Andy Gapin

Horrible Bosses has a great cast. It’s that simple, it’s just a solid cast and everyone pulls their weight. I’m not a huge Jennifer Aniston fan (she’s alright), but she was pretty incredible in this movie. Between her, Charlie Day, and Kevin Spacey, I don’t know who was the best. Charlie Day’s character is pretty much a slightly smarter Charlie from It’s Always Sunny, but I was more than okay with that. His high-strung, yelling-because-he-doesn’t-know-how-better-to-communicate antics were perfect for the character.

While I’m lucky enough to not hate my bosses at my current job, Horrible Bosses hits on a pretty good premise for a flick that most people have fantasized about at some point in their lives. Killing your boss, who hasn’t thought about that in even the smallest way? I’m not calling anyone (myself included) homicidal, but you know what I mean. So that sort of makes the idea not entirely original, but they work with it. The jokes aren’t always the best and sometimes there are big gaps without anything awesome happening, but everything that does happen is at least delivered well by actors that I love. At the end of the day, that’s good enough for me.

Horrible Boses isn’t going to win any awards or blast you with a ton of creativity, but it’s got people you like in it and they’re doing what they do best.

Rating: B

Every Friday the 13th, a group of friends heads over to my place and we watch some horror flicks. This is something we’ve been doing for roughly 7 or 8 years now. Generally, we have a set list of movies prepared beforehand, but last week, our planning failed us. We got through Piranha, which was awesome, but then it was on to Dinoshark. Unfortunately, Dinoshark nearly put us all to sleep. It was quite boring so we aborted it and decided to see what Netflix had for us to stream. After a few minutes, we all decided on ThanksKilling, hands down the most ridiculous sounding of all the movies we considered.

ThanksKilling bills itself as being the “ultimate low-budged experience.” That’s not far off form the truth, this is extremely low-budget. In fact, I’m pretty sure that there’s currently enough cash in my wallet right now to cover the entire production budget for ThanksKilling. Whether or not it’s the ultimate experience, I don’t know, but the entertainment level was off the charts. There’s that cliché saying “it’s so bad it’s good.” That is not ThanksKilling. This is head-hurtingly bad, but if you take this review as a warning to not view this flick, you’re making a mistake and missing the point. But I will say this, ThanksKilling demands to be watched in a room full of people that are able and willing to Mystery Science Theater 3000 the hell out of it.

The premise of ThanksKilling is surprisingly simple, a foul-mouthed, shit-talking, and axe-weilding turkey kills people. It’s that simple. There’s a slight explanation, but between awful acting and fact that nothing really makes any sense, the explanation is rather pointless. But yes, it’s a killer turkey on Thanksgiving. The turkey itself is a poorly-made, rubber-looking puppet that is somehow able to speak English and no one is bothered by this fact. That being said, the English-speaking abilities of this turkey work in our favor, as what makes this film actually worth watching is the horrible shit talking and one-liners from the turkey. Lines like “gobble gobble, motherfucker” and “you just got stuffed” are  littered throughout the entire film with reckless abandon. It’s quite wonderful.

ThanksKilling doesn’t spare the killing, there is plenty of it and much of it seems to have no real reason to it…which is the best kind for a horror flick. However, the characters seem rather unaffected by the deaths of others, they seem to only care about surviving themselves and even when family members are killed, they show little distress or sadness. It’s hard to tell if this is due to extremely poor acting or a poor script. Probably both.

One of the oddest things about ThanksKilling is that there is a certain JonBenét Ramsey joke that made it into the movie that completely throws you off. ThanksKilling was made in 2009 so a JonBenét Ramsey joke is neither topical nor edgy. However, what makes this joke worth noting is that it is said on three separate occasions in the movie. The second time the joke was made, our entire room was left completely dumbfounded, yet the characters in the film seemed to make no acknowledgement to the fact that roughly 20 minutes earlier, the same girl said the same joke. At first, it seemed as though this may have been a major editing goof that somehow made it into the final version of the film, but when the joke happened a third time, it was clear that this was intentional. I really don’t get this, to be honest, but it’s little things like this that make ThanksKilling such an crowd-pleaser.

There is plenty more ridiculousness worth mentioning, but much of what this film has to offer is the shock value of it all as it happens. I wouldn’t want to take that away from you.

Entertainment value (with friends): A
Quality grade: D-

Piranha is a wonderfully gory piece of entertainment that I should have seen while in theaters. Snoozing on this one was a mistake. Piranha is pretty much the Snakes on a Plane of the aquatic movies…only it’s better than that, it’s more of what Snakes on a Plane should of been instead of what Snakes on a Plane actually was.

Piranha marries together horror and comedy in the perfect way with just the right amount of each to make it much more of a horror comedy than a campy horror flick. Half the hilarity comes from the straight up ridiculous approach taken that makes it clear that the makers of this film were in on the joke in just the same way that the makers of Eight Legged Freaks were.  In fact, a reference to Eight Legged Freaks couldn’t be more appropriate for Piranha.

The gore is not rationed out lightly, instead the blood, guts, and dismemberment are poured on so heavily that it puts Starship Troopers to shame. Seriously, this film should replace the beach scene from Saving Private Ryan and become the new gold standard of bloody references.

When Piranha isn’t dumping gallon after gallon of blood onto the screen–which is most of the movie–it’s pretty much softcore porn. There are plenty of boobs and naked girls to go around, enough to make you double check the disc to make sure it’s not a Girls Gone Wild video.

The only real knock against Piranha is that they had Christopher Lloyd on board and completely squandered him. When you have Mr. Lloyd at your disposal, you can’t waste it! You need to use him to the fullest extent. He should be in every scene. Scratch that. He should be on screen at all times. Unfortunately, this was not the case. He was little more than a cameo in the Piranha.

That mistake aside, Piranha is just great and super entertaining. Watch this. Now.

Entertainment score: A

You take a look at Date Night and you’re like “alright, Tina Fey and Steve Carell, yeah, this should be decent.” You don’t expect a whole lot more than that and this is good because you don’t get much more than that. What you get is a good movie that is definitely worth the AM Cinema price, maybe the full price, but that’s really it. Date Night entertains without convincing you that you’ll ever want to see it again.

Easily, Tina Fey is the highlight of this movie. As someone that rarely disappoints, she is extremely on, especially in one scene in particular–you’ll know which one I’m talking about. At times she’s almost a bit Liz Lemon-ish, but more like Liz’s socially apt sister. Steve Carell is finally not playing a character that’s painfully awkward. While I have no complaints about his previous work, it’s kind of nice to see that his entire existence as an actor isn’t based solely on being awkward, even if Michael Scott is his best work.

The appareances by James Franco, Mila Kunis, Common, Mark Wahlberg, Mark Ruffalo, and Kristen Wiig feel hit or miss. James Franco and Mila Kunis are kind of awesome, like you’d expect. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, if not for a running gag involving Mark Wahlberg’s character, he could be replaced by anyone. Actually, scratch that, the gag is funny, but anyone else could be just as effective.

For the most part, Date Night moves along pretty predictably, getting more and more outrageous as things progress. If you happen to be in a well established relationship and see Date Night with your significant other, you’ll find yourselves looking at each other more than a few times throughout the movie, commenting about how in a couple of decades that will be the two of you. While it may seem like a boring outlook on the future, you find that you aren’t really that disappointed by this…and this will feel odd to you.

For a movie that keeps you entertained and provides more than enough laughs, Date Night is worth the trip to the theater, but unless it’s playing on TV one day while you’re flipping through channels in a few years, you’ll probably be more than happy to leave it at the theater when the credits start to roll.

Rating: C+

I don’t think I’ve met anyone that has ever said they don’t like Mike Judge. I know a few people that don’t get or like Idiocracy–I feel sorry for them–but everyone likes Office Space and most people in their mid to late twenties enjoyed Beavis And Butthead growing up. With all that in mind, I don’t think there’s going to be anyone that thinks Extract was bad. It’s not going to blow you away in any way, but it’s far from bad or boring. It’s not a great movie. It’s good movie.

Extract is pretty much exactly what you expect it to be. If you saw the trailer, you already know how the movie plays out. It’s nothing special and nothing you aren’t expecting. But that isn’t to say that it’s not an entertaining movie. Maybe it was because my expectations weren’t super high so I couldn’t be disappointed, but the only reason why I was waiting for it to end was because I had to pee.

To compare it to Judge’s other films, Extract is much more Office Space with a focus on banality, but not a notch or two down. Jason Bateman’s character is a rather likeable and easy to relate to guy, but I couldn’t decide if I really felt bad for him or not. I think I may have been rooting against him slightly. Casting-wise, Judge got it right on…even down to the generally easy-to-hate Ben Affleck who may have given the acting performance of his life in Extract. Okay, maybe that’s a bit overboard, but come on, even though he’s been in some good movies and hasn’t really ruined anything for me, he’s not that great of an actor. But he got the part exactly right for this film.

Overall, I’d say check it out if you’re looking for something to see, but if you’re not already dying to see it or desperate for something to do one night in the upcoming weeks, just wait for the DVD…and Netflix it.

Rating: B-