Sausage Party (2016) Seth Rogen – Movie Review

August 13, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

The food items at the supermarket named Shopwell’s are excited about the prospects of the annual ‘4th of July’ sale, where many of them get chosen by the ‘gods’ to go to the promised land of the “Great Beyond.” The most excited are the members of a package of ten phallic sausages, especially Frank, who becomes enamored of what he hopes will be his future companion, Brenda, who is one of a collection of eight vulvic hot dog buns. As luck would have it, the god selects both of their respective packages, but a returned jar of honey mustard warns them of the horrors that await them all once they leave the store (i.e., getting sliced, diced, cooked and consumed), leading to a series of events that has Frank, Brenda, and company out of the packages and on to a crazy odyssey as they mill about within the store.

Don’t Think Twice (2016) Mike Birbiglia – Movie Review

August 8, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Birbiglia plays Miles, the eldest member of the Commune at 36, who teaches improv to younger up-and-comers in his spare time. He feed the hopes and dreams they all have, though all the while, he has grown more cynical and bitter with each passing year of finding himself exactly in the same place as he was the year before, while many of those who’ve learned from him are doing what he can only dream to do. Even though it seems a longshot at this point in his career, he sees little hope but to press on, even if the Brooklyn theater that hosts their shows is on the verge of closing down, and effectively putting the Commune on hiatus.
However, another member of the tight-knit troupe, Jack, has a career trajectory that looks like it has more promise, even landing an audition with “Weekend Live” that could mean a regular gig, and perhaps parlay this into a long-running career in comedy on TV and in films, if chosen. His girlfriend Samantha, who is also in the Commune and who also lands an audition, but feels less certain she can make that next step in her profession, finding it a scary proposition to effectively end her dreams by actually achieving them — that it is always beyond her reach is what keeps her running after them.

Suicide Squad (2016) Will Smith, Margot Robbie Movie Review

August 6, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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The Dirty Dozen-inspired plotline involves black ops ringleader, federal agent Amanda Waller, bringing together Task Force X, a group of strangers, all violently criminal super-powered sociopaths locked away in elaborately imagined high-security prisons, forced to do the government’s dirty work to stave off the threat of other meta-humans that, in the wake of the death of Earth’s savior, Superman, can’t be stopped by conventional forces. To keep these fiercely independent baddies under control, these criminals are injected with micro-explosives (a la Escape from New York) through which Waller can detonate them with the touch of a phone app, and to sweeten the deal, promises of reduced sentences. Their first big mission ends up being taking down the evil, ancient entity known as Enchantress, who has usurped, for spells, the body of a scientist named Dr. June Moone — an entity once controlled by Waller but she managed to finally break free from the curse that bound her.

Captain Fantastic (2016) Viggo Mortensen – Movie Review

August 4, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Viggo Mortensen stars as Ben Cash, a father of six (ages range from six to eighteen), living “off the grid” in the remote dense wilderness of the Pacific Northwest as part of some sort of self-imposed counterculture exile, where they live off mostly of what’s out in nature in a ritualistic fashion — hunting, farming, rock climbing, survivalist training, and keeping physically fit, as well as mentally agile, learning from some of the great thinkers and philosophers, some quite revolutionary and controversial, the world has ever known. They’re all anxiously awaiting his bipolar wife Leslie to be cured of a disease during her hospital stay back in her home town in New Mexico when word comes that she has taken her own life. Though father-in-law Jack, who blames Ben for poisoning his daughter and grandchildren with his cultish hippie beliefs, explicitly tells him to stay away or get arrested, he packs the family bus and the septet vacate their bohemian digs and are off on the long road trip to crash the funeral. The kids, who’ve spent their entire lives away from any form of other civilization not found in their novels and textbooks, find so-called civilized society to be a crazier place than they’ve ever imagined.

Jason Bourne (2016) Matt Damon – Movie Review

August 2, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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This chapter in the saga finds Jason Bourne giving up the spy game and living completely off the grid, earning his keep as a bruising slugger in the Eastern European underground fighting circuit. That’s until he’s pulled out by his old crony in the CIA, Nicky Parsons, who has gone rogue to deliver intel to Jason that she’s hacked regarding the identity and mysterious death of his father, as well as his key involvement in a top-secret government operation. Tenacious CIA director Robert Dewey is hot on their trail, but he doesn’t so much want Bourne to come in out of the cold so much as think he is better off dead for being unobtainable and knowing far too much, which might jeopardize their current plot to utilize a monumentally popular social-media platform dubbed “Deep Dream” to spy on the majority of the world’s population. Dewey’s underling, Heather Lee, meanwhile, searches for a way to get Bourne on board without taking him out.

Cafe Society (2016) Woody Allen – Movie Review

August 1, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Set in the 1930s, Jesse Eisenberg stars as Bobby Dorfman, a young Bronxite and aspiring writer who calls on his distant uncle Phil to hook him up with a job in his top-flight talent agency in Hollywood. Shortly after relocating, Phil sends hisassistant, the decidedly glamour-averse Vonnie, to show his young nephew around the town, and the two soon hit it off as friends. However, friendship turns to feelings for Bobby, but she says she’s seeing someone else, though Bobby doesn’t know that her beau is, in fact, married uncle Phil. However, when Phil looks like he can’t quite pull the trigger and leave his wife for Vonnie once and for all, Bobby gets his chance at burgeoning love, though things get far more complicated when all of the players begin putting the pieces of the love triangle’s thorny entanglements together.

Bad Moms (2016) Mila Kunis – Movie Reviews

July 30, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Mila Kunis plays 32-year old wife and mother of two, Amy, whose already stale marriage in the Chicago suburbs (filmed in New Orleans) hits an impasse when she catches her hubby having an online affair. Her best friends, spitfire sexpot single-mom Carla and mousy housewife Kiki, form a pact to be “bad moms” as a means of rebellion against having to put up with bratty, unappreciative kids and husbands that take them for granted for the last several years. However, when the far-too-influential busybody PTA president, Gwendolyn, begins to make life difficult for them and their middle-school aged kids, Amy decides to run against her for control of the organization on a platform of empowering mothers to do not have to always have to be so perfect.

Nerve (2016) Emma Roberts, Dave Franco – Movie Review

July 28, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Emma Roberts plays venus ‘Vee’ Delmonico, an introverted, straight-as-an-arrow senior in a Staten Island high school. Vee is cajoled by her more outgoing and bold friend Sydney to install a popular underground (“dark web”) smartphone and desktop app called ‘Nerve’ in which one can choose to be a Player, who participates in a customized series of ‘dares’ for cash deposits and follower base, or Watcher, who, for a fee, contribute to the game system by making dare suggestions, monitoring and submitting approval (a la Periscope) when they’re completed by the Players. Pegged as an instant watcher, Vee decides to be a bit more daring and see what life is like on the Player side. Her first dare is to kiss a complete stranger in a diner for five seconds, which introduces her to Dave Franco’s Ian, who turns out to also be a Player himself. The game continues to pair up the two based on algorithms generated through the harvesting of their online personas through all manner of social media and private accounts, leading them to continue their misadventures-on-demand through the department stores and bustling streets of Manhattan. The problem is that the further you’re into it, the harder it is to quit, whether you want to or not.

Ice Age: Collision Course (2016) – Movie Review

July 26, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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In this film, the antics of Scrat the squirrel flying a UFO in outer space, chasing the elusive acorn, ends up inadvertently causing a massive meteor shower to hit Earth. Manny the woly mammoth and his wife Ellie forget, for a moment, their fears that their daughter Peaches will end up leaving them once she gets married to the silly-natured but loveable Julian. They see the fiery rocks hurtling in their vicinity and immediately run for cover, along with their gang of friends (aka The Herd) of many species, eventually running into the spirited and highly intelligent one-eyed weasel named Buck (returning from the third film, Dawn of the Dinosaurs), who concocts a plan to keep the most massive of asteroids from hitting Earth yet again and wiping them all out. Teamwork is employed, but they’re going to have to stay a step ahead of a trio of ill-mannered Dino-Birds who want all of these other pesky critters like the dino-egg saving Buck out of the way so they can rule the roost as the most powerful creatures on the newly destroyed planet.

Batman: The Killing Joke (2016) Conroy, Hamill Movie Review

July 25, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Batman, after some introductory scenes in which he battles some bad guys with the help of Barbara Gordon as Batgirl, goes to confront The Joker at Arkham Asylum, only to discover he has made his escape and is out and about causing havoc. The Joker, out to prove that anyone can go as mad as he has given the right (or wrong) circumstances (“All it takes is one bad day”, so he says), sets about committing some truly heinous acts toward some of the people who are fighting on the side of good. In between the contemporary story scenes, we get flashbacks to Joker’s past as a failing comedian who ended up turning to a life of crime in order to support his wife and unborn child, resulting in tragedy that cracks his psyche, and physically transforms his appearance to look as maniacal on the outside as he feels on the inside.