the truth about alcohol

[IMDB] [Netflix]

the truth about alcohol is one of those fake scientific documentaries that drives you batshit if you know how science works.  eg, if you go to the sleep lab for one night to measure the effect of drinking alcohol before sleeping, you cannot actually draw firm conclusions about the measurements because you do not have a baseline.  it was doubly maddening to see the interviews of actual doctors and scientists, most of whom seemed to understand that they were partaking in bullshit.  the interviewer asked questions which indicated he had not been paying attention to what he had been saying for the previous 5-10 minutes, then the doctor/scientist would struggle to not cry while answering.  clearly, it was one of those situations where they soiled their hands in order to accomplish a greater good.

the truth about alcohol is that it can be tasty and/or mind altering, and the only reason it is legal is that most people consume it regularly.  it gets one terrible night's sleep.

wheelman

[IMDB] [Netflix]

i will just come right to the point. wheelman used this gimmicky story-telling thing where it always left the camera in the car, and it bothered me because there was no apparent point to doing so. unless it was to distract from the overall weakness of the film, but that would imply that this overall weakness was somehow foreseen. it is not like you would go back and reshoot the whole movie in goofy perspective after you realize your first attempt was crap. or would you?

i dunno. i watch movies, i do not make them. it just seems like a lot to me. why not hire new actors, or make a different movie? it is not like there was anything amazing going on here that absolutely demanded to be preserved. like for example, if samurai princess had left out the love rhombus, they would not have been all, "crap, nothing to salvage here." instead they would have obviously preserved the director's artistic vision and reshot whatever needed reshooting because samurai princess was a film whose time had come, a work of art that demanded to be released.

well, wheelman was no samurai princess. it gets two red trunks. by the way, if your authentication protocol involves just believing anything somebody tells you over the phone, then you have at least one problem which demands immediate attention.

also, in case you are wondering, i intentionally left out all the jokes about how an alternate explanation for the camera placement is that the director could see into the future and already knew about the film's weakness, and just shot it that way the first time.  it just seemed too obvious.

the number 23

[IMDB] [Amazon]

the number 23 would have been a lot creepier if i did not already have the habit of playing stupid number games in my head. it is not really that hard to turn a string of numbers into another number, usually. and it is way easier if you have a modicum of control over which numbers get to be in your string and in what order. and if you allow splicing, then it is easier still. so there was nothing scary about the number 23. 

with that said, it was not a terrible movie. i was pleasantly surprised to find jim carey doing well in a serious role, and the plot was entertaining enough to justify the time expenditure.

the number 23 gets three top secrets. three is twice three halves, three halves is basically 32, which is 23 reversed, for a grand total of 46. er, 64? then 64 is 2^6, which is 26. and 26 is of course 3 more than 23. scary, right? right?

hello? is this thing on?

too late

[IMDB] [Amazon]

too late is a real feat of directorial masturbation. i guess i am supposed to comment on how they made it look like they shot the whole movie in five takes, possibly by shooting the whole movie in five takes, but i feel like that is a little too obvious a thing to comment on. i could also comment on the nonlinear storytelling, but really they had to do that in order to make the story at all interesting.

well shit, that actually leaves me with very little to comment on. actually, i do have something to say about the take at the outdoor movie theater. just the sheer amount of wat in that sequence was mind-blowing. it is an outdoor theater, plus a boxing ring? and the lady runs them both, simultaneously? and she used to be partners with the detective guy? but she was an exotic dancer in the previous scene? was she undercover or something? and she forgot to go back to the boxing ring to introduce the subsequent round? how did the guy get uncuffed and run away? it was just a lot, you know?

too late gets one really really really really really really really very really incredibly long take. so long.

take me

[IMDB] [Amazon]

take me is a tale about nevermind because it does not matter.  the acting was just not good enough to pull this one off. the chemistry was not there, and neither of the leads held the screen very well on their own. do not even get me started on the writing. who signed off on this ridiculous premise?

i actually have a whole bunch of things i could say about running a kidnapping business, but i just cannot believe that i have to say them.  i also want to avoid making any more buzz for this drek fest. so let me summarize by saying that if you are going to kidnap somebody, do try not to be such a fucking amateur about it?

take me gets one preposterously flawed turn of events after another.

the dark tower

[IMDB] [Amazon]

so sure, i read and loved the dark tower books, as well as almost everything else Stephen King has written, but i do not expect anybody to make a movie which translates the books directly to the screen. King has been writing a long time and has a good idea how to fully utilize the novel format, which i expect to make it even harder to make a film which is "true" to the books. so i am not surprised that the filmmakers went a different direction with the assignment, as it were.

still.

what the fuck was that? it was like some kind of crazy mishmash of things that appeared across like eight different Stephen King novels. and Jake has the shine now? seriously. i would have been a lot happier if they had just movieified wolves of the calla or wizard and glass.

the dark tower gets two souls in the man in black's pocket. one of the souls was because i wanted to like it more than it actually deserved.

the babysitter

[IMDB]

i have this new thing i am doing where i shut off bad movies rather than finish watching them. basically acknowledging my extremely finite lifespan and deciding that maybe i should spend it on more worthwhile things than low budget drek. but then i thought to myself, schmolli, what about your readers? and also, what do you have to do that is more important than watching low budget drek?

so anyway, i started watching low budget drek again. you will be pleased to hear that netflix has plenty of it available for streaming, and in fact, they even started producing it, i guess because they want to stop paying royalties on the crap they currently have in their library.

man, when an i going to start taking about this movie? very soon now, i assure you.

i first noticed netflix was funding lower budget stuff while watching standup specials. they started with big names, but now a lot of them could charitably be referred to as... small names. by this point i am pretty well convinced that they would be willing to fund a schmolli standup special, which would probably consist of me standing on a stage reading old movie reviews in my robo-schmolli voice.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. WELL HELLO PITTSBURG. WHAT A GREAT CROWD. LET US GET TO KNOW OUR AUDIENCE. YOU, SIR. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A BABYSITTER. NO, I THOUGHT NOT. JUST AS WELL, I DO NOT KNOW ANY BABYSITTER JOKES.

ANYWHO, I WILL NOW COMMENCE MY ROBO-SCHMOLLI REVIEW COMEDY SPECIAL.

THE BABYSITTER IS SUPPOSEDLY A COMEDY SLASH HORROR MOVIE, BUT I THINK I WOULD CALL IT MORE OF A STEAMING SLASH STINKING MOVIE. AT ANY RATE, NOT FUNNY AND NOT SCARY. ALSO NONE OF THE SEXY STUFF WAS SEXY. NETFLIX PLEASE.

THE BABYSITTER GETS ONE EXTREMELY IMPROBABLE KILL AFTER ANOTHER.

lol zone 2

[IMDB] [Amazon]

autocorrect decided that this movie should be called lol zone 2 instead of kill zone 2, and who am i to argue? in honor of autocorrect continuous and constant fuckups, i have decided to write this entire review without correcting autocorrect. let us see how correct the review ends up being. send to be going really well so far!

i am not going to lie, i watched this movie because Tony has was in it, because i loved him in Ong Bak. and, just like every other Tony has movie i have watched, i was so disappointed. is here trying to act or something? man, go with your strengths! beat some bad guys up!

anyway, they bakery this movie as an action movie, but there is really very little action per unit time. half the fight since are so confusing you cannot tell what is going on anyway. for example, the one where somebody, i thought it was the bad guys, sore up at the surgery and then one of them carves his way through the rest and then take it the cops who were guessing the underling donor guy? my best guess is that actually the guys who showed up were well-dressed cops and there was just one bad guy who was following them in.

another thing i would like to complain about is that so many of these action movies feature fight since where everyone is happy to just do superficial damage. the fights would be over so much more wiggly if anybody was delivering am extra disabling blow when they get a chance. i mean seriously, break s leg or something.

lol zone 2 gets two smartphones that i could not figure out who it belonged to until pretty much the end, except i think it was supposed to be obvious.