DISCONNECT: Maybe One Of The Most Important Films You'll See This Year.

Hello, WORLD!! Smokkee Singleton here. Yep, It's been a long time. I got TONS of reviews for you but I'm trying to play catch up here so I'll try to stick to the movies that's out now and movies that you may have missed but I've been too busy on The Simpsons: Tapped Out (Yes, I've become addicted to that freaking game!) to write. I'm gonna kick my return to movie reviewing off with what I feel is one of the most important movies I've seen this year.


DISCONNECT stars ensemble cast in various stories about socializing in this age of technology we're in. One narrative features Jason Bateman acting as what is fast becoming his type of character as Rich, a family man that doesn't spend nearly as much time with his wife Lydia (Hope Davis) or their kids (Haley Ramm and Jonah Bobo) as he does on a computer until a tragedy hits. How this tragedy comes about also causes a crisis between a father and son (Frank Grillo and Colin Ford). In another story Andrea Risebough plays an up-and-coming TV reporter who happens visits a mail escort site and lands a story with one such escort under the condition that he remains anonymous, that leads to a bigger opportunity....if she'll reveal her source. Lastly, in what to me is the center piece of this movie, Alexander Skarsgard and Paula Patton play the Hulls, a married couple who become victims of identity theft due to one or maybe more of their online activities, including online gambling and chatroom conversations. Their relationship is strained by their actions and because of Facebook and Twitter, their story is probably the most accessible and the most relative to our society.

Alexander Skarsgard and Paula Patton as the Hulls in DISCONNECT

The first thing that strikes you about this movie is how much it will remind you of CRASH. To put it mildly, this feels like a continuation of the tone of that earlier Oscar winning movie, with the racial issues replaced with modern day socializing issues. That said, director Henry Alex Rubin does a great job showing the connected world as we know it as well as highlighting the dangers of it as well. My only complaint is that this movie gets wrapped up nice and neat with no issue truly resolved or ended on bad terms. We all know life usually doesn't work that way. How many truly happy endings have there been? Still, because of the issues this movie addresses, I feel that this is a must see for anybody that uses a smart phone or a computer. Log off and check this movie out. B-     

IRON MAN 3 Goes The Distance

Hello, WORLD!! Smokkee here. Just got a chance to watch the last part of the IRON MAN movie trilogy. It certainly ended like the last chapter but we all know after the inevitable AVENGERS 2 there may be another solo outing for Tony Stark yet.

This movie starts with that Stark at a New Year's Eve party in 1999, years before he became the hero we know him as today. Accompanying Tony at this gathering is his date Dr Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall) and his loyal bodyguard Happy (the first two IRON MAN movie's director Jon Favreau). Sneaking aboard their already crowded elevator is the slightly unsightly Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce, unrecognizable at first). He wants to offer Tony a chance to be part of his new company AIM and Tony plays a mean prank on him as a way of saying 'beat it'.

(SN: Interestingly enough I remember meeting Aldrich, Maya and Maya's invention, Extremis, during a period of time when I still read comic books on a regular basis but not in the capacity of how this movie portrays them.) 

Flash foward to the Iron Man Stark. How is Tony (Robert Downey Jr) these days anyway after the events of last summer? He doesn't appear to be too scarred by them but it's revealed early that he isn't the same. Of course he just met a god, a monster, a living legend from decades ago, not to mention an entire alien army. So nobody can blame him if he's not quite the same fun loving billionaire after all that. That entire experience haunts him. He starts to have panic attacks anytime somebody brings up the New York incident. So what does he do? He does what he does best: he works. He's become another type of Iron Man, one who just keeps going and going. He reveals he has barely slept since the event, dragging himself out of bed to work on, what else, improving his Iron Man techonology. In earlier scenes it appears his robotic assistant Jarvis (voiced by Paul Bettany) has more personality than the former fun loving Stark.

The one thing that he has going for him is the love of his best friend Pepper Potts (the always lovely Gweneth Paltrow). She has a meeting with a now handsome Killian (Pearce, now looking like Pearce) and she too rebuffs his offer, albeit not as cruelly as Stark. Meanwhile, Stark's friend Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), still in possession of the War Machine outfit, now called Iron Patriot (Marvel Comics fans would remember that name too), is on the hunt per the POTUS for a terrorist called the Mandarian (Ben Kingsley, who should be arrested for stealing every scene he's in), the mastermind behind a series of bombings that is confusing the hell out of everybody because no bomb casings are recovered from the scenes of the crimes.  

This sets in motion a chain of events that will leave.... No since spoiling anything right?

You're just here to see if this movie works, right? It totally works! And the 3D for once doesn't take anything away from the great story telling. If I have any complaints, it's that IM# starts kinda slow but once it takes its foot off the brakes, you're in for one hell of a ride. Wanna talk about this movie with me? Find me on Twitter as @MrGBIZ or catch me on Bunch.com.





F  

Whodunnit? There's An App For That!

Hello, WORLD!! Smokkee Singleton here, back again after fighting a losing battle. As much as I love trying new apps, sometimes I have TOO much fun with them. One of my favorite genres of movies, books, and games is mysteries. I grew up reading Donald J Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown and Agatha Christie's Poirot and Miss Marples. I also maybe the only guy who thinks that Clue is better than Monopoly too.

I still love mysteries to this day. Some of the best mysteries these days can be found in video games. Square Inc even has a game coming out for the PC, the XBox 360 and the PS3 where you get to solve your own murder. Using that logic, I knew there had to be at least 1 good mystery smartphone app I could play but since I haven't found one in 5+ years I was starting to give up hope.

Til I found one. Then that one app opened a floodgate.

Turns out there's a slew of great apps for people like me. I've been totally distracted lately playing a few of them. The first mystery game that I played was Murder Room although the one I ran across first was Ellie.....Help Me Out Please, both created by ATEAM, Inc. I downloaded both at the same time.

That tablecloth will come in handy.

Murder Room (for Android & iOS) starts you off locked in a room with a another man who has a chainsaw wearing a pig's head and a little girl that, well, play the game and find out. The object is simply: try to escape the room and/or the chainsaw. The puzzles rang from simple to WTF but I got several bad endings before I got what is labeled a "True Ending" It kinda reminded me of the Choose Your Own Adventure books in that regard. Even more, after you get the "True Ending", you're then able to purchase "Another Room", it's the back story concerning the guy in the pig and the events that happen prior to the events in the first story (maybe). Both games are equally fun to play but the plot of both halves don't add up totally, a minor flaw.








Ellie (Android, iOS) has a different mystery to solve. You're watching a monitor of a room that has a the titular character locked inside. Your objective here is to help poor Ellie escape the room. I haven't finished playing this story yet, but I believe their is a 2nd mission here too. And it isn't as dark a story as Murder Room so the experience isn't quite as good to me as MR but it does have some tough puzzles to figure out nonetheless.

This dream sequence may hold the answer.

Now for my favorite mystery app so far, Who Is The Killer (Episode I) (Android, iOS)! In this game you're an unnamed detective that is the house guest of a lady named the Baroness. She's one of 7 other people who are there besides you. You're only here for 7 days but not without excitement. You see, every day you're there, somebody dies! Now, this game differs from the above two because THIS is my idea of a mystery. You have to obtain clues to figure out who the killer is and there's various ways to do this. One such way is to talk to the other guests. In this sense, it definitely reminds one of the board game Clue. There's several mini games, including dream sequences and anagram puzzles, that also help you solve the mystery. I think. I haven't solved it yet but wait til I get done with this review. Of course by this being Episode I it's safe to assume there's more chapters and so far I think it there is an Episode II and III already.

Like I said, I ran across TONS of these apps but a lot of them are those boring point n click games that make you sick after about 10 minutes of play. These games haven't made me nauseous yet though. Well, that's it for now WORLD.   Let me know if you found any of these games enjoyable.

As always, you can catch me on Twitter as @MrGBIZ.







   

SmokkeeOn... DJANGO UNCHAINED

Hello, WORLD!! Smokkee here to talk about Quentin Tarantino's latest masterpiece, DJANGO UNCHAINED. If you haven't seen this movie, stop reading this and go do so ASAP. If you want to read my review first, look up my Rotten Tomatoes or Gofobo review. I'm not reviewing it here. I want to discuss the controversy surrounding this movie.

And why it's unnecessary.

Now, unless you've been in a coma for the past 2 years, you gotta be lil familiar with this movie. Set in the days where slavery is alive and well in America, DJANGO tells the story of the titular slave (played by Jamie Foxx) who not only becomes a freeman thanks to a deal he makes with Dr Schultz, a bounty hunting dentist (played by the always great Christopher Waltz) , he also finds employment as a bounty hunter himself. Now free Jamie's Django sets about finding his beloved with Broomhilda (Foxx's costar in RAY Kerry Washington) and manages to find her at a plantation run by Lenardo DiCaprio.

I understand that race will always be a touchy subject but to be offended by any of that would be inane. First, if you had no idea that a movie about slavery would have racist undertones in it, then I'm not sure we should be having this conversation in the first place. Second, if you've seen Alex Haley's ROOTS, the movie many people consider THE movie on slavery, then nothing in this movie should have offended any African American. That movie was brutal in it's portrayal of slavery and it's language was just as harsh. There's no scene in DJANGO that can mirror any of Toby's torture scenes.

Stephen, the most racist character in DJANGO UNCHAINED.

Now Quentin Tarantino DOES seem to be infatuated w/the "N" word. He himself has used it on several occasions in almost every one of the pictures he made. So NOW it's offensive? It's a tad bit too late for that. Lastly, I want to point out Samuel L Jackson's Stephen character. If anything, the Caucasians in DJANGO use the 'n' word only because that's how they were brought up. What's the deal with Stephen then? He clearly is another freed slave, like Django, but his attitude is more like a slave-owners than any other slave owner in the movie. To make a movie about slavery and have the most racist character actually be an African American was genius! And it was fairly obvious genius at that, unlike given Schultz a first name of King (Dr King, get it?).    

Like I said, just some observations. It's a great movie, well worth watching. Only people with nothing else better to do with there tiem will find anything wrong with it. At least that's what I think. Let me know what you thought about it, WORLD. I'd love to hear from you.

FLIPBOARD: THE FACEBOOK AND TWITTER APP YOU'VE BEEN FOR!!

Hello, WORLD! In my never-ending quest to find the perfect app for social networks, I've seen plenty of contenders like Tweetdeck and Seesmic. I've also seen plenty of pretenders like Social and the highly touted but unremarkable UberSocial. What I have not seen is an app like Flipboard.

     First of all, it isn't a social network in itself but it is alive thanks to social networks. Consider Twitter and Facebook to be the blood that pumps through Flipboard's veins. Flipboard essentially presents news and information from a number of categorizes in a Pulse style manner, albeit more stylish. You actually "flip" your screen up or down to move on to the next tidbit or a previous post. You choose from a number of categories including business and food to add to your new feed. The source of the feed actually originates on social networks! 

On Flipboard's Wikipedia page it is stated that "It collects the content of social media and other websites and presents it in magazine format and allows users to "flip" through their social-networking feeds and feeds from websites that have partnered with the company." You get the most talked about issues from Facebook and Twitter's trending topics and updates all in one spot. The flipping of the pages is one of the most stylish innovations I've seen on an app. It almost creates the air of you turning a page in a magazine or a book. My own pages look incredible with this effect if I do say so myself.  



 
And that's my favorite thing about this app. Flipboard can keep you connected to all of your favorite social networks. Along with your Twitter and Facebook pages, you can add your Tumblr feed, your Google+ feed, even videos on You Tube from channels you are subscribed to. You can also post to those various social networks and a few others like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Flickr.   

I'd be negligent if I failed to mention the minor things that I found wrong with this app. My number one issue at this point while it allows you to post to all of your social networks, it won't allow you to do so at one time. This is a key selling point for Tweetdeck and other apps but it seems almost intentionally omitted here. It's minor because if you copy your own post you can still post to several networks in a quicker time than going app to app and posting it in this manner. Also, Android users with slide out QWERTYs will be a little miffed when they realize that this app on mobile Androids acts like it is stuck on screen orientation lock - there is no side view to this app that I've seen yet. Lastly, there's the lack of notifications issue which is not surprising seeing how many apps appear to lack this feature this days. Why they lack this feature is beyond my understanding. However for the price of admission (free), Android users don't have much else to complain about plus I suspect that some of these omissions won't be missing to much longer. 

Originally conceived for the iPad you can now check out the Android version of "Flipboard: Your News Magazine" Also the iOS version has recently integrated Google+ and YouTube onto it's app. Check it out and let me know what you think about it, WORLD!

10 of the Worse Plot Twists Of Recent Cinema

One of the dumbest movies of recent history.

Hello, WORLD!!! Smokkee here. I got a chance to watch RED LIGHTS (B-), which should have opened here in Chicago last Friday (but oddly I haven't heard anything about it), at the beginning of the week before last and it has stayed with me every since but I can't figure out why for the life of me. I liked RED LIGHTS, for what it's worth, but I can't say there would be no hesistation on my part to recommend this movie. I've also seen TED, SAVAGES, and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, all great movies I'd recommend without hesistation. I 'd recommend this RED LIGHT movie too, just a little more cautiously just because of the fact that I haven't stopped thinking about it. I loved it's plot, it's stars, but the pacing and the ending...

I liked this movie in spite of the
blah ending.

Now I'm jumping the gun. Let me give you a quick synopsis. Dr Margeret Matheson and her assistant/sidekick Dr Tom Buckley, played with obvious glee by Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy respectively, are professional paranormal activity debunkers. You know, they go around exposing all psychics and ghost whispers, etc , as the frauds they are. The duo has done this to all these so-called phenoms they've ever encountered. Well, almost all. There is one in particular, a Simon Silva, played by Robert DeNiro, who disappeared after a TV appearance where Dr Matheson attacked him on air 30 years ago. He comes out of retirement for one last performance and if Dr Matheson and Buckley plan on proving him a fraud, they've only got this one last shot to do it.

OK. Once again, I liked it. I loved the three main characters, especially DeNiro's Silva although Weaver's Maggie seems to be having the most fun in this movie. What didn't I like? The end. The shock: I didn't see it coming. One of my keys for a great movie is either I don't see it coming or I see it coming but it comes in a way I've never seen before. Neither happens here. As soon as the credits rolled, I heard my fellow moviegoers go "What happened?","I don't get it.",etc. I know what happened. I got it when it happened. The thing was it didn't do anything for me. If you've seen Christopher Nolan's MEMENTO (like I suggest every other week), then you know what I'm talking about. I won't spoil it here but the end of that movie made you wanna watch it again to be sure you wasn't crazy. Ditto Nolan's least talked about big name movie, the under-appreciated THE PRESTIGE. That movie's ending wrought as many multiple endings as MEMENTO did.

Don't get me wrong. As I said, I liked this RED LIGHT movie. In general the endings of movies can make and break movies. This ending doesn't work, sorry, but it's not a deal breaker. Unlike the ending of THE USUAL SUSPECTS, for instance, which makes that movie that much better, this ending feels forced. TUS ending is unforced as well as completely implausible but still manages to work. Films are funny like that sometime. The plot twist also can make or break movies. If you remember watching THE SIXTH SENSE for the first time and was lucky enough to see it before people started blabbing the ending, then you know exactly what I'm talking about here. The movie was ho-hum through out until you arrived at the ending, which made you want to go back and watch the whole movie again just to see how you didn't see what the ending told you earlier. Upon the second and third viewings, you realize how good this movie really was.  

With all that said, let's take a look at some of the other movie endings in recent cinema that left a bad taste in our mouths. Sometimes, like RED LIGHTS, these movies still work. Other times, well, not so much.

THE BOOK OF ELI (C): The premise of this 2010 movie was mouth watering to movie buffs. A samarai-type wanderer (Denzel Washington) is given the task of transporting a powerful book in by a mysterious voice he here's from one side of a apocalyptic United States to the other. The ending, if you didn't  see it coming, should have been a mind blower. I for one, did not see the end coming and no, my mind was not blown away by it. It's not really a bad movie. Denzel is Denzel, Gary Oldman as the head baddie and Mila Kunis as a femme fatale both showed a lil acting chops here as well but for some reason, the plot twist of this movie did nothing for me whatsoever.

HIGH TENSION (F): Oooooh, this should have been good. A freaky serial killer is stalking to girls and 1 of their families in the woods. How do we know he's freaky? One of his victims is forced to give him some head... after he decapitates her. Should be classic at least, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. This is a 2003 snooze fest. The end? Don't get me started. I HATE when movies cheat, that is I hate when movie shows you one thing then switches what you saw at the end. That's not fair. Of course, this movie would have been see thru had it not but still... Not only does this movie not work, the ending insults our intelligence. I don't even consider this a movie bcause of that.

INBREAKABLE (B-): Get ready for a trend, folks. This is the 1st of the M Night Shyamalan movies to make it to this list but it won't be the last. This one, from 2000, is actually not that bad not only compared to the rest of his films but to the rest of the films on this list. The premise: An everyman (Bruce Willis) is coming to terms with the fact that he may be invincible. He's informed of this by his brittle boned friend Elijah (a scary Samuel L Jackson). This movie was OK, the pacing was about as slow as RED LIGHTS though. The ending could have been much better. It shocked me but for the wrong reason. After all that slowly painful buildup, THIS was the best you could give me? Thanks but no thanks. Interesting note: this was M Night's second movie after the hugely successly THE SIXTH SENSE. I was soooo waiting on this movie and I hated that it wasn't as good as I thought it would be. Even worse, every movie made after this was a step further away from must see cinema. This was the beginning of the end. He did redeem himself with the excellent DEVILS but he only produced that; maybe that explains why it was so good.





SIGNS (C+): Former priest Mel Gibson is a single dad and Joaquin Phoenix is his former minor league baseball playing brother who start having those weird crop circles pop up in their family own farm in this thriller from 2002. The twist is...there is no twist. Crop circles? Where have I heard that from. If I could only remember where I've heard that before maybe that would be a spoiler. You know where you heard it from. Add this predictable ending to a sidestory that could double as a sleeping aide for insomniacs about the guy (M Night in a cameo appearance, something he did in all of his movies until they really started to suck) who caused the auto accident that caused the death of Gibson's character Gramham Hess' wife. While it does tie in to the ending, it was a totally snoozefest; the fact that the ending depended on the subplot probably had a lot to do with it feeling like a let down. Nevertheless, this is still probably M Night's 3rd best movie. In spite of the weak ending and the slow pacing, it manages to entertain. The best parts are the very few moments of actual terror that this thriller delivers.

THE VILLAGE (D-): M Night's 3rd movie to make this list is probably just as good as HIGH TENSION. Yeah, I said it. The titlular village in this 2004 thriller is surrounded by a woods that has some menacing creatures in it that prevents villagers from leaving.  The twist is actually pretty good here. The thing is by the time you find out what the twist is, you probably won't care or are asleep. This movie's pacing is equivalent to counting sheep. Would be M Night's worse but alas, he kept making movies.  Joaquin Phoenix, Sigourney Weaver, Adrien Brody, & William Hurt are all totally wasted here. Only person who seems any good here is Bryce Dallas Howard and that's only probably because has made a career on wasting herself in worse vehicles.





THE HAPPENING (F): For some strange reason, people all over in a New York town are committing suicides and a band of survivors try not to follow the masses' example in this 2008 snoozefest. Mark Wahlberg & Zooey Deschanel are giving it the best they can to both survive the epidemic and keep this movie a float. They manage to pull off one. The twist here is about probably the most boring twist I've seen, if you even wanna call it a twist. There's a horror movie that came out a few years back based on a surprisingly good novel that had almost this exact same premise. That movie sucked and the reason it sucked is there is no way you can make a movie with this type of 'killer' and make it interesting. At least that's what I think the problem was. Either or, neither of these movies works in any sense.



THE NUMBER 23 (D-): If you've seen this 2007 Jim Carrey snoozefest, you're an insomniac. Unfornately, I don't require a lot of sleep so yeah, I've watched it in it's entirety. I don't know why. The whole premise is timid dogcatcher Walter (Carrey)   finds a book about the #23 that not only stirs up old memories and cause him to question his own sanity, but sends him on the dumbest investigative quest I've ever seen. Complete waste of time. If you didn't know who the killer was here, you're as lost a cause as those of us who actually liked this movie. Like HIGH/HAUTE TENSION avoid this movie like the plague.








HANCOCK (C+): Expecting a new type of superhero movie, I was excited when I went to see this 2008 Will Smith vehicle. It did exceed my expectations but not by much. The only thing that I really did not like about this movie is the plot twist, which doesn't even come at the end. If this movie was divided into three acts the twist would be found more toward the end of the second act. And guess what? Blah? It does take away or add to this movie. I was expecting...to be honest, IDK what I was expecting but I do know I didn't get it. The end was as boring as the twist was. I can't say I hated this movie like I hated 23 or HIGH TENSION. Actually I still like this movie but it could have been way better and hopefully, the inevitable sequel is what I expect it to be, if I even expect anything. 



WAY OF THE GUN (B-): WOTG is my favorite movie on this list. The ending sucks big time. The plot is all over the place and you may need a score card to keep track of the characters, the double crosses and the double double crosses. Why do I like this movie? Because I know what it was aiming at and I admire it's audacity in that regards.  It's aim is to be a modern retelling of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with Benicio Del Toro and Ryan Phillippe as the pair of modern day outlaws in this 2000 movie. The twist at the end isn't the worst I've seen but after the fireworks this movie offers, it's more than a little anticlimatic to say the least. Totally could have been left off. If the original Butch/Sundance movie had the perfect ending, this should have totally had the same ending. It did, then the twist came and that's why it doesn't get an A for it's effort.




DIABOLIQUE (D-)/ THE VANISHING (D-): These two movies have something in common with WOTG: they are remakes of some damn good movies that more than likely you've never seen unless you're truly into films. These remakes are more blatant, copying scene after scene almost indentically to their sources. What's crazier about 1996 Sharon Stone powered DIABOLIQUE is that it comes from a movie that has one of the greatest twist endings of all time, 1955's French masterpiece LES DIABOLIQUES. The wife and the mistress (Sharon Stone) of a school master (Chazz Palminteri) plot to kill him. When they go through with it, that's when the insanity really starts. Story identical to the original, scene's identical, but why doesn't it work here? Among other things pacing character developement, lighting. Everything that wasn't wrong in the original is fixed here, with disasterous results. Never is this a good thing. Not to mention the original's best scene, which added to the twist, is expertly mauled here .

The original THE VANISHING, a Dutch-French 1988 offering about the boyfriend of a missing woman and his efforts to find her, had a helluva twist ending that made the film as powerful as possible. Americanization surprisingly keeps that ending then burns us when it adds a TV afterschool special-type happy ending (sorta) that totally slaps the viewers in the face, especially if you've viewed the original. Kiefer Sutherland is desperate boyfriend in the remake. Besides the obvious upbeat ending change this movie slowed the pace of the original to a crawl. The twist in the original is the end. The twist here gets watered down like a circus elephant. If you must see these too movies, brave the subtitles of the originals. And be prepared to be scared. Oh, and thank me when you get a chance. You're gonna love them.





   

Siri.....On An Android?!?

Hello, WORLD!! Smokkee Singleton, here. If you've been here on mbefore, you know I say that all the time. It kinda helps new readers get familiar with my voice. Speaking of voices, it kinda ties in to what this post is about. While the cell phone battle which at this point is almost solely between the iOS and the Android systems drags on, the differences between the 2 systems are slowly disappearing. Case in point: one of the iOS based iPhone 4's biggest advantages over the Android has been Siri, a voice operated app that turns your smart phone into a smart mouthed virtual PA. The Android has always had some kinda voice operated app; never has it had one that talked back though! After playing with it for about a week, there's a few minor tweaks that need to be worked out, including a somewhat limited number of responses (as compared to Siri), but I think I've received at least 2 updates that added new responses in that time frame so the creators of this app are constantly working on improving it. Anyway, since it's free, why not give it a try? Need a link? BAM!!:  Check out "Skyvi (Siri for Android)". That's it for now, WORLD, but if you try it because of me please let me know what you thought about it.