All posts by Josef Rodriguez

Hey, I'm Joey and I'm a (usually) film and pop culture blogger, but I'll write about pretty much anything.

Grizzly Review: The Descendants

The saying, “Blood is thicker than water”, is one of my favorite quotes of all time. It’s a statement that I’ve been able to apply to my life more times than I care to count. Sometimes, family is all you’ve got; the single thread holding your entire life together. Many people take their family for granted, but I’ve always felt that it’s when you need them most do they show their true colors. Sometimes they’re your guardian angel, other times they’re you worst enemies, but family needs to stick together, regardless.

Alexander Payne seems to be a master of the art of adaptation. His second film, Election, starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick, was based off of a novel of the same name, and received critical acclaim. This marked the beginning of a trend that would follow with Payne’s next three adaptations, About Schmidt, Sideways, and this year’s, The Descendants.

The Descendants stars George Clooney as Matthew King, a lawyer who is given the decision of what to do with an extremely large property that his family has owned since the 1860’s. While this is happening, his wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), suffers a severe boating accident, putting her into a coma, as well as being forced to go on life support. King is now in charge of the land, his wife’s condition, and his two children, Scottie (Amara Miller) and Alex (Shailene Woodley), one a precocious ten-year-old, the other a seventeen going on thirty year old who’s been in boarding school since the previous Christmas. Along with the family is Sid (Nick Krause), Alex’s closest friend, a somewhat dim-witted but good-hearted kid who is sometimes the only thing keeping everyone from killing one another.

Matt soon finds out that his wife will not be waking up from her coma, and it’s his duty to notify everyone of this, including her father, Scott Thorson (Robert Forster), who’s got a tough exterior, but is more patient and sympathetic than almost any character in the film. The rest of Matt’s family continues to pressure him about the specifics of the deal, and all Matt wants to do is make his decision alone and at peace.

Early in the film, Matt learns that his wife was having an affair with a man named David Speer (Matthew Lillard), a realtor in Hawaii. I’ve always felt that Lillard is an extremely underused and underrated actor, and even though his appearance in The Descendants is merely an extended cameo (if that), he has a presence that, to me, steals the show no matter what he’s doing.

The film itself is brilliant, with the ability to be quite plot heavy and yet play out so effortlessly and with such hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking results, that you can’t help but get attached to the characters. The characters themselves are layered and real; enough to the point where you feel you know them by the end of the film. They’re realistic people with actual problems, and we can sense this and we feel for them. The acting by every actor involved is absolutely brilliant. George Clooney gives another fantastic performance, as does the entire supporting cast.

The Hawaiian setting adds a level of both peace and tension. The film makes it very clear that this place is no permanent vacation spot. I have a friend who was raised in Hawaii, and from what he’s told me, and what I saw in the film, the little Hawaiian nuances are captured perfectly, from the very specific and sometimes subtle dialect, to the mannerisms and common household rules, it’s all quite mesmerizing how they managed to perfect it all.

As I mentioned before, The Descendants is based off of a 2007 novel of the same name. As a fan of the source material, the film adaptation does more than justice to the original novel, by being faithful enough to please fans, but not too faithful to the point where it’s a carbon copy of the novel, therefore singling out viewers who may have not read the novel.

The Descendants is a beautiful and heartbreaking portrait of a dysfunctional family that will give us all something to relate to. As for its R-Rating, yes its themes are heavy, but other than the language, I feel as if The Descendants is akin to a film released earlier this year, Terri; a movie that both kids and adults can relate to, sometimes in different ways, sometimes in the same. Regardless, The Descendants is a must watch for anyone who’s ever breathed in air. It may possibly be the best film of the year, but I can’t speak too soon.

5/5 Bears

Grizzly Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1

I feel like the entire film industry is beginning to revolve around pop culture. Now, this isn’t anything new, I know, but that doesn’t mean that it still isn’t frightening, with franchises that run for anywhere from five years (Twilight Saga) to 50 years (James Bond films). The surprising thing, though, is how much money these franchises make. Franchises like the Harry Potter films are in the multi-billions, as are franchises like Twilight and the James Bond movies.

Continue reading Grizzly Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1

Grizzly Review: Grave Encounters

The era of found footage films is in full flux right now. The surprisingly successful Paranormal Activity series, which has grossed almost $300 million dollars domestically, or The Blair Witch Project that grossed over $154 million dollars are both prime examples of this phenomena (no pun intended). Found footage films are successful because to be honest, they’re scary as hell, whether you want to believe it or not. It’s not always such a conscious recognition of the fear, but you have to admit that after you watch a Paranormal Activity movie, you tend to find yourself double-taking a little more than you usually do.

Recently, a film called Grave Encounters, which garnered positive reception at the Tribeca Film Festival, hit On-Demand as well as video stores soon after its initial festival run. The film, which was directed by The Vicious Brothers (who are neither brothers nor have the last name Vicious) for under $500,000, follows a camera crew who host a show called Grave Encounters, an intentional spoof of the popular show, Ghost Adventures. They decide to do what’s called a lock-down, a familiar procedure among fans of Ghost Adventures. The location? An abandoned mental institution that still maintains upkeep for some unknown reason. I presumed tours at first, but since there was no mention of this, I had nothing to go off.

The show, which is hosted by ghost expert Lance Preston (Sean Rogerson) and teched by his crew T.C. (Merwin Mondesir), Matt (Juan Riedinger), and Sasha (Ashleigh Gryzko), was in the middle of filming its first season when they decided to shoot in the location. Accompanied by “ghost expert” Houston Gray (Mackenzie Gray), the crew gets ready to go nowhere for an entire night of the hauntings that await them.

Grave Encounters makes it very clear that the entire “paranormal television” era is completely a sham, and that even the cast and crew don’t believe what they’re filming, which makes what they’re encountering that much more surprising. For the first 45 or so minutes, nothing too crazy happens. Tension is built amateurishly and then given up on just as quickly. If you decide to go and watch this movie, get used to the whole “so-much-tension-for-nothing” feel of the movie, because that’s the entire movie. In fact, anything resembling a good scare happens in the last half hour, and if you watched the first twenty minutes, and then skipped it to about 55 minutes, you really wouldn’t miss anything, I promise.

At 95 minutes, Grave Encounters is actually a tad longer than most other found-footage films, but half as scary, and most of the time, twice as boring. As I mentioned before, nothing scary happens until the last 30 minutes, and even then, it’s not the kind of scary that stays with you for weeks and weeks upon end, but rather a more instant jump followed by possibly a nervous giggle, and then it’s completely forgotten mere minutes later. The directors, who also penned the script, set up every scare so uniformly that when the punchline to this bad joke finally comes, you feel like it’s something you’ve heard, or in this case, seen, a million times before.

That’s not to say that Grave Encounters doesn’t have its moments. The surprisingly committed performance by the lead, Sean Rogerson, drives the film very well. He plays the part of the “ghost expert” perfectly, investing us into the story as he would in an episode of his show. The rest of the cast falters in comparison, though, except for Juan Riedenger, who plays Matt, the most Canadian character in this horror film made north of the border. His eventual slip into deep psychosis is enough reason to watch this movie for just that alone.

The lack of believable acting is what sets this film and other films like it (Paranormal Entity) apart from great found footage films. The acting is what turns the film from entertaining into believable. For months after seeing movies like The Fourth Kind and the Blair Witch Project, I was absolutely convinced that the things I was seeing on screen were as real as it could get. I honestly thought that Blair Witch was a documentary.

As a horror film, Grave Encounters fails, and almost miserably at that. I’m the type of person who s**** their pants when they see one of those scary videos on YouTube, and not even the barrage of stuff popping out during the last 30 minutes could scare me, let alone entertain me. It’s almost depressing that in a genre of film that is so easy to scare with, Grave Encounters can’t even do its one job right, which is a shame considering the massive amount of potential it had.

2/5 Bears

‘Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters’…Yes, I’m Serious

It seems as if Hansel & Gretel is yet another fairy tale to be bastardized by Hollywood, or is it? Earlier this year, a film entitled Snow White & the Huntsman was announced. It stars Kristen Stewart in the title role, and is a “re-imagining” of the story. In the original fairy tale, Snow White was to be taken to the Queen by a Huntsman, but in a nifty turn of events, the Huntsman actually becomes a “bodyguard” of sorts to Snow White and trains her to defeat the Queen. Where will the dwarves be? God, I really can’t wait to find out.

Regardless of my fetish for fighting dwarfs, Snow White & the Huntsman is another film in the long line of “Bad Career Choices for Stars of Twilight.” First it was Taylor Lautner in the dung-hole known as Abduction, and now this. An abomination to end all future fairy tale abominations.

Compared to that though, what’s the deal with Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. No one in their right mind would finance this, but I shouldn’t say that so confidently (see: Year One, Van Helsing, and Superman IV: the Quest for Peace). Upon doing some more research, I discovered that it is in fact a satire of sorts, produced by Gary Sanchez productions, the collaborative effort of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, as well as being directed by Tommy Wirkola, the half-man, half-genius behind the best Nazi-Zombie film ever made, Dead Snow. My sigh of relief was beginning to commence, especially when I learned that Jeremy Renner would be starring, until I read that Famke Janssen only took the role to pay off her mortgage.


The film itself follows our two favorite victims, Hansel & Gretel. It’s been 15 years since their “incident” involving a gingerbread house, and they’ve turned to the business of being bounty hunters, going after and killing witches all around the world.

The screenplay, which was penned by newcomer Dante Harper, didn’t really make me feel as nervous as it should. Take a look at Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil, for instance. An absolutely hilarious film that was written and directed by two first time filmmakers.

Honestly there are so many details and so much news coverage that’s going to either make me really want to see this movie, or boycott it, but until we see the trailer that’s being released on Thursday, we can’t make any judgments. All I’m asking is that we don’t have another repeat of Your Highness.

Oh, and Gemma Arterton will play Gretel…

‘In Case You Missed It’ Review: Friends With Benefits

Earlier this year, Ashton Kutcher and recent Oscar winner, Natalie Portman starred in a film about two friends who begin to have casual sex entitled No Strings Attached. The film itself received generally negative reviews despite its good cast and director (Ivan Reitman). Personally, I didn’t mind the film too much. It was a nice escape with some good jokes and likeable leads. Sure it was as cliché as it gets, but not every film can be The Deer Hunter, right?

Soon after I saw No Strings Attached, I heard of a film being released called Friends With Benefits. The premise was literally identical, and the female lead, Mila Kunis, co-starred with Natalie Portman earlier that year in Black Swan. I was, needless to say, quite skeptical. I didn’t let this get the best of me though, because the cast was equally as funny, if not more varied and interesting, than No Strings Attached.

Friends With Benefits follows two young professionals, Dylan (Justin Timberlake) and Jamie (Mila Kunis); one a successful internet blogger who is offered a job at GQ, the other is sent to recruit him. The two become very close friends over a short period of time. One day, Jamie claims, “I miss sex.” The rest is history. The two begin a strictly physical relationship with no emotions attached, which soon turn into something far different.


As much as I thought I wouldn’t like this movie, I’ll go ahead and admit that I really enjoyed it, a lot actually. With a more than 20% advantage on Rotten Tomatoes, Friends With Benefits actually deserves it. The two leads have way more chemistry than the stars of No Strings Attached. The story is very layered and involved, with just enough characterization to make you care, and possibly even cry. The supporting actors, which include Woody Harrelson, Bryan Greenberg, Patricia Clarkson, Jenna Elfman, Richard Jenkins, and even guest appearances by Emma Stone and Andy Samberg, all hold their own and give a lot of meaning to why Dylan and Jamie are why they are.

Dylan’s father, who’s known only as Mr. Harper (Richard Jenkins) has moderately severe Alzheimer’s that gets worse with age. He’s the type of character that we all know is going to say something insightful at the end of the movie that gives Dylan the courage to do what he has to do, blah, blah. Fact of the matter is, Richard Jenkins is funny as hell in everything he does, and he’s a fantastic actor. These are two things that are extremely useful in Hollywood, and he plays the role perfectly, as usual.

Directed and co-written by Will Gluck who you may recognize as the director of Easy A, has a good eye for scenery and makes sure to create an acceptable distinction between Los Angeles and New York, which may seem like an unnecessary detail, but honestly, you don’t know how many times I thought a movie takes place in the Upper East Side but it turns out I’m actually in downtown LA.

Friends With Benefits also has a knack for both employing cliché while simultaneously mocking it. While mocking cliché has now become a cliché, this Inception of clichés has led me to just give up and be entertained by the gimmick, which can be somewhat pervasive, but never tiring.

The film’s soundtrack is also something to note. It includes popular songs, but not the annoying ones that you hear on the radio every two seconds. They’re the popular songs that come on the radio once in a while and you’re actually happy to hear them. Example: “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie.

If anything, Friends With Benefits is a great romantic comedy and an acceptable vehicle for both Timberlake and Kunis, who both have extremely bright futures in Hollywood. Despite being in the business since children, I feel like their careers have really started reaching their full potential only recently (yes I know, Kunis was on That 70’s Show, that doesn’t count). Also, besides its great leads, Friends With Benefits offers us three of the best cameos of the year, but I can’t tell you what they are. Also, miraculously, Friends With Benefits has somehow made “Hey Soul Sister” by Train a bearable song to listen to during a credits sequence.

3.5/5 Bears
 

#23 – Countdown to Christmas: BAD SANTA

Who knew that the Coen Brothers would be involved with a film as filthy as Bad Santa? Known for creating such elegant pieces of drama and such witty pieces of comedy, their name on a raunch fest like Bad Santa seemed unimaginable at first. Then, the movie was released to critical and commercial acclaim, and our light bulb moment had been reached.

Bad Santa, starring Billy Bob Thornton as Willie, an alcoholic shoplifting Santa Clause, is every bit as raunchy and crude as you might think it’d be. Though with that raunchiness comes just as much heart and moral decency as any other Christmas movie. For those of you who don’t know, the plot revolves around two cons named Willie and Marcus (Tony Cox) pose as Santa Clause and his elf at a local mall to rob all of the stores on Christmas Eve. Everything goes smoothly until the security manager Gin (Bernie Mac) discovers their plan. While this shit is hitting the fan, Willie befriends a young boy known only as, The Kid (Brett Kelly).


Willie then gets involved romantically with The Kid’s mother Sue (Lauren Graham), more shit hits the fan, but it’s all really funny in that miserable kind of way.

Bad Santa works mostly because of how unlikable all the characters are besides The Kid. His roley-poley little body mixed with his innocent facial expressions are the ying to Billy Bob’s beer swigging yang. The two gel in an unlikely way that will warm your heart and possibly creep you out all at the same time.

Out of everybody involved though, it’s Tony Cox’s evil but wise Marcus that steals the show. With some smaller roles in films like Friday and Me, Myself, and Irene, his comedic timing is almost perfect, and he represents how evil Willie could be, but somehow has the heart not to be.

I’ll admit, I watched Bad Santa at far too young of an age (8 to be exact), but now, it’s a Christmas tradition for my friends and me. I mean, what other Christmas movie will make teenagers come over to your house?

4/5 Charlie Brown Trees.

For more COUNTDOWN TO CHRISTMAS – Click it Here! 

Also Check out our COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN…