Ride Along 2 (2016) Kevin Hart, Ice Cube – Movie Review

January 16, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

We pick up not long after the first entry with Hart’s character, Ben Barber, now a probationary officer for the Atlanta Police Department. He’s just a little over a week away from marrying his beloved fiancée Angela, sister of his former reluctant partner-in-crime-fighting James Payton. Once again, James finds himself in a situation in which he decides to take Ben as a partner in order to embarrass him by showing just how over his head he will be in dealing with real dangerous criminals, as the two head out to Miami for a ‘milk run’ to gain information that will lead to taking down Antonio Pope, an influential businessman who is also murderous big-time drug kingpin who is controlling the flow of narcotics between the two cities. Teaming up with a bravado Miami detective named Maya, as well as A.J., Pope’s computer hacker-turned-informant, it’s up to James to get his man and keep his future brother-in-law alive long enough to see his wedding day.

Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015) documentary – Movie Review

January 14, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Hitchcock/Truffaut is a documentary on Alfred Hitchcock, his influence on other filmmakers in history, including Francois Truffaut, who wrote a definitive book on the man through a series of interviews over the course of one week in 1962.

45 Years (2015) Charlotte Rampling – Movie Reviews

January 3, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

On the verge of celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary, wife Kate is putting together all of the necessities for their big party at an esteemed hall in the English countryside, while husband Geoff seems to be preoccupied. What’s been on his mind has stemmed from a letter he’s received that the body of the woman he was involved with before he met Kate, a woman named Katya, has been found frozen in a glacier in Switzerland, preserved nearly as it had been since she fell into a fissure as they were exploring through the area in 1962. As they had told people there they were married in order to keep their rooming arrangements from being questioned, Geoff has been considered the next of kin, and has therefore been the one notified. This is all news to Kate, who is curious not only as to why, after spending most of her life with someone, he never shared this with her, but also as to why the news of her found body is causing Geoff to exhibit new behavior, taking up smoking again, spending time in the attic looking at old items, reading books he’s had since before she’s met him, and listening to music he hasn’t listened to since he was young. After forty-five years of marriage, Kate wonders is she has been number two in Geoff’s heart all of those years.

Top 10 Films of 2015 – Best movies

January 2, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The end-of-they-year podcast. Vince Leo runs down his favorite films of the year 2015, as well as some honorable mentions. Happy New Year everyone!

Anomalisa (2015) Charlie Kaufman – Movie Review

December 31, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The main character is unhappily married, middle-aged self-help author and occupational speaker Michael Stone, who has traveled for a one-day stay in Cincinnati in order to deliver a lecture at a convention for those in the customer service industry. Michael is bored, lonely, and sad; he isn’t someone who particularly likes being around other people, and yet he also can’t seem to tolerate having to be left alone with his own thoughts. Ironic that he has become an expert in giving good customer service when those who follow what he preaches get on his every nerve, but he hates himself even more, and yet he can’t escape those feelings. During his stay at an upscale hotel, he tries to get reacquainted with an ex-lover with whom he spurned severely, and proceeds to make matters worse in his attempts to make them better. Then he meets a couple of women who are there to see his speech, including Lisa, a lonely younger woman who seems different than just about anyone else Michael has met.

Chi-Raq (2015) Spike Lee, Nick Cannon – Movie Review

December 30, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Set in Chicago’s South Side, there are two warring gangs who’ve been committing violent crimes against each other for years, the purple-clad Spartans and the Trojans, dressed in orange. Chi-Raq, aka Demetrius Dupree, is the head of the Spartans, and he’s down the eyepatch-sporting Trojan Cyclops and all of his men before his own get taken down. However, in the gunfire between the two men, an eleven-year old girl is killed by one of their strays, and no one is brave enough to snitch against the person who did it. Fed up by the cycle of violence that leaves them all as potential victims, the women of the community, led by Chi-Raq’s girlfriend Lysistrata, determine that they’re going to go on a sex strike — ‘no peace, no piece’ — until the men put down their weapons and work toward peace between them. News spreads like wildfire, making the so-called ‘blue-balls movement’ it a worldwide event, as even women in the sex industry and gay men are refusing to put out until a peace treaty is struck.

Carol (2015) Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara – Movie Review

December 26, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Set just before Christmas in the early 1950s, Rooney Mara co-stars as Therese Belivet, a young and shy Manhattan shopgirl who ends up waiting on a sophisticated socialite named Carol Aird, who is looking for the right present to get for her young daughter, Lindy. Carol means to make a separation from her husband Harge and wants to make the present something special to ease the transition for the young girl, especially as her parents will likely be tied up in a battle for custody for the foreseeable future. Therese kindly helps her pick out the right gift to ship to her address, but in the exchange, Carol has left her gloves behind on the counter. Therese returns the gloves, Carol is grateful enough to take her new friend out to lunch, and the two begin to find themselves drawing closer to one another in a manner they haven’t been able to with anyone else.

Daddy’s Home (2015) Ferrell, Wahlberg – Movie Review

December 25, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Will Ferrell stars as New Orleans smooth jazz ratio station exec Brad Whitaker, who has a loving wife in Sarah, and two stepchildren who haven’t quite come around to accepting him as their new father. Things seem to be on the up and up until Sarah’s deadbeat ex, Dusty Mayron, decides he wants to pay a visit, triggering lots of feelings of jealousy and insecurity when it turns out that Dusty is seen as the epitome of cool to his kids in all of the ways Brad can never be. Thinking he needs to up his game in the face of a total alpha male who might even steal back his ex-wife, Brad decides he’s going to have to start ‘manning up’ and beat Dusty at his own game to earn the right to be the man of the house.

The Hateful Eight (2015) Quentin Tarantino – Movie Review

December 25, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Set in a wintry Wyoming in the late 19th Century, we start the film off with ex-Union soldier turned bounty hunter named Major Marquis Warren, who stops a stagecoach in the middle of travel through a desolate mountain pass just ahead of a major snowstorm. On board the stagecoach is a fellow bounty hunter, John ‘The Hangman’ Ruth, who, unlike Marquis, takes his dead-or-alive bounties in while they’re still breathing so they will be hanged at the public square. The other passenger is one of those bounties Ruth is taking in to Red Rock, a racist spitfire named Daisy Domergue. A little further, they reluctantly pick up another passenger, Chris Mannix, who claims that he’s set to become the new sheriff of Red Rock upon arrival, and to whom they would collect their rewards.

The quartet, along with stagecoach driver O.B., are forced to shelter from the blizzard at a secluded tavern called Minnie’s Haberdashery, where they meet a new collection of interesting people, including a Mexican, Bob, who is tending the needs of the place while Minnie is away, a former Confederate general named Sandy Smithers, a drifter named Joe Gage, who says he’s there to visit his mother for the holidays, and Oswaldo Mobray, and a man claiming to be the hangman who is traveling to Red Rock to put a noose on Daisy Domergue. Ruth begins to become convinced that one (or perhaps more) of the men in the group is actually there to help Daisy escape, which, if true, means there’s going to be a violent confrontation about to go down at the Haberdashery if he’s not rooted out before the plan is hatched.

The Big Short (2015) Christian Bale – Movie Review

December 24, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Bolstered by a dynamite cast, The Big Short has several converging story threads, beginning with a socially awkward hedge-fund manager named Dr. Michael Burry, who determines that the subprime mortgage industry is a bubble built on a slew of misguided practices that’s inevitably going to burst, so he invests his company’s available assets, totaling 1.3 billion dollars, to bet against them. Douchebag banker Jared Vennett, who also serves as the film’s narrator, catches wind of Burry’s activities and looks into it himself, and soon he also becomes convinced that CDO’s (collateralized debt obligations), a hodge-podge of mostly junk bonded loans, will result in the market eventually failing.

The only one who will partner with Vennett is a smaller hedge fund headed by Mark Baum, who, despite being initially skeptical, sees the iceberg headed toward the Titanic and is willing to make a major play, though his conscience is persistently troubling him. Meanwhile, a couple of small-time investors secure the expertise of a former financial strategist, Ben Wickert, to help them play with the big boys, hoping they’ll make a fortune. As the mortgage industry is considered the bedrock of the investment market, banks are all too happy to let these “suckers” bet against its success.