Ghostbusters (2016)

Before you all jump down my throat and start giving me shit about seeing the new Ghostbusters movie let me tell you this: the original Ghostbusters movies are two of my all-time favorite movies ever. I know them both word for word and scene for scene. I have been watching the Ghostbusters movies since before the age of five. My parents have me and my older cousin on video running around with his play proton pack when we were little. They are two movies that I have nothing but the fondest memories of watching and that have impacted my life. I also have nothing but respect for the cast and director of the originals. Usually I do not like remakes, I freak out whenever I hear Hollywood finances a remake instead of something original. But, let me tell you guys, the new Ghostbusters movie is hilarious and in no way even a remake. I say it is a different telling with some throwbacks to the originals.

            This story begins with Dr. Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig). She is a professor of physics at Columbia University in New York City. Just before a class she is approached by a man who has read her book about ghosts and the paranormal. He needs Erin’s help with investigating a ghost in an old Victorian mansion he is a historian at. Erin is furious to find out her old friend Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) is selling the book they had both written together. This book could jeopardize her tenure that she is up for at the college.

            Erin goes to see Abby who is working at some sort of school for science. Abby is now working with Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) on new devices to catch ghosts. Erin tells them about the guys who came to see her about investigating the mansion. Abby and Hotlzmann are so excited so go check the place out that Erin tells them she will only take them to the mansion if Abby takes the book off of Amazon.

            At the mansion they find a full body apparition. All three women cannot believe what they are seeing. Erin tries to go up to talk to the apparition and the ghost spews goo all over her. Erin now fully believes there are such things as ghosts and the paranormal and her shouting her new belief was filmed by Holtzmann which Abby then puts onto the Internet. Columbia finds the video and kicks Erin out.

            Soon Erin, Abby, and Holtzmann get a call from a MTA worker named Patty (Leslie Jones) who says she saw a ghost in the subway after she had tried to chase after a guy who walked off that platform and onto the tracks. Before she saw the ghost she had seen something that had been placed on the electrical panel and sparked and exploded. They all see the ghost but they have no way of catching it. Or they do but they have nowhere to store it. Holtzmann keeps improving on their machines to catch ghosts as the story progresses.

            Ghost sightings occur at different places around the city. Erin notices a pattern. The pattern actually forms an X over a certain place that could be used to open up a portal for all the ghosts to come out of. And of course the portal gets opened and the Ghostbusters have to hilariously save the day.

            There is so much more to the story but why would I want to ruin a good thing? You guys have to go see it for yourselves.

            Obviously the major difference in this movie is that the cast is entirely female. That is awesome and if you do not think an all-female cast like this is awesome stop reading this review and get with the modern times. I think it was completely genius to have an all-female cast and especially because they are four of the funniest actresses around today. Kate McKinnon practically steals the entire movie. Every scene Holtzmann was in I cracked up so hard. I have never seen McKinnon on Saturday Night Live, I have only ever seen her in her bit part in the movie Sisters. She was even hilarious in that small part. Holtzmann is eccentric and fantastic and I now count her as one of my all-time favorite movie characters. With Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig I feel like their comedy was a bit toned down. To me they usually play these over the top comedic characters and in this movie they were not as over the top (I am sure that made absolutely no sense whatsoever to anyone but me). Leslie Jones was hilarious. I do not think I have never seen her in anything else. I enjoyed her character a lot too. Cecily Strong, also from Saturday Night Live, has a small part. I like her, I never mind seeing her in a TV show or movie, she is so funny.

I have to give a mention to some of the actors. Chris Hemsworth plays the secretary. I am not too much a fan of his acting but he was not that bad. It was funny seeing Hemsworth play such a clueless person. I nearly freaked out when I saw Matt Walsh. You have seen the guy in so many movies and shows as a bit player. I know him as Trotter from Upright Citizens Brigade.

            This Ghostbusters movie would not be complete without cameos from the original cast. Spoiler alert: they do not make cameos as their original characters. All of the cameos were great.

            Ghostbusters was one of the best times I have had sitting through a movie in the theater. Everything about it, to me, was perfect. The best was that it did not for one moment take itself too seriously and that helped so much because it was just silly all around. Paul Feig’s direction was awesome; his direction of Kate McKinnon’s scenes was the best. The cast could in no way have been any better. Do not let all the negative reviews get in your head and turn you off to seeing it. As I said, I am a diehard fan of the original movies and I loved this new Ghostbusters. Absolutely go see Ghostbusters as soon as you can.

 

Internet Famous (2016)

Before I got into the YouTube world last year I never knew there was such a thing as being internet famous. I literally thought YouTube was a place for crazy viral videos that came up on Tosh.0, finding classic movies, and ripping music and watching music videos. Then I got into the world of YouTube vloggers and my life has not been the same since in so many great ways. Since getting into the YouTube world I have become familiar with the stereotypes of the different types of vloggers and other social media celebs. There are the cute baby videos and family vloggers, the people who create parody videos, the teenagers who create comedy skits and advice videos and appeal to younger teenagers, there still are cat videos, there are some people who want to create and act in something so they turn to the web, and a whole host of other kinds of vloggers and web celebs. All these kinds of vloggers and personalities are just like movies and actors and actors in traditional Hollywood.

Vlogging and traditional Hollywood are rife for parodying. Mel Brooks made an entire career parodying everything from history to Hitchcock films to Frankenstein. With so many different kinds of personalities and silly kinds of videos being uploaded, all the vloggers on YouTube are definitely not safe from being parodied at all. That is just what the movie Internet Famous does and in the funniest, cleverest ways.

The story focuses on a group of popular vloggers who are placed in a competition through a popular talk show simply called Chris! to get a show of their own. The vloggers include Thomas Butterman (Shane Dawson) has millions of views and fans through his pop song parodies, Danny Wasserman thinks he is a serious film maker even though his videos are just of his cat walking around the house, Amber Day thinks she is a serious comedian but only has views because of her barely there clothing and because she is very pretty, Dale Hand (Steve Greene) makes videos scaring the shit out of his one-year-old daughter Lucy, and Veronica Dekker had a video she made where she was younger doing some kind of wobbly walk and then someone put the video to music and the video became a viral success and she has not been able to be taken seriously in Hollywood because of it.

Veronica thinks this contest could give her the chance to be more than just the Wobbly Walk girl. Thomas just wants to be more famous than he is and thinks his “employees” will help him win, Dale really does not have too much of a reason for doing the show, Danny wants to be taken seriously as a film maker without his cat even though his cat is the whole reason for his success, and Amber really kind of has no idea what the hell is going on.

I am not really going to go too much detail with Internet Famous because there is so much going on. Just know it is hilarious, ridiculously silly, and so much fun to watch.

I first heard about Internet Famous because I watch the vlogger Nikki Limo. Limo is one of those YouTubers who is an actress. She has made skits and vlogs for a number of years now. She is hilarious and one of my favorite YouTubers. Limo is not in the movie but her fiancé, Steve Greene, plays Dale Hand and wrote the movie as well. Limo had been snapchatting the premiere and after I found out Greene wrote it I definitely had to see it. I also like Shane Dawson and knew he was in it as well. I did not know what to expect with the story of Internet Famous when I watched it. I was laughing at its silliness from the moment it began and by the end I loved it. If it had not been for Nikki Limo’s snapchat it would have taken me a while to watch Internet Famous, so I cannot thank Limo enough for snapchatting the premiere.

            While I found Internet Famous to be hilarious and enjoyable, I think it definitely helped that I am familiar with the YouTube vlogging culture (I am now a vlogger! Check out the link to my channel where I also review movies on the side bar). With that being said Internet Famous will be more fun to watch if you are familiar with the YouTube vlogging culture. 

Red: Werewolf Hunter (2010)

Becoming a fan of an actor or actress is like being in throes of love. You come to like the actor or actress from something you saw them be it a TV show or a movie. You like their part and their acting in the part so you decide to go looking for other movies or shows they were in. Then you may star to casually reblog stuff about them or their show or movie you first watched them in on Tumblr and then that turns into obsessive reblogging and talking to other fans. You also start to post pics of them or their projects on your Instagram and tweet out to them and about them. The biggest thing for me if I like an actor or actress I will obsessively search for whatever movies or other shows they were in. For me watching an actor or actress in another project besides the one I am used to seeing them is like gauging their acting ability.

            What on earth does that blabbering have to do with the movie Red: Werewolf Hunter? It has EVERYTHING to do with why I sat through this shit show. I am currently girl crushing hardcore over Felicia Day. Before I get to my rambling about Felicia Day let me break down the horribleness of this movie.

            Virginia “Red” Sullivan (Day) is bringing her fiancé Nathan back to her family home in a small town. Virginia is greeted by her grandmother and her one brother Jake. Jake keeps making remarks and Virginia shuts him down. He asks Nathan if he knows the real reason why his sister is nicknamed Red. That is her nickname, not just because of her hair, but because it is a nickname given to the first girl in the family. While out for a walk, a man comes out from the woods along the driveway. The man grabs Nathan and then falls to the ground and turns to ash. Virginia’s other brother Marcus is a police officer. He comes and just tells Jake to scoop the guy up. Nathan is confused. He is an FBI agent and wants protocol to be followed when it comes to a crime scene. Marcus just totally ignores him.

            Virginia tells Nathan the truth of what he saw and what her family does. For generations the family has been hunting werewolves. The news is a lot for Nathan to take so he decides to go for a walk in the woods. Marcus does not think that is a good idea for Nathan to go off alone but Virginia says that the moon is not full. While out in the woods Nathan comes across a man called Gabriel who turns into a werewolf at will. Gabriel runs after Nathan and bites him. Marcus and Virginia hear the wolf howl and run into the woods looking for Nathan. The bite on his neck disappears by the time Virginia gets to him.

            Of course the symptoms of the bite start coming on for Nathan such as sharper hearing and flashbacks to the night he got bit. When there is a full moon he changes. He is eventually able to tell Virginia that Gabriel changed at will. The whole Sullivan crew becomes even more serious about their job to kill werewolves once they hear the news.

            Since this is supposed to be a “horror” movie pretty much everyone besides Virginia get hilariously and ridiculously killed off one by one.

            Alright, so as I said the one and only reason I even remotely sat through this movie is because of Felicia Day. I adore that woman so damn much right now. All the other actors in the movie were pitiful besides Day (and Rosemary Dunsmore who was the grandmother. She recently played Rachel Duncan’s mother on Orphan Black). I recently became a fan of Day’s after reading her book You’re Never Weird on the Internet (almost) and came to love her as an actress after watching her fantastic series The Guild (you can watch it on YouTube and on Netflix). If you are obsessed with the show Supernatural like a lot of my friends are, you may know Day as Charlie Bradbury.

            Red: Werewolf Hunter was awful. I was laughing so hard at most of the scenes and a lot of the acting. What also kind of sucked about this movie was that the story was decent it was something different. I think if the acting and production had been a bit better the movie would not have been bad. Even though Red: Werewolf Hunter was terrible I do not mind that I sat through it for Felicia Day and I will only say to watch the movie if you are a fan of hers.