Ocean's 8

I'm a fan of the original Oceans 11 (the one with Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, and Sinatra) and the reboot with Clooney and Brad Pitt.  Now, I'm a fan of Ocean's 8... well, I'm more a fan of the concept of Ocean's 8.  Don't get me wrong, it was pretty good, but it was also entirely too predictable.  Aside from that, it was a good introduction to this Ocean's crew of thieves and it was exceptionally entertaining.  Sometimes (with how many movies I've watched, critiqued, analyzed, and fanboy'd) I get bogged down and miss the forest for the trees... I ran the risk of doing that here, but fortunately the woman I was with kept that from happening - she was more exuberant about the little things than I was - wait... what I mean to say is that she was more excited about things like the casting and discovering what I thought were thinly veiled plot twists than I was.  Ocean's 8 is the first real date movie I've enjoyed in some years.  

SIDE NOTE: In other news... Rihanna is arguably the sexiest woman breathing right now (with only Lupita Nyongo #WakandaForever challenging her)… no disrespect to my lovely date (but I can't really respect her opinion since she went out with me and is in love with Alex Rodriguez...?).

VITALS 

Gary Ross (Free State of Jones, The Hunger Games) - Director (Free State of Jones, The Hunger Games)

Gary Ross (Free State of Jones, The Hunger Games) & Olivia Milch (Dude) - Writers

Sandra Bullock - Debbie Ocean

Cate Blanchett - Lou

Anne Hathaway - Daphne Kluger

Rihanna - Nine Ball

Helena Bonham Carter - Rose Weil

Sarah Paulson - Tammy

Awkwafina - Constance

Mindy Kaling - Amita

James Corden - Insurance Investigator

Richard Armitage - Claude Becker 

IF YOU MUST KNOW

(SPOILER ALERT)

Debbie Ocean is out of prison on parole (see Ocean's 11) and she’s been plotting her next job every minute she spent in the hole.  That’s the first connection we have with Danny Ocean (Ocean’s 11).  We quickly find out after she gets out that Danny’s no dead - maybe.  Danny’s little sister and she has mapped out everything down to the kind of crew that she needs pull off a job that will bring in so much money, they should never need to pull another job again… at least, not until Ocean’s 9 – and I hope they find a way to fit in Julia Roberts. 

First, Debbie seeks out her old ace, Lou (Blanchett) who is basically the Rusty (Brad Pitt) of the crew.  Lou is the one who compiles the talent and helps Debbie figure out the logistics of her high-handed plan to rob the MET Gala for the great gobs of jewels that the celebs and celebutants.  Then, they go out and solicit the talents of old friends (some semi-retired, some otherwise occupied) and new friends - all of whom are enticed by the idea of either working with Ocean and Lou or by the value of the loot to be divvied up at the end of the heist.

Long story, slightly shortened - everybody they look for is in.  They have a hick-up here and there (most of which were so minor as to be unworthy of mention) and Ocean (just like her brother, Danny) has a side mission attached to this jewelry heist; unlike Danny, she is working an angle to screw over the guy who snitched on her and broke her heart, Claude Becker (Armitage).

The heist happens, shenanigans ensue, and Debbie Ocean's 8 walk away with plenty of booty to spare.  See what I did there?

Aside from the cute-siness of the tagline "Every con has its pros," the biggest problem I have with this movie is that there is only one twist that is not predictable as hell and even that twist is relatively meaningless.  I'm not a complete bastard, so I won't tell you what it is, but let's just say the payoff for this particular twist doesn't really make much of a difference to me.  Maybe it's a function of the fact that this is officially the fifth Ocean's '#' movie and after a certain point, you kinda get it.  Ocean plans caper, Ocean gets crew together, crew makes Ocean's idea into a plan, crew's plan works despite Ocean, Ocean's crew walks away scot-free with a crap load of loot.  

Now, like I said, I was fortunate to go see this with a particularly savvy woman (besides, I am too old to be hanging out with dummies) who summed it up pretty well… Ocean's 8 is fun and it has “all my favorite people in it” – well, it may have all of her favorite people, but definitely multiple of my favorite female actors are in it.  Helena Bonham Carter, Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock, Anne Hathaway, and the magnificent Sarah Paulson.  I was missing Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Nicole Beharie, Zoe Saldana, and the incomparable Lupita in this flick - if they added 2 or more of these women, I would have been there twice on opening night day.

Not exactly groundbreaking or as slick and twisty as any of the Clooney Ocean's movies, but it was solid.  It was a great date movie, light and entertaining with a talented cast. I definitely detected a few Thomas Crown Affair-type nods (either one McQueen or Brosnan).  Good enough to watch again - when it comes out on one of those streaming services.  And, in my humble nerdy opinion... it was at least as good as Avengers: Infinity War (Pt. I) - snap that sh#, Thanos!

PS: Did I mention she's in this too (even though they tried to make her not sexy)...

IMTHATDUDE gives Ocean's 8: 4 

RATING SYSTEM:
5 = You should be about halfway to the theatre by now… Well… GET! 
4 = Definitely worth the bread. Niiice.
3 = I won’t cuss anybody out and demand my paper back.
2 = Somewhere SOUTH of under-whelmed./I know it has a pulse, but…
1 = Not a good look. They played me AND I played myself.

KEANU

MICROWAVE REVIEW

I'm not exactly sure how I felt about sitting in a Williamsburg, Brooklyn theatre full of white millennials laughing hysterically at the comedic use of the N-word by Key and Peele.  It was a little disconcerting.  And full disclosure - I don't like cats... more specifically, I don't like house cats.  That said, Keanu was a little cute in an "I still don't want one in my apartment" kind of way.  But, once I put those things aside, I was able to laugh a sufficient amount to consider this a legit flick and worth seeing.  I wouldn't recommend making plans around seeing it.  It's not as good as some of the more recent comedies like Let's Be Cops, Dope, Trainwreck, Deadpool, or 50 Shades of Grey. It is, however, funny enough to see in the theatre or to pay and rent when it hits Amazon Instant or On-Demand in a couple of months.


VITALS
Jordan Peele & Alex Rubens  - Writers
Directed by Peter Atencio  
Keegan-Michael Key - Clarence
Jordan Peele - Rell Williams
Tiffany Haddish - Hi-C
Method Man - Cheddar
Luis Guzman - Bacon
Will Forte - Hulka


IF YOU MUST KNOW

Rell Williams (Peele) has just been dumped and loses the only thing he has going for him - Keanu, his kitten. His cousin and best friend, Clarence (Key) decides to join him in his quest to find and reclaim Keanu.  They end up posing as drug dealer/assassins, which cause them to get in just a little bit of trouble with real drug dealers/killers known as the Blips (folks who've been kicked out of the Bloods and the Crips - funny).  There's a little bit of character growth for both Rell and Clarence in this comedy that gives a slightly different twist to the "fish out of water" theme.  

There were some amusing George Michael bits that ran throughout the film.  Peele is still the funnier of the comedy pair in my book (Obama translator aside).  Good amount of laughs, lots of N-Words - but all within a context that made sense from a black improv comedic point of view, and the character arcs that take Rell and Clarence from somewhat pathetic man-boys (in different ways) to full grown men.  

It's worth a look, but not if you're expecting hilarity.  It's a slow Saturday afternoon or date night flick that is sufficient for sh#s and giggles as they say (probably a better laugh if you get lit first,  but I won't make fun of you for spending your bread on it anyway.  

IMTHATDUDE gives Keanu: 3

RATING SYSTEM:
5 = You should be about halfway to the theatre by now… Well… GET!

4 = Definitely worth the bread. Niiice.

3 = I won’t cuss anybody out and demand my paper back.

2 = Somewhere SOUTH of under-whelmed./I know it has a pulse, but…

1 = Not a good look. They played me AND I played myself.

James Bond: Spectre

Don't believe the hype!  Yeaaaaah, boyeeeeeeeee!  Forgive me.  It has been too long since I dissed a Bond film... Bardem was weird and whack in Skyfall as the villain - but the concept was there.  Movie was pretty lame though - re-watched it a while ago before this one dropped. Here you go (and shout out to my homegirl, Ellis; she said this looked like whackness, but then again, she hates all things Bond, so who would trust her movie selection on anything?)...

I fell asleep twice in one sitting.  TWICE!!!  Sure, I was tired, but it's James Bond... I don't fall asleep  in action movies (aside from that bananaballs flick that had Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis).  I am a bona fide movie-warrior.  I have denied young moviegoer's requests for me to move down so they can sit together - Sorry, suckers... get here earlier.  I picked my seat and skipped the concession stand for a reason.  I have braved the crappy 42nd Street and Prospect Park Pavilion theaters - No, sir.  No threat of bed bugs scares my fastidious a$$... I'm lying!!!  I will never hit those theaters again until I am satisfied they don't have a problem.  But, I did survive the dark depths of Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow, Soul Plane, Punisher, Desolation of Smaug, Fifty Shades, and countless other craptastic nightmares without batting an eye.  Yet, I am rarely ever tired enough to sleep through a flick I paid for.  I am far to stingy with my paper to waste it on movies I don't actually watch.  I watched 95% of Spectre, and it was the most boring Bond I have ever seen next to In Her Majesty's Secret Service (Remember that one?  Stop lying, you don't.  Nobody does.  It was a$$.)

VITALS

Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition) - Director
John Logan (Sweeney Todd, Gladiator) & Neil Purvis (The World is Not Enough, Johnny English) - Writers
Daniel Craig (Munich, Casino Royale) - Bond, James Bond... kinda
Cristoph Waltz (Django Unchained, Muppets Most Wanted) - Ernst Stavro Blofeld
Ralph Fiennes (Schindler's List, Grand Budapest Hotel) - Q
Lea Seydoux (Blue is the Warmest Color, Fairwell, My Queen) - Madeleine Swann
Monica Bellucci (Shoot'em Up, Melena) - Lucia Sciarra
Naomie Harris (Miami Vice, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom) - Eve Moneypenny
Ben Whishaw (Layer Cake, Cloud Atlas) - Q
Andrew Scott (TV's The Hour and Sherlock) - C
Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy, Riddick) - Mr. Hinx

IF YOU MUCH KNOW [SPOILER ALERT... STOP READING NOW IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE SPOILERS]

Bond has girl and disses her for a mission.  Almost gets killed, but escapes in a very Bond like way.  Gets a full grown woman (Monica Bellucci) after claiming responsibility for killing her hubby; but only needs her for information, so it's a smash and run job... again.  Then, he finds himself involved with the barely legal daughter of a target who has yet another piece of information for him... all the while he is running into or being hunted by the mysterious cabal of villains known only as as "Spectre" which turns out to be run by Ernst Gustavo Blofeld (Waltz).  Blofeld, for all his criminal mind mastery, puts Bond in a painful yet EASILY escapable situation and, shockingly, Bond escapes. Additional chasing ensues (literally and figuratively), before Blofeld and Bond meet again - eventually one must kill the other permanently.

What perplexes me is that Bond is not Bond midway through this movie.  He regressed to his Vesper-loving days of when we were first supposed to be learning how Bond became the misogynistic prick that we have all known and loved for decades.  Instead, he gets a little whiff of that young "strange" and he changes into a lovestruck ordinary Joe.  I don't watch Bond movies to see him fall for some dame.  I watch to see his brackishness, callousness, machismo, a$$kicking and impossible stunts, and love of fine things (women, cars, winning, etc.).  Instead I got a Spectre of the Bond I knew and loved (see how I did that there? I make this look easy... enough).  Dude, you're an assassin with a license to kill.  Assassinate already.

As for Blofeld, he had flashes of awesome villainy, but then there was the whole tell my enemy everything and let him escape thing that usually wouldn't have troubled me if I didn't think the movie was so boring.  Even if the villain had a white damned cat.

Not enough Casino Royale action for me (or ever Quantum), and too heavy on Craig showing his actor-y nuance made this one of my least favorite Bonds in Craig's filmography.  Then again, what do you expect when your theme song is sung by the n'er happy Sam "Depress Me" Smith.  Great voice, but if you're down and happen to have a bottle of scotch, you might want to leave that Sam Smith playlist right next to your tickets for Spectre... on the shelf until a much happier time surfaces.  In fairness, this is a more chick-friendly Bond movie, but IMTHATDUDE and the same way I refuse to get a filet mignon at a pancake house, or go to a business meeting with a suit and my Sean John sneaks, I refuse to let a watered-down, sensitive James Bond retain its vaunted position on my list of all things dope.

IMTHATDUDE gives Spectre: 2.5 (Benefit of the Bond)

RATING SYSTEM:

5 = You should be about halfway to the theatre by now… Well… GET!
4 = Definitely worth the bread. Niiice.
3 = I won’t cuss anybody out and demand my paper back.
2 = Somewhere SOUTH of under-whelmed./I know it has a pulse, but…
1 = Not a good look. They played me AND I played myself.

50 Shades of Grey

Let me start with something positive.  That's a nice looking tie.  And now that all the pleasantries are done, I'm going to try not to be to harsh, so let me begin with a simple definition:

: not intelligent : having or showing a lack of ability to learn and understand things
: not sensible or logical
: not able to think normally because you are drunk, tired, etc.

That's right.  The word you're looking for is - stupid.  So VERY stupid - and I don’t just mean the movie.  The world is stupid.  On some level we all knew this movie would suck. (Actually, there really wasn’t that much of that in this flick either.) We knew it and still we flocked to theaters in great big sellout crowds to see it, defying all logic, normal thought, and ability to understand.  The world is a great bastion of voyeuristic morons; me included.  If only the world were collectively drunk... well, we’d still be pretty stupid, but at least it would be excusable that we spent over $260M in the first four days on a movie that was obviously a niche soft porn film at-best.  50 Shades of Grey did the impossible; it made me lose respect for myself.  Sure, I have enough to spare, but a loss of any self-respect for watching this movie is entirely too great a loss.

Puns like ‘whorrible’ and ‘whorrid’ are inescapable.  But, since I have a modicum of respect for whores - it being the oldest profession and all - it would be a disservice to all things whore-ish for me to use such terms to describe this flick.  Put plainly - 50 Shades is pretty damned bad.  Start to finish.  Bad concept.  Bad script.  Bad casting (despite having never read the books).  The best thing about the movie is being a producer.  It cost about $40M to make and that investment was quadrupled in the first four days of its release.

VITALS

Sam Taylor-Johnson (Nowhere Boy, Destricted) - Director
Kelly Marcel (Saving Mr. Banks) - Writers
E.L. James (50 Shades trilogy) - Source Writer

Dakota Johnson (21 Jump Street, The Five Year Engagement) - Anastasia Steele
Jamie Dornan (Marie Antoinette, TV’s Once Upon a Time) - Christian Grey
Eloise Mumford (In the Blood) - Kate
Max Martini (Pacific Rim, Sabotage) - Taylor
Marcia Gay Harden (Mystic River, Into the Wild) - Mrs. Grey

IF YOU MUST KNOW

Christian Grey (Dornan) is a young billionaire with a freaky sneaky secret. He meets Anastasia Steele (Johnson), a graduating senior from blah-blah liberal arts college - of course she has a 4.0 and is an English Literature major who happens to be a hopeless romantic and a virgin.  I’ll pause there and let the absurdity hit you... virgin in her senior year in Portland or Vancouver, Washington?  What the hell else are they doing in Portland/Vancouver besides drankin, smoking, and the niggityniggitynasty?  Looking for glittery-shimmery vampires?  Let’s be honest - by her sophomore year that virginity would’ve been about as nonexistent as a Kim Kardashian’s love of white dudes (or Ray J’s manhood, whichever).

ASIDE: I tried to read the sample of this book and it irked me sumthin’ awful.  EL James is English, so I foolishly expected her english and grammar skills to be better than a fifth grader.  SMDH!  50 Shades was nothing short of visual masochism with no safe words.  At least Anastasia got a damned car and a dope pad.  What did moviegoers get for our submission - 15 bucks lighter in the wallet and time-raped (I know that’s crass, but time-despoiled doesn’t have the same flow given the content of this movie).

Here’s the problem with the premise... this story is not a love story.  I would throw down good paper that says any woman who would subject herself to this kind of emotional and physical abuse isn’t going to do it for a dude that makes $75K a year even if he, unlike Grey, is emotionally available - the whole love thing falls apart because it is romanticization of finances.  She’s blown away by his bread and prestige, not by him.  Hell, she doesn’t even know him AFTER he gets the cookie.  I don’t have a clue if he loses everything in the books, but if he does, it doesn’t matter...  Anastasia doesn’t set foot in this cat’s creepy a$$ soundproof BDSM den if he was a teacher, garbage man, bus driver, cop, or firefighter (well, maybe the last one - I hear firefighters get all kinds of strange).

The movie lacked depth and had zero intrigue.  The dialogue was sub-sophomoric.  And although I was silently screaming for this woman to sign the damned contract already, the sheer volume of questions volleyed back and forth between the characters created negative dramatic tension.  Plus, the chemistry between Grey and Steele was almost completely imperceptible. Even post-coitus, it looked like they were on an awkward first date.  They looked like two young actors trying hard to find their motivation.  On the bright side, there was a such dearth of action that I almost fell into a much needed deep sleep during the Savannah, Georgia segment.

Dakota Johnson was good in her tiny piece of the Social Network.  She was memorable and I still think she has a career ahead of her despite this unfortunate yet financially successful film.  Dornan... I dunno his work outside of this, so I can't speak to it.  But I hope the next one is better written, and they find a stronger director.  Maybe holla at Jane Campion, Ava DuVernay, or if you want to go a bit more artsy/graphic - David Lynch, Mira Nair, Ang Lee, or Catherine Breillat.

SUGGESTIONS:  Next time, make your movie at least as compelling as the concession stand advertisements.  Also, if it is going to be soft core porn, make that joint NC17 - maybe that would have appeased the readers and pervs alike.  I’ll still pass.  RED (that’s the safe word, right).

POSTSCRIPT - Shout out to Charlie Hunnam for wisely rethinking this role and backing out.  Huge box office success but you're better than that script and novel.  Good man.

IMTHATDUDE gives 50 Shades of Grey: 1

RATING SYSTEM:

5 = You should be about halfway to the theatre by now… Well… GET!
4 = Definitely worth the bread. Niiice.
3 = I won’t cuss anybody out and demand my paper back.
2 = Somewhere SOUTH of under-whelmed./I know it has a pulse, but…
1 = Not a good look. They played me AND I played myself.