Neighbors– Fun movie! Seth Rogan plays…Seth Rogan married to Rose Byrne. They have an adorable little girl and recently moved into their first home. Then a fraternity moves in next door. The couple plays it cool at first, making friends with the frat and even goes to a party and end up having a great time. But when the all night parties keep happening, they call the cops with a noise complaint. That starts the ever escalating war between the neighbors. Really funny movie, I liked it a lot. Zac Efron and Dave Franco often steal the show. The cast is really good, full of cursing and all the drug and sex jokes one could ask for.

A Million Ways to Die in the West– Like most thing Seth MacFarlane does, this is a hot and cold movie. Seth plays Albert, a cowardly farmer. His girl leaves him for being a punk and then a mysterious woman (Charlize Theron!) comes to town and he falls in love with her. Unfortunately she is the wife of a notorious gunslinger. Albert has a problem on his hands. The cast is really great, the cameos are perfect and there is some really funny stuff in here. The other stuff hits the dirt like a big mouth bass. For every joke that made me laugh, there’s four that are so bad it’s hard to even consider them jokes. They tread on racial jokes that don’t work at all, the “gross out” material is totally unnecessary (I’m looking at you sheep urine)  and the tripping scene (how much did that cost?) is weird just to be weird. Couldn’t think of anything better than that tired nonsense? It’s a really bi-polar movie. Good times at one moment and then get me out of here bombs the next.

22 Jump Street– I had a good time with 21 Jump Street and they really stepped it up for 22. They knew hot ridiculous doing a sequel is and they acknowledge that and work with it. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are a great comedy team as Schmidt and Jenko. The obvious step of going from undercover cops in high school to undercover cops in college is put through the ringer here. The make fun of themselves, send up the genre, but make it their own as well. They did everything they needed to in this movie, I hope they stick to their guns and leave the franchise as it is. Go out on top, no need to come back to this world.

Found footage style movie making is a high wire balancing act. It’s hard to do, a lot can go wrong, but if you pull it off, it’s some impressive stuff. Afflicted gets a lot right making for a fun and engaging horror movie.

Derek and Clif have been best friends since childhood. Clif got the movie making bug at a young age and got Derek to co-star in all of them. They grow up and Derek gets into the IT industry, which he soon realizes was a big mistake. When he’s diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder, AVM, he asks his best friend to travel the world with him for a year while he’s still healthy enough to do it. Clif decides it’ll be a great adventure and they make a web site and bring cameras along (Clif followed his passion and is a documentarian) to catalog and share their experiences with everyone.

They leave home for Europe and the trip starts off great. A week in, Derek meets a young woman at a bar and they take off to go back to Derek and Clif’s hotel room. When Clif goes to the room a little later, he finds Derek alone, knocked out and bleeding in bed from a blow to the head and a deep wound on his arm. As the days pass after the attack, Derek starts showing really weird symptoms. They document Derek’s crazy changes and try to figure out what to do. They both come to the realization that no hospital can help him and Derek gets into serious trouble when he starts attacking people. With each passing day, things spiral further and further out of control.

The whole movie is shown through Clif’s cameras. We’re set up with how much equipment Clif brings, but it’s never revealed how/who found the footage and edited it together. I don’t have a problem with that as I think it all works, the set up is all we really need. There’s a lot of really impressive stuff in this movie. It looks, really, really good. Very well shot, the visual effects are fantastic and I love the end. You get to know the two guys, understand what they’re doing and they quickly get to the point of the movie. The build up is great and the execution is often masterful. Derek and Clif (those are their real names) are still beginners in the film industry, but they show a lot of understanding and expertise in Afflicted. A few things caught my eye here and there. Sometimes the dialog is a little clunky, they stay in one town when they should have took off right after shit went down (it would have been pretty easy for the authorities to find them) and the French actress is just not good. It’s tough to watch her deliver lines which is terrible because her scenes are very important and bring down the quality of the movie.

I like being surprised by movies like Afflicted that seem to come out of nowhere by great up and coming filmmakers. I look forward to see what these two tackle next.