Paradise Is Perfect For Real

Paradise Is Perfect For Real is motion picture hell? or, at the minimum, an unpleasant, theater-based purgatory where time stretches to have an eternity as well as your creative soul wallows inside a clich?-drenched limbo pleading for that finish credits to reach and hang you free. Regardless of your religious preferences, you?ll think it is tiresome and pandering ? unless of course you worship in the altar of monotony.

Paradise states be ?based on the true story.? In some way, the occasions of Darren Aronofsky?s Noah strike me weight loss credible -- yes, the Rock Titans ? and more entertaining. Director Randall Wallace derives Paradise Is Perfect For Real from Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent?s 2010 New You are able to Occasions bestseller ?Heaven is perfect for Real: Just A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Visit to Paradise and Back.? Because the title indicates, the memoir documents youthful Colton Burpo?s (Connor Corum) near-dying experience, where he states have met Jesus ? who had been riding a rainbow-colored equine ? and stayed in Paradise. Colton?s publish-surgery story deeply affects his father, Todd Burpo (Greg Kinnear), a Christian minister inside a small Nebraskan community who holds his son?s account and uses it for connecting on the much deeper spiritual level together with his Chapel community.

That is all fine and dandy. The issues of Paradise Is Perfect For Real don?t relaxation using the story ? that is engaging, on the surface level. They're using the execution. There?s a minute, in early stages within the film, in which the always-welcome Margo Martindale sits in a piano and leads a chirpy chapel choir via a hymn. ?A little less pious!? she instructs his or her shrill voices achieve a deafening pitch.

Wallace must have compensated focus on her suggestion.

Paradise Is Perfect For Real systems righteous messages about belief, family and the effectiveness of community inside a terrible movie mired with tone-hard of hearing sermons along with a complete lack of dramatic suspense. Burpo?s book might be an amazing read, but there?s no tension within the central story that Wallace can connect his plot. Colton experienced something miraculous. His father thinks him. Finish of story. It?s beautiful, although not a movie.

Neither, though, is Paradise Is Perfect For Real, and thus, the director and the co-film writer Chris Parker (Fight of the season, Vampire In Brooklyn) need to manufacture conflict through artificial battles. The Burpo?s face a collection of bills that threaten to foreclose their house. The chapel loves Todd like a preacher, but start to fear that Colton?s story damages the credibility they've being an institution. (Wouldn?t they embrace ANY congregation member who?d stated to possess a direct interaction with Jesus?) Wallace can?t build to the resolution, so he shoots a number of moments which have no connection because the movie plays out. Todd breaks his leg inside a softball game, that is tragic, but nothing comes from it because the movie progresses, what exactly was the main reason? In another shateringly awkward scene, Todd must pass kidney gemstones while his best friend (Thomas Haden Chapel) cracks jokes with the bathroom door. Again, I question why, because this doesn't have bearing towards the overall story attempting to find out.

They are mere speed bumps around the dreadful route to Paradise. The movie?s mortal sin is the actual way it completely wastes its honours-quality cast -- particularly Kinnear. The Oscar-nominated actor really brings the personality, kindness, and warm-hearted passion of the Bible Belt pastor to his role. You're reminded of higher days when Kinnear was requested to lead to terrific ensemble pieces like Just Like It Will get or Little Miss Sunshine. After turning heads opposite Denzel Washington flying, the feisty Kelly Reilly accepts a meager, do-nothing part as Sonja Burpo, a soundboard made to respond to the absurd situations littering her path. A minimum of they are professional stars, who hopefully have legitimate agents who?ll funnel better scripts soon. I can?t the same about youthful Corum, that has simply no screen presence. Paradise is his first screen credit If there?s a God in Hollywood, it will likely be his last.

We've been inundated with belief-based features lately. They've ranged from conventional (Boy of God) to imaginative (Noah). But couple of happen to be as flat-out flatlined because the disappointing Paradise Is Perfect For Real, a hokey slice of saturated spiritual redemption. I doubt I?ll visit a cheesier, more desperate movie all year long.

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Pitch Perfect [Blu-ray]

An overwhelming majority of comedies pretend to care about their semi-fleshed out main characters and openly degrade and manipulate their shallow side characters in order to generate laughs. The reason why Pitch Perfect works, and works pretty damn well, is because it has a fondness for and takes the time to understand almost every single person it puts on screen. It doesn?t ridicule them like a stranger might. It teases them in the same way a friend who knows every dirty little secret would tease. That?s not only more honest, it?s far funnier and far more relatable, and there?s not a single character or even larger idea that?s immune from the treatment here.

The Movie:

From Beca?s (Anna Kendrick) bullshit, teenage angstyness to Aubrey?s (Anna Camp) father-instilled and annoying obsession with perfection to the inherent ridiculous nerdiness of a capella competitions themselves, Pitch Perfect celebrates, analyzes and teases all of it. No one is let off the hook and no one?s pratfalls or insecurities completely define them. Even the primary villain, Bumper (Adam DeVine), is allowed to say really funny things and have his own version of a happy ending. It?s all exaggerated--but only in the same way as Mean Girls. Apart from three or four minor instances, the film plays up its characters without making them caricatures, and staying on the right side of that note makes a big difference.

Structured by a very formulaic premise that follows auditions to a final competition, Pitch Perfect nonetheless finds ways to still live in the margins and in the gray areas. The basic story follows a group of girls including Beca, Aubrey, Chloe (Brittany Snow) and Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) who sing in an all-female a capella group continually bested by their all-male a capella adversaries, but the overall goal is so much bigger than just winning. It?s about getting noses dirty, trying new things and shedding all the baggage accrued through singing competition failures, step-monster intrusions and surprise vocal node flare-ups. It?s about relaxing and having some fun.

And if any movie this year--other than perhaps Magic Mike--knows how to cut loose and have some fun, it?s Pitch Perfect. Buoyed by the year?s best musical montage featuring more than a dozen characters performing Kelly Clarkson?s ?Since U Been Gone? and further energized by hilarious commentary from Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins during all the a capella performances, the movie never stays in one place too long. It belts out notes in every register and continually nails each of its characters with very specific jokes that work perfectly with their individual personalities. For example: we?re off-handedly told Bumper has introduced a line of sports sandals. If ever a human being would be pumped about such an activity, it?s that clown.

Pitch Perfect works. It has the perfect love-hate relationship with its subject matter and a great sense of humor about itself. It never comes off as preachy or unfair to its characters, and it features dozens of classic lines that should continue to be quoted for years. It's great. A-ca-believe-it!

The Disc:

Pitch Perfect is loaded with exactly the type of special features you would expect from a movie that uses a lot of improvisation. A series of ?Line-o-rama? features quick cut through a slew of different hilarious lines left on the cutting room floor. The one involving Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins is the clear stand-out as those two go back and forth rapid-firing as many funny asides as they can think of for possible inclusion in the movie.

The disc also offers quite a few deleted or extended scenes. Most of them are of more of the extended variety with just a few extra added lines of dialogue, but since they let fans watch Fat Amy beatbox and Bumper being all 'bumpy', their inclusion is definitely warranted, as are some special interview segments with Banks? commentator and a few of the performers after a capella competitions.

Another random and interesting special feature is a music video that cuts together cast performances of Nicki Minaj?s ?Starships? with those fans taped and sent in themselves. The result is a pretty cool a capella take on the song featuring some snazzy editing. All that, plus behind the scenes footage of Fat Amy?s burrito attack and two commentaries from producers/ director combine to make this Pitch Perfect release a worthwhile and fun purchase.

Distributor: Universal PicturesStarring: Anna Kendrick, Brittany Snow, Rebel WilsonProduced by: Elizabeth Banks, Paul Brooks, Max Handelman

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Perfect Sense [Blu-Ray]

The idea that an epidemic might swarm through the world, cutting off people?s sensory perceptions, could explore a lot of potential angles. How will people react? Will they get used to the changes? Will there be exceptions to the disease? We?ve seen big-budget movies try to present the panic and bewildering emotions related to broad-spectrum disease, but director David Mackenzie takes a different route in Perfect Sense, a story about disease, but more about two young lovers navigating a new world.

The Movie:

There is a lot of rushing in the first few minutes of Perfect Sense. People are living frenzied lives. Michael (Ewan McGregor), for instance, runs a busy kitchen and Susan (Eva Green) works in a laboratory focusing on epidemiology. I?d guess that latter job might generally be less stressful, but with an impending virus cutting off people?s ability to smell around the world, things in the lab are moving forward with a bit more fervor. Just when the smell epidemic reaches the area, Susan and Michael have a meet-cute moment. They end up extremely nude, later, and when they wake up together, they find their olfactory senses are entirely gone.

What follows is not the continued panic one might expect to see. There is a lot of sobering talk, even amidst some laughter, a lot of shots meant to belie introspection, handed to us by an incredibly annoying but necessary narrative device. What Mackenzie seems to be trying to show is that humanity will be able to move beyond an epidemic, even if that epidemic affects each and every one of us, and assuming that epidemic does not kill us off. Even with a loss of smell, life will move on.

While the aftermath of Perfect Sense is quite heartfelt, its actual plotline is unbelievable, a story that becomes even more preposterous when humanity begins to lose its other senses as well. During this time, we are bamboozled by the camera and never given even half a chance to see the world over during this time of trepidation and disease. Instead, we are asked to focus on Michael and Susan as they begin to explore their love for one another in ?new? and ?interesting? ways as the disease robs them of their senses one by one.

The notion of two people clinging through hardship together is a theme we?ve seen before, but in Perfect Sense it is overly sentimental, driven by Susan?s narration of the event and its maudlin declaration that love must triumph, even in times of turmoil. Without love, there is nothing. Perfect Sense spends a lot of time making this declaration clear, but without it, we might have been privy to more shots of the devastating effects of the disease and fewer shots of Eva Green?s wasted nudity throughout.

Perfect Sense began with the bud of an idea, but then took a wrong turn somewhere between loss of taste and loss of sight. If you?re into dwelling in harrowing emotional states, this movie might strike in your lane, but for everyone else, Perfect Sense, despite its intense focus on the serious, will be a laughably flawed production.

The Disc:

The extras section is pretty Spartan, with the main feature taking a short look at the film by juxtaposing some of the trailer with interviews from Green and Mackenzie. I was really hoping we?d get a chance to hear more from the cast and crew about the making of the film, or maybe even from Max Richter, the Blue Notebooks composer whose music is one of the better parts of Perfect Sense.

The disc is set up pretty well and the previews at the beginning can be skipped, which is a nice bonus. One of the strangest things with the set is the scene selection, which is set up vertically rather than in the usual horizontal frame. Overall, even if you liked the film, I?m not certain the set is a necessary buy, but with no noticeable film-color or film-technique problems, there may be enough there to add the flick to your collection, especially if you are a sucker for romance (or nudity).

Perfect Sense [Blu-Ray] DetailsStarring: Eva Green, Ewan McGregor, Connie NielsenProduced by: Gillian Berrie, Malte Grunert

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The Perfect Host

Cosmopolitan dinner host Warwick Wilson (David Hyde Pierce) is pouring a glass of white wine, chopping a mélange of colorful vegetables, and roasting a duck when the doorbell interrupts. In compliance with the modern décor of his Los Angeles home, Warwick approaches a video-imaging buzzer that in black and white reveals a handsome yet distraught twenty-something babbling on about a mutual acquaintance named Julia and how she had insisted he, John Taylor (Clayne Crawford), invite himself over because Warwick is just such a nice guy, and she thought they'd "hit it off". Well, Warwick proves to be as the title suggests, inviting John to stay for dinner. He might actually be a bit too accommodating, inviting a few more guests -- imaginary ones. As it turns out, the perfect host is a certified sociopath.

After a scuffle, John, a sadistic on-the-run bank robber (did I forget to mention that?), finds his woozy body imbibed with a concoction of alcoholic-tinged sedative. As he comes to, tied to a chair with hands bound behind his back, John is forced to play witness to his dinner host's mad, schizophrenic visions and insidious dinner chatter.

The Perfect Host may read like a bizarre train wreck of unfortunate circumstance piled on top of perverse, illogical fantasy and caught somewhere between psychological thriller and bemusing dark comedy. That's because it is. Tone is sacrificed for haphazard absurdism, and the narrative grows ever more irrational, without even a wink at the camera. In fact, writer-director-editor Nick Tomnay presents a movie so infatuated with twists and turns that as the ruse becomes ever more ludicrous you are never sure whether the film was meant to be a comedy -- albeit one with a long lead-up and no punch-line.

David Hyde Pierce nonetheless seems to be enjoying and reveling in the sadistic fun, mining his Broadway roots for broad comedy and twisted humor as though he were breaking the fourth wall and playing out to the audience, engaging in moments of comic bliss. He's phenomenally entertaining. But the rest of the cast remains stoic and bogged down by a directorial hand devoid of self-reflexivity. Think Clue (1985) but stripped entirely of comic and theatrical self-recognition. It's all so toneless, promising only by picture's end that the viewer will be left intoxicated by irritating numbness.

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