Cinema Dispatch: War Dogs

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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War Dogs and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by Todd Phillips

The guy who burned out after the FIRST Hangover movie has decided to try and go the Adam McKay route; mainly by making a comedy that ALSO has brains and a message about contemporary America.  I mean, at least this will probably be better than giving him time to do Hangover 4: The Revenge.  Not only that, but the trailers look like there might be something there to enjoy.  Maybe not great, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this mildly amused me the same way Our Brand is Crisis and Whisky Tango Foxtrot did which seem to be covering some of the same ground, albeit with a lot more violence in this one.  Can this movie manage to be a fun and engaging exploration into the world of weapons contractors, or is this just a guy who probably peaked seven years ago drying desperately to jump on a bandwagon?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows David Packouz (Miles Teller) who’s some twenty something loser bumming around Miami; working as a massage therapist while trying to get a bed sheet business off the ground.  Right off the bat it’s clear that this guy is a Grade-A loser, but opportunity comes knocking when an old friend from middle school Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill) moves back to town and has started a weapons contracting firm to sell supplies to the military.  David, having nothing else going on and a kid on the way with his girlfriend Iz (Ana de Armas), agrees to work for him despite his… moral objections I guess?  Well whatever makes him hesitant about the job quickly falls away as the small company starts winning tiny contracts from the government; slowly building up their clout and influence.  Over time though, it’s clear that Efraim wants to go really big really fast and is willing to do whatever it takes to get there, even working with Henry Girard (Bradley Cooper) who’s well known and respected in the industry, but is shady as all hell and is even on the US Terrorist Watch List.  Will the two be able to keep their head above water as they sink deeper and deeper into the seedy and dangerous world of illegal gun trading?  Will the government turn a blind eye to this duo just so they can get the weapons and ammo they need to fund the war on terror?  Are these REALLY the faces of people you would trust with multi-million dollar contracts paid with the use of taxpayer money?

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Hell, they’re probably a lot less dangerous than BP, and we give those guys a SHIT load of money!

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Cinema Dispatch: Pete’s Dragon

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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Pete’s Dragon and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios

Directed by David Lowery

Disney is at it again with another fresh milking of the nostalgic cash cow!  I really don’t know anything about the original Pete’s Dragon other than Don Bluth did the animation on it, so they won’t be hooking me in with that alone, but then I never had an affinity for Sleeping Beauty and still though Maleficent was one of the best movies of that year.  Can this new movie manage to capture the charm and spirit of the original film while also roping in new fans, or is this going to be as uninspired as The Jungle Book?  Wait; am I still the only one who didn’t like that?  Anyway, let’s find out!!

The movie begins with little Pete (Oakes Fegley) having to watch his parents die horribly as their car ends up flipping over on the interstate, though you’d think the airbags or seatbelts could have saved one of them considering it wasn’t a head on collision.  Well in any case, little Pete is all alone in the woods (who SHOULD be covered in his parents blood but I guess you can’t go there in a PG movie) and is about to be killed by wolves when something starts to approach from beyond the trees.  It turns out that there be dragons in these hills, and he takes little Pete to raise as one of his own.  Many years later, Pete is now at the ripe old age of ten and gets discovered in the woods by a… Forest Ranger I think called Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) who takes him in and tries to get him acclimated to the real world before sending him off to the state.  While that’s going on, Gavin (Karl Urban) who works as a lumberjack (he’s either a manager or just an employee that everyone likes) and is certain that he saw something out in those woods and is gonna hunt it because… reasons.  Will Pete be reunited with his best friend?  Can they keep on going with their living arrangement now that Pete has had a taste of the good life as well as peanut butter?  Am I SERIOUSLY going to be the only one who didn’t care for this one, just like with The Jungle Book!?

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Pictured: me writing this review

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Super Comics: Sonic the Hedgehog 6-7

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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Sonic the Hedgehog and all the images you see in this recap are owned by Archie Comics and Sega of America

We’re back with more comics about our favorite Mickey Mouse knockoff!!  We’re still very much in the early days before this comic really got a sense of what it was going to be other than a funny book companion to the video games, but even if it’s just a fluff series, it can still be enjoyable if they know how to tell good jokes and come up with interesting one shot ideas.  Do they manage to pull that off in these two issues?  Let’s find out!!

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Issue 6 (January 1994)

This issue, at least for the first half, a tie in to Sonic Spinball which I’m pretty sure is the only Sonic game that takes place in the Sat AM universe.  Well, I DO have my suspicions about that Sonic Generations 2 game or whatever it is coming out in 2017 (the tagline is Join the Resistance) but until that’s confirmed, this is the only Sat AM tie in game.  Unfortunately, that ALSO means that nothing of particular consequence is going to happen here as trying to tie any great continuity (that’s only barely getting established in the first place) to a pinball game is probably not the best idea long term.  But since we might as well get into it, the issue begins with the Freedom Fighters storming one of Robotnik’s factories to take him out once and for all (you KNOW they’re serious because Boomer brought a hammer), but the find it completely deserted and with a letter pinned to the front door informing them that Robotnik’s base of operations is now inside of volcano.  Probably not the WORST idea as far supervillain lairs go, but the addition of rails to get people easily through the facility may have been something he should have decided against.

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“Blasts!  Why did I bother installing those in the first place!?”     “We asked you about them SEVEN times before going into construction, but you were REALLY adamant about it.”     “Are you talking back to me, smart guy!?”

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Super Recaps: My Little Pony season 6 (28 Pranks Later)

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 3 Comments

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and all the images you see in this recap are owned by Hasbro.

Episode directed by Denny Lu and Tim Stuby

We’re back with another episode of Everybody Hates Dash!  Now the episode from last week was pretty disappointing and felt like a script they had rejected three seasons ago but decided to fish out of the junk drawer to fill out this season.  Sure, the episode before that was pretty excellent, but this is still not how you want to come back from a mid-season hiatus.  Can this episode make up for that lackluster effort, or did they expend all their creative energy bringing Patton Oswalt into an episode?  Let’s find out!!

The episode begins on a DARK and (not quite) STORMY night where Fluttershy is trying REALLY hard to ace that slasher movie audition by getting into character and walking through the woods at night.  Her excuse for this is that a picnic went on too long (things got WAY too crazy when they brought out the Dijon mustard!) but you’d think the ONE person who’d be looking out for that would be the one who’s already terrified of everything!

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“A whole lot of help YOU turned out to be Mr. Bear!  GO OUT THERE AND KICK THAT MONSTER’S ASS!!”

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Cinema Dispatch: Sausage Party

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Sausage Party and all the images you see in this review are owned by Columbia Pictures

Directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon

I’m pretty sure I’ve been hearing this movie for at least five years and Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have been trying to get this made for even longer than that.  I’m not sure how it took so much work to get this movie made as both of them are bankable stars and this movie ended up costing next to nothing (ten million is nothing in terms of Hollywood features), but regardless of whatever strife they had to work through, the day has finally come for us to see a movie about dicks, vaginas, and assholes being played by hotdogs, buns, and bagels.  Does this movie end up being a classy as fuck masterpiece for the ages, or was all that effort for naught and this is just a giant steaming load of lameness?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows the misadventures of several food items in this one grocery store known as Shopwell’s, but for the most part our focus is on Frank the Sausage (Seth Rogen).  He’s living the perfect sausage life; namely staying fresh inside his package and praising the Gods every day in the hopes that he will be chosen to leave the store and enter the great beyond!  Well he’s also praying that he can nail that hot little number in the bun package, Brenda Bunson (Kristen Wiig), but he’s got to keep those urges in check.  After all, the Gods only want FRESH food that isn’t tainted with sin!  Now all the food in this store (and presumably all the other stores in the world) seem to all follow this belief system where the humans are Gods taking them to a promised land, but as we all know humans tend to be to total assholes and will end up eating them instead which is SUPER fucked up!  The day finally comes for Frank, his other sausage buddies (Carl and Barry played by Jonah Hill and Michael Cera), and Brenda as one of the Gods chooses them and they’re put in its holy shopping cart.  Of course, things don’t go quite as planned as the shopping cart runs into another one; splattering a lot of the food in a very gruesome manner and knocking both Frank and Brenda (along with a few other items) out of the cart and into the store… OUT OF THEIR PACKAGES!!  Now you may have assumed that the shopping carts collided due to bad luck.  Not quite so, as a jar of Honey Mustard (Danny McBride) had seen some shit and jumped out of the cart after telling the rest of the food how fucked they are, and that was the cause of the crash.  Why is this important?  Well there was one person listening the entire time, and that was Frank!  So on top of getting back inside a sausage package (along with Brenda who needs to find a bun package) Frank is on a journey to find out the truth and if what Honey Mustard was saying had any merit to it!  Can Frank discover the dark secrets that the world outside the grocery store holds?  Will this inevitably create a schism between him and Brenda, the latter of which still has faith in the Gods and their divine plan?  And what about Carl and Barry!?  WHAT THE FUCK IS GONNA HAPPEN TO THEM!?

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Oh, you know… probably nothing good.

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Super Recaps: The Twilight Zone (Dream Lover)

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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The Twilight Zone and all the images you see in this recap are owned by Warner Bros Television and based on the series created by Rod Serling

Episode directed by Peter o’ Fallon

We’re back with another episode of Extreme Twilight Zone!  After seeing Katherine Heigl kill Baby Hitler, what else is there!?  Where can this series possibly go after that!?  Well we’re gonna find out as we’ve barely even started on this series and there are a whole lot of episodes left, including this one about a tortured artist who brings dream girl to Life… which is the premise of Ruby Sparks only done about a decade earlier.  Anyway, let’s get started!!

The episode follows Graphic Novel writer Andrew Lomax (Adrian Pasdar) who is living the nightmare of all writers; having no fucking clue what to write.  How could this be though!?  He has a plaque on his wall confirming that his last book, Sleepless City, was a New York Times best seller for sixteen consecutive weeks!  Clearly this bout of writer’s block must be the machinations of… THE TWILIGHT ZONE.  While in the middle of a pity party for himself, he starts to see a hot woman wrapped in nothing but a towel (mirroring a pinup drawing he just did) who is eagerly awaiting his tender embrace!  Too bad it’s all a dream!  OR IS IT!?

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Either way, I’m pretty sure A-ha is gonna sue someone.

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Cinema Dispatch: Nine Lives

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 3 Comments

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Nine Lives and all the images you see in this review are owned by EuropaCorp

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

How does this movie even exist?  I know actors gotta eat, and sure, we ARE getting a Bryan Cranston dad comedy with James Franco soon, but even HE doesn’t have the freaking clout of Kevin Spacey!  If this guy was so desperate for a payday, then why isn’t he in a Marvel movie or a DreamWorks animated feature!?  Why the hell is he in a TALKING CAT movie!?  This is the shit you cast Chris O’Donnell in or snatch up Jason Lee to do!  Not two time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey!  Ugh… whatever.  We gotta deal with the cards we’re dealt.  Does this movie manage to be just as bad as we expect it to be, or is there something there that justifies its reason to exist in 2016?  No.  The answer is no.  Still, we might as well take a look anyway.

Tom Brand (Kevin Spacey) is your typical movie dad.  Spends a lot of time at work, doesn’t have much time for his family, and is generally considered a jerk by his peers.  He doesn’t care though because he’s building the TALLEST BUILDING ON THE EAST COAST which will be his legacy; much more so than his grown ass son David (Robbie Amell) who works for him in a desperate bid to get his approval, and his daughter Rebecca (Malina Weissman) who still hasn’t figured out that her dad is an asshole.  His wife Lara (Jennifer Garner) informs him that he better come through in spades for his daughter’s birthday and all she wants is a cat.  Bi shocker there.  The guy bites the bullet and goes to buy a furry bastard but somehow (through FATE perhaps!?) ends up in the shop of God (Christopher Walken) who for some reason runs a cat store.  Okay, he’s not ACTUALLY God, but considering how magical this guy is, there’s not that many other alternatives, though it would have been AWESOME if he turned out to be Satan.  Anyway, Tom buys a cat from the man known as Felix Perkins (he runs a shop called Purr-kins) but has to make an emergency stop at the office on the way back to tell one of his company’s terrible managers (Mark Consuelos) that his ass is shit canned.  Unfortunately for Tom, lightning strikes, shenanigans ensue, and he ends up in the body of the cat while his real body is in a coma (presumably the cat’s consciousness just died or something).  Now he has to find a way back into his body before that awful manager dude somehow sells the company out from under him and his son, while also learning that maybe life isn’t all about going to work every day and providing for your family.  What a moral.  Can Kevin Spacey bother to show any interest in this performance?  Just how embarrassing can Jennifer Garner’s performance get?  WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA!?!?

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Oh, well NOW it makes sense!  This must be the head of EuropaCorp!

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Super Recaps: My Little Pony season 6 (The Cart Before the Ponies)

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 6 Comments

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and all the images you see in this recap are owned by Hasbro.

Episode directed by Denny Lu and Tim Stuby

We’re back with another episode of CMC: After Story!  The CMC have had their Cutie Marks for some time now, but since they’re the only other group that episodes in this series can focus on (something I’d like to change at some point, but whatever), there has to be new justifications for them to go on their wacky adventures.  Not really a tall order considering the Mane6 have episodes that don’t tie directly into their duties as Warriors of Friendship or whatever, but so far there hasn’t been enough episodes post crusade to get a sense of how they’ll work without that specific goal to get things started.  Will this be a sign of things to come for the CMC, or are we going to get more of the same only now it’s less interesting?  Let’s find out!!

The episode begins in the Ponyville Schoolhouse (it’s a good thing all the kids are the same age) where everything is… fine.  The CMC aren’t blowing up the playground, Diamond Tiara isn’t spreading anti-Cutie Mark propaganda, and Pip’s reign as Student Body President hasn’t ended in catastrophic failure!  Things are just… okay.  Cheerilee must have realized how boring this is (either consciously or subconsciously) and has decided to have the class do the most dangerously stupid (and lawsuit inducing) thing she could imagine!

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“You’ve got twenty four hours to build a fully functioning four wheel vehicle to strap yourselves into and be thrown down a cliff in.  Any questions?”     “Can we use power tools without adult supervision??”     “I don’t see why not!”

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Super Comics: Sonic the Hedgehog 2-5

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Sonic the Hedgehog and all the images you see in this recap are owned by Archie Comics and Sega of America

So it certainly has been a while since I last touched upon the Sonic the Hedgehog comics, and I decided that, especially in these early issues, things will need to be sped up a bit; especially considering the kind of comics the early issues are.  There’s no real continuity or story progression here as each issue has several self-contained episodic adventures, some of which can be only a single page, so trying to recap these issues is akin to trying to recap like two weeks’ worth of Garfield comic strips.  To that end, I’ll mostly focus on the larger stories (there’s at least one per issue) and will focus on anything that either expands the mythos and lore, or just simply grabs my attention.  With that, lets’ get started!!

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Issue 2 (September 1993)

The only thing of significance in this comic is the introduction of Coconuts, Scratch, and Grounder; the primary antagonists of The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (as opposed to the Sat AM series).  Sonic naturally kicks the crap out of all three of them (I’m assuming they’ll show up again in future issues) and then the rest of the comic is one offs with requests for reader mail at the end of each one.  There’s a cute bit here with readers submitted their own origin stories for Tails and his two tails and the rest of the filler is mildly amusing, but it’s just that; filler to pad out the comic and excuses to come up with WAY too many puns.

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Make it stop!  IT’S TOO MUCH!  I can’t take the PUNishment!!

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Cinema Dispatch: Suicide Squad

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 3 Comments

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Suicide Squad and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by David Ayer

After Batman v Superman, I can’t imagine how everyone behind this movie wasn’t shaking in their boots now that the ENTIRE franchise is resting on their should to right the course and bring audiences back around before the Justice League and Wonder Woman movies have a chance to kick this cinematic universe into high gear.  In fact, the heavily publicized reshoots of this movie were probably due almost entirely those expectations being thrust upon this after Batman v Superman fell flat on its face.  Still, even when that movie was running its course, there was always the hope that this one would be the fun alternative to the somber and serious Snyder film and the marketing at least was leaning heavily on that idea to sell it to the masses.  Does this succeed in distinguishing itself from the rest of the DCCU which includes a maybe a third of a good movie and a really awful one, or were DC and WB playing us all for fools by convincing us this one would be different?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows the first undertaking of The Suicide Squad which is a group of SUPER criminals that the US government plans to use in order to fight meta-human or otherwise extremely dangerous threats.  The project is being pushed forward by the tough as nails Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) and is comprised of Deadshot (Will Smith) who is a perfect shot, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) who… I guess is good with a baseball bat, El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) who’s actually doing this under duress as he’s given up his fire spewing ways, Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnouye-Agabaje) who’s… half man half crocodile I think, Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) who is pretty good at throwing boomerangs, and of course Slipknot (Adam Beach) who doesn’t do shit.  Along with the squad is Col Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman) who’s basically serving as their babysitter and also has the power to blow their heads off if they step out of line (NOTHING at all like Battle Royale) and Katana (Karen Fukuhara) who I think is supposed to be a good guy at least compared to the other members (as far as I can tell, she’s NOT actually in jail and volunteered for the mission) and she’s got a magic sword.  Not what I’d call the best team to send out when a city gets very nearly leveled by an evil witch called The Enchantress that is inhabiting the body of Dr June Moone (Cara Delvingne) who JUST SO HAPPENS to be Flagg’s girlfriend, but at least the government won’t have to pay for their funeral expenses when they surely get obliterated by dark and unimaginable forces.  Can the Suicide Squad manage to infiltrate the city that’s crawling with monsters summoned by the witch and save a highly valuable target inside?  What about the Joker?  Isn’t he supposed to be in this too?  Does the fate of the world REALLY need to rest on the shoulders of Captain Boomerang!?

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“Deadshot!  Secure the perimeter!  Harley!  Keep an eye on the door!  Boomerang!”     “WHAT IS IT BOSS!?  I’M READY FOR ANYTHING!!”     “Go get me a coffee.”

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