Movie Reviews: Sorry To Bother You, The First Purge and Gotti
It’s movie review time everybody and I am bringing three movies to you today: ‘Sorry to Bother You’, ‘The First Purge’ and ‘Gotti’. All three movies are in theaters with ‘Sorry to Bother You’ opening wide on July 13th. You can rate all of these movies on our 0-100 scale at the bottom of this page.
Jeff (91/100): Holy. Shit. Seriously, holy shit. Whether you liked it or not, there really isn’t any other response after seeing ‘Sorry to Bother You’. There is a ton of buzz about this movie as the majority of both the audience and critics are singing its praises. It’s insanely hard to talk about this movie without spoiling anything, but I will try and paint the best picture that I can.
Opening wide this Thursday night (trailer above), ‘Sorry to Bother You’, was written and directed by hip-hop artist/producer Boots Riley and stars Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Armie Hammer, Steven Yeun and more recognizable Hollywood faces and voices. The movie “follows a young African-American telemarketer who adopts a white accent in order to thrive at his job.” The movie, described as a comedy science-fiction, goes far beyond the short plot description and ventures into a wild satirical ride.
‘Sorry to Bother You’ is an anti-capitalist satirical look on class, race, corporations, culture and everything in between. While not everything the movie tries to achieve lands with grace, the script is brilliant and hilarious. The movie is fast-paced and quick-witted and only has one fault in the fact that it struggles to hold up its own weight at the end. When it comes to recent satire on race and class, ‘Sorry to Bother You’ isn’t quite as precise and efficient as ‘Get Out’, but it still stands tall. Even if you can’t connect to every piece of commentary the movie makes, it’s impossible to not see where it is coming from or what it is trying to convey. Riley isn’t afraid to take a swing at anything and everything relevant to the world we live in right now, from race to corporations to cultural trends and more.
All of the performances in ‘Sorry to Bother You’ are fantastic, especially Lakeith Stanfield’s. You’ll most recently recognize Stanfield from ‘Get Out’, but he has also been in some other great films as of late including ‘Selma’, ‘Short Term 12’ and ‘Straight Outta Compton’. There’s no doubt in my mind Stanfield is about to break out from ‘Sorry to Bother You’, pick up some awards season love and become a star. He is excellent in this movie and is worth the price of admission alone. I can’t go without mentioning the director, Boots Riley, and what he was able to achieve. Again, as I said above, not everything lands perfectly, but to have such a successful debut as a writer-director and do so with an original, creative and deep movie is impressive. The hype for Riley’s future as a writer and director can only go up.
This will be a movie that certainly turns some people off. There’s no getting around the fact it takes tons of risks and doesn’t align with movie norms of this day and age. In my theater, almost everyone was engaged, laughing and reacting from start to finish, but there were a few people who got up and left at one point. We need more movies like ‘Sorry to Bother You’, though. Regardless of what the subject matter is, even as someone who loves Marvel movies, more original movies that take risks need to be released with fanfare and big promotion. I wish I could talk more in depth about this movie, but it is really hard to not spoil the meat of what happens, so I just suggest that you go out and see it for yourself.
Jeff (28/100): This is the fakest woke movie of all time. On one hand, this could be an exaggeration, but on the other hand, is it? ‘The First Purge’ thinks it is so much smarter than it really is and it’s very obvious. I am sure some people may find this movie entertaining, but for me, it’s the worst of the series.
There are two big issues I have with the movie. The first being how the social commentary just doesn’t work and feels completely forced. I have no problem with social commentary in movies, whether I agree with what is being said, or not, so long as it is done right. Two recent movies, ‘Get Out’ and ‘Sorry to Bother You’, find ways to make social commentary in two different ways. ‘Get Out’, does so with subtlety, while, ‘Sorry to Bother You’, does so with comedic satire, and both in doing so. The social commentary in ‘The First Purge’ is neither comedic satire or subtle, it’s just obnoxious. It takes everything it wants to say about race, class and politics and brings it to an extreme level that just doesn’t balance out with the absurdity of the movie. Yes, we get it, the government stinks, but maybe try and finesse the commentary into the movie with a subtler touch? The first movie in the ‘Purge’ series had commentary on class, but, even though it wasn’t perfect, was far less in your face and didn’t cannibalize the flow of the story. I can see many people being put off by what ‘The First Purge’ tries to deliver.
My second issue with ‘The First Purge’ is the fact that it pretends to be a prequel. In a sense, sure, it takes place before the other ‘Purge’ movies, but it just feels like they called it a prequel to try and market and repackage this as something new. The creation and concept of the Purge is discussed in the beginning, but then the movie just quickly evolves into just another following of Purge events as they take place. The thing that interested me about this movie was seeing how exactly they came up with this fucked up idea and why it was implemented. They just spend so little time on it and hurry as quick as possible to solely show off another Purge. On top of all of that, it’s easily the least coherent Purge out of all of the movies. It doesn’t look, sound or flow all that great and the draw of what makes this concept interesting isn’t there anymore.
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Look, if you like these types of b-movie horror productions then you may like ‘The First Purge’. But even that seems like a stretch to me, considering it seems much worse than the first three in the series. The thing that bothers me the most is the idea of the Purge continues to really intrigue me. Like a big dumb idiot, every time they announce one of these bad boys, I think to myself, “hmm, maybe this time. Maybe this time they’ll finally get it.” Well, I can tell you confidently, with ‘The First Purge’, we will have to keep waiting.
Side note: Marisa Tomei deserves better
Jeff (2/100): This is not really an original thought, but ‘Gotti’ feels like a movie E would book for Vinny in an episode of ‘Entourage’. Something about it just felt fake and as if it was some strange sort of satirical take on a real John Gotti movie. It’s an absurd mess of a film from Kevin Connolly that would have been completely forgettable if not for the media circus surrounding its Rotten Tomatoes profile.
I want to be clear in stating that this is in no way a review or rating to shed any hate on John Travolta. I do not think it is at all his fault that this movie is a complete mess. When I see John Gotti in this movie, all I see is John Travolta, but it is the story and the way the movie is put together that takes me out of it all. Travolta was great in ‘The People vs. O.J. Simpson’ as Robert Shapiro, proving he still has the chops to play a real person and make it believable. This movie, however, did not supply him the goods.
The way the story flows and is put together just flat out doesn’t work and seems broken. It feels incomplete, like as if they didn’t have enough material to work with. It’s a spectacle of confusion as the movie jumps between different narrators, different time periods and more. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to anything. Not to mention that the acting outside of Travolta doesn’t help the movie’s cause at all.
The best part of this movie, as KenJac discussed in his review, is the fact that the music is done by Pitbull. Yes, Mr. Worldwide. It’s such a weird, bizarre choice and just plays into the thought of this being a fake movie from ‘Entourage’.
Development for this film began all the way back in 2010 and got tripped up on numerous issues and disputes. ‘Gotti’ is a great example of how quickly things can fall apart in Hollywood and how tough it is to actually make a movie. With all of that said, basically everything about ‘Gotti’ is just an absolute train wreck.
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‘Gotti’ is obviously Officially Not Buttered with a super low average score of 2/100. Meanwhile, we are still waiting for KenJac and Trillballins to see ‘Sorry to Bother You’ and ‘The First Purge’, but both movies will likely be Officially Buttered and Officially Not Buttered, respectively. A new episode of Lights, Camera, Barstool dropped last night, with a special three-episode week continuing tomorrow morning and on Thursday morning. You can subscribe here. We want to see what your movie ratings are for the year 2018 and new releases. Click the links at the bottom of this post to submit your rating for everything released so far this year.
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