Who You're Not Gonna Call..."Ghost Team"

Ghost Team (2016)

PG-13

Starring Jon Heder, David Krumholtz, Justin Long, Melonie Diaz, Amy Sidaris,

Directed by Oliver Irving

The Story:

Louis (Heder) is tired of his life and wants to do something exciting and new. He decides to try and make a video to be the next Ghost Hunter on tv. He assembles his team, and they head to a spooky farm on the outskirts of town.

One by one, members of the team go missing.  Louis has definitely stumbled onto something. Can he rescue them from the supernatural mystery, or will his foray into adventure be the last thing he ever does?

Oh, I try and spin it, but this just isn't that great of a movie.

Of course, I'd say that about any movie with Jon Heder as the star. Really? That's the best you could do?

But this is a movie with a 12 dollar budget, and you get what you pay for.

Most of the characters are tipped to the annoying side of the scale.

It's one I almost pulled out at the 20 minute mark, but I had mercy as there was potential there for something interesting to happen.

It got mildly better as more of the cast was introduced, but in the end, it's just not that great.

It does make the live action remake of Scooby Doo seem even better now.

: )

Not streaming yet, but it's coming soon to Netflix.

Final Grade: C- ... D+.  Yeah, let's go with D+

In A "GalaxyQuest" Not Far Away

GalaxyQuest (1999)

Rated PG-13

Starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, Justin Long, Daryl Mitchell

Directed by Dean Parisot

The Story:

The old stars of a sci-fi television show called "Galaxy Quest" are now hitting the convention circuit. When actual aliens come to Earth, they ask Commander Taggart (Allen) to help them. He thinks they are the usual convention nerds, agrees, and then has his mind blown when he is actually sent into space. He returns to Earth to get the rest of the crew (Weaver, Rickman, Shalhoub, Mitchell) and a new recruit (Rockwell) to put on the performance of a lifetime.

Want a perfect sci-fi movie that is part homage, part parody and part aweseome?

Look no further than GalaxyQuest!

The most obvious inspiration is Star Trek and their rabid fanbase, but the movie plays perfectly as a love letter to the genre, those types of shows, and the fans.

Allen channels his inner Captain Kirk while Rickman gets to play the Spock counterpart.  The two bicker throughout the film, and it is hysterical.

Shalhoub plays the quirky straight man who steals many a scene just by reacting.

However, it's Rockwell who endears himself to the audience as the "token red shirt" who is simply waiting for the moment when he is going to get offed!

Great film, even if you're not a fan of science fiction films.

Even better if you are.

If it's been 15 years or more since you last saw the film, well there's no time like the present to rectify that!

Available to stream instantly on Netflix and Amazon Prime as of this writing.

Final Grade: A

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: I own it. I love it. Great movie.

The World Gets A Bit Dangerous "Walking With Dinosaurs"

Walking With Dinosaurs (2013)

Rated PG for scary dinosaurs

Starring Charlie Rowe, Karl Urban, Angourie Rice, John Leguizamo, Justin Long, Skyler Stone, Tiya Sircar

Directed by Barry Cook & Neil Nightingale

The Story:

In Alaska, an archaeologist (Urban) is driving his niece (Rice) and nephew (Rowe) to a site where he had found a dinosaur tooth.  Unimpressed, the nephew decides to sit at the truck and pout, when a bird named Alex (Leguizamo) comes along to tell the kid about the story about how that tooth came to be found where it was.  Cue the flashbacks and the story of a little dinosaur (Long) who grows up to be the leader of his herd though unlikely odds.

So apparently the brains behind this thought, let's take the BBC series Walking With Dinosaurs , and cross it with The Land Before Time...

Yes, these dinosaurs talk, though they don't do mouth movements, so it's not nearly as cutesy or annoying as you might think.

I don't know what to think...

The movie itself is nice to look at.  Using actual scenery with CGI, the landscapes and backgrounds are lush and beautiful.

However, I'm not sure how impressed I was overall with the dinosaurs.

Maybe it was the inclusion of humans in Jurassic Park, but I almost think those dinosaurs looked more realistic.

Anyway, the story itself isn't that terrible, and it's a film that the whole family can sit and enjoy/tolerate for 90 minutes, then it's done.

Final Grade: C

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: No, I think I'm okay.

Be Yourself...Or At Least Someone Else..."A Case of You"

A Case of You (2013)
Rated R for language

Starring Justin Long, Evan Rachel Wood

Directed by Kat Coiro

The Story:

Sam (Long) is a writer who is looking for his muse to break out from the hack jobs he's been hired to write.  He meets Birdie (Wood) and is totally smitten.  Of course, she is fired from her job, and Sam takes to finding her by stalking her Facebook page.  Using her page to try and impress her, the two begin dating.  But the more in love he falls with her, the less of Sam is really being offered.  Will he continue to lie to impress the girl of his dreams, or come clean and risk losing her?

This is another one of those films that I wanted to like more than I did.

Nothing inherently wrong with it, and it passes 90 minutes fairly well.

However, when you're a romantic comedy, you have two very important hurdles to clear.

Be Funny.
Be Romantic.

How did this one fair?

It should have been funnier.

It should have been more romantic.

Again, one I'll chalk up to missed opportunities.

A great list of cameos that popped in to small, pivotal-ish roles to help the narrative along.

Vince Vaughn, Sam Rockwell and Brendan Fraser to name but a few.

Not terrible, not wonderful.

Give it a whirl if you're so inclined.

Final Grade: C

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: Nah, I'm good, thanks.

The Fourth for the Fourth..."Live Free or Die Hard"

I'm getting too old for this...

Whoops.

Wrong franchise!

The Story:

After over a decade, John McClane (Bruce Willis) is back in action again.  This time, he is asked to check on a computer hacker suspect named Matt (Justin Long).  He arrives in time to save Matt from an assassination attempt.  Now it's a race to get Matt back to the FBI and figure out what is going on.  It turns out that ex-Fed Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) is going to bring down the Federal Government by hacking into it and destroying it from within.  Only Matt has a chance of stopping him, and McClane is going to make sure he survives.  But when Gabriel kidnaps Lucy McClane (Mary Elizabeth Winstead)...

Well saving the world takes a backseat to saving his daughter.

This movie gets more right than it gets wrong in the franchise.  Say what you will about it, but it definitely was great to see Willis back on screen as John McClane.  Could they and should they have embraced the heritage of the film and embraced the R rating?

Probably so.

And I think that's where most longtime fans had an issue.  Not nearly as bloody or violent as its predecessors, and not nearly as much sarcastic profanity-filled snark from our hero.

Plus, I think a lot of people simply hated Justin Long.

Me, I liked the guy, and as was proved in Part 3, McClane with an everyman partner works.  Matt is clearly in over his head, but McClane is there to help out throughout the film.  Plus Long works as someone who is in so far over his head, he is just amazed at what looks like second nature to McClane, and he just doesn't see how that kind of heroism is possible.

Again, this installment straddles the heist versus political stance like part 2, but comes off more on the side of the heist, which is a good thing.

It was a nice reminder of how great the franchise was, and unlike say the 4th Indiana Jones movie, it didn't come back and run the franchise into the ground.

Yes, I'm willing to forgive the fighter jet surfing at the end, they had to get McClane off the freeway somehow... ;)

Giving this one a slight edge over Die Harder in the overall scheme of things.

Final Grade: B+

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: This one is growing on me.  : )

All Everyone Wants Is To Be "Accepted"

Where everyone that applies gets in!

The Story:

Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long) has graduated, but no college said yes to the potential freshman.  He hatches a plan with his friends and their only friend who got accepted into a college, Sherman (Jonah Hill) to create a website for a faux college where these others that got rejected could go in the fall.  They rent an old insane asylum near the campus of Harmon University so they actually have a place.  Then using Sherman's uncle Ben (Lewis Black) to improve as the Dean, the parents are fooled and Bartleby and the gang are set to enjoy a year off on their parents dime.  The only problem, the accepted button actually works, and a week after the guys think they've got a semester of slacking, suddenly find themselves with several hundred new applicants.  What's a fake college to do, except get serious about their education!

I find this movie to be hysterical.  Funny, well written, and Justin Long and Jonah Hill are masters at playing themselves in these roles.  The laughs come fast and furious, with most working perfectly to execution.

One thing I realized having not seen this one in a few years, Jonah Hill used to be Huuuuuge!  Dangerously so.  I have to give him credit for slimming down over the years and not getting bigger and exploding!

In a sense, this is the antithesis of Animal House.  Whereas they really didn't care about college, these kids simply weren't good enough to get in.

Yet a funny thing happened on their way to not-learning.

They actually learned a great deal, and come out better for it in the end.

The impassioned speech at the end as to why their school should be accredited and not become a boring clone of what works in other schools is in reality a wake-up call for what is wrong with the education system today, and it's getting only worse, not any better.

But that's way too deep for this movie.

: )

Final Grade: A-

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: I own it, and considering how funny it really is, I don't watch it nearly enough.  I'll blame the language, as it's a pretty hardcore PG-13 film!

Needs More Channing Tatum... "10 Years"

Has it been 10 years already?

The Story:

It's been 10 years since graduation, and a group of friends returns to celebrate their high school graduation.  Are friends still as tight as they once were?  Do any relationships rekindle or spark out after all this time?  Did everyone really grow up?

Only one way to find out...

Ten Years. 

That's about how long my wife thought this movie lasted. : )

Really, it's just about 100 minutes, but it's 100 minutes of talking heads and lots of different characters taking up screen time.

Whether you connect to any of them or not will depend a lot on the actors in question, and perhaps if they had a story that strikes a chord with your personally, or at least is interesting.

The players:  Jake (Channing Tatum) and his girlfriend arrive, but Jake can't shake his former flame Mary (Rosario Dawson) who arrives to the affair...married.

Marty (Justin Long) and AJ who both are trying to get with the popular girl one more time.

Former bully who decides to mend his ways by apologizing to everyone during the party, repeatedly.

Then there is the boy who made good, Reeves (Oscar Isaac) who went on to become a popular musician thanks in part to a song about a girl (Kate Mara) who he was in love with in school, and still is to this day.


It's a cute film with its heart in the right place, but overly long and a bit boring in many places.

Too much reliance on alcohol to get the party started and keep it going, and most of the conversations shouldn't take all night, but they do.  And as they drag on, so too does the movie.

It could have been shorter, tighter scripted and a much better affair.

My recommendation?

If you want a film that celebrates a 10 Year High School Reunion, check out Grosse Pointe Blanke instead.

: )

Final Grade: C

Would I Own It: Nope