Pitch Perfect 2

Review by Candice Catullo

For me, the tone of PITCH PERFECT 2 is set perfectly by it’s two most dramatic commentators, Gail and John. Played by Elizabeth Banks (HUNGER GAMES) and John Michael Higgins (BEST IN SHOW), the overzealous and politically incorrect a cappella super fans embody the intended theatrical whimsy of the PITCH PERFECT series. Plus, they really are funny.

First, a comparison to the original PITCH PERFECT movie (2012). The sequel stuck with essentially the same cast, including the core singing group – The Barden Bellas – with some minor additions and no major players missing from this sequel. Most of the running jokes were also back, which leads me to believe the game plan was to stick with what worked.

Unfriended

Review by Joseph Anthony

The tagline of UNFRIENDED is “If you sign off, you die!” If that doesn’t sound appealing to you then you may know right away that this might not be your kind of thing.

The setup and premise are simple: The movie plays out entirely on the computer screen of our lead, Blaire (Shelley Hennig, OUIJA), a high school girl who is dating her Skype buddy, Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm).  All plot details are revealed to the audience through Skype, iMessage, Facebook, Gmail, YouTube and an assortment of other sites. If you are unfamiliar with online jargon and websites geared to teens and young adults, it may be difficult to keep up at times.  

Mystery Road (now on video)

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I considered going to the Cleveland International Film Festival this year, I really did, for a moment or so. But I didn't. 

In truth, going downtown is a downer for me in the best of times. Too many bad memories. And I don't like to gamble, I don't like to see sports, mug people or get mugged. So the metropolis holds little appeal for me. On an optimistic note, the Cleveland International Film Festival in 2015 managed to branch out into satellite theaters, one of them deep in the suburbs, at the the Cinemark Valley View, where I feel slightly more likely to come out alive. 

I hope that trend continues, and the thriving Cleveland International Film Festival eventually migrates out of Cleveland altogether. Most likely, based on past history, going all the way to Miami-South Beach, Florida. Where there is likely more parking and less snow. Where I'm even less likely to attend. Damn.

Oh well, home video allows you to create! Your own! Cleveland International Film Festival! At! Home! You may as well start with Australian writer-director Ivan Sen's MYSTERY ROAD.

Burroughs: The Movie (January 17th and 18th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[BURROUGHS: THE MOVIE screens Saturday January 17th at 8:50 pm and Sunday January 18th at 8:10 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

In 1981 Saturday Night Live, now turning 40, was on the verge of cancellation, not even having logged ten years on the air. The star-making variety program, during a notorious absence by producer/guiding light Lorne Michaels, had become stagnated with an unedifying cast and dismal sketches, and ratings plummeted accordingly.

Yet the show, even in its low point, made literary history as the first TV program to broadcast an appearance by William S. Burroughs, the gaunt addict terrible of the Beat Generation. Burroughs was introduced by guest host Lauren Hutton as "America's greatest living writer," and he read, live from New York, from his hallucinatory Nova Express.

We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists (now on video)

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

A short time ago, Cleveland Movie Blog editor Bob

Schedule

Ignizio posted his review of the documentary CLEANFLIX, an excellent nonfiction feature about the ironies of home-video movie censorship in Mormon territory that actually made a balanced case for LDS censors (it helps, of course, when the antagonists are powerful corporate-studio swine, even with their movie-director minions moaning about "artistic freedom"). Anyway, I had a review of that in my archive FIRST, but just sort of figured CLEANFLIX was a little too off-the-radar for you miserable Clevelanders, who probably want to hear more about garbage like Dance Moms (which I had to review also, BTW). I was going to pull CLEANFLIX out of mothballs if the Cedar Lee or Cinematheque or somebody had the good taste to premiere it on the big screen...but no. Ignizio tracked down watched the movie himself and scooped me.

Mitsy's Magnificent Makeover (now on video)

[MITSY'S MAGNIFICENT MAKEOVER is now available on home video.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Why does the Cleveland Movie Blog, our tastes leaning a bit Ghoulardiward at all times, take note of a minor-key kiddie direct-to-video babysitter like MITSY'S MAGNIFICENT MAKEOVER? Does it represent the final, unreleased masterwork of Lucio Fulci? Does it include the famously censored decapitation scenes, finally discovered on Hong Kong laserdisc? Does it get away from the campy, silly Mitsy of the 1960s and back to the original, dark, brooding psychotic Mitsy of the 1930s and 40s?

No, the deal is that this all-CGI semi-musical children's short feature (or long short subject) is that it represents yet another step forward for true "desktop filmmaking." Francis Ford Coppola, if my memory serves me right, prophesied that, with the advent of digital film and computer-editing suites affordable to the masses, someday the next CITIZEN KANE would not hail from a mighty Hollywood soundstage but rather from the bedroom of some adolescent Jewish girl in Cleveland.

Perfect Sense (now on video)

[PERFECT SENSE is now available on home video.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Earlier this year Bob Ignizio expressed a marked lack of enthusiasm for yet another art-house end-of-the-world movie. It wasn't MELANCHOLIA - that one was good, evidently - it was some sort of genre relation with lots of numbers in the title.

Well, just to show Bob that we feel his pain, and that he doesn't have to suffer through every mopey, Sundance-acclaimed, Cedar Lee-playing emo-type dramas about the end of the world from an average doomed soul's POV, I'll dump all over PERFECT SENSE, yeah, even though it bids to be more serious and grownup than the usual CGI zombie/meteor apocalypse.

Bear Nation (now on video)

[BEAR NATION is now available on home video.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Not long ago I complained on this blog thusly: for a man who isn't gay I seem to get assigned an inordinate amount of gay movies to watch, by all my various freelance publishers. Like I'm being subjected to some fiendish hidden psychological experiment of longstanding. Like instead of the standard "KICK ME" sign secretly taped to my shirt back in school someone wrote "MAKE THIS GUY WATCH LOTS OF GAY MOVIES," and I still haven't noticed it's there. Like God is making me one of His little jokes - or maybe making me a Job-like example to others of what could happen.

I mean, the other day a spirit materialized in front of me and said, "Mr. Cassady, what the hell? Why in the world are you watching so many damn gay movies? If it were me I'd go crazy!" I consulted with Mary Ann the Ghost Buster, who identified the apparition. It was Vito Russo (mild chuckle in the back of the auditorium from the one or two people who got that one).

Yet Another Gay Movie I had to do? BEAR NATION. And I'm taking you all down with me...

Teen A Go Go (now on video)

[TEEN A GO-GO is now available on home video.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I'm still kind of amazed, even three decades after the announcement, that pariah metropolis Cleveland actually got the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. The thing is, as everyone should remember, cities from New York to LA all campaigned mightily to build the official rock museum. Memphis, I understand, put up a particularly strong fight. That the facility wound up in Cleveland I can only ascribe to the most astounding act of diplomacy since Jimmy Carter brought Israel and Egypt to the peace table...or maybe blackmail. Someone in Cleveland City Hall or the old Growth Association learned that top Rock Hall guys were really Watergate informant "Deep Throat," skyjacker D.B. Cooper, the true JFK assassin, missing heir Michael Rockefeller, the bushy-haired stranger who killed Marilyn Shepard, and an incognito Jimmy Hoffa, all hiding out together. If we didn't get the Rock Hall, Cleveland would release to the media the secret files J.Edgar Hoover had on all of them. Can you prove it didn't go down that way?