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Reviews
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)
Best Biopic since Walk the Line, maybe ever.
It's a rare thing for me to hear such glowing things about a movie ahead of time and not be disappointed when I watch it, but this managed to greatly exceed my high expectations. This is exactly the kind of BioPic Weird Al deserves and is honestly a lot more true to it's subject than a movie more wedded to the facts would be. A parody biopic for a famous parodist is an inspired and amazing concept, and the way it was put together was an absolute joy to watch. Do yourself a favor and check it out.
Special kudos to Danielle Radcliffe, Juliane Nicholson, and Toby Huss for their performances. Everyone in the movie did an amazing job but those three really stood out.
Naughty & Nice (2014)
Decent Christmas Movie
So there's a giant plot hole right in the middle of this movie where the two leads break up for some reason that makes no sense to me. I assumed it was because the Dr wasn't willing to move to LA because it would require her moving away from her mom and/or giving up her radio show but immediately afterwards she talks about quitting just because it reminds her of the dude and shortly after that she decides to move to Dallas with the guy who she was sort of just killing time with prior to meeting Pepper. So essentially there was nothing keeping her in Colorado, he was clearly into her and looking for a relationship and she just got pissed and ended things for no reason. Super lazy writing there. That being said as far as cheesy Christmas movies go this one was fairly decent. The story was fun, the acting was pretty good, all in all good watch.
So This Is Christmas (2013)
The worst "Christmas" movie I've ever seen.
Christmas is in quotations because while there are some heavy handed religious overtones and a nativity themed play happening in the background nothing important about the movie was really Christmas related.
I didn't expect much from this movie but it still managed to disappoint. I don't know if there was anything stand out terrible about it as that there just wasn't anything redeeming about it. Like not even enjoyable to watch as a bad movie, it was completely joyless. It felt like a Christian production company was trying to make a movie to appeal to secular audiences based only on the propaganda of how debaucherous secular film is. The acting ranged from bad to worse, the plot didn't really make any sense, the character development was unrealistic. It was pretty much just garbage through and through.
American Sniper (2014)
Failure of a Bio-pic
I thought this movie was pretty terrible. Not quite I wish I could purge the memory from my soul terrible but definitely I wish I could get that time back terrible. I know many people are criticizing the film for it's political stance but I think that's a bit unfair just on principle. The problems with this movie go beyond that however. The scene where Kyle's credo of Sheep/Sheepdog/Wolf is introduced was just poorly done as a scene and it didn't flow naturally with the movie on top of that. It was like they finished filming the movie and realized this line that he's strongly associated with was missing and hired a couple of random people off the street to improvise a scene using the line then spliced whatever they came up with into the movie at a completely random point. The scene of young Kyle hunting with his dad was not quite as poorly handled but felt similarly superfluous. The real problem with the movie which can't be tied to any specific moment however was it's failure to really humanize Kyle. I'm not a cold person by any means and I simply felt nothing at the end of the movie when it's hero met his tragic end. It was like hearing a death statistic, I just acknowledged the fact there was one less person on the planet without really any empathy for those lives who were effected by that event. Filming and Acting were decent for the most part but nothing to make up this movies shortcomings.
Fat Kid Rules the World (2012)
Cliché, but a good watch.
So there is nothing new or particularly exciting about this movie. It's the story of who's not popular, a catalyst occurs, and then he is popular. It's a story that's been done before many times, Angus, Simon Birch, that one where Patrick Dempsey paid a cool girl to pretend to date him.
That being said I did really enjoy watching this movie and would recommend it to others. Marcus and Troy's Father were both great performances and everyone else was really good. There were some fun scenes watching Marcus causing chaos here and there. It was interesting watching Troy's evolution throughout the movie. I wasn't quite emotionally invested enough for the OD scene to affect me but I did feel somewhat elated at the movies conclusion.
Again it's nothing your going to be talking about with your friends for weeks on end but a pretty pleasant way to spend an evening if you don't have that option.
In Search of the Perfect Human Diet (2012)
Some good info but not well presented
So the message behind the film seemed to be eat more meat. Here are just a few problems I saw with the arguments the film use's to make that claim.
1. Person claims humans have a herbivores digestive system. Obviously untrue (we are omnivores as are our closest relatives) but I'm not sure why he chose to feature a business owner selling soy jerky to make it other than it discredits people who support vegetarianism. Would have been better to either not addressed vegetarianism at all, or had some sort of expert to explain the relative upsides/downsides of a vegetarian diet. For example of the 4 of the 5 blue zones in the world have a plant based diet and the 5th is mostly fish.
2. Person claims that all herbivores have four stomachs. This is factually not true. Horses, Rhino's, rabbits, and a host of other herbivores have a single stomach.
3. If you have read In Defense of Food you know how complicated nutritional science is. The film implies that the old low fat movement came about with no scientific backing. To me that sounds more like an infomercial than a documentary. It's quite possible whatever evidence they were gathering was either misleading or misinterpreted but it would have been more illuminating to discuss what the specific errors were and why the modern science is better. Is the view the film is pushing the result of increases in knowledge or just the next fad. Personally I'm not sure and looking at this film critically doesn't go a long way towards convincing me.
3. Person claims that there high carb proponents make no differentiation between processed an non-processed carbs after a scene at the vegetarian summit where a presenter specifically said avoid processed foods. This is sort of the base problem with the films premise. Humans have evolved to thrive on a pretty wide range of foods and whole grains are not that different from the foods we were eating previously. The problem is that in refining them we remove all but the least nutritionally dense portion of the grain and turn that nutritionally deficient substance into a large portion of or diet. That is far different from having a moderate amount of whole grains and a greatly increased level of more nutritionally dense vegetables which is the diet vegetarians actually promote. Again maybe paleo are right but you need to make a fair comparison to know one way or the other.
4. The analysis by the plank institute only covers Europe, an area that earlier in the film noted has no plant food sources for a significant period of the year. Humans are opportunistic eaters they will eat what is available. If plants are not available they won't be a large portion of the diet. If you look at what we know about diets world wide the only thing they have in common is variety.
5. When you make a film that is promoting establishment views you don't need to give outsiders a voice. The opposite is not true. At some point it would have been a good idea to have some sort of expert on to explain why the current recommendations exist and to weigh in on the benefits and disadvantages of the diet the movie.
I think paleo is an overall fairly healthy diet. I think this film would have made a better case for it by focusing on modern studies showing it's benefits than focusing on one side of the debate over what our ancestors ate. It also seemed to miss that all the nutrients animals are getting come from the food they eat so if you're eating grain fed beef you're not making a huge improvement over eating the grains yourself.