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 choosing good movies to watch yourself!

Wknd Box Office: Finding Dory, Central Intelligence, Genius

By Debbie Schlussel

Yes, I’m late with these written/posted movie reviews, though yet again nothing much to rave about. Remember, you can always hear my movie reviews live, first thing every Friday morning on “The Pat Campbell Show” on KFAQ 1170 AM Tulsa at 7:35 a.m. Eastern, and on “The James Show,” on KWTX 1230 AM at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, on “The Larry The Cable Guy Show” (sometimes on Thursdays) between 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. Eastern on SiriusXM’s Jeff and Larry’s Comedy Roundup Channel 97, and on “The Mike Church Show” on the Veritas Radio Network/CRUSADE. I do my movie reviews on all four shows, as well as some discussion of current political issues and pop culture topics.







* Finding Dory – PG: I never saw “Finding Nemo,” the 2003 hit movie to which this is a sequel. I understand, though, that this is pretty much the same story as that one, except that “Dory,” a character from that movie, is the lead character, instead of Nemo. Although the completely unreliable site, Breitfart, claims that this movie shows two lesbian moms and has a trans stingray character, it’s not true. At least, I didn’t see it, and I was completely awake and alert throughout this entertaining, funny, cute movie. I don’t remember ever seeing or hearing the stingray claim he got a sex change or cut off any parts, as was claimed. The movie is animated in the usual high-quality Disney Pixar style. I saw it in 3D, but you need not spring for that and will have a fine viewing experience in 2D. Also, like most Pixar movies, this has a cute animated short prior to the main event.
Ellen DeGeneres voices the Dory character for most of the movie. The story: Dory, as a young fish, has short-term memory loss, and her parents are very worried about her. How will she find her way around? How will she be able to cope and take care of herself? Will anyone want to be friends with her? I was kind of surprised that such an adult set of concerns was the subject of a kids movie. But I think the movie handled it well. And while I’m not politically correct and don’t like PC movies, I liked this movie especially because I think it teaches kids to have compassion for those with mental disabilities. That’s laudable, though it is probably over the heads of the target audience. Dory, because of her inability to remember, gets lost from her parents while she is very young, and spends most of the rest of the movie trying to find them. Through that process, she meets a number of familiar characters (including Nemo and his father, Marlin, the latter of whom is voice by Albert Brooks) and a number of new ones. All of them, in their own way, help Dory make her way in her conscientious search to find her folks.
Like most Pixar movies, this has the usual colorful array of characters, sets and backgrounds, and other eye candy stuff. And like most Pixar movies, there are funny and quirky characters. Although the movie is kind of scary and serous for kids (at least, the kids when I was growing up–today, I know it’s a different story), there is a predictable and unlikely happy ending.
I enjoyed it. And it’s perfect to take your kids and whole family to see.
ONE-AND-A-HALF REAGANS

Watch the trailer . . .

* Central Intelligence – PG-13: When a movie has posters that proclaim, “Saving the World Takes a Little Hart and a Big Johnson,” you already know what to expect: not much. And I didn’t expect anything from this. That said, I laughed a lot for the first third of the movie. It was very funny for about that much of the film. After that, it falls flat and fizzles. Plus saying it’s kinda stupid overall is the understatement of the year. The story is okay. It’s the execution that’s just dumb. And, again, I didn’t expect better, so I was pleasantly surprised if only ever so briefly . . . and then I was returned to the reality of most movies starring Kevin Hart and many movies starring Duane “The Rock” Johnson.
The story: Johnson is a fat, nerdy, poor kid in high school. He has no friends and is constantly mocked by the popular crowd, made up of mostly jocks. One day, they grab him while he’s naked in the locker room shower and throw him onto the gym floor during a school assembly. The only decent person, played by Hart, is the high school’s star athlete, who is also voted “Most Likely to Succeed” by their high school class. Hart covers up the naked Johnson with his varsity jacket and tries to shield him from further embarrassment. This kindness is something Johnson never forgets.
Fast forward 20 years later, and things are reversed. Sort of. Johnson is now a big, tall, buff guy who turns out to be a CIA operative of sorts. And Hart is an accountant who can’t get any respect at work and is bored with his life. He’s disappointed with how his life has turned out, and his wife–his high school sweetheart–wants the two of them to see a marriage counselor. It’s also the week of their 20th high school reunion. Hart, because he sees his life as so unexciting, doesn’t want to attend the reunion, while his wife does.
Soon, Johnson is back in Hart’s life, and Hart becomes entangled in a CIA plot regarding dangerous weapons and an evil villain. And that’s when it becomes stupid and mindless. Not that anyone should have expected anything different. After all, this is The Rock and Kevin Hart. Not exactly the working ensemble of masterpiece theater. As you’ll note, this only rates a PG-13, and not an R. It’s not as raunchy as what you’d typically expect for a bromance involving these two. But, again, it is as silly as what you’d expect.
HALF A MARX

Watch the trailer . . .

* Genius – PG-13: You know Hollywood is running out of ideas, when it puts out a movie about the editing of books. Yes, this is literally about that. I know–the only thing less exciting is a movie about watching paint dry. And that’ll probably be next. You literally see endless scenes of Israel-hater Colin Firth editing pages, crossing out words, and writing in the margins, as he portrays Max Perkins, the editor at Charles Scribner and Sons publishing house in New York in 1929. Yaaawn.
Apparently, Perkins was the editor of several famous, successful authors at the time, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, both of whom make appearances in this movie (played by actors, of course). But that notoriety doesn’t make this movie any more watchable or interesting. Instead, it feels like a boorish bore you were forced to eat dinner with drops a couple names during an insufferable conversation you wish you could walk out on. No, there’s nothing “genius” about Genius.
The movie focuses on Perkins’ two editing pursuits of books by a then-up-and-coming novelist Thomas Wolfe, not to be confused with the more contemporary Tom Wolfe, author of “The Right Stuff” and “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” The Thomas Wolfe of this book is a drunken, carousing, overwrought Southerner desperate to become a star and funded by his rich paramour (Nicole Kidman), a married woman who is jealous of his impending success and budding friendship with editor Perkins. In this onscreen bore, Wolfe is played–in fact, overplayed–by Jude Law. Wolfe is very wordy and writes thousands of pages for his two books, all of which must be whittled down and distilled by Perkins, who spends months rewriting the drivel and turning Wolfe into a star. Since he’s forever at work editing Wolfe, Perkins neglects his family and skips a vacation. He’s barely in his kids’ lives, yet still aware of what is going on with them.
While this movie, as with most period pieces with a decent budget, has charming clothing, cars, decor, and other accoutrements of the time, that’s where the charm ends. An irrelevant scene of editor and writer, Perkins and Wolfe, at a Black jazz club feels like filler, made to waste valuable minutes of the nearly two hours of my life I’ll never get back that this long, slow movie comprised. And I wasn’t sure what the point or purpose of this movie was, other than to enable an ensemble of filmmakers and actors to collect yet another paycheck for a job boringly done.
This movie is the cure for insomnia . . . and for the ten bucks plus and nearly two hours of your life you were dying to throw away.
TWO MARXES PLUS THREE NODOZ

Watch the trailer . . .

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 choosing good movies to watch yourself!

Wknd Box Office: Fifty Shades of Grey, Kingsman: The Secret Service

By Debbie Schlussel
I can only recommend one of the two new movies in theaters, this weekend. Hint: it’s not the one glamorizing sex slavery and physical abuse of women. Many readers have asked where my movie reviews from last weekend are. I had many issues with this website last week. The site ate my reviews and I had to start over, and by the time I did, it was time for the Jewish Sabbath. So I’ll try to post those later today. Stay tuned. In the meantime, there are these new ones:

* “Fifty Shades of Grey“: It’s hard to take seriously the NFL’s claimed opposition to domestic abuse against women, especially since the League approved ads which ran during the Super Bowl promoting this lame, boring two-hour excuse for promotion of sex slavery and domestic violence. This painful-to-watch movie pimped women on this idea for two hours: ugly, mousy women can nab billionaires and live the good life . . . if they only submit to being hit, handcuffed, tortured, and treated like animals. Hey, it worked for Melanie Griffith’s and Don Johnson’s unattractive daughter, Dakota Johnson, who plays Anastasia Steele, the naive idiot who stars in this movie and accepts being tortured. Heck, she’s “empowering” herself by negotiating what objects she agrees can and will be inserted into and clamped on to her. Yay, Grrrlpower! My favorite line amidst the equally dumb dialogue throughout: “Um, what’s a butt plug?” Yup, welcome to American “culture” in the Kartrashian Age.

This movie is creepy, boring, degrading, and just plain awful. Fifty Shades of Incredibly Stupid. The “acting” is hilarious, but the lines in the movie are even more so. Every ghost of dead starving artist writers consigned to penning anonymous Harlequin Romances in the ’70s is turning over in her grave. They all missed their time in the sun and chance at earning $100 million, the reported haul of fat chick middle-aged writer E.L. James, who wrote the silly “novels” on which this movie is based. Oh, and did I mention that this is just the first of three Fifty Shades movies? Suffer three times as much over several years.
Last week, I asked if you think this movie will outsell “American Sniper” in the long run? To the naysayers, I think you overestimate the taste of American women. As I noted, all three of the Fifty Shades “books” dominate the list of the top 10 best selling adult fiction books in America for the last eleven years. Remember, each one of these three books alone outsold Chris Kyle’s “American Sniper.” Like I said, American women like sex slavery and torture even more than ISIS does. And the American feminist movement has been equally, hypocritically silent on those two things: Islam’s treatment of women and “Fifty Shades of Grey’s” treatment of women.
I think I’ve written this before, but I cannot wait for the day that a man who has beaten or tortured a woman uses the “Fifty Shades of Grey” defense. “She asked for it” now has a new meaning because now, in many cases, specifically because this book glamorized it, she did ask for it. Hey, if I were Ray Rice, I’d use that defense and ask my employer why they promote this stuff and yet tell me I’m bad for doing a lot less.
The “story”: a mousy, unattractive soon-to-be college graduate in Oregon meets a young, twisted, mentally ill billionaire who hates romance and loves his women in chains and handcuffs and strapped to torture devices while he violently beats them. She is dazzled by the billionaire’s good looks and agrees to this lifestyle while pretending to vacillate back and forth about it. Soon, she is being beaten and forced to sleep in a separate room after having sex and beatings, while being tied up to contraptions.
I hate-hate-hated this “movie.” I’ve never seen so many boring sex scenes in a row. They seemed clinical at best. In fact, it was so boring, I even fell asleep during the first sex scene of the movie. Didn’t miss much. The two actors in this movie have zero chemistry, and the story is just plain dumb. And how many close-ups of this ugly woman biting her lip did I need? It’s headache inducing. So were the repetitive close-ups of this woman’s nipple. Yes, this is porn. No question about that. And it’s boring, sleep-inducing, dumb-as-heck porn. Um, no thanks.
It’s interesting but no surprise that middle-aged fat chicks filled the audience at the promo showing of this which I attended. That’s the “prized” demo who made the books a hit. These are the hags who were 30-somethings when “Sex & the City” was on TV. And now they’ve graduated to this similarly sleazy vapidity with higher creep and violence factors. That’s who’s going to see this movie. No date for Valentine’s Day, so they will hit the theaters instead to see their imaginary non-existent lover, Christian Grey. It’s a fantasy about glamor for the unglamorous. And the fantasy involves getting beaten and tortured and whipped.
Remember those old cigarette ads for “Virginia Slims”? The slogan was, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Indeed.
Yay, feminism. Yay, women. Yay, America. You love domestic abuse, so long as it’s packaged in the right wrapper. Bleeping Morons.
FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR BETTY FRIEDANS PLUS FOUR ISIS BEHEADINGS

Watch the trailer . . .

* “Kingsman: The Secret Service“: This was a decent movie. I liked it, other than the couple of anal sex jokes, which were unnecessary and ruined what was otherwise a fun and funny movie for me. I also could have done without the scene at a church in Kentucky, where all of the churchgoers are openly racist bigots. Yes, it resembles the Westboro Baptist Church (not in Kentucky), but made no effort to say this is a fringe church and not representative of all Christians. Where was the racist, bigoted mosque? Won’t ever happen in a mainstream Hollywood movie.
This movie has everything the modern-day James Bond movies lack (and that the old ones had): lots of great gadgets, guns, funny lines, hot women, action, and political incorrectness galore. All of the liberal celebrities and politicians, including Barack Obama, are killed in this movie. Their heads literally explode. And the villain is an effeminate Black hip-hop-esque billionaire (Samuel L. Jackson) devoted to stopping global warming. In fact, he is so devoted to that cause that he believes most humans must be destroyed and eliminated from planet Earth in order to stop global warming (except for a select few he’s chosen to survive because they are celebrities and politicians and obey what he commands). He wants to take the “man” out of “manmade global warming.” I’m shocked, really, that the Hollywoodites allowed this movie to get made and distributed.
The story: there’s a secret organization made up of secret agents who work to fight and destroy evil in the world. It’s a private, England-based organization, “The Kingsmen.” It’s headed by Michael Caine, and one of its top agents is played by the dapper Colin Firth (UPDATE: beware of his anti-Israel, anti-Semitic ties–see comment from reader Susan, below), who wears impeccable, bulletproof bespoke suits. Firth recruits Eggsy, the loser teen son of one of his late fellow Kingsmen. Eggsy lives in the projects, hangs out with street thugs, wears hip-hop-style clothing, and keeps getting into trouble and petty crime. His mother lives with a violent boyfriend who beats her, and she has given birth to his baby.
Firth sets out to convince Eggsy that there is something more for him in life as a Kingsman if he only applies himself. Eggsy is training and auditioning to become the next Kingsman and help Firth fight the evil billionaire and stop him from destroying humanity. Firth uses a men’s clothing store, “Kingsman,” as his cover. The evil billionaire has an equally evil female assistant who has no legs. Instead, she walks and runs on blades and uses them to stab, maim, and murder people. A barely recognizable Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker of “Star Wars” fame) is in this movie as a bearded professor.
Some of the movie is dumb, but it’s mostly funny and a parody of Bond movies and British TV’s “The Avengers.” If you appreciate it for what it is, you’ll enjoy it. It’s filled with four-letter words, and there are those two unwanted anal sex jokes. So, it’s not for kids.
TWO-AND-A-HALF REAGANS

Watch the trailer . . .

You might also like:

SEX SELLS: Random House Did What?

Sally Ride Was Pushed Ahead of More Qualified Male ...

The Rutgers Gay Suicide & Laura Ingraham

Sign Apocalypse Might Be Upon Us: NYT’s Maureen Dowd Quotes ...

Linkwithin

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 choosing good movies to watch yourself!

Wknd Box Office: Nightcrawler, Before I Go to Sleep, Horns, Men Women & Children

By Debbie Schlussel
They used to give us good thrillers and scary horrors at the movies for Halloween. No longer. There’s only one new movie at theaters today that I recommend. The rest are absolute dreck.

* “Nightcrawler“: I mostly liked this very creepy, true to life movie, which gives us a fantastic inside look at the agenda and lack of ethics in TV news. In this movie, it’s local TV news, but it definitely translates to the national level, including to FOX News, not just the others. My one reservation is that the movie goes out of its way to make the creepy anti-hero of the movie a Jew–his name is “Lou Bloom,” with an obviously Jewish surname (and he is played by a Jew). Was that really necessary? And on top of that, his loyal, decent, honest sidekick., “Rick”–whom he treats like crap, betrays, and sends to his end–is played by Riz Ahmed, a Pakistani Muslim who looks every bit of it (and who has played “wrongfully accused” Muslim terrorists in several movies, including “The Road to Guantanamo”). Hmmm . . .
The story: Jake Gyllenhaal is Bloom, a creepy, greasy, nerdy, low-rent liar and thief who resorts to scrapping and stealing to survive. One night, as he is driving down the freeway, he comes across police rescuing a woman from a burning car on the shoulder of the road. He sees a cameraman shooting footage, and learns that the cameraman finds out about the accidents from listening to a police scanner. So, he pawns a stolen bike in exchange for camera equipment, and thus, his career of “nightcrawling”–trolling for the “if it bleeds, it leads” footage to make a buck.
Bloom meets a desperate news director (a very injectified and Botoxaceous Rene Russo) who seeks out sensational bloody footage. She buys his tape and tells him she is looking for any kind of minority crime against White people–to fit her agenda of showing urban crime infecting the suburbs. She says White people like to feel fear from minorities, and she wants stories to fit that narrative. She doesn’t use the word “White,” but the point is clearly understood. This is probably the only other dishonest part of the movie (aside from the Jewish-Muslim thing gratuitously injected into the flick), and it’s blatantly dishonest at that. In fact, we know that while news directors have an agenda, it is generally the opposite: they like to show big, bad, rich, Whitey afflicting crime on the innocent, oppressed minorities.
Soon, Bloom is staging crime scenes, invading and trespassing throughout crime victims’ homes. He moves magnets and pictures on some victims’ refrigerator to get the most heart-rending footage. Then, he drags a dead body out of a car and onto a certain vantage point on a street before police reach the crime scene. And ultimately, he gets people killed . . . all to create a story, get exclusive, bloody footage of it, and make a buck.
That Bloom has no morals, no ethics, no sense of decency whatsoever, and is willing not only to thwart police investigations into crimes, but to get people killed, isn’t news. We know that people in the media, whether they were CNN’s Peter Arnett, or are FOX News’ Geraldo Rivera and Carl Cameron (who fraudulently reported that Israeli Jewish illegal alien “artists” were behind the 9/11 attacks on FOX News, without challenge from any of the anchors or officials on the network), will do and say anything to be relevant and make bucks. But it’s nice to have a movie–a dark movie with a little comedy mixed in–make the same point and finally admit that, yes, the media has an agenda and doesn’t give us the real news. It makes up fake news. And presents faked and staged footage.
I’m normally NOT a fan of far-leftist Gyllenhaal (or his sister, Maggie, who said America deserved 9/11). But he was good in this movie as a creepy, crazy, ,manipulative, dishonest, immoral huckster with no boundaries. I get the feeling that he was crazy in real life when he made this, as he quickly lost 30 pounds to play the role and appear gaunt. He told reporters that he ran 10-15 miles every day and ate just kale salads (I’m not sure I believe that story, though). And while I heretofore thought Russo looked fabulous for 60 based on her many recent TV appearances promoting this movie, the close-ups of her very puffy, over-injected face on the giant screen were disturbing. She looks like a blowfish, who would pop if a needle came anywhere close. Chick got a lotta work done, and it’s obvious.
Well acted and, overall, an entertaining, engaging movie without a second of boredom. And it makes great points, even if some of those points are made slightly in the reverse of what they should be. Because of the deliberate, gratuitous, sub rosa attempt to make the villain in this movie a Jew–by giving him the name Bloom (and the victim a Muslim)–I downgraded my rating by HALF A REAGAN and give it . . .
TWO-AND-A-HALF REAGANS



* “Before I Go To Sleep“: I was very excited to see this, and, man, was it a letdown. Long, slow, boring, and with very little payoff at the end. While only 1.5 hours long, it seems like an eternity. The movie’s billed as a “psychological thriller,” but it is anything but. It’s not thrilling, nor does it mess much with my psyche or yours. Doesn’t make you think much, other than, please, make this end already. What this really is: a chick flick chock full of evil men and one sullen, constantly crying, and angst-filled chick. Um, no thank you.
The story: a dull, sullen, constantly harried and desperately crying Nicole Kidman plays Christine, a British woman who wakes up every morning with no memory of what happened in her life in the last 20 years. She believes she is still a 20-year-old grad student, instead of the 40-year-old that she actually is (but actually, it should be that she’s lost 30 years, with the 47-year-old Kidman looking every day of 53). When she wakes up each morning in the arms of a man (Colin Firth), he tells her he is her husband, Ben, and that she’s lost her memory as a result of a car accident. He also tells her that each day, she learns the same things, but then, when she goes to sleep, her memory is wiped clean and she must start over again the next morning.
Also, every morning, after Ben leaves for work, she is called by a psychiatrist, Dr. Nasch (Mark Strong), who tells her to find a camera he’s given her, on which she’s recorded her story and what she’s learned in the previous days. This refreshes part of her memory. But, still, she’s trying to find out more: what happened to her in the accident, what her situation is, what she does for a living, who her old friends were and whee she can find them, all in an attempt to get her life back and recover.
But it’s all a mystery . . . a mystery that, frankly, you won’t care much about, since the same thing is annoyingly repeated over and over again, with little change for the first 3/4ths of the movie. When things finally come to a head, it suddenly becomes the Ray Rice story, with beatings and violence, but it’s not exciting or informative. And at that point, you’re waiting for the payoff of sitting through all the misery and sullenness. And, unfortunately, there is none. The resolution of it all is entirely a letdown, with a dull, cloying, lame ending, full of tears and maudlin music.
Like I said, this is a boring, silly chick flick parading as a psychological thriller. Don’t buy into that cross-dressing, or you’ll get burned.
HALF A MARX



* “Horns“: Absolute, utter garbage. I can’t believe I wasted two hours of my life I’ll never get back on this rank fecal material. So silly, so stupid, so unnecessarily violent, snake-filled, and sexually lewd. If this is Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe’s attempt to become a serious or comedic actor (hard to tell if this is trying to be an unfunny comedy or a stupid, failed drama), he failed miserably.
Radcliffe is an American 20-something accused of murdering his lifelong girlfriend to whom he was about to propose. But he says he didn’t do it and is falsely accused. He grows horns on his head and soon has devil-like powers. He’s able to get people to do bad things: he tells two male cops to give each other oral sex and causes them to do it, and causes some fat guy to go fully nude in a bar (a scene I’d prefer never to have seen). He also gets his older brother to take enough illegal drugs (cocaine, pills, and mushrooms) to die. And he is surrounded by snakes that he gets to lunge at and bite people. He apparently does all of this to find the real killer. Whatever. Who cares? I certainly didn’t. Believe me, I’m making this high-quality Gitmo torture material sound far better than it is.
Skip at all cost.
FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR ISIS BEHEADINGSFOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS PLUS FOUR BIN LADENS PLUS FOUR ISIS BEHEADINGS



* “Men, Women & Children“: This is another Gitmo torture material flick. It’s also a rip-off of 2012’s “Disconnect” (read my review), which wasn’t great either, but is a masterpiece compared to this absolute enema. By the way, two words that should instantly warn you off: Adam Sandler. Yup, he’s in this cinematic rot.
The movie is about oversexualized teens and adults who use the internet for sexual deviance. One teen watches so much porn that he’s unable to have sex with a real girl. That girl, a minor, poses in skimpy, revealing outfits her mother buys her on a website her mother set up to accept money from perverts seeking a “private modeling session.” That teen girl, talks about giving oral sex to an older man and the “taste” of his sperm. She is friends with an anorexically skinny girl who was fat, but lost a ton of weight because she doesn’t eat. She did this to become attractive to and lose her virginity to the school football star she’s in love with, who thinks of her as nothing more than a quick conquest. Then, he ignores her, and she faints in the school bathroom as a result of an ectopic pregnancy with his kid. Another girl at the school is in love with a different school football star. He’s quit the team and most of life in order to play online games that take up most of his time and a lot of money. The girl who has a relationship with him has to sneak around in order to see him and talk to him because her mother obsessively tracks her every move online and on cell phones and is overbearing beyond belief. And, finally, there are the parents of the kid addicted to online porn. They aren’t having sex, so each seeks out another person to have sex with online. The husband (Sandler) starts an affair with a hooker. And the wife has an affair with a man she met on a website for cheaters.
Yes, this disgusting, gross, creepy, dysfunctional dungheap is what Hollywood gives us for “entertainment” these days. The movie could double not only for Gitmo torture material, but for Al-Qaeda and ISIS recruiting film, too. YUCK.
FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS PLUS FOUR BIN LADENS PLUS FOUR ISIS BEHEADINGS