Tag Archives: Movies

Aug 22 2015
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review – Hitman: Agent 47 – Special Guest Reviewer Video Game Rack Fighter

VGRF

VGRF

By:  Video Game Rack Fighter, Official Bookshelf Battle Blog Video Game Reviewer/BQB’s Main Squeeze

What’s up, 3.5 readers?

Finally!  BQB allows someone with an extra X chromosome to get a word in edgewise around here.

Between BQB, the Yeti, the Ghost of Uncle Hardass, and Dr. Hugo Von Science, it’s a total sausage fest up in this place.

I’ll exclude Alien Jones for obvious reasons.

Let’s talk about the latest attempt at a movie based on the long running video game franchise, Hitman.

FYI – this review is going to have some KILLER SPOILERS!

(Ha!  See what I did there?)

Hitman:  Agent 47 – Twentieth Century Fox

In the games, you play Agent 47, a cunning, coldblooded killing machine, completely devoid of feeling or remorse.

BQB EDITORIAL NOTE:  Kind of like VGRF that time I ate her twizzlers.

Do you mind?

The games present a very chilling version of 47.  He has an expressionless face and a deep, scary voice.

BQB EDITORIAL NOTE:  Kind of like VGRF that time…

Shut up!

Anyway, the games are such a hit because there is so much strategy involved.  As Agent 47, you work for, “The Agency” and you’re assigned a target to assassinate.

Don’t worry.  The target is usually a bad guy who’s done something assassination worthy and often, the Agency will call on “The Hitman” to cross some line.  He refuses and ends up taking on his bosses.

The player has a variety of choices.  There are subtle ways to take out the mark, like poisoning his food, injection with a syringe, strangling with a garrote wire, setting up a trap (i.e. rigging a chandelier or something heavy to fall on his squash) or, if you aren’t up for any of that, you can just break out 47’s trademark dual pistols, the “Silver Ballers” and start racking up the body count.

BQB EDITORIAL NOTE:  This is why I sleep with one eye open.

While this video game series is superb, Agent 47 is not a character that translates well to the big screen.

When I say that the video game 47 is completely devoid of personality, I mean he’s really devoid of personality.  There’s just nothing there, and nothing that keeps him from feeling bad about the things that he does, and that’s why he’s such an eerie anti-hero to control.

Try as they might to avoid it, every actor has some personality, even if they try to stifle it for the role.  Timothy Olyphant tried in a 2007 long forgotten version simply titled Hitman and while this latest effort brings more style and panache, it too I fear is destined for the 99 cent bin.

Rupert Friend, who you may know as Quinn, Carrie’s post-Brody love interest on Homeland, provides a more believable tour of duty as our favorite Hitman than Olyphant did.  If you ask me, Olyphant is such a likable guy that it was a mistake to cast him for that role.

There was a more concerted effort to pay homage to video game fans with this one.  Friend breaks out the silver ballers and the garrote wire.

BQB EDITORIAL NOTE:  Hon, I just feel you’re too comfortable using the words “garrote wire.”

.And just like the VG version of 47, Friend grabs various uniforms to use to blend in and escape.

BQB EDITORIAL NOTE:  Because that would totally work.

Do you just want to write this then?  Huh?  Sheesh.

Friend also attempts to mimic a stoic 47-esque voice.  Sometimes he hits the mark, other times he misses it.

Gamers will also be pleased to see that 47’s handler, Diana, also drops in.  She’s played by the actress, “Angelababy.”

Isn’t that just an adorable name?  “Hi.  I’m Angelababy.”  Love it.

The plot?  That’s the other reason why it’s hard to turn this franchise into a movie.  The plot of the video games is to kill, kill, kill.

Here, the film follows a plot to capture Litvenko (aka Ciaran Hinds aka Mance Raider from Game of Thrones.

BQB EDITORIAL NOTE:  OMG!  I love Game of Thrones.

Tell us something we don’t know.

Litvenko was the man who began an assassin development program, conditioning people like 47 to kill in a brutally efficient manner.

After deciding he wanted nothing more to do with the program, he took off, but now the bad guys want him to produce more hitmen.

So, to get to him, they want to kidnap Litvenko’s daughter, Katia aka Hannah Ware.

There’s a face-off between 47 and Agent John Smith aka Zachary Quinto, who plays Mr. Spock in the JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot.

Both agents claim to have Hannah’s best interests at heart, but only one does.  I’ll let you figure out who it is.

Oh, and I don’t want to give too much away, but it turns out Hannah doesn’t need that much protecting.

To wrap this up, it’s better than the first movie, but that’s not saying much.  As a fan of the series, I appreciate the nods to gamers, but overall, this one fell flat.

Worth a rental, but don’t rush out to the theater.

The dog days of summer are here, and unfortunately, this is the first of many dog movies to come.

STATUS:  Not shelf worthy.

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Aug 10 2015
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TV Reviews

True Detective -Season 2 Finale – TV Review by Special Guest Jake Hatcher

By:  Jake Hatcher, Official Bookshelf Battle Blog Private Eye

True Dick

True Dick

The name’s Hatcher.  Jake Hatcher.  I’m a gumshoe.  A sleuth.  A shamus.  A private dick.

And as of late, a coerced scribe for Bookshelf Q. Battler’s joke of a blog.

Not to put my employer down, but I’ve seen milk cartons with a higher readership.

Let’s take a minute and shoot the bull about True Detective.  The second second season just wrapped up on HBO and there were more twists than a road designed by a blind man.

I’m required to warn you this review has more SPOILERS that you can shake a stick at.

Trailer – True Detective – HBO

Like most capers, it all begins with a murder.

The City of Vinci.  It’s a factory town.  Lot of big business, but only a handful of people actually live there.  That means the cops and the local government pretty much act with impunity, free to wrangle their devious deals without any oversight.

And like most mysteries, this story begins with a murder.  The city manager, a real pervert’s pervert, is put on ice.  A special task force is put together to figure out the whodunnit.

It includes:

  • Rachel McAdams as Ani Bezzerides – Hubba hubba.  Even though they try to ugly her up so she looks like a real downtrodden broad, she still makes this gumshoe’s ticker skip a beat.  Hell, I still haven’t stopped thinking about how this dame wore the hell out of that dress in Southpaw.  Bezzerides’ pops ran some hippy dippy commune and growing up on it made for a tough life.
  • Tayler Kitsch as Paul Woodrugh – A highway patrolman who takes a bad rap when he pulls over a speeder.  Turns out its some floozy actress who puts the frame job on him.  She makes a false claim that he tried to get the goodies just to get out of trouble because she’s had one too many run ins with the law before.  His bosses put him on the special detail so he can lay low for awhile, but the case allows him to do anything but.
  • Colin Farrell as Ray Velcoro – a real mean so and so, a drunk bastard to boot.  Beats up people at the drop of a hat.  I kinda liked him.  (Well, except for the corruption part.)  Ray’s wife was raped years ago an he turned to mobster Frank Semyon to hand over the perpetrator. Unfortunately, Ray pays for that info with his soul as he ends up becoming Frank’s lapdog for the rest of his life, using his position to further Frank’s criminal interests on account of Frank now having something to hold over Ray’s head.

Frank, played by Vince Vaughn, is a crooked club and casino owner whose duked his way out to the top of the underworld ranks.  He’s experienced success late in life and like most folks who’ve had that happen, it’s hard for him to be happy about it.  He’s bitter that it took so long and his worst fears are met when he discovers that the city manager had been looting all his money behind his back.  It’s up to Frank to find out who the manager was working with.

I’m a straight arrow when it comes to the letter of the law, so I don’t care for it when a bad guy is glorified.  However, Vaughn steals the show and the writers try to get the point across that sometimes folks like Frank, born into bad circumstances, see their only way to the top as being a life of crime.

To the show’s credit, it’s also made clear that Frank could walk away at any time and leave the degenerate life behind.  His wife Jordan, aka Kelly Reilly, begs him to take the money they have left, forget about revenge, and call it quits, but Frank just can’t do it.

I can relate.  My third ex-wife, Connie, often tried to talk me out of dropping the gumshoe game.  She wanted to move to the sticks and start a bed and breakfast.  I came up with a million reasons why that wasn’t feasible but the real one is that I’d of been bored out of my mind.  Sometimes you get to the point where you’ve pummeled so many criminals that you don’t know what you’d do without another one to smack around.

But I digress.

Overall, it was a decent program with a lot of action and intrigue.  Also, there’s the occasional bare set of bosoms.  It’s not like I try to notice things like that, but I can’t help it.  I’m a detective.  I notice every detail.  No matter how big.

One criticism might be that the plot is a bit convoluted.  I watched the whole thing and had to stand on my head and spin before it all made sense.  You’ve got land deals, murder, a cold case from 1992, some impropriety in Afghanistan, sometimes it all ties together, though you need a flowchart and a slide rule to figure it all out.

Maybe that’s director Nic Pizzolato’s point.  Sometimes the answers to mysteries aren’t handed over all wrapped with a nice shiny red bow.

Word on the street is there have been some complaints that this season wasn’t as good as the last.  To that, I’d point out that the idea is that each season rolls with a new group of detectives in a different locale.  Thus, each season is like watching a whole new extended movie, so it’s hard to compare one film to another.  Just because you really like one movie, aka season one, doesn’t mean the second movie, aka season two was terrible.

They were just different.

Ahh, Rachel McAdams.  What a foxy broad.

Jake Hatcher is the Bookshelf Battle Blog’s Pop Culture Detective, sworn to solve 100 pop culture mysteries.  Sometimes he even shares his own tales of daring do in LA’s seedy underworld.  If you have a pop culture question, put Jake on the case.  Tweet questions to @bookshelfbattle or leave them in the comments.

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Aug 09 2015
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review – Fantastic Four (2015)

So a rubberman, a rock monster, a burning man and an invisible girl walk into a bar…

Bookshelf Q. Battler here with a review at the latest attempt at a Fantastic Four movie.

To paraphrase Ben “The Thing” Grimm:  IT’S SPOILIN’ TIME!

Fantastic Four – Movieclips Trailers

This movie is getting the crap panned out of it by the critics and even director Josh Trank reportedly tweeted (and later deleted), “You’ll probably never get to see my good version,”  assumedly in response to a collective thumbs down from the movie review community.

Rotten Tomatoes, a movie review site that ranks films on a scale of 1-100% gave it 9%.  It barely registered.  Holy crap, that’s like, Gigli territory.

To put it in perspective, if Disney ever puts out a Jar Jar Binks origin story film, it’d probably get at least 15% just for being a completed film.

(I don’t know that to be case exactly.  What do I look like, a Rotten Tomato expert or something?)

Personally?  I don’t get it.

Call me crazy, tell me why I’m wrong, but I didn’t think it was that bad.

It was better than the two mid-2000’s attempts, though that’s not saying much.  This franchise’s big villain/draw has always been the metallic Dr. Doom, and those movies, for some odd reason, were pretty light on the Doom.

A Fab Four movie that’s light on Dr. Doom is the equivalent of making a movie about Superman, except there’s no heroics and it’s just a rom-com about how he wants to tell Lois his secret but is too afraid.

This version makes up for it, with some pretty sweet Doom scenes  in which he, in almost a Darth Vaderian level of bad-ass-itude, started popping heads left and right with his mind.  Toby Kebell plays the baddie in this version.

The franchise went with a younger crew this time around, and I don’t think that hurt it.  In fact, Miles Teller plays Reed Richards and in a summer where every hero is buffer and has more muscles than the next, it was good to see a nerd as the hero for once.

For once?  TRY FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!

NERDS:  Can a nerd be the hero for once?

SOCIETY:  What?!  You need glasses to see?  Boo!  No!  No super heroics for you!

In this movie’s defense, this franchise isn’t Marvel’s easiest to put on film.  You’ve got Reed aka Mr. Fantastic, who is a freaking rubber man.  While being super stretchy is an interesting power, it does have the potential to backfire and look dumb.  This film avoided that.

Then you’ve got a rock man, an invisible girl, and a man on fire, so all in all, they’re a haphazard collection of heroes with random powers.

(Oddly though, while this group usually gets goofed on by the critics, another comic book group featuring a Nordic god, a man in a robot suit, a green monster and a super patriot are box office gold so go figure.)

Kate Mara and Reg E. Cathey pull off a House of Cards mini-reunion.  Frank Underwood fans know Kate as Zoe Barnes and Reg as Freddy aka the owner of Frank’s favorite barbecue joint.  Here, Reg is the father of Sue (Kate) and Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan).

Sidenote:  Jordan took a lot of heat (pun intended) for playing Johnny/the Human Torch.  The character has usually been white in past films.  But really, who cares?  Spread the super hero roles throughout the races.  If you’re worried about what color a character is in a super hero movie you probably have too much time on your hands.

Meanwhile, Jamie Bell plays Ben Grimm, the team member who has it the hardest (pun intended) because while the other characters can return to normal, he’s stuck being a rock monster.

And in this film, he’s a rock monster with no pants.  He’s got nothing down there in case you were wondering.  Maybe you weren’t.  I don’t know.

This movie is all origin story with a face-off against Doom at the end.  Perhaps it can be criticized on the fact that most of the first half is devoted to the experiment that leads to the team inadvertently catching their powers.

I’m not a fan of super hero origins stories, mostly because we know them front and back already.  I don’t need to see Batman’s parents get shot for the hundredth time.  I don’t need to see Superman’s escape pod land in the Kents’ corn field.  I don’t need to see Peter Parker get bitten by a damn radioactive Spider again.

We all know what happened.  There’s no need to re-tell the whole story again every time the cast changes.  Just jump straight to the action.

However, I can’t begrudge the Fab Four an origin story because they’ve been denied a good one thus far.

I don’t know.  Based on the reviews, I went into it thinking that it would be two hours of The Thing performing a poetry recital while Sue and Johnny use Reed as a jumprope, so I was pleasantly surprised.

If you hated it, I don’t want to start a nerd fight or anything, but what did I miss?  Why is this movie considered so sucky?

It’s not like it was good enough to run out and watch again, but I didn’t feel like I didn’t get my money’s worth either.

STATUS:  Shelf worthy.

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Aug 05 2015
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Pop Culture Mysteries

Pop Culture Mysteries – Case File #004 – Snubbed (Part 7) (Conclusion)

PREVIOUSLY ON POP CULTURE MYSTERIES…

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6

AND NOW THE POP CULTURE MYSTERIES CONTINUE…

“Where the hell I was I?”

I was all alone, sitting in front of the library’s beep boop machine.

The lights switched off.shutterstock_71510056

“Oh thank God,”  Agnes said.  “You’re conscious again.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,”  the librarian replied.  “You were making me look up Nicki Minaj’s tweets and then you drifted off somewhere deep in thought, humming a song about someone named, ‘Honey.'”

“Ag, wanna help me wrap this mystery up?”

“Library’s closed,”  Agnes said as she pointed to the door, giving me the bum’s rush.  “Time to find a shelter, rummy.”

There was nothing I could do to convince Agnes that I wasn’t just one of an assortment of street people who wandered into the library all day seeking free shelter and wi-fi, constantly harassing her to cater to their every need and whim as if she was some kind of city employed maid instead of a trained researcher.

She handed me a stack of papers on the way out.

“Print-outs of everything else I found on the Nicki Minaj snub,”  the old lady said.  “I still think you need to find something better to do with your time than waste it on pop culture.”

“There’s 3.5 readers who disagree with you, doll.”

I pocketed the papers and shuffled my way out of the building, down the street aways until I found an all-night diner.

“How much for a water, sweetheart?”

“It’s complimentary,” the waitress answered.

“Then keep ’em coming.”

“Wow.  Big spender.”

I laid out the file full of info Agnes printed out for me.

The tacks were brass and it was time to get down to them.

1)  Was Nicki’s “snub” race related?

I understand I’m the wrong color to be saying that race relations have improved over the years.

However, I am the right age.  Though I stopped aging sixty years ago, I’m ninety-five and can tell you there was a time when interracial marriage was a sin, black people were denied access to basic opportunities taken for granted today.

I’ve seen black people shooed to the back of the bus, out of restaurants, chased away with dogs from the voting booth, you name it.

Society kept Peaches and I apart and that will always be a sore spot for yours truly, seeing as how society’s opinion was never asked for in the matter.

But, as an open-minded private dick, I get the flip side.  That folks aren’t openly treated like garbage just because of the color of their skin is all well and good, but the aftershocks of slavery and past oppression are going to be around for a long time.  Will black people ever feel truly welcome in the world?  Are there white people who hold certain biases, some of whom may not even realize it?

The President put it best:

It is incontrovertible that race relations have improved significantly during my lifetime and yours, and that opportunities have opened up, and that attitudes have changed.  That is a fact.  What is also true is the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on.  We’re not cured of it.

– Barack Obama on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast

By the wayside, if any of you yahoos can explain to this gumshoe WTF a podcast is, it’d be appreciated.  All I gather is everyone and their brother has their own show now thanks to the wonders of modern technology.

Did MTV decide not to nominate Nicki for a couple extra awards because of the color of her skin?  Doubtful.

Could Nicki’s complaint be seen as a preamble for a discussion for a greater need for diversity in the entertainment industry?

Of course.

In my day, black singers were considered novelty acts.  Today, they’re widely accepted.

Still, you don’t see as many movies where the protagonist, i.e. the lead guy or gal, the one all the action is centered around, is black.  There’s some, but not many.

You’ll see a lot of supporting black actors.  I suppose that’s progress from my day, where if you were a black actor you were typecast as the maid, the butler, or some hoodlum the cops were rousting.

To paraphrase the Prez’s summation, things are better, but they could also get better.

2)  What about body-type-ism?

Hollywood is all glamour and pizazz.   Heavy on the style, hold the substance.

If you’re fat, or ugly, or you’ve got a crooked nose, or shingles, or a weepy eye, or facial fungus or any host of bodily issues, there’s a better chance of finding you on the Moon than there is in the next blockbuster.

Is that right?  Is that wrong?  Maybe that’s just how the cookie crumbles.

People listen to music and watch the boob tube to escape reality.  Average Joes and Josephines want to pretend their someone greater than they are and it’s hard to do that when the guy or gal on the screen looks like you.

But then again, perhaps that’s an indictment of today’s looks-conscious world, one that assumes the not hot folk have nothing to offer.

I’ve observed this problem since waking up.  You’ve got that Meghan Trainor gal and her All About That Bass song.

Not to scandalize you, 3.5 readers, but as a trained investigator, I’m able to read between the lines and I’m fairly certain “All About That Bass” is double-talk for Meghan’s corpulent posterior.

Therein lies the point.  The gal has an impressive set of pipes and can sing like all get out, but she’s a bit on the chunky side, so she has to address that fact in a song.

If you ask me, people should be able to appreciate a good voice and not give a toot about the size of the singer’s caboose.

To that end (no pun intended), Nicki might be onto something.

I feel sorry for today’s musical entertainers.

Do you know what a singer needed to make it big in my day?  A pretty dress and a fine set of vocal chords.  That’s about it.

I remember sitting in a grand hall, listening to Peaches fill it up, feeling blessed just to have known her.

She didn’t have to wiggle her butt to a beat like Nicki, or put on an Egyptian Princess outfit like Katy, or a meat dress like Lady Gaga or pretend to be an action movie star like Taylor.

Peaches sang.  The audience cheered.  That’s it.

Today, people have more choices on how to be entertained than ever before, and while that’s led to more artists working, the negative byproduct is that it also requires most of them to engage in some kind of goofy gimmick.

Alas, the music gets lost in the pageantry.

I see the manager is about to kick me out for ordering nothing but complimentary water, so I’ll close with a final observation.

Conclusions

It’s all about the evidence, ’bout the evidence, no speculation.

I see nothing that proves Nicki was snubbed due to race or body-type-ism and let’s face it.  Three out of five nominations is nothing to sneeze at.

However, in a world where people are often cast aside because of what they look like, there’s always room for a conversation about how that trend can be curbed.

Personally, as one of the most handsome and modest bastards around, I think that’s big of me to say.

shutterstock_278169329

Copyright Bookshelf Q. Battler 2015.

All Rights Reserved.

Images courtesy of a shutterstock.com license.

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Aug 04 2015
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review – Vacation (2015)

Holiday Rohhh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oad.

Yup.  I wasted valuable time and money to take in this movie.

OBLIGATORY SPOILER WARNING – though the trailer pretty much summarizes the best parts of the film:

Movieclips Trailers – Vacation

Oh Hollywood.  Why must you continue to play it safe with reboots and sequels and so on?

Let me put it this way:

1)  This movie doesn’t suck.

2)  It only starts to suck when you start comparing it to the three original Vacation movies from the 1980’s that share this film’s name.

3)  Though I can’t call it a guffaw-fest, there were a number of times where I did laugh.

The setup:  Adult Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms), recognizing that his family is stuck in an unhappy rut, decides to pack up the clan and take them on a road trip to Walley World, just as his father Clark (Chevy Chase) did in the first film.

From there on, the film becomes a series of sketches, smaller vignettes that happen the family as they make various stops along the way.

Some jokes from the first movie are parodied or paid homage to (Rusty rents a Prancer, an Albanian car that far surpasses his father’s Family Truckster in suckage).

But to the movie’s credit, it pokes fun at itself, and an attempt is made to go off on its own rather than be simply a modernized carbon copy of the original.

Cameos aplenty, as I assume many of today’s actors have fond memories of laughing their butts off at a young Chevy Chase, as I do.

Chevy and Beverly D’Angelo make cameos as Grandpa Clark and Grandma Ellen.  I feel like there might have been potential to do something funnier with them, but then again, had they been featured longer than they were, it’d of been a different movie altogether.

For fans of Community, it might be hard to not look at Chevy these days and think “Pierce Hawthorne.”  Meanwhile, Beverly has definitely made some kind of supernatural anti-aging deal.

My favorite bit was the younger brother bullies the older brother routine.  Every once in awhile, I’ll see that somewhere.  It’s usually the older kid, who’s bigger, bullies the younger kid, but every so often you’ll see an older kid who’s polite and doesn’t want to hurt his miserable pipsqueak of a younger brother, even though he could totally knock him into next week for being a little jerk if he wanted to.  That dynamic makes for some fun here.

As if there wasn’t enough in this film to make me feel old, Christina Applegate, who once played the uber hot Kelly Bundy in her youth (and who I oggled extensively in mine), now plays the uptight Mom trying to prove to everyone she’s still as fun as she used to be.

Oh time, please slow down.

Should you rush out to see it?  Nah.  Is it worth a rental when you have nothing better to do?  Sure.

STATUS:  Not shelf-worthy.

BUT – if you’re one of those younger people born with a cell phone in hand, you should check out:

Vacation

European Vacation

Christmas Vacation (I don’t know about you but I have to watch this at least once during the holiday season)

And though it’s not as good, Vegas Vacation.

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Aug 02 2015
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

Dun dun dun da dun dun dun dun…doo da dooo..do da dooo…doo da doooo…da doo doo!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, 3.5 readers, is to read this review.

This review will self destruct in 5 seconds….

Also, SPOILERS

Movieclips Trailers – Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

I can’t believe this movie franchise has been going strong for so long, 3.5.  I really can’t.

Want to know how old this franchise is?

Ving Rhames took the role as Hunt’s associate Luther Stickell when he was hot off of playing crime boss Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction.

Time, where oh where did you go?

Cruise, well-preserved, likely due to praying to the alien gods of Scientology (it pays to swear fealty to the Mighty Potentate) is as cool as ever in this one.

To Cruise’s credit, he’s a man who’s lived an extraordinary life, has nothing left to prove and yet, for our viewing pleasure, hooked himself up to the side of a flying plane.

Here’s a CNN article about how Cruise pulled this one off.  It involved special contacts to protect his eyes from flying debris (a piece of dirt flying at high speeds could have blinded him), a safety harness, and so on.

Amazingly, there was all sorts of safety precautions taken, yet the final shot looks as though he was just holding on with nothing but his hands.

Would you strap yourself to a flying plane moving at 185 mph?

I would not.  I would tell the writers they need to rewrite that shit.  Those terrorists need to be foiled on the ground.

So kudos to Tom.  You were married to Nicole Kidman, Katie Holmes, and now you’ve literally flown.

So, the setup.  This go around it’s IMF vs. the Syndicate, an evil organization bent on bringing down the world.

To throw a monkey wrench into the works, Hunt has also cheesed off the CIA and MI6.

Fast cars, exotic locales, insane stunts…it’s an action movie that’s got it all.

I don’t know about you, 3.5 readers, but with these types of movies, I just go for the pretty colors and fancy special effects and don’t waste a lot of time getting bogged down by the plot.  There’s so much explanation of how someone is going to break in to some place and blah blah blah, here’s how it’s going to happen and here’s what everyone is going to do.

Perhaps you sit there with your popcorn, trying to parse out all the details, but to me, it’s all just:

ETHAN:  To break in, we’ll need the thing to do the thing and get past the thing.

BENJI:  You’ll need a thing.  But the thing has to be done with the exact thing or the thing will happen to the thing.

LUTHER:  Nope.  No way.  You can’t do that thing with this thing.  You’re going to need that other thing and when that thing happens, you’d better be ready to do that thing.

ETHAN:  So it’s settled.  We’re going to do the thing.

This is a big role for Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa (not Elsa, no one sang, “Let it Go,”), the British agent who works with Hunt.

Sean Harris is exceptionally creepy as the film’s uber villian Solomon Lane while Jeremy Renner and Alec Baldwin get into a bureaucratic turf war over whether the CIA should absorb the IMF’s functions.

Last but not least, Simon Pegg, a nerd after my own heart, returns as Hunt’s tech savvy sidekick Benji.

It’s worth the price of admission with some awesomeness you have to see on the big screen.

I always look forward to these whenever they’re out.  In this nerd’s opinion, when it comes to spy action movies, MI is second only to 007.

And by the way, there’s a great Spectretrailer before this one.  Can’t wait for it.

Interesting side note:  I noticed this movie was backed by the China Movie Channel and Alibaba Films.  (Alibaba being the Chinese version of Amazon).  Will the Chinese become major players in the American film industry?  Eh, it seems new but then again Asia bridging the gap to Hollywood isn’t all that new.  Japanese backed Sony has been around forever.

STATUS:  Shelf-worthy.

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Jul 26 2015
5 Comments
Movie Reviews

Movie Review – Southpaw (2015) – Special Guest Reviewer – Jake Hatcher

By:  Jake Hatcher, Official Bookshelf Battle Blog Private Eye

BQB EDITORIAL NOTE: A special treat for you, 3.5 readers.  If you’re following Pop Culture Mysteries, then you know that the Official Bookshelf Battle Blog Private Eye, Jake Hatcher, was once a formidable pugilist.  His fists of fury brought down a number of vicious opponents, not to mention the Third Reich.

Thus, I decided to take a powder for this review and allow “The Jersey Jabber” to take over.

Jake Hatcher, Guest Movie Reviewer

Jake Hatcher, Guest Movie Reviewer

Another Saturday night and no dame to while away the hours with.  I was lonelier than an injured dog with one of those safety cones around its neck that renders it unable to lick itself.

To my surprise, I stepped into my office and found an envelope on my desk.  Inside?  A movie ticket for the film Southpaw and the following note:

See a movie on me, Hatcher.  It’s the least I can do for the man who keeps my 3.5 readers entertained with tales of daring-do.

Sincerely,

Bookshelf Q. Battler

Blogger-in-Chief for the Bookshelf Battle Blog

Huh.  Delilah must have dropped it off while I was at the liquor store.

Did I say liquor store?  I meant to say while I was putting in a hard day of sleuthing.

Much appreciated, Mr. Battler.  Though honestly, the least you could have done was pony up the dough for two tickets. Hell, you could have even talked that looker of a lawyer of yours into accompanying me.

Dim lights.  Emotional flick.  Perfect atmosphere to sneak in a little smooch-a-roo but oh well.  Who am I kidding?  I’ve got a better shot at stealing the Queen of England’s crown jewels than I do at stealing a kiss from the delicious dish Delilah K. Donnelly.

You know, 3.5 readers, in my day films were only shown for a limited time.  If you missed it, it was tough titty said the kitty. Thus, if some turkey gobbled up the action that you missed, you’d allow him to give you an earful and you’d thank him for it, because by and large, word of mouth was the only way you’d find out about the story you missed.

Things are different today.  Miss a film in the theater?  Just watch it on your television.  Or your phone.  Or those damn i-Whatevers.  Big phones basically.  Watch a movie on your toaster, your toothbrush, your refrigerator, your cuisinart.  If it’s a beep boop machine, then you can watch a damn movie on it.

And you can watch it whenever you want too.  On the can, in line at the delicatessen, at the dentist’s office while your teeth are getting drilled, while you’re pretending to give two shits about whatever it is your dumb friend is saying, it doesn’t matter.

Bottomline – I’m supposed to warn you that this review has more SPOILERS than Ms. Donnelly has beauty, so if you haven’t taken it in yet, then take a walk, Jack.

Movieclips Trailers – Southpaw

Mr. Battler, all complaints about your cheapness aside, I do thank you for giving me the chance to watch this movie.  It brought the good old days of my boxing career back to me faster than a Maserati with a brick on the accelerator.

So this fella, Jake Gyllenhaal.  I take it he’s the cock of the walk in Tinsel Town these days.  I’m not light in the loafers or nothin’ but I can tell a handsome man when I see one so I imagine the broads go gaga over this galoot.  Guys like that have their choice of roles so it’s to his credit that he chose this one, since it’s not exactly a glamorous one.

Gyllenhaal plays Billy Hope, an ironic name to be sure because this cat becomes utterly hopeless.

At the start of the picture, Hope has it all.  A mansion the Sultan of Brunei would be happy to call home.  A swimming pool you could sail a battleship through.  More friends than he can shake a stick at.  An adorable daughter and a wife who’s hotter than a bowl full of jalapenos.

(I just have to say that to entertain the 3.5 readers, Ms. Donnelly.  You know she’s got nothin’ on you.)

Have you folks taken a gander at this Rachel McAdams broad?  All I can say is I’ll see your “Hubba Hubba” and raise you an “Awooga!”

That gal is easy on the eyes, let me tell you.  For most of the first part of the movie, she runs around in a skimpy dress that really shows off her dynamic derriere.

Not that I want to pay attention to stuff like that, but I am a private detective.  It’s my job to notice these things.

Anyway, you don’t need to listen to me flap my yapper all night, so let me give you the straight skinny.

Hope’s world comes crashing down when Miguel Escobar, a rival for the heavyweight belt, makes an inappropriate comment about Mrs. Hope.  The champ gets madder than a box full of boll weevils, a fist fight ensues, and both fighters’ entourages join in the melee.

A gun is drawn and fired, Mrs. Hope takes a bullet and croaks like a frog on a log and yours truly is left to suffer without McAdams’ keister to gawk at for another hour and a half.

Again, I was just doing my job.

Luckily, there was plenty of other action to make up for the lack of McAdam’s marvelous mangoes.  I won’t rat out the details but the whole mess causes Hope a whole heap of financial and legal problems, see? He loses his house, his money, his kid and hits rock bottom, a place this gumshoe knows only too well.

It’s up to down and out trainer Tick Wills (Forest Whitaker) to give Hope some hope and bring him back from the brink of self-destruction.

Curtis “50-Cent” Jackson plays Hope’s conniving manager Jordan, a real slick type who drops Hope like a bad penny when the going gets tough.

As if there wasn’t enough irony in this film, 50-Cent is the fella that springs the bad news to Hope that he’s got less cash than a check-out register at a discount dime store.  Word on the street is that 50, or “Fiddy” as I hear folks call him, just filed for bankruptcy and his nickname has become more than apt.

Can anyone explain to me what a rapper is?  I woke up a year ago after a 59-year nap and like a kangaroo with a sewn up pouch, I’m confused.  All I can gather is they talk fast in rhyme to a beat.  It’s like being a real smooth Lord Byron I suppose.

Whatever rapping is, the film is accompanied by a soundtrack that rap aficionados will want to check out.  Fiddy is featured on the album, and another fella called Eminem offers up a diddy called, Phenomenal.

It’s catchy.  You should listen to it.  I hummed it for awhile after I got home until Ms. Tsang kicked me out of her kitchen because she couldn’t stand to listen to me anymore.

Can’t say as I blame her.  Sometimes I’m not the best company.  Just ask the three ex-Mrs. Hatchers.

I tip my fedora to Gyllenhaal.  The key to great acting is to transform into someone the audience doesn’t recognize, and Jake does that here.

(Try not to get confused, 3.5 readers.  The star’s name is Jake, but my name is also Jake.  Two Jakes, no waiting.)

Hope is a mumbling, bumbling fella, a punch drunk palooka who’s taken one too many smashes to the cranium.  He’s a powder keg full of rage and ready to see the slightest provocation as the match needed to set him off.  Gyllenhaal plays him to a tee.

Acting isn’t an easy gig.  When I first arrived in LaLaLand, I gave the old thespian routine a go and was laughed at by the entertainment industry power brokers like I was a clown in a pair of polka dot pants.

I try not to think about that though.  Sometimes when you fail, all that really happens is you come that much closer to figuring out what you’re good at.

Me?  I have two skills:

1)  Sleuthing.

2)  Punching dangerous desperados in the face.

Word has it Mr. Battler will even help me regale you 3.5 readers with the tale of how I became so good at the latter.  All I’ll say for now is I wish I’d never allowed that scumbag Mugsy McGillicuddy to force me to take a dive.  It cost me my chance at fame and fortune but even worse, my sweet, sweet Peaches.

If you want my recommendation, this film is worth your time.  It’s a gut wrenching story of loss and redemption.  The moral of the tale?  Appreciate what you’ve got and don’t stoop to the bad guy’s level or else you’ll lose it in an instant.  Sometimes the bigger man is the one who walks away.

Mr. Gyllenhaal, keep at it.  I think this acting thing of yours is going to work out for you.  And again, just because I pointed out that you’re a man of dapper visage doesn’t make me some kind of switch hitter for the Oakland Athletics.

Finally, I’d just like to say if my courtship of Ms. Donnelly doesn’t work out, you’re welcome to stop by Tsang’s Hong Kong Palace and eat my special egg roll, Ms. McAdams.

That’s not some kind of inappropriate innuendo.  Ms. Tsang shared her recipe with me and I make a mean plate of those delicious appetizers.  We could share a meal and shoot the bull was all I was trying to say.

Is it hot in here or is it just me?  Must be this damn trench coat I’m wearing in July.

Jake Hatcher is a hardboiled film noir style detective who fell asleep in 1955, woke up in 2014, and was recruited in June of this year by Bookshelf Battle Blog Lead Counsel Delilah K. Donnelly to solve 100 Pop Culture Mysteries.

If you have a question about movies, music, TV, books, or other forms of entertainment, drop a dime to Bookshelf Q. Battler by tweeting @bookshelfbattle and he’ll put Hatcher on the case.

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Jul 25 2015
2 Comments
Movie Reviews

Movie Review – Pixels (2015)

Hey parents!  Remember all those video games you loved as a kid?

Well, they’re so old that they’ve become quaint!

Bookshelf Q. Battler here with a review of Adam Sandler’s action movie for kids, Pixels.

Even Pac-Man couldn’t gobble up the oncoming SPOILERS fast enough.

Movie Trailer – Pixels – Sony

Sometimes it’s hard to be Adam Sandler.

He wowed people in the 90’s with hits like Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison.  Those are two films that are still quotable today.

(You’ve never told someone something they just said made no sense and everyone is now dumber for having heard it?)

But then he made a slew of lesser films that fell flat and now he’s the point where everyone expects his movies will suck.

To his credit, this one didn’t.

If you’re looking for highbrow entertainment, then you’ll probably think it does.

If you’re a parent looking for a movie to bring your kids to that won’t bore you to tears, then you’ll enjoy it.

As kids, Sandler (Brenner), Kevin James (Cooper), Josh Gad (Ludlow), and Peter Dinklage (Eddie) once competed in a 1980’s video game tournament.

Back in those days, the lads thought the world would one day be their oyster.  Alas, they find life pretty disappointing as adults.

Brenner, who once dreamed of becoming a tech genius works at a Best Buy-esque home TV installation company.  Ludlow has become a wacky conspiracy theorist who still lives with his grandma and Eddie?  I won’t spoil it for you.

The only one who had life go his way was Cooper, but I won’t spoil that for you either.

Needless to say, the buddies who once believed their video game skills were useless in the real world become the world’s only hope when aliens attack using video game warfare.

Turns out, aliens aren’t that bright.  (Don’t tell Alien Jones).

Footage of the video game tournament was sent to outer space as an example of Earth culture in the hopes that friendly aliens would discover it.  Alas, the aliens take it as a challenge and develop real life versions of 1980’s video games to attack Earth.

Completely silly I know, but you’ll enjoy the special effects as Brenner and friends take on Centipede, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and so on.

There’s plenty of celebrity appearances.  Brian Cox plays a cranky American general and Sean Bean plays his British counterpart.  Michelle Monaghan plays Brenner’s love interest/Army inventor of anti-alien video game technology.

Josh Gad steals the show with his antics until Dinklage steals it from him with his obnoxious, egotistical character.

Q-Bert becomes the Jar Jar Binks of the film but that’s besides the point.

Will you, as once said to Happy Madison, be dumber for watching this movie?  Maybe.  But if you suspend disbelief and silence your inner critic, you’ll be entertained.

But if you can remember a time when arcades were fun and popular, then you might want to skip it because you’ll be left feeling old…unless you’re feeling nostalgic.

STATUS:  Shelf-worthy.

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Jul 20 2015
1 Comment
Movies

Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf (SyFy Channel Movie Trailer)

I smell Oscar…

New Trailers Buzz – Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf (Roger Corman, SyFy Channel)

Shark+Octopus=Sharktopus

Whale+Wolf=Whalewolf

What say you, 3.5 readers?

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Jul 19 2015
10 Comments
Movie Reviews

Movie Review – Ant-Man (2015)

While other heroes might be larger than life, this one’s going small.

Bookshelf Q. Battler here with a review of Marvel’s latest summer smash hit, Ant-Man.

Be forewarned – the SPOILERS ahead aren’t tiny.

Ant-Man – Marvel – Movieclips Trailers

Try this one on for size (pun intended.)

In a comic book world where one superhero is big, bolder and badder than the next, this guy’s power comes from becoming super miniscule.  Not only that, but he controls a legion of ants who become his buddies.

Sounds epically stupid, right?

And yet, somehow Marvel pulls it off with great gusto in one of its best offerings this year.

Michael Douglas plays Dr. Hank Pym, whose Pym particle allows miniaturization.  The wearer of a suit infused with Pym’s creation allows the wearer:

  • To become tiny
  • And therefore able to infiltrate places held by the enemy undetected
  • To still pack a human sized punch despite being small
  • To become big and small at will, thus further ability to fake out the enemy
  • To control a legion of ant lackeys willing to do your bidding

Years ago, Pym put the kibosh on his creation, refusing to share it with the government out of fear it could fall into the wrong hands and be used for nefarious purposes.

Flash forward to today, where Pym’s protege, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll of House of Cards fame) has managed to recreate Pym’s research to create “Yellowjacket,” a suit that allows the wearer to become small, fly around and shoot lasers.

Cross has evil plans for his creation and that’s where ex-con Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) comes in.

Pym’s too old to don the suit himself, refuses to put his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) at risk by allowing her to wear it, and thus Scott is recruited to become…dun dun dun…ANT-MAN!

This is a heist movie, more or less Marvel’s version of Ocean’s 11, as Scott must infiltrate Cross’ security and make off with the Yellowjacket tech before Cross’ evil plans are unleashed on the world.

I love Avengers, but here’s the thing.  Iron Man has super intellect.  The Hulk has super strength.  Thor has muscles out the wazoo.  Capt. America is the world’s ultimate soldier.

Try as much as you like, but you’ll never get to be like one of these guys.

That’s why Ant-Man is such a relatable character.  When Scott dons the Ant-Man suit, he doesn’t react with great poise and precision.  He gets slapped all over creation, avoiding people trying to step on him and a hungry rat who thinks he looks delicious.

He needs Pym to train him and he needs a lot of work as he makes a lot of mistakes along the way (as most average people would when gaining a special ability for the first time).

There’s cross-over into the Avengers world, though I won’t spoil it with details.  Fans won’t be disappointed.

Paul Rudd, known for his comedic roles, was the perfect choice for the part.  Meanwhile, it was great to see Michael Douglass, whose suffered health problems in recent years, back on the big screen in a major role.  Thanks to some fancy effects, there is a flashback part where he’s youth-i-fied to the point where he looks like he could fight Glenn Close for boiling his bunny (aw come on, you’ve had plenty of time to watch Fatal Attraction.)

It’s been awhile since Hollywood’s attempted a good big person becomes small movie.  Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, is the last one I can remember.

The key to this movie is it takes itself seriously when necessary, but there’s also balance where the goofy premise is poked fun at.  Epic fight scenes are shown on a small scale, where Ant-Man squares off against Yellowjacket in a daring, death defying struggle, but then panned out on a regular human sized scale their fight on a child’s train set looks like a few toys being tossed about.

Scott’s ex-con buddies who back him up also provide much comic relief.

Hollywood’s been at this one for awhile.  Ant-Man was in play for at least a decade before reaching the big screen.  The public had to develop a thirst for super heroes and a great team had to be put together, one that was self-aware that the concept is goofy and could portray that one the screen while also providing the high stakes, do or die situations that comic book fans love.

STATUS:  Shelf-worthy

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