Moviewatcher122's 2016 Film Diary: April

April 1



"Have a nice party."
"Nice? It's gotta be better than nice. It's gotta be bloody unforgettable."

I always wanted to start off April 1st with this movie someday, so this April Fool's Day I decided to do so. I wasn't really expecting much from it, but I actually ended up enjoying it. It's a fun slasher movie with an interesting premise and I really liked the whole April Fool's Day scenario of this movie. It's far from being a horror classic, but I had fun with it and it is worth checking out regardless of whether it's April 1st or not.

April 2

Re-watch



"I bet it's going to feel really big in that hand later..."

This is the first time I've seen a movie twice in theatres and this movie was just as awesome the second time around. Don't really have much to add this time around, but I will say that there were quite a few moments in this movie that I had forgotten about and there were even a few things I missed on my first viewing. I also don't recall catching the post-credits scene last time which was also a plus. Now that I've seen this again I can easily say that this is Marvel's best movie to date and hopefully it will set the bar for how superhero movies should be made.

April 3



"Be careful. You're a man who makes people afraid, and that's dangerous."
"It's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid."

What a hell of a movie this was and far from what I was expecting. This is one of the darker Clint Eastwood westerns while also having it's similarities to the movies that Sergio Leone and Don Siegel made. It had a fascinating story, Clint Eastwood was great as the leading role and a very intellegent script. As much as I liked Play Misty With Me, this movie which is Clint Eastwood's second film behind the camera is the movie that made him into the great director he is today.

April 4



"You really think you're ready for the field? I once used defibrillators on myself. I put shards of glass in my fuckin' eye. I've jumped from a high-rise building using only a raincoat as a parachute and broke both legs upon landing; I still had to pretend I was in a fucking Cirque du Soleil show! I've swallowed enough microchips and shit them back out again to make a computer. This arm has been ripped off completely and re-attached with *this* fuckin' arm."
"I don't know that that's possible... I mean medically..."
"During the threat of an assassination attempt, I appeared convincingly in front of congress as Barack Obama."
"In black-face? That's not appropriate."
"I watched the woman I love get tossed from a plane and hit by another plane mid-air. I drove a car off a freeway on top of a train while it was on fire. Not the car, *I* was on fire."
"Jesus, you're intense."

I originally had no interest in seeing this movie at all. Mainly because the trailers looked terrible and because I'm not a fan of Melissa McCarthy. Not to mention that I hated Paul Feig's other movies with Bridesmaids being so painful that I stopped watching around 55 minutes in and The Heat sucked too with the best jokes being in the trailer, so I thought this movie would be no exception. When it was in theatres I still had no interest in seeing it and didn't hear many good things about it, but very recently my grandpa told me about this movie saying that he enjoyed it and my dad said that is wasn't as bad as he thought it would be and that Jason Statham and Jude Law made the movie tolerable. Both of them told me about this movie on the same day by the way which was an odd coincidence, so by that point I was like "What the hell, I might as well check it out. Especially since it's on Netflix."

I was surprised by how much I actually liked it and is much better than I thought it would be. This movie was just another victim of bad advertising as it's different from what this movie was advertised as. The trailers made it look like another typical Melissa McCarthy vehicle with her being loud and obnoxious and jokes with her getting hurt or jokes revolving around her weight. Luckily this movie didn't fall under that category. This movie was really funny and relies more on witty dialogue or clever gags and actually delivers genuine laughs instead of brief chuckles every now and then. The cast does a good job as well with Jason Statham and Jude Law delivering good performances as expected and I even liked Melissa McCarthy's role and it's nice to see a movie she's in where she isn't typecast or stereotyped. Even the action scenes in this movie were well-done and well-shot. This was a surprisingly good movie and I'm glad I watched it after hearing good things about it from my family.

April 5



"Look, you don't understand. There is a maniac trying to kill us."
"Welcome to New York."

Wasn't sure what to think of this, but it surprisingly wasn't that bad. I guess it was due to how toned down the previous movie was that it was just nice to see the gory kills again. They did get creative with some of the kills and unlike the previous movie it actually was fun. It's just a shame that it's almost a good movie. I wasn't too interested in this movie plot-wise, the characters weren't that interesting and wasn't really rooting for them and it should've focused on New York a lot more than it actually did. Still it's far from being the worst entry in this franchise and it was a lot better than I expected.

April 6



"The step-king has had enough of the king's BULLSHIT!"

Judging from the ads for this movie I wasn't looking forward to it. The trailers and commercials made it look like some family-friendly Will Ferrell movie that relied heavily on slapstick. Plus Will Ferrell's movies have kind of been slipping in quality recently with Anchorman 2 being godawful and Get Hard being occasionally funny, but for the most part was disappointing and I know he only had a cameo in it, but The Internship is one of the worst comedies in recent years, so I thought the same thing would apply to this movie. Surprisingly enough I actually liked it. It delivered a good amount of laughs, Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg made a good comedic duo and it really wasn't geared toward kids despite its premise. It's not Will Ferrell's best movie by any means, but it's miles better than some of his recent films.

April 7



Well this was... a movie... I guess? It really didn't do a whole lot for me. It had a strong opening, but after that it just stopped being so interesting. Now going into this movie I knew that there was no dialogue and that the story is told through visuals and I thought it sounded interesting, but I was expecting it to be a lot more interesting and engaging on a visual level. It still looks good and there was some things I liked about it, but it just failed to keep my interest. There isn't much going on in this movie and feels like it's something that would be shown at a museum with animated picture frames that holds enough memory to show a whole movie and the sound in this movie is just crickets and birds. Yeah, forget Ennio Morricone, John Williams and Danny Elfman. These crickets and birds are the best film composers of all time.

Still, even though I wasn't invested in this movie there was still some things I liked about this movie and all and there's enough good things in it for me to not rate it anything below a 6/10, but as an experiment it didn't really work for me and I just thought that it could've been better. Worth watching at least once if you're into these weird kind of movies, but everyone else would probably be better off skipping.

April 8



"Wayne? She got away. The cowboy was here, they got the jump on me."
"Do you know where they went?"
"Hell, no. How could I? I've been staring at my eyelids for the last hour and a half."

This movie is another gem in Nicolas Cage's career. It's a very well-made neo-noir with a great performance from Dennis Hopper and Nicolas Cage turns in a very good performance as well, the script was well-written and it was also darkly funny at times. It's a pretty good film and it's one of Cage's more underrated movies.

April 9



"Good afternoon, graduates, dead poets, painters, future Einsteins, and all those in between. Today I'm here to warn you, that you are being lied to. Our parents, our teachers, our doctors, have lied to us. And it's the exact same lie. The same six words, "Everything is going to be okay."

This movie was something that I thought sounded weird and not in a good way judging from what I've heard about it and honestly after seeing it I feel the same way about this premise as I did before. It was just weird to have a movie about a guy who communicates via a beaver puppet and have it played as a serious movie when it would've been more fitting as a dark comedy. Well it is a dramedy, but the comedy doesn't really work and the plot was just too silly for me to take seriously. I will give this movie credit though as it is well-made on a technical standpoint. Jodie Foster does a good job behind the camera, the acting is decent with Mel Gibson doing an adequate job with talking in a Cockney accent and there are a few chuckle-worthy moments, but other than that this movie didn't work for me and I just couldn't take it seriously.

April 9



"Source Code is not time travel. Rather, Source Code is time re-assignment. It gives us access to a parallel reality."

Even though this movie was on my radar for years, I never really had a strong urge to watch it until very recently. Now that I have seen it I can easily say that it deserves all the praise it has gotten over the years. I actually didn't know a lot about this movie going into it other than the fact that Duncan Jones directed it and Jake Gyllenhaal is the main character and going into this one knowing little to nothing about it really made it fun for me although I would feel the same way about it if I knew what it was about. This was a very smart movie with a great premise, a clever script, great acting and there's so much going on that it requires your fullest attention. It's a very exciting movie from start to finish and now that I've seen both of Duncan Jones films, it shows that he is a director that's worth keeping my eye on.

April 10



"My fear is my curse. What's yours?"
"I was born without a conscience."

This is a pretty underrated movie and it is a very good re-telling of Yojimbo. Just like A Fistful of Dollars it takes the original story and gives it a different setting with the aforementioned film taking place in the west instead of ancient Japan and this one taking place in the Prohibition Era. It's a very gripping story that had me on the edge of my seat despite being familiar with this story and Bruce Willis played the leading role very well. Not a great movie by any means, but I really enjoyed it and I think it's better than people give it credit for.

April 11



"Boys, boys! Henry! What's going on?"
"I'm sorry, Mom. We were playing this really dumb game. We weren't fighting. We were just playing. Weren't we, Mark?"
"...Yeah, playing."
"Well, all right, but just not so rough, okay? You two looked like you were trying to kill each other."

This was a very interesting movie and as far as acting goes this is easily Macaulay Culkin's best role. He really does a very convincing job as the sociopathic kid and he pretty much made this movie. Besides him though Elijah Wood is also good as well and it's a very ballsy movie that's both disturbing and fascinating to watch. This was a very solid movie that was better than I was expecting it to be.

April 12



"I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we pass the audition."

This was a decent documentary on The Beatles, but it was not what I was expecting it to be. I was expecting it to be more powerful documentary on the troubled production of Let It Be and what would eventually come to the band breaking up, but this movie was mostly just recording sessions of the album. That's not to say it wasn't interesting because it was, but I was expecting a lot more than just that. I really liked the last 30 minutes with them performing on the rooftop, but I would've been more excited about it hadn't I already seen that footage on YouTube years ago, so I already knew what happened. It's a decent documentary, but it's far what I was expecting it to be and after watching this movie I found out that it was supposed to be much longer with it being well over 3 hours. Maybe it would've been better if they went with the original cut.

April 13



"And that spells cash with a capital..."
"K!"
"You should go back to school."
"I hated teaching."

This was a very funny movie. It had a lot of funny moments and there was so many jokes in this movie that I probably would have to watch it again just to catch it all. I also liked the claymation opening credits sequence and it might be one of the best animated opening credits I've ever seen in a live-action movie. I didn't really see it as a modern-day Marx Brothers movie until I read about people comparing this to them and after seeing that I can now understand the connection. If there's one complaint I had though is that it does feel a little too fast-paced at times and it really gets out of control near the end. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, but it did kind of catch me off-guard. I still laughed a lot watching this though and I'll most likely watch it again.

April 15



"I've waited all my life to say this."
"Be my guest."
"We come in peace."

This may not be Joe Dante's best work, but I still really enjoyed this movie. It's a really fun movie with a down to earth premise, good acting from our child starts especially a very young Ethan Hawke and like pretty much all of Joe Dante's movies they look really impressive on a visual level even though some of the effects look very cheesy and dated by todays standards, but even that isn't a problem as it adds to the charm and I think some of the cheesy effects really add to what Joe Dante was trying to do with this movie which was pay homage to the classic sci-fi movies and TV shows. Like I said it's not Dante's best work, but I still really enjoyed it and my younger brother who I watched this with enjoyed this as much as I did.

April 15



"But I'm telling you, and I'm telling everybody at this table that that's a shark! And I know what a shark looks like, because I've seen one up close. And you'd better do something about this one, because I don't intend to go through that hell again!"

I will admit that Jaws did not need any sequels at all, but with that said this still turned out to be decent. While bringing back Roy Scheider definitely helps, I think this movie's strongest point is that it knows what it wants to be. It knows that it's not going to be as good as the original Jaws, but it does it's best to be effective as a sequel. While this sequel is pretty tame compared to the first one and it is a little slow at times, it's still a fun sequel that does have some suspense and Roy Scheider is just as good as he was in the first movie. Like I said Jaws didn't need a sequel, but it's still better than it has any right to be.

April 17



"I just killed two people!"
"That's awesome."
"They had guns and knives and they were being total dicks!"

The worst thing about this movie is that it's very competent as an action movie, but it fails at everything else. The action scenes were actually well-done and it was surprisingly gory at times which is nice to see when most action movies tend to play it safe these days, but it's a shame that they're a part of this terrible movie. The acting is bad, the chemistry between Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart is far from believable and for a comedy it's surprisingly unfunny. Going into this movie I thought I would get a funny action comedy that would deliver on both sides, but unfortunately it's only good at one thing. I chuckled maybe a few times, but most of the time the humor felt so forced or so virtually non-existent that I had a hard time telling if this movie was even trying to be funny or not and was just waiting for something funny to happen. The plot to this movie is also very poorly-executed and this movie just seems to take itself too seriously. This movie also managed to give me a headache which is something rare for a movie to do to me. It's possible that I had a headache before I went into this movie, but I didn't notice it until near the end of the movie so I blame the quality of this film on this one. Terrible movie and if it wasn't for the action scenes then my rating would be lower.

April 18



"Our shark couldn't have killed Overman. Its mother did."
"You're talkin' about some damn shark's mother?"

Decided to watch this one since the first 3 Jaws movies are on Netflix. Wasn't really sure what to expect from it, but this movie was so stupid that it was funny. The 3-D effects haven't aged well, but it's really funny how in your face this movie is with the 3-D and the acting is cheesy and the plot is very stupid, but it's just too stupid for me not to enjoy. Not much else to say, but even though it's bad on a technical level, I still think there's fun to be had with this sequel despite it being a step-down from the first two Jaws.

April 19



"When I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you."

This was the last movie in the Chuck Norris DVD pack that I haven't seen and I can easily say that I saved the best one for last. It's a highly entertaining 80's action film with some really cool action scenes, a cliche, but fun story and Chuck Norris' character was cool and he is convincing as the cop role. Not much to say other than it's a really fun movie and I don't think I'll see a Chuck Norris movie that's better than this one.

April 20



"Thank you, Clearlake! C'mon... we love you, we'll see you next year."

This movie was even better than I thought it would be. Mainly because I wasn't sure how Gary Busey was going to pull off the role of Buddy Holly and he just seemed like a weird choice, but he surprisingly pulls it off very well and it was a very good performance. The way they told his story was very well-done and unlike that Ritchie Valens movie La Bamba, I think they had a lot more of a story to tell unlike the latter which felt dragged on at times. It was a very solid biopic that did Buddy Holly's story justice.

April 22



"You like Patsy Cline? I just love her. I wonder how come she don't put out no more new records."
"Because she's dead."
"Oh... that's sad. Don't that make you sad?"
"I've had time to get over it."

Out of all of Oliver Stone's films, this one is his most underrated and seems to be the black sheep in his filmography. It's definitely different from his other movies, but it's still great. I loved how progressively dark this movie got as it went on, the well-written script and there were some great moments of dark humor. The acting was also great with very strong performances from Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Voight and even Jennifer Lopez turned in a very good performance and I have never been impressed by her as an actress before. I mean she was alright in Out of Sight and Jersey Girl, (You'll know why I say that about the latter if you've seen that movie.) but other times she's just very forgettable. Here though she delivers her best performance that I've seen and pretty much everyone in this movie did a great job. This is a great hidden gem in Oliver Stone's catalogue and it's one of his top tier films in my book.

April 24



"I'm too nostalgic. I'll admit it."
"We graduated four months ago. What can you possibly be nostalgic for?"
"I'm nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I've begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I'm reminiscing this right now. I can't go to the bar because I've already looked back on it in my memory... and I didn't have a good time."

Even though I've never been to college and I don't have any plans to go there for personal reasons, but I still found myself relating to this movie and connecting with the characters. Despite the fact that this movie is about college graduates and the aftermath of graduating, this really felt similar to when I graduated high school and some of the stuff they were saying in this movie really spoke to me. It was also very funny at times and the dialogue in this movie is just very well-written. I loved this movie and it's my favorite film from Noah Baumach so far.

April 25



"Me and my brother, we're gonna rule London!"

Even though this movie is far from perfect, Tom Hardy's performance alone makes this movie worth seeing. The way he portrayed the twin gangsters Reggie and Ron Kray and is another movie that showcases Tom Hardy's acting talent very well. I was also interested in the characters they were playing and where the story was going to go, but the script for this movie isn't perfect and I think it could've been polished a bit more, but I still really enjoyed this movie and like I said it's worth seeing for Tom Hardy's performance alone.

April 26



"This has got to be the weirdest day of my life... well, so far."

This was an OK movie that was pretty weird at times. One thing I really liked about this movie was Bruce Willis' voice acting job as the baby. He was a very good choice for the role and almost everything he said was really funny. As for the rest of the comedy in this movie it was hit or miss for me. Some of it worked and some of it didn't. The plot was also very predictable and it was pretty obvious with how it was going to end. I still don't regret watching this as I had fun with it and I would probably watch it again at least once just for Bruce Willis' funny lines, but I wouldn't go out of my way to do so.

April 27



"I'll do what I can to see they go easy on you."
"We both know they never "go easy"
"Then, I'm sorry."
"No, you're not. You don't even know the meaning. Its just a vestigial word for a feeling you've never felt."

This was a movie that was always on my radar, but at the same time the premise sounded flawed. I mean a movie about where it's illegal to feel emotion does sound nearly impossible to accomplish in the acting department and it seemed like the only way it could work is by casting Steven Seagal in the leading role. OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but it did sound like a flawed premise. Fortunately this turned out to be a great movie. Despite the unusual premise, they still managed to do a lot of great things with it and lots of interesting ideas were explored with it. Christian Bale also manages to deliver a great job as well and he pulls off the emotionless role very well without it feeling forced and the rest of the cast does a very good job as well. It's a great movie that's just as fun to watch as much as it is a well-executed film with lots of interesting ideas and a great depiction of the future.

April 29



"I'd like to dedicate this to my father, Francis L. It's a song the girls in the band wrote, Lisa and Wendy."

Even though I wasn't too familiar with Prince's music, his death still took me by surprise. I listened to a little bit of his music years ago, but back then I didn't really think much of it. Since then I haven't listened to much of his music, but right when his death was announced so many people were uploading his music on YouTube and I had a chance to listen to it this time around because before he died he was still highly against online media. After listening to his music I finally fell in love with it and I never knew how influential and beloved he was as a musician until after his death.

I decided that I might as well watch this movie as well since now is a good time as any to watch it. If there's one thing I loved about this movie, it would be the soundtrack. It was just fantastic and the music was just so good that I actually want to own the soundtrack for this movie. As far as story goes, it was decent for 1984 and Prince is also really good acting-wise, but the music is what really makes this movie enjoyable. Still this is an 80's classic and it made me want to actually buy a couple of Prince's albums.

R.I.P Prince

April 30



"It was incredible. Only the third time a man had been mauled by a gorilla at that steel mill, that month!"

This was just some random movie that I decided to watch, but had no intent on ending the month with this movie. However when I actually watched it, I was surprised when I felt that a film called Pootie Tang was good enough to end the month on. This was a movie that was so stupidly funny and it was just so crazy in the best way possible. There was just so many moments in this movie that made me laugh and I really liked the off-the-wall plot that it had.

Interestingly enough this movie was written by Louis C.K. and so far I'm pretty neutral on his work. He was one of the writers for Down To Earth which I hated and I've seen the first three episodes on Louie and I had a different opinion on each of them. I thought the first episode was OK, the second one I didn't like very much and the third one was pretty funny. I'm assuming the show gets better as it goes on, so I'll watch a few more episodes just so I can form an opinion on that show, but as weird as this may sound this movie is the one that actually made me realize how much comedic talent Louis C.K. actually has and I should definitely check out his stand-up as the stand-up in the episodes I've seen have been the highlight of those episodes. Not much to say other than it's a very funny movie and it's a lot better than the Listal and IMDB rating would have you believe. Worth checking out if you like blaxplotation comedies like I'm Gonna Git You Sucka and Black Dynamite.

April 14



"How old are you?"
"I have no idea. But I'm in the Bible if that means anything."

I never heard of this movie until very recently and even though I'm not really familiar with Henry Rollins or his music, the praise I've seen for this from other fellow Listalites was enough for me to check this out. This was a very interesting movie with an original premise, a great performance from Rollins and a very well-written script. I can't say that I fell in love with this movie, but I'm definitely glad that I watched it and I hope this one finds an audience sooner or later.