The Disaster Artist
Years ago, when I first saw The Room, I was blown away by how amazing it was but if you would have told me that years later James Franco and Seth Rogen would make a movie about the making of The Room I would have thought you were crazy. Before I talk about The Disaster Artist though, it’s important to give a brief rundown of what The Room is. The Room is an awful movie that’s meant to be taken seriously but somehow, through pure luck, hard work, and complete incompetence ended up being one of the funniest movies of all time. It’s kind of like when President Lincoln invented bread, he was trying to make bread but when it was all said and done, bread.
As for The Disaster Artist, it’s a perfect love letter to the film that maybe only fans will really care about. As I sat in the theater, I did wonder if people that had not seen The Room would understand the joke. Yes, James Franco is amazing in this movie and maybe that’s enough for an audience that isn’t aware of the story to stay entertained but that’s a big maybe. Ultimately, The Disaster Artist is a great film for the fans that know the story, so if you’re like me and you’ve seen The Room, go out and watch this film. I promise you’ll have a great time.
9/10 (Amazing)
Downsizing
Downsizing is a frustrating film because it has the potential to be, at the very least, a good movie, but unfortunately, it’s a film that has too much to say and not enough time to say it in. What’s even worse, since the film doesn’t have enough time to tell its story, the movie ends up feeling too long because the audience never really knows where the movie is going. One minute it’s about racism, then it’s about the economy, then it’s about trying to find your place in the world, and then it’s about global warming. The movie, unfortunately, becomes one new storyline after the next and none of the issues brought up really carry any weight because the movie fails to spend any time on them.
I did wonder if maybe the film, as is, could have connected more with me if there was a different actor as the lead. While I like Matt Damon as an actor, I feel like his character along with so many others in the film are miscast. At the beginning of the film when characters are referring to Damon and Kristen Wiig as a “young couple” I was left there thinking, how old are they suppose to be? Damon looks 50 but I’m pretty sure he’s supposed to be playing late 20’s or, at the oldest, early 30’s. On top of that, there’s absolutely no chemistry between Damon and actress Hong Chau. While I won’t spoil why this is important, I will say that the movie really hinges on them being believable together and it just doesn’t work. While Chau does deliver a great performance, I’m just not sure it fits with the kind of movie that’s being made. This movie could have easily been the next great social satire like Idiocracy, but after wasting my time to go see it, the only idiot is me.
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4.75/10 (Train Wreck)
The not new movie review of the week!!!
All of last year, anytime I would watch a movie, new or old, I would give it a review score, and since I’m already going to be doing that for the movies I watch in 2018, I figured why not write about them for the Movie Review Round Up. Anything goes for this section of the article. The only rule is that it just needs to be something not newly released. If anyone out there has a recommendation for what I should watch next, feel free to let me know.
The Men Who Stare at Goats
Time to put on our powdered wigs, jump in the way back machine and travel back to 2009. 2009!? Did they even have electricity back then??? The Men Who Stare at Goats is a movie that I remember seeing trailers for and thinking, “that looks fun,” and that’s exactly what I got, a fun movie. With George Clooney delivering a solid performance, its become obvious that between this and his performance in O Brother, Where Art Thou? that Clooney, while great in certain dramatic roles, really missed his calling as a comedic actor. On top of that, there are solid performances from Kevin Spacey (moving on) Ewan McGregor and Jeff Bridges. If you’re like me and enjoy movies that shine a light on the side of the government we don’t often see, then this wacky film about the U.S. Government training soldiers to become “Jedi” is a film that you should certainly check out. Seriously, they tried to train soldiers to kill goats with their minds, actual mind bullets. Wow!
Thinks of a Thoughter 