The Qwipster Film Review Podcast

Sacred Himalayan peak Meru Peak in northern India, at nearly 22,000 feet, may not be the tallest mountain in the world, but it is one of the most difficult to climb. It's so difficult that, at least prior to this documentary's footage, it had never been scaled successfully, even by several of the world's best mountain climbers who've tried repeatedly, ultimately failing once they get to the precipitous "Shark's Fin" of the mountain's central of three peaks, where climbing is slow, the harsh climate is freezing, and the places to rest nearly nonexistent. Meru documents both a 2008 and a 2011 attempt by Jimmy Chin, who put much of this film together, along with his longtime climbing partner Conrad Anker and ultra-athletic free-climber Renan Ozturk, to scale the complicated peak before the hundreds of pound of food and other necessary supplies runs out that would make success an impossibility.

Straight Outta Compton gives us the basic origins of the group N.W.A.'s three most well-known members, Dre, Cube, and Eazy-E, the latter of whom would turn some of the money he accrued while drug-dealing into launching his own record label, Ruthless Records, and made it a local success. Their radio buzz puts them on the radar of music talent manager Jerry Heller, who impresses on them that he has the chops in the business to take them to the next level of success, securing a record deal to give them national distribution, but also perhaps led to their eventual break-up, as contracts are signed but money never seems to flow in ways that smack of fairness. From there, the biopic deals with the group's controversy, particularly in their impassioned call to rise up against police brutality in "F--- Tha Police", as well as their lyrics that are called out for glamorizing the gangster lifestyle to their predominantly young listeners. Other threads include Cube's leaving the group to go solo, Dre eventually doing the same after one more album (from the frying pan to the fire of Los Angeles thug mogul Suge Knight), and Eazy-E's contraction of AIDS, which would take his life before a proposed reunion of the group, this time on their own terms, could take place.

After a prologue featuring David Lipsky hearing the news of David Foster Wallace's suicide in 2008, we flash back to 1996 for most of the duration, as the journalist travels to Wallace's home on the outskirts of Bloomington, Illinois for a few days before they head out to the final stop in Minneapolis, trying to pick his brain without being too pushy. The reserved author is very tight-lipped about things that are too personal in nature, which leads to a good deal of testiness on Wallace's part. Voids exist, as Lipsky begins to think that perhaps Wallace is trying to shape his image for the purpose of the interview and not be forthcoming about who he really is and what he believes, leading to some push back, and forcing the reporter to put together some insights based on the items Wallace keeps around his house.

Jason Bateman stars as Simon, who has just moved to hometown Los Angeles from Chicago with his wife Robyn and St. Bernard, Mr. Bojangles. Robyn has decided to stay at home to work while Simon heads off to corporate-land due to some unstable moments of paranoia and fear in her past, including the trauma of losing an unborn child before it came to term. While purchasing some items for their new home, Simon is approached by a man he once went to high school with, Gordon, and, out of politeness, 'Gordo', as he was once nicknamed in school, is invited over for dinner and to catch up with old times. Gordo tries to make peace, offering up such gifts as bottles fo wine, and new koi for their pond. Robyn finds him to be nice, if socially awkward, but something about Gordo begins to rub Simon the wrong way, which causes a bit of tension among the three, as well as some unsavory events of the past resurfacing that Robyn senses but can't put her finger on.

Miles Teller plays Reed Richards in his older form, who has invented, with assistance from his best and only friend Ben Grimm, a contraption that apparently allows it to teleport an object somewhere else and have it return back to the invention. Reed initially thinks that place it goes is on Earth, but he's later informed that he has created an inter-dimensional transporter that is connected to another planet full of all kinds of crazy energy that gets him linked up with Dr. Franklin Storm, the head of a government-sponsored science-based think tank for young prodigies called the Baxter Institute, along with his thrill-seeking son Johnny, his adopted genius of a daughter, Sue, and an older prodigy named Victor Von Doom, who has already been working on a project of similar direction. After building a bigger version of the device that can transport much larger objects, the government rep on the case wants their men to take over the project once they see it has been successful, leaving the scientists who spent their lives forging the way little choice but to sneak into the facility and operate the high-tech machine themselves to be the first humans ever to travel to this new, undiscovered planet. After drunk-dialing Ben to join them on the fun, they do just that, and while there, things go awry when they discover the place is rife with an unknown and seemingly unstable energy source that consumes them, as Victor is lost, while the rest of the crew get back, barely, with their lives, forever changed by the experience, not only emotionally, but physically as well. Reed becomes a man of rubber-like abilities, Ben a goliath of stone, Johnny a man of flames and flight, and Sue a woman of invisibility and forcefields.

Ethan Hunt has to go it on his own as the IMF (Impossible Mission Force), for all intents and purposes, is shut down by the CIA head Alan Hunley for a lack of results on their latest mission, plus mishaps such as the Kremlin getting destroyed from their previous mission (as chronicled in the fourth M:I flick, Ghost Protocol). Hunt really wants to take down shadowy international terrorism syndicate leader Solomon Lane, who has been orchestrating a series of seemingly unrelated catastrophes for a higher purposes we don't come to fully find out until later in the plot. For reasons he can't make out, Lane has an operative in his employ, Ilsa Faust, who is as deadly as she is alluring, and she is helping Ethan Hunt while also committing some heinous acts -- a potential double agent in their midst.

Econo Airline pilot Rusty eavesdrops on a conversation in which his wife Debbie discusses how bored she's become of the routine in their marriage, exemplified by the usual Sheboygan cabin they rent every year around Memorial Day, Rusty decides to surprise her and their sons with something new -- a cross-country road trip from Chicago to So-Cal's Walley World, just like he had when he was a lad. Renting a similar family wagon in the Tartan Prancer, which contains features seemingly just to have them, the family of four set off for a whole series of misadventures, including road rage incidents, attempts at public sex, and a treacherous white-water rapids excursion with a suicidal rafting instructor at the nadir of his depressive state.

In 1982, Sam Brenner was one of the best video gamers around his local arcade. But not THE best, as he would eventually lose in a Worldwide Video Arcade Championship competition to the cocky, pimp-voiced, and mulleted Eddie "The Fireblaster" Plant, who bests him at the wildly popular "Donkey Kong" to steal the victory. NASA had sponsored the event, and used the footage from the competition to send up to space, where it would eventually be found by aliens who take what they find as a declaration of war, and who come to Earth, 'Space Invaders'-style, to take over things using representations found from the video games they viewed from the original video. Flash forward to today, and Will is now the President of the United States. Along with conspiracy theorist whack-job Ludlow Lamonsoff and fresh-from-prison former-nemesis Eddie Plant, Brenner, who now works as a low-level home electronics install guy, has to go to wherever the action is in order to apply his video game skills to thwart the advancing aliens in their various glowing cube forms, and in the process, save the Earth from destruction. He also finds that one of his customers, the hot single mom Violet Van Patten, is also a Lieutenant Colonel in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that is heading the front against the invasion, though they have to rely in the gamers because the military lacks the kind of hand-eye coordination necessary to best these games. What a chance for a geek to impress the hot babes by saving the world!

Comedian Amy Schumer gets her chance to shine on the big screen with Trainwreck, playing, appropriately, Amy, working by day as a journalist at a men's lifestyle and celebrity gossip publication, but who drinks hard, gets high, and carouses with the opposite sex even harder when not on the clock. Life's in a predictable pattern of not getting too committed to things until she is assigned a piece on a famous sports doctor named Aaron. Meanwhile, Amy has even more on her plate when her philandering, hard-drinking father, Gordon, is hospitalized and put into assisted living, while Kim, Amy's pragmatic married sister, is constantly trying to get her to give up her hedonistic ways. It culminates in Amy coming to rely on the rock-solid support of Aaron, while all the while fighting off getting in too deep due to her own feelings on the kind of life that she should be leading.

There's actually more than one Ant-Man in the film, as we start with the original, Dr. Hank Pym, a leading scientist, and inventor of the "Pym Particle", which allows things, including people, to shrink own to ant-size, or more, but with enhanced strength. Through a series of ingenious plays, Pym manages to get his Ant Suit into the hands of resourceful (but jobless) cat burglar Scott Lang, recently released from prison for theft on a corporate scale, though he did it to return money the company reportedly bilked form its customers. The reason for the ruse: Pym wants Lang to thwart the plans of his power-hungry former protégé Darren Cross in using his designs to create his own method shrink people down to miniature size in the form of the flying, weaponized Yellowjacket suits, which he aims to do for nefarious purposes. Pym's shrewd and scrappy daughter Hope still works in the company under Cross, which gives them the inside knowledge they need for Lang to breach Cross's tight security and stop the Yellowjacket project before it disrupts global warfare as we know it.

Terminator Genisys starts in 2029, with the end of the rebellion against Skynet HQ, which makes it, essentially, both a prequel and a sequel to The Terminator, as we see the T-800 played by Schwarzenegger go back to 1984 and try to assassinate Sarah Connor, to make sure her son, John, will never be born, and therefore, not be able to lead humanity to victory against the machines. Following not long behind to keep this from happening is Kyle Reese, who soon discovers that he and the the killer cyborg aren't the first ones to travel to the past in this timeline, as he is soon met by an older form of a T-800 that was sent even further into the past to serve as Sarah's protector (earning him the nickname, "Pops"), as well as an even more dangerous T-1000 out to take them all down. Sarah, who is fully aware from an early age on what to expect will happen in the year 1984, barely needs protecting, and might only be interested in keeping Reese around because he is also needed to create John in the future. Together, they seek to keep the Terminators from killing the seed of Resistance in Earth's future, while the humans seek to stop the creation of Genisys, the seed of what will eventually become Skynet -- it's a race against time through time.

Shameik Moore stars as Malcolm, a geeky high school senior with Harvard aspirations living in "The Bottoms", one of the toughest neighborhoods in Inglewood, California. When he's not trying to avoid crossing the paths of troublemakers, he's spending time with his best friends Diggy and Jib playing in their pop-punk band, or diving head first into 1990s hip-hop, including sporting the high-top fade hair style and colorful fashion of the "Yo! MTV Raps" era. One day, Malcolm runs into one of those troublemakers he typically avoids, a drug dealer named Dom, and ends up trying to play matchmaker between him and a local beauty that Malcolm himself has a thing for, Nakia. Nakia's one condition for seeing Dom results in Malcolm and friends being invited to Dom's birthday bash at a local club. A botched drug deal leads Dom to stash his supply of MDMA (aka, molly, aka, ecstasy) in Malcolm's backpack, which some murderous gangsters want back. Malcolm is told by an incarcerated Dom that he can, under no circumstances, give it to them, leaving his life in jeopardy until he can find a safe way to appease all of the interested parties involved.

The basic premise of this film is that we're given the emotional inner workings of a young girl in Minnesota named Riley (Dias, The Shifting), through the personification of her feelings -- Joy (Poehler, They Came Together), Sadness, Fear, Disgust, Anger -- and how they try to coordinate to navigate her way through life in as safe and secure a way possible, looking out as if from the control tower of her mind's eye, through the many stages in life. Now eleven years old, this is a particularly tricky stage in her development, just on the cusp of maturing into a teenager, when the simplicity and imagination of her young childhood no longer interest her, and she begins to deal with new emotions, hopes, fears, and struggles with identity. The confusion is further exacerbated by career opportunity for her father that results in the family uprooting from the only place Riley has ever known, and moving to San Francisco, where she has no friends, no creature comforts, none of her favorite activities, and especially no ice hockey. As much as Joy tries to keep Riley content, her disappointing new home, the awkwardness of being a stranger in school, and the unfamiliar city around her leads the maturing girl to feel very out of sorts emotionally, giving way to many of her cherished memories turning from ones of happiness into ones of a cherished life sorely missed, as that part of her childhood seems to have been left behind forever. Those feelings cause Sadness to begin to take control of the machine that controls Riley and her orb-like embodiment of memories, which leads Joy to try to take drastic action to curb the tendency of Sadness to affect the balance of things. However, in her desperation, both Joy and Sadness get inadvertently ousted from the command center into the crazy and mysterious nether regions of Riley's mind. They encounter a series of obstacles in their long and arduous trek back, leaving Fear, Disgust, and Anger are the only emotions Riley can feel in this very delicate and confusing time in her life, while the happy memories of her youth begin to fade into oblivion.

Siblings Gray and Zach are sent on vacation to visit their Aunt Claire, who is the manager of operations at the Costa Rica island resort known as Jurassic World, a tourist attraction funded by mega-billionaire named Simon Masrani that takes its basic idea from the original Jurassic Park but seeks to do the formula right (i.e., more profitably). In addition to the assortment of dinosaurs, the corporation is looking into creating their own hybrid dinos through experiments in genetic engineering that are sure to draw in even more interested visitors year after year. Their biggest creation is the Indominus Rex, a creation that splices the T. Rex DNA with a hodge-podge of other predators of various strengths, that just might be the most deadly creature that has ever roamed the Earth. Navy vet Owen Grady is a behavioral research consultant and talent trainer at the facility, looking into the ability for these dinosaurs to learn from human instruction, and he's especially made progress at whispering to velociraptors, which may prove to be a much needed thing now that Indominus Rex has gotten out of its cage and is prepared to hunt and kill whatever it can on the island, which ultimately could mean the slaughter of 20,000 visitors trapped in the theme park.

Love and Mercy, which takes its name from the first track on Brian Wilson's first solo album in 1988, is a biopic on Brian Wilson, the musical genius behind many of the Beach Boys greatest and most critically acclaimed hits. It's a tale told in two parts, one being the days of the late 1960s in which Wilson, here played by Paul Dano, would quite live touring to spend his days in the studio to make the ambitious albums Pet Sounds and the defunct Smile almost single-handedly, and the other taking place in the 1980s, when Wilson, played in these scenes by John Cusack, would be kept under the tight scrutiny of Dr. Eugene Landy, who had been treating the reclusive and troubled artist for paranoid schizophrenia. Wilson's most creative period was also his most troubled, as his mental illness allowed him to draw out styles and sounds unheard of in any recording to date, but also affected his personal life to the point of disaster. His later years were characterized by his subservience to his doctor, who controlled every aspect of his life, and Wilson's budding romance with a Los Angeles car salesperson named Melinda Ledbetter, who thinks he is being manipulated and overmedicated.