Room 237, Insidious, The Conjuring

Room 237

Whacked out conspiracy theories await…

If you are a fan of The Shining, then you will probably be interested in watching Room 237, a “documentary” about Stanley Kubrick’s most famous film. Room 237 isn’t so much a documentary as it is a collection of various fan interpretations about the actual film. There is no behind the scenes footage, there are no actor retrospectives, hell, the people talking about the film don’t even show their faces. What we see are various scenes from The Shining and the fans providing voice-overs as they describe their interpretations.

The thing that makes Room 237 great is the interpretations themselves. These aren’t just any run-of-the-mill kinds of things. These people go fucking crazy with what they believe the film is about. One person believes the film is a metaphor for the massacre of the American Indians, another that the movie is really about the WWII holocaust of the Jews, and yet another that the film actually exists as a subtle message to the world that the moon landing was fake and Kubrick himself had directed it.

The Way Way Back, The Great Gatsby

The Way Way Back

We’ve all been under water?

The Way Way Back tells the story of 14 year old Duncan who is stuck on a summer vacation with his mom, her boyfriend Steve Carell, and his sister. The sister and Carell both hate Duncan. He acts like a whiny turd, so I don’t blame them. At first, I thought the lead in this movie was going to be even worse than that loser from The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Actually, for about the first third of the movie, he was worse. Not only was he super-emo, he sulked around without even speaking and acted like a brat. Fortunately, once he got a job at the local water park, and had some “cool lessons” from Sam Rockwell, things started to pick up.

The beginning of the movie was painful. Duncan is an absolute bore to watch on the screen with all his moping around. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him? We aren’t given any reason to. We know nothing about him other than the fact that people dislike him. That’s not a good enough reason, Hollywood. Maybe everyone hates him for a reason. Maybe he’s the head of a neo-Nazi cult in his high school or something. You can’t have your lead character be a sad-sack and expect us to have sympathy for him just because. Anyway, like I said, things get a lot better once he starts working for Rockwell at the Water Wizz theme park.

It’s Pilot Season – 2013

The Fall 2013 television season is upon us. And that means we’re inundated with the worst the networks have to offer. Each year brings us new series; a few will be great, but most will be unwatchable trash. There’s far too many horrible series out there for me to review them all. So, I’ve decided to watch the three biggest pilots of this season and review them. Please note, my reviews are not necessarily what I think of the entire series, but simply my thoughts on the pilot episode.

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD

Yawn.

Holy fuck, we start right out the gate with a major shitfest. Even on paper, Agents of SHIELD sounds like a horrible idea. An Avenger’s show without the Avengers in it? What could go wrong? Recently, Fox picked up a show for the 2014 season that would feature Gotham city without Batman. People started making fun of it immediately and/or bemoaning how terrible an idea it is to do a Batman show without Batman. And you know what? Those people are absolutely right. Nobody gives a fuck about Gotham City without Batman. So, why would we give a fuck about SHIELD without the Avengers? The reason The Avengers was a massive hit was everybody wanted to see Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and Hulk together on the big screen. I guaran-fucking-tee you that nobody said, “Ooohhh I can’t wait to see Agent Coulson and some other nondescript guys in black suits!” And that is exactly what Agents of SHIELD is. It’s a generic spy/sci-fi series about a bunch of nondescript guys in black suits. Watching it is painful. You just keep thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if Iron Man just blasted through a wall and started kicking some ass? But it’s not going to happen. Instead, we see a bunch of non-superheroes acting like a bunch of idiots. Thanks guys, if I wanted to see that, I could watch any other genre of film or television. From a conceptual standpoint alone, this series failed miserably.