Movie Review-American Ultra

American Ultra is a very odd, but entertaining movie. Jesse Eisenberg plays Mike. He’s the town stoner, who also works at the local convenience store, and his creative outlet is drawing a cartoon series about a superhero monkey.  Mike seems like a real loser who lives in a real dump with his girlfriend but, in this movie, things are not always as they seem.  Kristen Stewart plays his girlfriend Phoebe, but is she really his girlfriend?

It turns out that Mike is a “sleeper agent” who’s had his memory erased and was placed in this small, backwoods town. So when one of the C.I.A.’s top agents decides to “terminate” all evidence of the project Mike is attached to, “the stoner” wakes up from his deep sleep and suddenly starts realizing he has unexplained abilities to survive and killing skills that would rival the top ninja or Navy Seal.

The killing spree he goes on, almost apologetically is crazy. He uses frying pans, spoons, shovels and, of course standard weapons like guns and knives to kill anything the C.I.A throws at him. This is one bloody and violent movie, but it has a real sense of humor. For example when he explains to his girlfriend, after he kills his first two men, “but they were real d****”.  Thankfully the movie only has a run time of 96 minutes because I was growing numb from all the graphic violence.

American Ultra is not for the squeamish but, if you can handle the blood and gore, it is a really smart comedy that I really enjoyed. I groaned as much as I laughed.

The movie is rated “R” for strong, bloody violence, drug use and sexual situations. On my “Hollywood Popcorn Scale” I rate American Ultra a LARGE.

Hollywood Hernandez

 

Movie Review-Straight Outta Compton

Straight Outta Compton, for me, plays more like a documentary than just a movie. I lived this era in music. The movie depicts events in time that changed the entire landscape of music. In 1986 urban radio was playing funk, R&B and ballads. Artists like Cameo, Janet Jackson, Morris Day, Levert and Michael Jackson ruled the airways with a mixture of dance, pop and some hard driving funk. That all changed when NWA hit the scene. It was literally a “fork in the road” for urban music. An entire genre of “Reality Rap” followed. NWA was the first to “report” on the situation of the inner city. Their music reflected their environment.

Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, as executive producers of the film, got it all down on film with Straight Outta Compton. I’ve never seen a more accurate depiction of what really occurred during the late 80’s in Hip Hop. The movie starts with NWA and goes into the evolution of the L.A. hip hop “gangster rap” scene from The D.O.C. to Snoop Dogg and further. But this movie begins and ends with Easy E. It shows how Easy bankrolled the group, with his stash of money as a drug dealer, to the tragic end to his life of excess with his death in 1991 at the age of 31 from AIDS.

The cast, including Ice Cube’s son playing his dad, is right on point. You feel the emotions of the rappers from Straight Outta Compton. You see the genuine love they had for each other before contracts and money issues tore them apart. And then of course there’s the music. That old school gangsta hip hop still rocks the house.

The movie is rated “R” for strong language, nudity, sexual situations, violence and drug use. (This movie is hard core!) And it runs a little long at 2 hours and 27 minutes. This will be a huge movie and I am already predicting an Oscar nomination (it’s that good). Straight Outta Compton gets my highest rating on my “Hollywood Popcorn Scale”. I rate it a JUMBO (with extra butter). Go see it!

Hollywood Hernandez   

Movie Review-Fantastic Four

Fantastic Four takes the Marvel super heroes back to the drawing board and re-boots the series with a younger and hipper cast of characters. Miles Teller (Whiplash) plays Reed Richards. The movie shows him as a young boy in elementary school who, along with his best friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), is already working on his invention for time teleportation. Rounding out the cast’s lead characters are Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station), who plays Johnny Storm, and his adopted sister, Susan Storm, is played by Kate Mara (American Horror Story).

The new cast seems more age appropriate to play a group of wide-eyed, young scientists who work together to build a full scale time teleportation machine. The team’s goal is to travel to a different dimension and bring back the mysteries of the universe. Enter Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) who’s original design for a time teleportation machine failed. He joins the team and immediately becomes rivals with Reed Richards, who not only figures out the mystery of time teleportation, he also becomes his rival for the affections of the lovely Susan Storm.

 

To prevent the government from using their completed machine Richards, Von Doom and Johnny Storm devise a plan to use the machine to become the first humans to travel to an alternate dimension. Richards invites his best friend, Ben Grimm, to tag along to watch his back. Instead the four travelers have a horrible accident and they are transformed into humans with super human powers. Susan, who helps the boys make the trip back safely, is also affected by the energy from the dimension traveling ship. Von Doom doesn’t make it back with the group of dimension travelers. However; he does show up again at the end of the movie to play the villain that every super hero teams need to create some type of conflict in a movie.

 

The contrived situation for the villain was one of the issues I had with the movie. I would have liked to have seen more of the “bad guy” in the movie. However; because the movie has so much more to like than not, I’ll recommend it. Fantastic Four runs for 100 minutes and is rated “PG-13” for sci-fi action and violence. On my “Hollywood Popcorn Scale” I rate this movie a LARGE.

Hollywood Hernandez