Weekend Box Office: The Purge, The Internship, The Kings of Summer

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post about some of the movies from last week and THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all follows this post about guidelines to chosing good movies to watch yourself!

Weekend Box Office: The Purge, The Internship, The Kings of Summer


By Debbie Schlussel



Another mediocre weekend of new movies at theaters this weekend–well-suited for an ever more mediocre nation. *** SPOILER ALERT *** – If you don’t want certain things given away for the very predictable, “The Purge,” only read the first two sentences of my review:


* “The Purge“: I absolutely hated this very obvious, predictable far-left “social commentary” denouncing rich White people (especially those who are still in married, nuclear families) and mocking American patriotism as something akin to supporting murder. Samantha Power–Obama’s America-hating UN Ambassador nominee–would LOVE this. The only good guy in this movie is a Black homeless veteran, who saves everyone, including the family that tortured him and was going to help him get murdered. And while the movie is entertaining, it’s mostly a racist (anti-White) exercise in torture porn, killing porn, and other brutal savagery. That’s how it gets its “thrills.” I saw almost every “twist” and plot point in this movie a million miles away–that the Black guy was gonna save the day, that the rich people are evil, self-absorbed Whites (they threw on one Black chick with the evil Whites at the end to make it seem balanced, but it wasn’t), that the daughter’s boyfriend was gonna try to kill the dad, etc.



The story: It’s the future–the year 2022, to be exact. Crime is near zero and unemployment is under 1% in America, where things are doing very well, economically. Ethan Hawke plays a wealthy, successful salesman of home security systems, which he’s sold to his entire gated neighborhood. His McMansion is the largest and nicest in the neighborhood. And it’s the night of “The Purge,” an annual 12-hour event, once a year, in which everyone is allowed to commit any crime, including murder, against anyone else, and they won’t be arrested for it. There are no police, firemen, hospitals, or EMT’s available from 7:00 p.m. on that night until 7:00 a.m., the next morning. It’s a “holiday” the “new founding fathers” of the “new America,” established so that everyone can take out their hate (“purging” it) from themselves by perpetrating violence against the homeless, weak, poor, and other “undesirables,” who cannot afford expensive home security systems, something apparently only rich White people have. Those rich White (married nuclear family) people all support this savage “Purge” holiday and put out lavender and white flowers on the night of the Purge to signal to purgers that this is a house that supports the purge and it should be left untouched.



Hawke is the father of a young son and a teen daughter and has a beautiful wife (Lena Headey). The whole neighborhood is jealous of their success. When the Purge begins, they are locked down in their McMansion, supporting the Purge, with Hawke and his wife lecturing the liberal kids about how good the Purge is for America and its economy. But no security system is really 100% failsafe, and you know at the beginning of the movie, there’s gonna be trouble. First, the daughter’s “older” boyfriend sneaked into the house before it was locked down. He tells the daughter that he is going to speak with her father and “resolve” things, but predictably, he has a gun and tries to kill the dad (Hawke).



Then, the son sees video from outside the house of a Black homeless man running from Purgers down the street. He begs for help, and the son shuts off the security system and lets him in. Then, the upper-class White Purgers who were trying to kill the Black man (who is wearing dog tags and a military-style green jacket, apparently to show us he’s a military vet) come to the house and threaten to kill Hawke and his family if he doesn’t release the Black man to them to be killed. So Hawke and his wife capture and torture the Black man into submission and prepare to throw him to the “wolves,” where they know he’ll be killed.



The rest of the movie is spent on the family trying to fight off the Purgers. And, again, they are ultimately saved by the Black guy they were going to send to his certain death at the Purgers’ hands.



Just horrible. And, like I said, anti-American, anti-White, anti-nuclear-family, racist class warfare propaganda.



FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS

* “The Internship“: This is billed as a reunion of “The Wedding Crashers” lead actors Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. But it’s no “Wedding Crashers.” Not nearly as funny. Not even close. Instead, it’s a love letter to and about Google, and a somewhat annoying one at that. It’s also a lie–there are several scenes with interns training to man the Google “helpline,” for example, but one of the most frustrating things about Google is that it, in fact, refuses to have a “helpline,” because that would cost money. Instead, if you have a problem with any of your Google products (as I occasionally have–I use some Google products for my site), you are stuck searching the help section and participating in useless forums, where you’ll mostly never get help or find the answers you need. Hey, Google, thanks for untruth in advertising. I wish Google DID have a helpline.



I also found this movie to be very self-absorbed and–per usual with Hollywood liberals a/k/a hypocrites–it’s full of ethnic stereotypes against “smart-but-square” Indians, Asians, etc. No Muslim stereotypes, though, ‘cuz they’d NEVER do that.



The story: Vaughn and Wilson are very successful, very effective salesmen for a watch company. But their company went out of business, and they need to find new jobs. So they apply for internships at Google, which they get, despite the fact that they are not genius college students from Harvard and Stanford (which is pretty much the rest of the Google internship population). The interns are divided into teams to compete in various tasks (including the fake Google “helpline”), with the winning team members getting actual jobs at Google. At first, Vaughn and Wilson seem like idiots and out of their league. They are outgunned by the young geniuses, but, predictably, they soon start helping their team win. Oh, and did I mention that they do this by taking their team of interns (who are mostly underage) to a strip club to get drunk and receive and/or perform lap dances? Ick. That’s “team bonding” and the “socialization” of geeks, these days, sadly. A terrible message for the many kids who will end up seeing this movie, which–by the way–is NOT for kids. It’s rated PG-13, but should really have an R-rating.



Yes, there were funny lines and scenes in this movie, and I laughed. But not as much as I expected to. And not nearly as much as I did when watching “The Wedding Crashers.” This was just okay. But I’d be lying if I said it was not entertaining. It was, but it was also dumb and predictable, including the silly, improbable, and hardly believable “love story” between Wilson and a top Google exec.



HALF A REAGAN



* “The Kings of Summer“: In this coming of age movie, three teen boys who are fed up with their strict parents (who later become crazy and immature) run away from home and live in the woods in a house they’ve built from junk. While their parents are working with police to find them, they are “hunting” and “fishing” for their own food (a good deal of it bought by them from the nearby Boston Market just outside and across the street from the woods). They also learn about love and jealousy and test their friendship in the process. There are several VERY scary and creepy scenes involving a poisonous copperhead snake. And there is a gross bloody scene of a rabbit being killed and skinned. Plus the language is not for kids–it’s rated “R” for a reason (several of them).



This is one of those quirky, artsy movies I usually hate and I could have done without the melodrama. But there are funny lines and it’s entertaining. And, while one of the three boys is a very weird quasi-gay character (who is very funny), it’s mostly about boys becoming men (despite having parents who don’t necessarily foster that), which I liked.



ONE-AND-A-HALF REAGANS