So the call from the last episode that Lydia (Regina King) made to the mystery man has come with some repercussions apparently. Lydia is throwing up in the morning, she has no appetite and as you would have it, is pregnant.

This entire episode seemed like an ode to single motherhood as Ruben Robinson (Dorian Missick)  and Lydia investigate the fatal stabbing of a man who got killed within his own store. Turns out that this man had extended a helpful hand to a mother, her daughter and another homeless girl who stayed with him. As with any favor there is normally a fee and this man took it upon himself to sleep with both young girls and one decided to stab him up for cheating on her with the other. The mother of this girl turns herself in as the murderer but by the end of the episode Lydia was chasing down the girl who really killed him and it ends with Ruben putting a bullet in her shoulder. 

The whole aspect of this case gave Lydia a lot of face time with the mother who expressed her love for her troubled daughter and tried her best to take her place in prison. Lydia, who was somewhat considering an abortion thinks deeply with every situation on her pregnancy and by the end (after telling the daughter how much her mother loves her), she decides that she is going to keep the child. I am not too sure as to what this new pregnancy thing will do for the Lydia angle of SouthLAnd but it was very unexpected.

Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie)  is still going through his struggles with unappreciative citizens around town and finally decides to move next to Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy) where most of the cops lived in LA. Speaking of Sammy, our favorite goofball  - after chasing a purse snatcher and running by a trash can that was making noise, he accidentally shoots it and ends up hitting a dog and nearly killing it. Calling in some favors and agreeing to pay $1300 for the surgery needed to heal the dog, Sammy becomes the butt of the jokes for Dewey and Ben as they cannot believe that he spent that much money to save a dog. The punchline in the end was that he tried taking the dog home (he thought it was a stray) but the owners show up – a little girl and her dad and he was still  made to pay for the surgery.

Finally the duo of Jessica Tang (Lucy Liu) and John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz) are called out to remove a homeless man from private property. When they questioned the man who suffered from dementia,  they found out from his tattoo that he was an ex-marine. The episode tackled the very real issue of forgotten veterans as we see Tang go into overdrive trying to get the man an ID to have him sent to a shelter. Turns out that Jessica is a military baby whose dad was a hardcore marine… this is our bonus clue into the mysterious Tang for the episode. So for those of you keeping score at home, let’s see what we have on Tang…

• She once fought a brute at a routine traffic stop who beat her within an inch of her life and it’s on YouTUBE.
• She has dated a few Jewish men and had a lot of sex with them.
• Her father was a Marine, taught her “Semper Fi” and “no man left behind”, which she takes seriously.

I wonder what the big bad secret will be about Jessica? I just wonder this because normally the slow roll on a character’s background is normally a setup for something crazy… this is just my skepticism but we shall see.

The father of Lydia’s baby is a mystery and I am thinking that it’s Sal from seasons 1- 3… okay, okay I kid, I kid… but I know it’s going to end up being someone random like Ben… Plus Sal has been missing in action since season 3. Who do you readers think it is? Is Russell back and tapping that? Or maybe Lydia’s still sleeping with Josie’s son.

Originally posted at: Spicy Movie Dogs

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An amazing journey into the lives of 3 very realistic teenage boys during a year in High School. Chronicle is the story of Andrew Detmer (Dane Dehaan), Matt Garetty (Alex Russell) and Steve Montgomery (Michael B. Jordan) as they discover ultimate power through telekenesis and become the closest of friends for it. But with great power comes great responsibility and one of the boys isn’t able to handle his progression as his emotions and living conditions drive him to a darkness that only his friends can save him from.

If you are a fan of anime, this movie will ring very close to Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira for you. The trio of friends include the standard abused, social misfit, the cool jock that everybody likes and then one very normal guy. Unlike most movies that take this angle however, Chronicle’s acting is very well done. I was easily impressed with Michael B. Johnson as Steve, who was the cool jock friend. It is normally hard to pull off that role yet he somehow made it easy and put to shame all of the players in the past that have tried it. Cool guys (especially teens) are typically unlikable, corny or dare I say douchebags, but not Steve. He stole every scene that he was in and the audience generally felt for him and cared for his well-being. Very, very impressive.

The one downside to Chronicle is the fact that it’s yet another 3rd person camera movie where we are led to believe that one of the friends is toting around a camera the entire time. Whenever the camera was off we were made to see things from someone else’s camera or security camera’s in the general vicinity, yet no explanation was given of this. I assume the footage (per the norm) is meant to be what was collected after “the event”, but that is purely speculative being that it was never told to us – the audience.

Chronicle had a very small cast of players which made it extremely easy to follow and the direction made it even easier to keep up with the lives of these 3 boys. The story was well done as it delved into the sci-fi area of super powers but keeps it home by touching on the all too common theme of bullying and child abuse.

Make sure you get out to see Chronicle as it is bound to become a cult classic amongst comic book nerds and sci-fi fans alike.

Originally posted at: Spicy Movie Dogs

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Is it me or is officer Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie) slipping deeper and deeper into the world of Copland and farther away from the white knight that he set out to be when he first donned the uniform? With the new partner in Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy), Ben has bypassed all of his moral standing to become what you can call a “frat boy” for the LAPD. This season has him sleeping with random young girls (co-ed), he punched a teen in the face last episode and is almost proud of his newly found fame by way of the internet when the incident was recorded. Hell at the beginning of this episode he is spooning with his latest victim who takes pictures of them together in order to show her friends how she got sexed up by the cop who punched that girl.

Another scene has Ben atop a bar in the afterhours, wearing a dunce cap and it was so out of character for him. Surely this is a far cry from the Ben we have been watching for 2 seasons past. I can see that a crash back to reality is more than due for the young cop but what and where will it be – is still to be determined.

Community came off as a character building episode as the normally private officer Jessica Tang (Lucy Liu) reveals to John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz) that she used to date and sleep with Jewish guys in the past… excuse me… what was that? Hmm, so we can wave the innocent amazon stereotype far away from Jessica, she’s pretty much human.

Sporting a shiner from the cocaine monster that punched her in the face last episode, she and Cooper answer a call from a convicted child molester whose neighbor had kidnapped him, shaved his head and used a permanent marker to write “child molester” in various different ways all over his scalp. The 2 have a deep discussion after scolding the neighbor and dropping the victim back into the warzone but both agreed that they wished more was done to punish people that hurt kids.

Later that night Cooper and Tang receive another call from the same neighborhood as the molester was trapped in his home and made to burn to death with everybody in the neighborhood coming forward to say they did it. Needless to say either of the officers seemed to care too much to investigate. It would have been worthless… maybe the guy had gone too far near the playground.

“Community” was the standard “day in the life of” episode for the LAPD and Detectives Lydia (Regina King) and Ruben Robinson’s (Dorian Missick) time was taken up with investigating the murder of a Latin woman that was extorting money from her own people via real estate. The woman was murdered, drug under a bridge via a shopping cart and there was enough evidence to make it an open and shut case for the vagrant son of one of her victims.

Ruben reveals that he is very much a loving family man and rehearses a speech for his 15 yr old’s birthday the entire time.  Lydia is supportive and seems genuine, until Ruben leaves for his daughter’s party and she makes a phone call to a mysterious person asking if she can come over… fans like me wonder at who it was she called being that Lydia’s rocky love life has always circulated around people she worked with but I am sure more will be revealed as the episodes go on.

* * * *

To be honest, if you were to miss an episode of SouthLAnd, this would be the one to miss. There was nothing major to learn or to remember for any of the cops and it felt very much like filler. Hopefully next week will bring us a bit of drama and possibly a start at a continuous storyline like we had with last season.

Originally posted at: Spicy Movie Dogs

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I guess it was about time for our local boyscout Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie) to have a bad day. This bad day however had him punch a young, black hipster party girl square in the face with a closed fist… and while she may have deserved it, the act was done with a huge crowd of people watching – camera phones running tape to make him e-famous on YouTUBE.

The situation came about towards the end of another unappreciated day for Sherman as he and Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy) left the scene of a crime where their new Chief had shot an old woman in the face with a shotgun. Prior to that he had to wrestle a young criminal from the home of a woman who willingly hid him from the police and told the Cops that she did it because the boy was “more my people than you are”. Needless to say that little quote pushed Ben over the edge, having felt himself a champion of the people – the thought that the ones he was there to “protect” would rather help the criminals made him reach a boiling point.

So when he and Sammy come upon a street party and made to break it up for the noise disturbance, the privileged kids took to attacking them then filming the aftermath when Ben decided to fight back. He lost his cool, blacked out and decked the girl after she spit in his face and pushed him. The entire scene was inspired by recent events at the “Occupy” movement where similar things occurred with citizens attacking the police, barricading them with their bodies and then filming the aftermath of them being pepper sprayed. I see you working SouthLAnd, I see you working.

Bokeem Woodbine makes another appearance in this episode as Officer Jones – I really like this cat. He’s that cool Cop that is not only respectful to the people in the neighborhood (he grew up there), but unlike Lydia (Regina King) he isn’t on a “save the world” campaign. He has a green partner who Ben picks on the entire episode as a sort of hazing like he received in the 1^st and 2^nd season of SouthLAnd. It was pretty funny seeing Ben try and play the dick when someone like Dewey (C.Thomas Howell) makes it seem so easy.

The entire cast of detectives and beat cops worked together in this one and we get some brief time with Officer Tang (Lucy Liu) and John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz). These 2 are a cute match – with John trying to warm Tang up and she, recognizing that he wants to make friendly, playing the part of the ice queen. There’s just something about that little smile that Tang does when she plays hard to get that lets you know that she’s reachable though and before long we will get the full story behind her.

There were a few cameos like Marla Gibbs from the old show 227 playing the part of a senile old woman that kept calling Lydia “Brenda”. Those of you who are old enough to have watched that show will get the reference. A blatant plug for my other favorite TNT Show “The Walking Dead” was placed into the dialogue to remind us that it’s coming back next month but thankfully it wasn’t as distracting as it could have been.

I hope they do more episodes like this which involves everybody together but the thing that stuck out to me the most (outside of Lydia finding a woman’s body embedded in the front of an SUV with her hand cut off) was Lydia’s partner Ruben Robinson (Dorian Missick), hinting at destroying some evidence in order to keep a man free who had shot and killed a liar that got him wrongfully locked up for 22 years. It stuck with me because I would have done the same thing… and despite Lydia’s hardcore stance on following rules, I was proud of her for turning her back to allow Ruben to lose the evidence.

In the end it was Sammy’s turn to play mentor to the defeated Ben Sherman about keeping a cool head under all circumstances. Quite ironic since last season held an emotional version of Sammy, freshly divorced, having lost his partner and best friend, roaming the streets of LA looking for revenge. On a final note, the new chief is one impressively hardcore dude; I look forward to seeing what he has in store for the team (besides making them fill out a line of a McDonald’s application whenever they mess up… hilarious).

Originally posted at: Spicy Movie Dogs

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In The Devil Inside, Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) daughter to Maria Rossi (Suzana Crowley) is investigating the cause behind her mother’s psychological state. Turns out that mom went crazy one day and massacred a few people including a priest during her exorcism. The investigation takes them to Rome, the capitol of the Catholic Church where Isabella visits a school of exorcism to learn about the process. With the help of a few priests and some prying Isabella finds out that her mother is being held in a psychiatric hospital there in Rome. Her mother is in bad shape and after visiting her and seeing this for herself, she along with a couple of priests try to exorcise the demon that lived within Maria. This is when things get hairy and Isabella finds herself in trouble with forces that she isn’t fit to compete with.

Although I have grown tired and cynical about the exorcism line of movies, I do acknowledge that it is a tough sell to those of us who aren’t believers. Contorted limbs, demonic voices, the brave priest and horrified loved ones are always standard in this showcase of biblical drama but when you don’t believe it all just comes off as silly. The Devil Inside makes it even harder to accept the exorcism angle being that it is shot in the same vein as The Blair Witch Project, District 9 and Cloverfield… The shaky cam type of filming. Like those movies we are forced to become the invisible person next to the characters, seeing the craziness up close. The problem however is that we have seen the craziness in many other movies.

Those of you who saw The Rite last year will probably roll your eyes at the similar events in this movie as they both deal with nonbelievers being made to believe through the witnessing of an actual exorcism. The only difference seems to be in the way they were shot and the fact that The Rite had the acting power of Sir Anthony Hopkins.

I am stuck in this journey for a great exorcism movie and year after year I come up short. The one movie that almost nailed it was The Last Exorcism but it was good for the twist in events that occurred rather than being good for the scare factor and thrilling premise. I would love to have an exorcist themed movie to recommend to people as “the good one” in the entire genre but alas I don’t. While I didn’t expect The Last Exorcism to be “the one”, I did expect The Rite to be and both movies were a tremendous disappointment.

Originally posted at: Spicy Movie Dogs

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Shot with a gritty sepia toned look to give a very art house feel to the movie, Haywire works due to the direction of the great Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, Che, etc.). Assisted by the great acting talents of Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton and Antonio Banderas (just to name a few), newcomer Gina Carano and Channing Tatum stepped up their game and achieved cinematic gold.

When you watch Haywire it’s like – who cares who this girl is… she’s athletic, she’s fine, and she takes nothing from anyone. Let’s watch her realistically fight men for an hour and bypass that entire standard Hollywood “pretty her up” bullcrap. I don’t even remember the dialogue as every fight scene took time to register afterwards… your reaction will be: “wait did he just closed fist punch her in the face? Wait, she’s punching him back and… whoa she choked him out with some sort of crab move… geez her legs are scary!”

Gina Carano sells it beautifully, and why not… being a seasoned kickboxer and mixed martial artist, who can actually kick your ass.

The story of Haywire is about a double-cross that was meant to leave a black-ops, government trained professional dead, but instead results in a revenge run of epic proportions. That’s about it… the pacing is lightning fast but the fight choreography is methodical and shot from afar to allow us to see every broken limb and bone jarring punch. In my opinion THIS is what a female action movie should be… no sugar and spice, just bruises and cuts.

It’s the ultimate opener to what I sincerely hope will be a run of Carano beat-em-ups.

While the story was nothing to get excited about (extremely simple and formulaic), the cinematography and most of all, the music is what made Haywire shine. Sure I can write forever on how cool it is to see a man get his ass handed to him via some submission holds but in the end it’s the music that keeps you paying attention.

Haywire skips over the need for suspense music to remind us to get excited or soothing jazz to queue up a love scene; we are given a bunch of upbeat tracks that match the movie’s tone and they allow it to ride out without interruption. It was a kickass journey that was candy to the ears.

Girls Can Fight Too!

No doubt there will be a few people who think that a woman of Gina’s size is unlikely to be doing the things she does in the movie as Mallory. These same people with that opinion may not be fight fans or have done martial arts in the past so I understand the “women can’t fight guys” illusion within their heads. Look at it this way: If a small woman, who is an ex-marine, trained by the government for special operations was to kick YOUR ass, she’d probably do it the way it’s done in this one. Nerding from a couch does not allow you to fathom this premise, trust me I understand. Just take it from someone who has the background to acknowledge this.

While there are many great movies out right now, you may want to check out Haywire for some solid action. While Gina Carano doesn’t strip down naked and smear sex appeal all over the screen, you will be given a wild ride irregardless and come one, isn’t it time that we had a woman who knows how to actually fight whose name isn’t Cynthia Rothrock?

Originally posted at: Spicy Movie Dogs

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It’s 1944 and the Negro is still regarded as an unintelligent man, incapable of fighting in America’s wars due to cowardice and the inability to make intelligent decisions. This old, racist denouncement – made to fuel segregation, came from the 20′s and was still being followed by the United States military in World War II. Red Tails is the story of a squadron of African American pilots from the Tuskegee training experiment (those of you who saw The Tuskegee Airmen movie will appreciate this follow-up) who are relegated to duties that hold no effect on the war and kept them hidden from the public eye. Wanting the men to have a shot at real honor and combat, their Colonel, A.J. Bullard  (Terrence Howard) goes to the Capitol to argue for his men and eventually gets one mission that blossoms after the pilots debunk the Negro stereotype.

* * * *

The tale of Red Tails is a dramatization based on real events and was not supported by any production companies other than Lucasfilm (good ‘ol George Lucas) who put his own money behind its release. It is for this and the realization that there were some blacks fighting the Nazi’s in WW2 that I encourage you all to support this movie regardless of my score and complaints within the next few paragraphs.  Red Tails has some veteran acting talent and familiar names (for some of you), like Terrance Howard as Col. A.J. Bullard, and Cuba Gooding Jr. as Major Stance.

The main pilots that drive the film… or should I say fly… are David Oyelowo as Joe ‘Lightning’ Little (the best of the lot), Nate Parker as Marty ‘Easy’ Julian, Elijah Kelley as Samuel ‘Joker’ George, Ne-Yo (yes that Ne-Yo) as Andrew ‘Smokey’ Salem… who did a bang-up job acting I must say and Tristan Wilds as Ray ‘Junior’ Gannon. Lars van Riessen plays the German Ace ‘Pretty Boy’ and Daniela Ruah plays the part of Sophie, the Italian love interest.

How Hollywood Turns The Luftwaffe Into A Joke

The dogfights really bothered the hell out of me, but I know this is because I am a fan of aerial combat and a bit of a nerd when it comes to World War II. The portrayal of Nazis as weak bullies is well and good when it comes time for fantasy, but in a historical movie like this I would expect some better research into how the German Luftwaffe flew before filming what it is I saw. These fights were terrible, no real choreography was done and the simplicity in the way the Negro pilots would get behind the Germans to shoot them down was video game caliber ridiculous.

For a movie about flying I was very disappointed that more focus was not spent on the ferocity and mental aptitude taken to win in dogfight after dogfight. Red Tails took another route – giving us close-in shots of the boy’s faces as they talked throughout the fights, aerial maneuvers be damned. The film assumes the audience will suspend belief and let our imagination trick us into believing that the Tuskegee men were all ace caliber pilots… but at a glance it wasn’t that way, no, at a glance the Germans were flying targets.

Decaffeinated Racism Tastes The Best

Let’s be honest here, if you’re older than 30 you know (from movies/documentaries in the past and from the older generation) that America has been overtly racist as hell since forever. So why are these newer movies about historical events playing nice with the interactions between black and white?  

Sure you have the token racist guy in these movies but he is the great white whale – in other words it’s normally one loud racist guy and everyone else is just quiet. Red Tails is no different as we see the black pilots walk into a bar (token scene is token) and get kicked out for it being whites only… queue the great white whale who drops a “nigger” slur all by his lonesome and fist fight ensues. I know racism is a touchy subject but we do a disservice to the real men and women who were all sorts of niggers, spooks, spades and coons when they fought for this country, by presenting this watered down exchange as a representation.

For the ladies, there is some white Italian/Negro love that goes on and while it could have seemed forced (being that it had nothing to add to the story as a whole) it was actually very well done. Again David Oyelowo is the reason this worked. I would have liked to see some authentic Italian male angst at the sight of an “eggplant” walking the streets with one of their fine country-women but again… this was decaffeinated racism. Everybody was playing nice.

I’m Just Being A Nerd – Go See Red Tails

So while you’re probably at the point of saying “stopurbitchin” at my review of this little film, I will say that I appreciate the entire effort in bringing this to the big screen. Sure I can rip it apart after watching but the people around me who weren’t students of World War II and American race history seemed to really have a good time. To ask me if you should or should not see this, I would say yes – go out and see it, support it and make sure that stories like this get funded for Box Office release! While it could have been so much better, I do appreciate it for what it is.

Originally posted at: Spicy Movie Dogs

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There’s something fresh and wonderful about SouthLAnd this season and I cannot put my finger on it. No it isn’t the cute freckled face of Lucy Liu (who has joined the team as John Cooper’s partner “Jessica Tang”), and no it isn’t Lou Diamond Phillips as the jackass vet that breaks Ben Sherman’s balls the entire episode. I think it’s just the fact that it’s back on… I forgot how good the production was in this series and the pacing which doesn’t allow us to get bored.

Really my favorite change that has happened since last season’s shocking array of deaths and gut punches is the addition of Lucy Liu. John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz), fresh off of rehab from his drug abuse and back pains (visible scar tells us that they operated on him) is in beast mode. Ladies eat your heart out because your man is back, bigger, stronger, and leaner than ever. The first shot we get of him is in the gym where he’s banging the weights out like a champion.

Jessica Tang (Lucy Liu) enters the picture and acts as if she has been with the show since the beginning. She gets her share of playful racial jokes from team douchebag Bill “Dewey” Dudek (C. Thomas Howell) but rolls with them like a champ. Immediately she impresses Cooper who was the relative Jedi Master of the team before his rehab and we can see from his reactions that she is indeed impressive.

Dewey’s constant joking about a YouTUBE video of Tang, lead me to believe that she was a naughty girl in her past, but when Cooper finally watches it and it turns out to be some giant brute beating her within an inch of her life at a routine traffic stop… let’s just say I immediately understood her. Tang is a war-tested, hardened cop stuck in a cute frame and it will no doubt be interesting to watch as her adventures with Cooper moving forward.

Another surprise came with the new hairstyle of our beloved Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy), who now acts like a confident man – thank God. Teamed up with the young lady-killer Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie), the chemistry between these 2 boys is something else. Now when you have a criminal running we can have the 2 sprinter caliber cops together going after him – which coincidentally happens at the end of this episode. For people wanting that Starsky and Hutch type of copping, Ben and Sammy will be the answer for that.

Unfortunately Lydia (Regina King) is still having partner issues being that we start off with a new one instead of Josie Ochoa (Jenny Gago) who I thought was a great balance to Lydia’s alpha dog tendencies. This new partner is Ruben Robinson (Dorian Missick), is an ex-soldier turned detective who, like Lydia’s first partner Russell is more of the strong silent type. We don’t get much from Ruben outside of the fact that he has a nagging wife and a good career in the military but we do get another episode of Lydia letting her heart get her in trouble with a crackhead junkie.

The introductions were made and the episode was light and straightforward. For those who care about the episode itself, the most shocking part of it besides seeing a boy who got shot in the neck bleed out, or a guy get scraped across the road 10 ft from running into traffic… wait there was a lot going on now wasn’t there? Hmm… well I was saying that the most eventful thing had to be the police station being raided by one man with a shotgun. Ben and Sammy literally pissed their pants and a couple of officers were wounded or killed.

SouthLAnd is back folks! If that doesn’t get you hot for Tuesdays I really don’t know what will.

Originally posted at: Spicy Movie Dogs

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Latin and subtitled, Shiver will not be seen by many people with English as a first language but for lovers of horror and vampires it really should be seen regardless. Shiver touches on the subjects of raising a teenager, gambling addiction and vampirism. It is also a movie about a creepy small town (think Jeepers Creepers) and bullying. It is a really good watch that starts out a bit slow but picks up the pace quickly.

Young Santiago (Junio Valverde) has a skin disease called photophobia which makes him unable to be out in the sun for extended periods of time due to complications that would be almost fatal for him including skin cancer. This disease makes his life hell as a teenager as he wears a hooded jacket year-round with shades in case he gets exposed at any time. He is also attending night school where all the other kids consider him a freak, all except his best friend. When it becomes too much to bear, Santi (who begins having nightmares that the sun incinerates him like a vampire) convinces his mother to have them move and they relocate to a tiny town in the foggy mountains which would allow for Santi to attend school daily like a regular child.

What Santi and his mother didn’t know however is that the town, bordered by a dense forest is about to have a mysterious force taking lives and draining it’s victim’s blood. At first some sheep get slaughtered and then people end up dying. Santi, being the mysterious stranger in town is blamed for the murders and his condition and wanting to fit in does not help his situation with the accusations.

Shiver is very different from your standard horror movie, it doesn’t question the audience’s intelligence as it leaves much to the imagination with the mystery of the murders and the unknown entity within the woods. The parts of movie that showed the interaction between Santi and his mother Julia (Mar Sodupe) are very well acted and makes you feel sorry for him in his tortured life.

Above all else the best part of Shiver is the big reveal into what is truly behind the murders and the disappearances. It is completely out there and atypical of the standard vampire fluff that we see being released almost weekly.

If you are interested in a different take on vampirism and the blood sucking monsters that everyone loves so much, check out Shiver, it’s available for instant viewing on Netflix.

Originally posted at: Spicy Movie Dogs

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