and the acting was great as we have come to expect from Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper, along with the rest of the cast in this feature film. One of the reasons it was so enjoyable is because things didn’t come easy for her with her family getting in the way constantly, along with other obstacles from other people trying to steal her business.  The movie is very well done and it will have you cheering for the underdog as she tries to break free from the cycle of failure in her family.

We all liked this movie and it is definitely one to put on your list for the Holidays.

John – **** Don’t Miss It
Becky – **** Don’t Miss It

Conroy – **** Don’t Miss it
Corban – **** Don’t Miss It
Bianca – **** Don’t Miss It

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John Boyd

Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy
John is an auto consultant and owner of CoolCarGuy.com with his license at a car dealership in Denver, Colorado. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase or consign your vehicle – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com or Twitter@coolcarguy

John & Becky’s Movie Review Of The Big Short

thebigshortBecky and I went to see the movie The Big Short at the AMC theater in Hollywood, CA on Thursday with Conroy, Corban and Bianca. The Fandango website at The Big Short describes the movie as follows…

“This adaptation of Michael Lewis’ nonfiction book The Big Short explores the 2008 financial crisis through the lens of four unorthodox moneymen, who foresaw the consequences of the fraudulent mortgage-lending practices of large banks on Wall Street. Christian Bale plays Michael Burry, a former hedge-fund manager who was one of the first to forecast the collapse of the credit bubble due to excessive subprime lending. Steve Carell is Mark Baum (based on the real-life Steve Eisman), a money manager who rose to fame after successfully betting against subprime mortgages…”

The Review:  If you’ve been wondering what happened to bring about the big recession of 2008 and you’re curious about how incompetent the United States government and Wall Street investors really are, then you will want to see this movie.  It has an all-star cast and they all are excellent at playing a group of eccentric investors from California, Denver and New York City who all arrive at the same conclusion – the big banks were committing fraud and packaging bad loans as “A rated paper”, when it was really junk paper.

The movie has some comedy mixed in with this tragedy about American Capitalism when it is allowed to go unchecked by corrupt government officials.  If you lived through the 2008 recession when our two incompetent Presidents, George Bush followed by Barrack Obama, came out and said how we had to save the banks with a $700 billion bailout or we would all plummet into the Abyss then you will appreciate this film.   This was even though the banks had clearly committed fraud on the American people and the United States taxpayer got to flip the bill, while the bankers ran off with their millions.

The film is very well done and it is very entertaining as a look back to just 8 years ago when some investors realized that “credit default swaps” were being packaged and sold without telling the whole story of why money was flowing to people with bad credit to buy homes.  It reminded me of the Savings and Loan scandal that we went through in the 1980’s and 1990’s, which was another financial fiasco that the Federal Reserve helped create for the American people and this sort of thing will more than likely happen again as is shown clearly at the end of The Big Short.

Conroy and I thought it was a Don’t Miss It and Corban thought it was Worth The Trip.  If you don’t pay attention in this movie and you’re not sure about what happened in 2008 you can easily get lost or find the movie really boring.  Bianca and Becky thought it was a waste of time and they didn’t like it at all.

John – ** Don’t Miss It
Becky – * Dont Bother

Conroy – **** Don’t Miss it
Corban – *** Worth The Trip
Bianca – * Don’t Bother

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John Boyd

Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy
John is an auto consultant and owner of CoolCarGuy.com with his license at a car dealership in Denver, Colorado. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase or consign your vehicle – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com or Twitter@coolcarguy

John & Becky’s Movie Review Of Star Wars: The Force Awakens

star-warsBecky and I went to see the new Star Wars movie The Force Awakens at the Chinese Mann theater in Hollywood, CA on Friday with Conroy, Corban and Bianca. The Fandango website at Star Wars: The Force Awaken describes the movie as follows…

“In this continuation of the epic space opera, a downed stormtrooper (John Boyega) goes on a journey that brings him face-to-face with heroes from the past (Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill). Directed by J.J. Abrams…”

The Review:  I saw the original Star Wars over 27 times when I was 10 years old in 1977 at the movie theater and many more times on VHS and DVD when it became available.  After Return of the Jedi, I thought the franchise went seriously downhill and started turning into more of a fantasy version of “The Days of our Lives” soap opera as they tried to make the movies as good as the first three.

Along comes Disney thats buys the rights to Star Wars for $4 billion and hires J.J. Abrams, who directed Star Trek to launch a new movie The Force Awakens, with a whole new set of stars and some of the characters from the original one.  The movie was really well done as you would expect, but it was a complete knock-off of the first three films.  I don’t wont to be a “spoiler”, but they went back to the “Luke, I am your father” situation again, only with another character, along with a female version of Yoda and even the classic bar scene.  Instead of Luke Skywalker, this time around there is a young female version of Luke who finds a droid just like R2D2 and if you’re a fan of the original Star Wars, you will see similarities to the first Star Wars, even including a bigger and more destructive Death Star.  There is even a new Obi-Wan, who arrives in the movie and will certainly be in the next one around.  I just have to wonder if the next one will be a remake of The Empire Strikes Back.

The bottom line is that there is very little new here at all.  It is definitely “The Force Awakens” because it’s a total rehash of the first one, which maybe everyone was expecting, but I thought it was supposed to be a completely new movie.  It is still entertaining for Star Wars fans and it was really well done.  We all thought it was entertaining, but I personally thought J.J.’s remake of Star Trek was actually better because the story was completely new and not a remake.  I enjoyed it enough to give it a Worth The Trip, if you’re a Star Wars fan.  Becky is not a fan though and she still thought it was Worth The Trip.

John – *** Worth The Trip
Becky – *** Worth The Trip

Conroy – **** Don’t Miss it
Corban – *** Don’t Miss it
Bianca – *** Worth The Trip

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John Boyd

Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy
John is an auto consultant and owner of CoolCarGuy.com with his license at a car dealership in Denver, Colorado. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase or consign your vehicle – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com or Twitter@coolcarguy

John & Becky’s Movie Review Of Sisters

sistersBecky and I went to see the new movie Sisters at the Hitching Post theater in Tehachapi, CA on Saturday night with Conroy, Corban and Bianca. The Fandango website at Sisters describes the movie as follows…

“SNL alumni Tina Fey and Amy Poehler co-star in this Universal Studios comedy about two daffy adult sisters, one an irresponsible single mom and the other a kindhearted nurse, who decide to throw one last wild party at their childhood home before it’s sold by their parents…”

The Review:  Sisters is one of those movies that everyone wanted to go see based on the movie trailers since it looks like it’s going to be really funny.  Especially with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler starring together in a movie about sisters and complete opposites.  Unfortunately, the film doesn’t deliver or even come close to living up to the expectations.  It has some good laughs, but overall the story is pretty lame.

The entire movie centers around two sisters who have parents that are downsizing and they are upset about their parents making this decision without them for selfish reasons.  One daughter is really responsible and the other one is pretty much a train wreck who has lived a life of partying.  They decide to throw one last party at their parents house, like they did when they were in High School and it gets out of control.  That is pretty much the entire movie.

As I mentioned, there are a few good laughs, but they are few and far between.  Sisters is like a funny Saturday Night Live skit that went far too long and eventually the joke is no longer that funny.  Three of us left the movie thinking it was “okay” and Corban and Bianca thought that it was Worth The Trip.

John – ** Rental
Becky – ** Rental

Conroy – ** Rental
Corban – *** Worth The Trip
Bianca – *** Worth The Trip

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John Boyd

Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy
John is an auto consultant and owner of CoolCarGuy.com with his license at a car dealership in Denver, Colorado. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase or consign your vehicle – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com or Twitter@coolcarguy

John & Becky’s Movie Review Of In The Heart Of The Sea

HeartoftheseaBecky and I went to see the new movie In the Heart of the Sea at the Regal Cinema in Lone Tree, CO on opening night. The Fandango website at In the Heart of the Sea describes the movie as follows…

Ron Howard helms this adaptation of Nathaniel Philbrick‘s historical novel about the harrowing high-seas encounter that inspired Herman Melville‘s Moby Dick. In the winter of 1820, the crew of the New England whaling ship the Essex struggle to survive after an attack by a rogue sperm whale leaves them stranded at sea for 90 days….”

The Review:  I was pretty thrilled about seeing a Moby Dick flick, having read the book as a kid.  Especially since it is directed by Ron Howard and starring Chris Hemsworth, who is the Australian actor who plays Thor in the Avengers.  Becky wanted to see it too, so we had pretty high expectations for this film.  However, I think we were expecting more than what it delivered for both of us.

Don’t get me wrong.  It’s a good film and it is directed extremely well as you would expect from Ron Howard and was fascinating being based on a true story, but the script could have been much better.  It is the true story behind the story of Moby Dick, so instead of Melville’s tale of Captain Ahab and Moby Dick, it is about the real whaler who encountered the beast that Melville wrote about.  I think that was part of the problem with the film for me is that it is entertaining and interesting, but it was almost like watching a documentary, instead of getting swept into the crazy character of Captain Ahab.

It’s a good movie, but I don’t think it’s a great movie.  It’s definitely more of a 7 than a 10 and I was expecting a 10, because at times it is boring.  It doesn’t go into enough of an explanation as to why they were whaling in the first place until the end of the movie when you find out that they need whale oil because oil from the ground had not been discovered.  I think that was a disservice to the audience because in this politically correct generation it is easy to judge the people from a hundred years ago based on the times of today.  The true story is fascinating and it’s amazing how they survived and gruesome and barbaric and from a historical sense unbelievably sad.

It is definitely a movie that is worth seeing and we suggest seeing it on the big screen because it is a big whale.  You’ll enjoy it, but you will probably leave wanting more than what it delivers.  We still thought it was worth the price of admission.

John – *** Worth The Trip
Becky – *** Worth The Trip

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John Boyd

Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy
John is an auto consultant and owner of CoolCarGuy.com with his license at a car dealership in Denver, Colorado. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase or consign your vehicle – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com or Twitter@coolcarguy