The question Mike gets the most is “What’s a good movie I should watch?” It’s a very open ended question so in this episode, Mike shares his go-to recommendations for every type of movie lover. Watching as many movies as he does: Mike inserts different genres into that question and what he’d recommend to 6 types of movie lover: Comedy, Thriller, War and More! Mike reviews the new Michael Bay movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal all called Ambulance. And in the trailer park, Mike covers Father Stu starring Mark Wahlberg.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome back to Movie Mike's Movie Podcast. I
am your host Movie Mike a k A. Mike D.
And today I want to give you just a bunch
of movie recommendations for every type of movie lover. I'll
get into why I came up with the idea on
this week's episode. Also give you a review of the
new Michael Bay movie starring Jake Jillen Hall called Ambulance,
which is in theaters now and in the trailer park.
(00:21):
We'll talk about a movie coming out this week called
Father stew with Mark Wahlberg. There are so many great
movies out right now. It's starting to be really fun
to do this podcast where there's so much to talk about.
So shout out to the entire Monday Movie crew, thanks
for being here and listening every single week. And now
let's talk movies. In a world where everyone and their
(00:42):
mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the
ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast.
A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like
walking on MTS classes from the Nashville Podcast Networks Movie
(01:02):
Movie Podcast. So I would say the number one question
I get every time I see an old friend, a coworker,
even sometimes you meet a listener out. What people always
ask me because I do this podcast, because I talked
so much about movies online, is what movies should I watch?
What movie do you recommend? And it's a hard question
(01:23):
to answer because you have to consider many things. Different
people like different kinds of movies. And I wish there
was just one movie I could recommend to every person
alive and it'd be good no matter what you like.
But that's not really the case when it comes to movies.
So I wanted to do an episode that you could
come back to later, maybe share with a friend who
(01:45):
maybe ask you that question, or what movie should I watch? Well,
here are some recommendations for every type of movie lover
and what I feel like our movies that anybody could
watch that are into these genres and enjoy. These are
all A plus movies. I think they go beyond what
age you are, what level of movie fan you are,
(02:05):
that you can just sit down and watch by yourself,
with a friend or with family, and afterward you think
that was a good movie. So these are just my
go to recommendations when people ask me that question. So
we'll dive into some different genres here, and I want
to start with the genre that I don't get to
talk about very often, and it is war movies. And
(02:25):
my go to war movie recommendation is Fury from I
think the thing that stands out most about this movie
is the cast with Brad Pitt, Michael Beniah, John Berth, No,
Scott Eastwood. There are so many great actors in this movie,
and when I watch a war movie, I want something
that's very realistic. And I also just love learning about
(02:47):
World War Two, and any movie that depicts what's going
on in the world during that time is just really
captivating to me, mainly because not that long ago. This
movie takes place in April ninety five of And what
I love about Fury is it's a very gritty, realistic movie,
and I think that's what I look for when I
sit down to watch a war movie. So if you're
(03:08):
a fan of movies like Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down,
Full Metal Jacket, I think Fury is right up there
as well. What I was saying is, I think the
cast in this just really makes this movie what it
is because Brad Pitt as the leader here with this
cool haircut and cool accent and everybody's war names in
this movie, and I think that's why I like Fury
(03:29):
so much. I was rewatching it before I did this episode,
and every character here, from Brad Pitt to Shyla Buff,
you really get to know and it kind of takes
it a step further when watching a war movie and
really helps you connect and depict what was going on
during that time in that war in particular. And I
just love the story here. It's about this five man
(03:50):
crew who undertakes really deadly mission and it all kind
of comes to the climax of the movie when they're
outnumbered and basically have to fight against these Nazis knowing
that they're probably not going to come out alive. So
if you're looking to sit down and watch a war
movie that maybe you haven't seen, I would go with Fury.
From Next up, I want to talk about my go
(04:12):
to drama recommendation, and it's also from and I really
love dramas and movies that focus on the subject and
makes that subject seem like it's the biggest thing in
the entire world. But it's always something that I would
have no interest in really knowing more about. But through
their storytelling and through the focus on this one subject.
(04:35):
It makes it so captivating. And the movie I want
to talk about here is Whiplash. Also just some really
great actors in this movie, but hands down the best
performance goes to j. K. Simmons his portrayal as Terrence
Fletcher in this as he is pushing Miles Teller's character
to be this incredible drummer. I just love the tension
between these two characters, especially during the iconic not quite
(04:59):
my tempo scene, not quite my temple. It's all good,
no worries. Here we go dry. I'm upsets the whole band,
can hear you, I'm upset, Louder, I'm Upsetuder, I'm upset.
(05:23):
So j K. Simmons as this instructor trying to push
him to the best of his ability to be the
greatest drummer he can be, and as you hear in
that clip, just basically shattering his mental state because nothing
he does is good enough. So I love how this
movie took the subject of drumming in a jazz ensemble
(05:46):
to be the biggest thing in the entire world, like
it was a life or death situation that was going
on here. And I just put myself if I was
just going to watch a performance from this jazz ensemble
and had no idea what was going on. I just
should be like, oh, that was a great Morman's not
knowing how hard that drummer was pushed to make those
quarter notes and all those things that he's yelling at
(06:07):
them for. So there are other movies that do this.
And if you're fans of movies like Moneyball, Black swan Ford,
b Ferrari, where it's super hyper focused on a sport,
a hobby, or just some kind of craft and done
in this dramatic way and through the eyes of a
drama like this, it just makes for a really good movie.
(06:28):
So my go to drama recommendation if you haven't seen it,
is Whiplash. Next up, let me talk about my go
to comedy recommendation, and again by looking at this list
and if you listen to this podcast for any amount
of time, I always like to focus on movies happening now.
I'm a big fan of keeping filmmaking and the you know,
(06:50):
enjoyment of modern cinema alive. So I always like to
recommend things within the last ten years. And when it
comes to comedies, I feel like comedies haven't been there
in the last ten years. I think the genre of
comedy is kind of dead, to be honest, I can't
remember the last time I watched a movie an outright
(07:11):
laughed out loud like I did when I was a teenager,
like I did when I was a kid. What I
think is the thing now is drama eas So it's
a mix of drama with comedy, so it's not outwardly
trying to be this thing that you're gonna watch and
be like, man, that was the funniest movie I've ever seen.
I don't think that exists anymore. I just think comedy
has evolved out of what the scope of a movie
(07:34):
can be. So it's really hard to do that now.
As we saw with Judd Apatow's last movie on Netflix.
You can just fail so bad at comedies right now
because it's hard to make something funny these days. And
what I think is now the kind of go to
movie I look for is that mix of a dramedy,
(07:54):
so it's not so much relying on keeping the funny
moments coming again and again and again. It builds a
story through a character feels a little bit more relatable,
but has some comedic relief throughout it. That's a little
bit more relatable, a little bit more of that things
that we would find, you know, in everyday life. And
maybe it's a little bit of a safety net of
(08:16):
not branding itself as a funny, laugh out loud comedy
to where I enjoyed that a little bit more so.
What I would recommend in the drama y category is
a movie from called Ingrid Goes West starring Aubrey Plaza,
and I really love a lot of Aubrey Plaza movies,
and this movie is about her character is dealing with
(08:40):
the death of her mother. She has all these kind
of setbacks in her life, and she's trying to kind
of escape all the sad things in her life through
social media, and she becomes obsessed with this other person
on Instagram. She's like this l a based influence her
name Taylor, and she finds a way to become friends
with her and does all this kind of scam artists
(09:04):
manipulation through social media. So I feel like it's also
a little bit relevant to what's going on now and
what we're all kind of obsessed with when it comes
to television shows and documentaries. We love things right now
about people getting scammed, people falling for things that you think, well,
how could somebody fall for that? People manipulating and not
(09:24):
saying who they actually are, and doing really shady things
online and just in life in general. So I feel
like if this movie came out now, it would have
a bigger impact and people would be talking about it more.
But it came out back in seventeen. Maybe it wasn't
the biggest thing at the moment, but it has that
good mix of comedy and drama and in that scam
(09:47):
artist space. So if you've watched recent movies like Promising,
Young Woman, I Care a Lot, or even back a
little further the Blingering, and you were fans of those movies,
I think you would like Ingrid Goes West. Next up.
We kind of stay in the same space. And I
want to talk about my go to rom com recommendation,
(10:07):
and it's kind of changed a little bit over the years,
but I have to say the most recent rom com
I watched and really loved was from this year. It's
called I Want You Back, starring Charlie Day and Jenny Slate.
Came out on Amazon and kind of like just straight
up comedy. I too thought the romantic comedy was a
little bit dead too, and it just got very cheesy,
(10:28):
which I know that's what rom coms are supposed to be,
But I love the feeling of a late nineties, early
two thousands rom calm. I think that's where this genre
really thrived. And when I watched I Want You Back,
I had those same kind of feelings that I got
from those types of movies during that era, because the
(10:49):
line you have to walk between a rom com is
what the genre says, that has to have an element
of romance where you believe in the character's love story
and it's also funny, which is hard to do because
I feel like so often it just kind of falls
into the cheesy comedy and the love story never really develops.
And the most recent rom comes I've seen with a
(11:10):
few exceptions that I'll get into that this movie is
similar like, but this movie did it so well and
it was also a little novel. The story is about
these two total strangers dealing with this breakup around the
same time, and together they meet and decide they're going
to use each other to get their excess back try
(11:30):
and date them, and you know, basically we're talking about
scams earlier scam away into ending up back with a
person they thought they were supposed to be with. But
I actually believed in the love story here and it
had me invested in a way I wasn't going to
expect it to. And not only that, it does have
(11:50):
some good comedic moments. I wouldn't say fall out of
your chair moments by any means, but I think it
was really there and it was just very charming. So
love Charlie Day from Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And I
loved Jenny Slay back when she was on SNL even
though she did drop an F word. I think that
was like the pinnacle of her SNL career. But she
(12:11):
does some really great stand up comedy. Has also been
in some good movies. To obvious, Child was probably my
favorite movie of hers, but this one is really up there.
So I do like to recommend this one because I
feel like more people should have seen this movie on
Amazon and the movies I would say it's similar to,
(12:31):
and the movies I would compare it to recently that
have been some of my favorite rom coms. Were Crazy
Rich Asians and always be my maybe, so I think
those three movies have been my three favorite rom coms
in the last ten years, But if you're a fan
of the rom coms of the nineties and two thousand's,
I think this I Want You Back movie is as
(12:52):
close as you can get to that. A few more
genres I want to talk about, and musicals are probably
way down there on the list of movies I set
out to watch. I just don't really like the idea
and concept of people bursting into song randomly and the
song having to develop the plot, because if I'm watching
a movie and the singing just takes me out of it,
(13:14):
it takes me out of following along with the story,
and I don't really consider a song to be like
a plot point. It just feels like music to me
is set in the middle of a movie. So when
there's a lot of singing, I feel like there's very
little story in musicals. So that's why I just choose
not to watch them. But every now and then a
really big one comes out, and I think why they
(13:37):
stand out so much is because they are able to
tell the story and the music kind of takes it
a step further. It's not the main thing, it's not
carrying the entire movie. It heightens everything else about the movie,
and the movie I watched most recently and wasn't expecting
to like as much as I did was Tick Tick Boom,
(13:58):
And now that is kind of my goat to musical
recommendation if you haven't seen that one, because Andrew Garfield
is so good in it, and it's more a story
about struggling turning thirty years old, having that kind of
time in your life, where do you go on and
do something that you're super passionate about but aren't having
much success in even though you know it's what you're
(14:19):
supposed to be doing, Or go and be like what
all your other friends are doing now and settling down
into careers to kind of move on from that phase
of their life. And that's what I took away from
this movie, and the music and the songs just kind
of heightened that. I did find the songs catchy, and
even though I'm not into musical theater at all, I
(14:41):
found it really refreshing. So this is now my go
to musical recommendation. Before that, it was La La Land,
But I think at this point, if you haven't seen
La La Land, you're never going to watch La La
Land because that type of movie probably doesn't appeal to you.
But if you are a fan of La La Land,
haven't seeing tick Tick Boom, Or maybe you're a fan
(15:02):
of a Star's Board or The Greatest Showman. I think
all of these movies kind of fall into movies that
people call musicals, fall under that genre, but there's more
substance there to grab onto if that's not your thing.
Next up, I want to talk about action movies, and
whenever I recommend an action movie that I think most
(15:23):
people will like, always have to think about my dad,
because my dad and I have probably bonded very little
over movies, because, unlike anybody else I've ever met, he
doesn't watch any movies, he doesn't watch any TV shows.
He goes to work, comes home, he eats, and he
goes to sleep. But every now and then he'll be
(15:44):
sitting on the couch on like a Saturday afternoon, and
we'll throw on a movie to try to get his attention.
It always just has to be an action movie because
my dad can understand there's a bad guy, there's a
good guy. Bad guy wants to shoot good guy. Good
guy has a fight back, Like my dad con grass
that concept um if you're not familiar with my family.
My parents moved here from Mexico. They speak primarily Spanish
(16:09):
but no English, so when they're watching a movie, you know,
some of the language barrier is there and they won't
understand all the dialogue. So I think with an action movie,
it's very deliberate with what's going on. You don't really
have to follow along the plot line, do you understand it?
So our go to genre is the action movies or
(16:29):
like old three Stooges skits from back in the Day
and the movie I want to Show Him now is
a movie that came out last year was Bob oden
Kirk called Nobody. I love Bob oden Kirk. You probably
know him best as Saul and Better Call Saw and
Breaking Bad. He did some really great work as a
comedy writer in SNL back in the day, wrote one
(16:50):
of my favorite Chris Farley sketches ever. And it's kind
of cool seeing him having so much success with Better
Call Saul and now being a movie star, which he
I mean, he's been in movies his entire career as well,
but it's cool seeing him as a leading man and
in a movie like Nobody, where I kind of feel
like it's the movie adaptation of Breaking Bad that it
(17:12):
should have got. Like I didn't like El Camino on Netflix,
but I kind of had that same feeling watching nobody
of it exists in that world. I don't know just
because it's Bob hooden Kirk that I had that feeling.
But he plays a character named Hutch who had this
kind of dark past of doing these things that you
kind of learned throughout the movie. But he has a
very kind of special set of skills, maybe a little
(17:33):
derivative of like Taken, and he's trying to defend himself
after two thieves broken to his house and you know,
threatened his family, so he kind of goes back into
reverting into that lifestyle. And there's a lot of fist fights.
There's a lot of gunfire, you know, squealing tires, like
all those things that make up a great action movie
(17:54):
are in this movie. And it just has kind of
a good, fresh feel to it because it is Bob
boden Kirk. It's like an older guy but still being
able to crush anybody who comes at him. I just
kind of love that aspect of it. So if you're
a fan of movies like The John Wick movies. It's
not as violent as a John Wick movie, but kind
of up there too, you know Jason Bourne, the die
(18:16):
Hard movies, or even if you just love Breaking Bad,
I think you would really like Nobody. And I tell
anybody looking for a great action movie, you gotta check
this one now before you go watch anyone. But I
kind of feel like this is my go to like
guy movie recommendation because I know it'll pass my dad's
test of like, man, that's a good movie just by
seeing all the flying action in it. I decided to
(18:37):
throw in a bonus one here. And it's a movie
I haven't been able to talk about on the podcast.
I'm really found a place for it yet. But it's
a movie called The Worst Person in the World, and
it is now my go to foreign film recommendation. It's
in Norwegian and I remember seeing the trailer kind of
pop up here and there, and the first thing that
(18:58):
stuck out to me about this movie is the title.
That's such a great movie title, the Worst Person in
the World. And know, it's not a movie about me.
It's a movie about this young woman and it kind
of follows her life of indecisiveness and not being able
to fully commit to a relationship. And what I loved
about The Worst Person in the World is even though
(19:18):
I don't speak Norwegian, it didn't really matter while I
was watching this movie. And my favorite aspect of it
is that you don't entirely root for her throughout the
entire movie. It shows the good parts of her, but
it also really shows the bad parts of her, and
she's almost not a hero in her own movie because
(19:38):
she's doing some things that as the viewer, you're like, man,
you're kind of a bad person for doing that. And
it just kind of shows a realistic depiction of somebody's
struggle trying to find love, trying to find their worth
in life, and it's a very realistic but entertaining approach.
There's some great visuals in this movie, even just from
(19:59):
watching the trailer. There's a scene where she's like running
through and time is frozen. There's some other kind of
funny elements and somewhat bizarre moments throughout the movie as well,
But overall, it's just a very realistic and depiction of
life that I really haven't seen before. And maybe that's
because it is a Norwegian film, but I have been
(20:21):
trying to get into a little bit more of foreign films,
kind of expanding just beyond my American brain of wanting
to watch the big Hollywood movies just to see how
different people tell stories. And it kind of goes back
to what I was talking about with my dad of
you know, even though he doesn't fully understand all the
English dialogue, he still gets when there's good storytelling there
(20:44):
or when there's just great action there. And I think
that's the same thing when watching a foreign film, me
being American and watching a Norwegian film. If the writing
is there, if the acting is there, and it's all
done at a really high level, it doesn't really matter
what language it's in. So if you're a fan of
movies like Parasite or also came out in the past
(21:04):
year Parallel Mothers, which I really enjoyed back in the day,
Eat the MoMath and began with one of my favorite
foreign films, Like me, you're just looking for maybe something
in a different language that just has a really great story.
I would say, check out The Worst Person in the World.
And last up, I wanted to talk about thriller. I
think that's kind of at least in my top three
(21:26):
genres because when a thriller has done really well, it
does what I look for in a movie going experience.
I want to feel like I'm on a roller coaster.
I want to feel like I'm taking on an emotional
ride that gets my heart rate going, but also like
plays into what's going on in my brain of analyzing
all these scenes and dialogue and characters. I just feel
(21:48):
like thriller really gives you the most bang for your
buck because it has the elements of drama, it has
the elements of action, and it's not like a superhero
movie that has any kind fantasy aspect to it. It's
just very set in real life. And I think that's why,
when done well, I just love a good thriller. And
the one I recommend the most is also from and
(22:11):
it is starring Jake jillen Hall called Nightcrawler. I feel
like one of his best performances he's ever given, but
received zero OSCAR nominations for this role. And the fact
that Jake jillen Hall has only received one OSCAR nomination
out of his entire acting career, I believe it was
a travesty. So what this movie is about, It's this
(22:32):
guy played by Jake Jillen Hall living in Los Angeles
and he's trying to get by on this newly stumbled
upon career as a cameraman, and he is trying to
get footage that he is selling two new stations. So
he gets a police scanner, starts listening for violent crimes,
goes there with this camera and gets the most upfront
(22:55):
and brutal footage that he can because that's what pays
the most. If bleeds it leads, they tell him in
the movie. So he gets obsessed with this idea of
going there being the first they're getting the closest shot,
getting the most gruesome shot, because because that's what's driving
the news ratings, and if he can get that exclusive shot,
he can make more money for it. But what happens
(23:16):
is it gets very dark, and he starts to descend
into this madness of being so obsessed with it that
he doesn't really have any more values, and the news
organization he's working with almost doesn't really care how he
gets the shot, so you can imagine where it goes
from there. All he cares about is getting that shot.
(23:37):
Jake Jillen Hall really dives into a really dark place
to do this character and if I think he's like
one of my dream interviews to have. And I know
he's been doing press for his new movie that I
will be reviewing here in a bit, and I would
just like to ask him he plays like a demented character,
so well, where does he go with in his brain?
He seems like a pretty chill, down to earth dude
(23:59):
when he's on on camera, but seeing him in a
role like this in several of his movie roles where
he's just overwhelmed with emotion and looks downright scary, I
just wonder, like, how do you get to that place
as an actor? But if you liked movies like Drive
or Taxi Driver back in the day, movies like No
Country for Old Men, Hell or High Water New Wars
(24:20):
style movies, I think you'd really like Nightcrawler if you
haven't seen it. So that is my go to thriller recommendation,
and that will take us into this week's movie review.
I'm gonna talk about Ambulance starring Jake Jillen Hall after this,
I want to get into this movie review. Now, let's
(24:43):
talk about Ambulance. It's in theaters now, directed by Michael Bay,
starring Jake Jillen Hall and Yaka abdual Matine. The second
a big, fun action ride, lots of explosions. If you're
into that, I think this could be the movie for you.
Before I get into my full review of it, here's
just a little bit of the ambulance trailer. I got
(25:03):
a cop shot. You gotta get him to the hospital.
You're my brother. Have I ever gotten anything that couldn't
get you out of block everything down? We're just trying
to get home. We don't get to walk over into
the suns. I have a plan. So what this movie
is about. Jake Jillen Hall and Yaa are brothers, and
(25:27):
Yahya's character is a veteran. He is a war hero,
but now he's needing money to pay for this medical
procedure that his wife needs and he's really having no
kind of luck. So he goes to his brother, Jake
Jillen Hogg, who is a very sophisticated bank robber, and
then Jake Jillen Hog gets him involved in this bank
highest and part that goes wrong is a cop gets shot.
(25:51):
An ambulance tries to go and rescue the cop, and
then they hijack that ambulance to escape from the bank,
and the entire movie is just this big police chase
involving them trying to get away. So that's basically the
plot of the movie. There are a lot of other
twists and turns, and I honestly think this is one
(26:11):
of Michael Bay's best movies in a very long time.
He kind of went back to his roots. And you
can hate on Michael Bay. I feel like some people do,
because everybody says he just uses explosions. If you think
about his movies that have made his name known, primarily
the Transformers franchise, but also Bad Boys Armageddon. A movie
(26:32):
I really like from him is called Pain and Gain,
and yes, he throws in a lot of special effects,
but Michael Bay knows how to make an entertaining movie
on the big screen, and this movie does exactly that.
So what really sticks out with this one is he's
gotten a little bit away from He used a lot
of what is called lens flare and Transformers, which was
(26:54):
this very like stylistic thing. He kind of made it
so popular because of those movies and probably used it
a little bit too much that it's a little visually jarring.
And I think he's evolved a little bit from that.
There is some of that in this movie, but the
new kind of thing he is focused on is these
crazy aerial drone shots that he uses a lot. If
(27:14):
you go watch the trailer, it's straight up like going
up a building, does a spin, and then focuses on
another part. It's very visually stimulating. You watch this movie
and it has a style to it, and that's what
I loved about it. I I felt his voice in
just that direction and just the look of the movie.
So even if you took the same movie with the
(27:36):
same script, the same actors without that style, I don't
think it would have been as entertaining. So I gotta
give it to him. He really knows how to make
something that's fun to watch in theaters, and those shots,
for me, made it a lot more enjoyable. If you
get a little bit motion sick while watching something like that.
If you just see the trailer and that's like, oh,
(27:56):
I can't handle that. The entire movie maybe uses it
a little it too much, but it's just so cool
that I think he kind of had to. And then
the pacing throughout the movie is pretty good because it
does kind of remind me of speed and you think,
how long could you watch a chase scene and still
be entertained by it. It maybe went on just a
little bit too long and the third act, but there
(28:17):
was just so much gunfire, car crashes. He got really
into like cars running into things on the sidewalk and
you know, exploding and going everywhere. So those kinds of
things are very fun in this movie. Now, when you
talk about the actors here, I thought it was a
really fun role for Jake Jillen Hall. And I was
even watching him on SNL over the weekend, and in
(28:40):
his monologue he kind of addressed that. He even talked
about the movie Nightcrawler, which I was talking about earlier.
I recorded that segment of the podcast before I watched
as anel, so it was kind of cool to hear
I mentioned that movie because I am a big fan
of that. I think he knows that. But I'll play
you this clip from his SNL monologue which kind of
explains I think it was a little bit more in
ref friends to him in his choice to host us
(29:02):
and now, But I also feel like he's also kind
of talking about why he did a movie like this.
You know, it's funny. I got this reputation for being
this serious, intense method actor, but honestly, I wasn't even
that good at method acting. I was only doing that
method stuff because I thought that's what you had to
do to be a serious actor, and I kind of
(29:23):
forgot how to have fun. That's when I realized something
I should have realized a long time ago. Acting is
a really stupid job. It's pretend and it's it's fun
and it should be filled with joy. Well, I'm finally
embracing that joy again, and that's why I'm back standing
on the stage. And I felt like he was really
(29:44):
embracing that in this movie. And you think someone at
his level of acting maybe wouldn't do a movie like this,
But it was fun to see and he really kind
of dived a little bit into that darker side that
he does have, not as much a little bit of
his character in Spiderman Mysterio. I felt like came out
a little bit in this role. But it just felt
(30:06):
like him wanting to do a big, fun, entertaining movie
and didn't take himself entirely seriously. There were even some
lighthearted moments in all this chaos, But I just thought
he was perfect in this role. Also really enjoyed ya
Ya in this movie. I really loved him in The
Watchman and also in Candyman, and I just think he's
(30:26):
a really great action star and showed even a little
bit more of his range in this movie. But again,
you're not gonna go into watching Ambulance with the premise
like this, with the special effects that Michael Bay has
in this movie and leave feeling like you just watched
a OSCAR nominated or you know, best actor worthy performance.
But it's just a fun, turn your brain off and
(30:48):
watch things explode and crazy things happen type of movie.
And I felt like I really needed that right now.
And even my wife Kelsey went with me, and she's
not super into these type of movies, but she found
it very entertaining. Maybe not her favorite movie that she's
seen this year, but at one point she was like,
I have to go to the bathroom, but I don't
(31:09):
want to leave because it's so good. I think her
biggest complaint was that it did feel a little bit
long at two hours in fifteen minutes, And yeah, I
think if this movie was under two hours, it really
could have made that third act a little bit stronger
and not feel any lull whatsoever, it would have just
been NonStop action. So Ambulance had everything I was looking
for in Michael Bay action movie. It had the cheesy lines.
(31:33):
Not as cheesy as The Fast and the Furious movies,
but cheesy in the sense that it had a little
bit of a cliche cast of character types, like the
seasoned cop who's trying to catch them, the more sophisticated
FBI guy who's working alongside trying to talk Jake Jillen
hauled down from hurting anybody else in this chase. And
(31:56):
there was one line in particular that I feel like
I would used if I was making a parody of
an action movie like this. One of the characters is like,
tell my wife I love her, and the other person
is like, you'll tell her yourself. It just felt very cliche,
but I loved it so overall. I think if all
the things I've been talking about sound like what you
(32:16):
would be interested in in an action movie, you'll have
a fun time watching this one. I give it three
point five out of five money bags. Now it's time
for the part of the podcast where I break down
a movie trailer of a movie coming to you very soon.
In theaters or streaming on demand. In a segment we
(32:38):
call it's time to head down to movie, and this
week we are talking about a movie called Father Stew
that is coming out starring Mark Wahlberg. I really love
movies where the actor considers it a passion project, and
Mark Wahlberg has been wanting to make this movie for
(32:59):
a very long time. I'm based on a true story,
a story he just really believed in. So I think
when an actor is that invested in a project, I
already feel like it heightens my expectations going into it.
It's not just the movie he took on to get
a paycheck. If they truly believed in it, truly just
loved the story, I feel like it's going to be
(33:20):
a heightened movie going experience. So we'll talk all about
this movie, but here's just a little bit of the trailer.
I'm going to be a priesteen. I've all been wrong,
and we've all done some wrong, but he came to
forget us. Everybody will be treated all this thing. There's
no easy way to deliver news. You have a progressive
(33:42):
muscle disorder, the muscles weakened. Then until he sees the
function is there anything that doesn't mess with Yeah, I
rutile function. I'm trying to be a p the wise
man will bound down. So Mark Wahlberg plays this character
who has had a bit of an identity crisis, trying
out all these different jobs and career paths, and in
(34:02):
the movie gets started with him wanting to go and
be an actor in Hollywood, and then he meets this
girl who was a Mexican American, find that relatable and
then ultimately decides that he wants to be a priest.
And this comes to him after a near death experience.
In the trailer, you see he's on a motorcycle and
gets hit by a car and then somehow survives it.
(34:26):
So as he is trying to be a priest, he
is also hit with this diagnosis that's called inclusion body mitosis,
which is extremely rare. It's basically a disease that has
the same kind of symptoms as als. It's incurable, and
you see his body start to break down. So just
(34:48):
in the trailer alone, you see Mark Wahlberg go as
the Mark Wahlber we all know ripped up very in
shape too. What he actually did to prepare for this
role during this role was gained thirty pounds, and you
see that in the trailer, and what he actually did
in real life is he had six weeks to put
on about thirty pounds, started consuming seven thousand calories a day,
(35:10):
and then eleven thousand calories. The final four weeks of
this weight game, he was straight up just drinking olive oil.
So that's a commitment to the role. And for somebody
like Mark Wahlberg, who in the past has been very
open with how crazy his schedule is. He wakes up
at like two am and works out, has all these
meals like throughout the day, does so much before like
(35:32):
seven am. Then most humans do, and it's very strict
and all that process of you know, going to sleep
very early, and at his age, still has a physique that's,
you know, still a Hollywood movie star physique. So I
think that has to be hard on you too, if
you're going to really commit to a movie to the
(35:52):
point to where you are taking away all that all
those things you work for, I mean knowing he can
probably get it back within a couple few months because
of how intense he is. I just think that's an
extra level of commitment, and it's not unheard of for
an actor to put on weight for a role. We've seen,
you know, drastic weight gains or weight sheds be sometimes
(36:15):
the reason that people go on to win Oscars. And
you don't really put Mark Wahlberg in that category because
I don't know, I feel like people don't take him
seriously enough. And I really like his work. I like
his action movies, I like his dramas, I really like
him in comedy. I think he is one of the
most underrated A list actors. So what this movie is,
(36:36):
it's this bad boy type with a good heart, has
a big health scare, and it's just trying to do
something that gives them purpose in life. So if you're
looking to get your Mark Wahlberg fix, you want to
watch something based on a true story or just looking
for maybe something uplifting. This movie comes out early this week.
He comes out on Wednesday, April, just in time for
(36:59):
the Eastern weekend. So there you go. This makes addition
of bar and that'll do it here for another week
of the podcast. And what I like to do at
the end of every single episode, give my listeners shout out.
You can do that just by hitting me up on
any form of social media. Send me an email Movie
(37:20):
Mike D at gmail dot com If you need quick
links to any of the things, they're all down in
the episode description. And I think this is the first
for the listeners. Shout out is I have a physical
letter here, and something I never really expected, because I
feel like it already takes so much just to send
a d M or tweet, even just to send an email,
(37:42):
like that's going above a step, you know, to a
podcast you listen to. So to have a physical letter
in my hands to read during the listeners shout out
is something I never thought would happen. And the letter
is addressed to Movie Mike. It is from Barbara Sears
and Williamsburg, Kentucky, and she writes Mike D. Thanks for
being the glue that keeps the whole show together. Lunchbox
(38:03):
thinks he is the m v P of the show,
but we all know that it is you. I enclosed
the gift and I cannot use it, so I am
paying it forward to you and your sweet wife. Have
a good day. Hashtag pimp and joy. I actually got
to meet you at Bobby Show in Somerset, Kentucky a
couple of years ago. Signed Barbara Sears, Williamsburg, Kentucky. So
I really appreciate the letter, appreciate you listening to the
(38:25):
Bobby Bones Show into listening to this podcast, and also
just really appreciate the gift Barbara. So thanks to everybody
for listening this week. I hope you have a great
rest of your day, and until next time, go out
and watch good movies. I will talk to you later.
Hello, and welcome back to Movie Mike's Movie Podcast. I
am your host Movie Mike a k A. Mike D.
And today I want to give you just a bunch
of movie recommendations for every type of movie lover. I'll
get into why I came up with the idea on
this week's episode. Also give you a review of the
new Michael Bay movie starring Jake Jillen Hall called Ambulance,
which is in theaters now and in the trailer park.
(00:21):
We'll talk about a movie coming out this week called
Father stew with Mark Wahlberg. There are so many great
movies out right now. It's starting to be really fun
to do this podcast where there's so much to talk about.
So shout out to the entire Monday Movie crew, thanks
for being here and listening every single week. And now
let's talk movies. In a world where everyone and their
(00:42):
mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the
ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast.
A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like
walking on MTS classes from the Nashville Podcast Networks Movie
(01:02):
Movie Podcast. So I would say the number one question
I get every time I see an old friend, a coworker,
even sometimes you meet a listener out. What people always
ask me because I do this podcast, because I talked
so much about movies online, is what movies should I watch?
What movie do you recommend? And it's a hard question
(01:23):
to answer because you have to consider many things. Different
people like different kinds of movies. And I wish there
was just one movie I could recommend to every person
alive and it'd be good no matter what you like.
But that's not really the case when it comes to movies.
So I wanted to do an episode that you could
come back to later, maybe share with a friend who
(01:45):
maybe ask you that question, or what movie should I watch? Well,
here are some recommendations for every type of movie lover
and what I feel like our movies that anybody could
watch that are into these genres and enjoy. These are
all A plus movies. I think they go beyond what
age you are, what level of movie fan you are,
(02:05):
that you can just sit down and watch by yourself,
with a friend or with family, and afterward you think
that was a good movie. So these are just my
go to recommendations when people ask me that question. So
we'll dive into some different genres here, and I want
to start with the genre that I don't get to
talk about very often, and it is war movies. And
(02:25):
my go to war movie recommendation is Fury from I
think the thing that stands out most about this movie
is the cast with Brad Pitt, Michael Beniah, John Berth, No,
Scott Eastwood. There are so many great actors in this movie,
and when I watch a war movie, I want something
that's very realistic. And I also just love learning about
(02:47):
World War Two, and any movie that depicts what's going
on in the world during that time is just really
captivating to me, mainly because not that long ago. This
movie takes place in April ninety five of And what
I love about Fury is it's a very gritty, realistic movie,
and I think that's what I look for when I
sit down to watch a war movie. So if you're
(03:08):
a fan of movies like Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down,
Full Metal Jacket, I think Fury is right up there
as well. What I was saying is, I think the
cast in this just really makes this movie what it
is because Brad Pitt as the leader here with this
cool haircut and cool accent and everybody's war names in
this movie, and I think that's why I like Fury
(03:29):
so much. I was rewatching it before I did this episode,
and every character here, from Brad Pitt to Shyla Buff,
you really get to know and it kind of takes
it a step further when watching a war movie and
really helps you connect and depict what was going on
during that time in that war in particular. And I
just love the story here. It's about this five man
(03:50):
crew who undertakes really deadly mission and it all kind
of comes to the climax of the movie when they're
outnumbered and basically have to fight against these Nazis knowing
that they're probably not going to come out alive. So
if you're looking to sit down and watch a war
movie that maybe you haven't seen, I would go with Fury.
From Next up, I want to talk about my go
(04:12):
to drama recommendation, and it's also from and I really
love dramas and movies that focus on the subject and
makes that subject seem like it's the biggest thing in
the entire world. But it's always something that I would
have no interest in really knowing more about. But through
their storytelling and through the focus on this one subject.
(04:35):
It makes it so captivating. And the movie I want
to talk about here is Whiplash. Also just some really
great actors in this movie, but hands down the best
performance goes to j. K. Simmons his portrayal as Terrence
Fletcher in this as he is pushing Miles Teller's character
to be this incredible drummer. I just love the tension
between these two characters, especially during the iconic not quite
(04:59):
my tempo scene, not quite my temple. It's all good,
no worries. Here we go dry. I'm upsets the whole band,
can hear you, I'm upset, Louder, I'm Upsetuder, I'm upset.
(05:23):
So j K. Simmons as this instructor trying to push
him to the best of his ability to be the
greatest drummer he can be, and as you hear in
that clip, just basically shattering his mental state because nothing
he does is good enough. So I love how this
movie took the subject of drumming in a jazz ensemble
(05:46):
to be the biggest thing in the entire world, like
it was a life or death situation that was going
on here. And I just put myself if I was
just going to watch a performance from this jazz ensemble
and had no idea what was going on. I just
should be like, oh, that was a great Morman's not
knowing how hard that drummer was pushed to make those
quarter notes and all those things that he's yelling at
(06:07):
them for. So there are other movies that do this.
And if you're fans of movies like Moneyball, Black swan Ford,
b Ferrari, where it's super hyper focused on a sport,
a hobby, or just some kind of craft and done
in this dramatic way and through the eyes of a
drama like this, it just makes for a really good movie.
(06:28):
So my go to drama recommendation if you haven't seen it,
is Whiplash. Next up, let me talk about my go
to comedy recommendation, and again by looking at this list
and if you listen to this podcast for any amount
of time, I always like to focus on movies happening now.
I'm a big fan of keeping filmmaking and the you know,
(06:50):
enjoyment of modern cinema alive. So I always like to
recommend things within the last ten years. And when it
comes to comedies, I feel like comedies haven't been there
in the last ten years. I think the genre of
comedy is kind of dead, to be honest, I can't
remember the last time I watched a movie an outright
(07:11):
laughed out loud like I did when I was a teenager,
like I did when I was a kid. What I
think is the thing now is drama eas So it's
a mix of drama with comedy, so it's not outwardly
trying to be this thing that you're gonna watch and
be like, man, that was the funniest movie I've ever seen.
I don't think that exists anymore. I just think comedy
has evolved out of what the scope of a movie
(07:34):
can be. So it's really hard to do that now.
As we saw with Judd Apatow's last movie on Netflix.
You can just fail so bad at comedies right now
because it's hard to make something funny these days. And
what I think is now the kind of go to
movie I look for is that mix of a dramedy,
(07:54):
so it's not so much relying on keeping the funny
moments coming again and again and again. It builds a
story through a character feels a little bit more relatable,
but has some comedic relief throughout it. That's a little
bit more relatable, a little bit more of that things
that we would find, you know, in everyday life. And
maybe it's a little bit of a safety net of
(08:16):
not branding itself as a funny, laugh out loud comedy
to where I enjoyed that a little bit more so.
What I would recommend in the drama y category is
a movie from called Ingrid Goes West starring Aubrey Plaza,
and I really love a lot of Aubrey Plaza movies,
and this movie is about her character is dealing with
(08:40):
the death of her mother. She has all these kind
of setbacks in her life, and she's trying to kind
of escape all the sad things in her life through
social media, and she becomes obsessed with this other person
on Instagram. She's like this l a based influence her
name Taylor, and she finds a way to become friends
with her and does all this kind of scam artists
(09:04):
manipulation through social media. So I feel like it's also
a little bit relevant to what's going on now and
what we're all kind of obsessed with when it comes
to television shows and documentaries. We love things right now
about people getting scammed, people falling for things that you think, well,
how could somebody fall for that? People manipulating and not
(09:24):
saying who they actually are, and doing really shady things
online and just in life in general. So I feel
like if this movie came out now, it would have
a bigger impact and people would be talking about it more.
But it came out back in seventeen. Maybe it wasn't
the biggest thing at the moment, but it has that
good mix of comedy and drama and in that scam
(09:47):
artist space. So if you've watched recent movies like Promising,
Young Woman, I Care a Lot, or even back a
little further the Blingering, and you were fans of those movies,
I think you would like Ingrid Goes West. Next up.
We kind of stay in the same space. And I
want to talk about my go to rom com recommendation,
(10:07):
and it's kind of changed a little bit over the years,
but I have to say the most recent rom com
I watched and really loved was from this year. It's
called I Want You Back, starring Charlie Day and Jenny Slate.
Came out on Amazon and kind of like just straight
up comedy. I too thought the romantic comedy was a
little bit dead too, and it just got very cheesy,
(10:28):
which I know that's what rom coms are supposed to be,
But I love the feeling of a late nineties, early
two thousands rom calm. I think that's where this genre
really thrived. And when I watched I Want You Back,
I had those same kind of feelings that I got
from those types of movies during that era, because the
(10:49):
line you have to walk between a rom com is
what the genre says, that has to have an element
of romance where you believe in the character's love story
and it's also funny, which is hard to do because
I feel like so often it just kind of falls
into the cheesy comedy and the love story never really develops.
And the most recent rom comes I've seen with a
(11:10):
few exceptions that I'll get into that this movie is
similar like, but this movie did it so well and
it was also a little novel. The story is about
these two total strangers dealing with this breakup around the
same time, and together they meet and decide they're going
to use each other to get their excess back try
(11:30):
and date them, and you know, basically we're talking about
scams earlier scam away into ending up back with a
person they thought they were supposed to be with. But
I actually believed in the love story here and it
had me invested in a way I wasn't going to
expect it to. And not only that, it does have
(11:50):
some good comedic moments. I wouldn't say fall out of
your chair moments by any means, but I think it
was really there and it was just very charming. So
love Charlie Day from Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And I
loved Jenny Slay back when she was on SNL even
though she did drop an F word. I think that
was like the pinnacle of her SNL career. But she
(12:11):
does some really great stand up comedy. Has also been
in some good movies. To obvious, Child was probably my
favorite movie of hers, but this one is really up there.
So I do like to recommend this one because I
feel like more people should have seen this movie on
Amazon and the movies I would say it's similar to,
(12:31):
and the movies I would compare it to recently that
have been some of my favorite rom coms. Were Crazy
Rich Asians and always be my maybe, so I think
those three movies have been my three favorite rom coms
in the last ten years, But if you're a fan
of the rom coms of the nineties and two thousand's,
I think this I Want You Back movie is as
(12:52):
close as you can get to that. A few more
genres I want to talk about, and musicals are probably
way down there on the list of movies I set
out to watch. I just don't really like the idea
and concept of people bursting into song randomly and the
song having to develop the plot, because if I'm watching
a movie and the singing just takes me out of it,
(13:14):
it takes me out of following along with the story,
and I don't really consider a song to be like
a plot point. It just feels like music to me
is set in the middle of a movie. So when
there's a lot of singing, I feel like there's very
little story in musicals. So that's why I just choose
not to watch them. But every now and then a
really big one comes out, and I think why they
(13:37):
stand out so much is because they are able to
tell the story and the music kind of takes it
a step further. It's not the main thing, it's not
carrying the entire movie. It heightens everything else about the movie,
and the movie I watched most recently and wasn't expecting
to like as much as I did was Tick Tick Boom,
(13:58):
And now that is kind of my goat to musical
recommendation if you haven't seen that one, because Andrew Garfield
is so good in it, and it's more a story
about struggling turning thirty years old, having that kind of
time in your life, where do you go on and
do something that you're super passionate about but aren't having
much success in even though you know it's what you're
(14:19):
supposed to be doing, Or go and be like what
all your other friends are doing now and settling down
into careers to kind of move on from that phase
of their life. And that's what I took away from
this movie, and the music and the songs just kind
of heightened that. I did find the songs catchy, and
even though I'm not into musical theater at all, I
(14:41):
found it really refreshing. So this is now my go
to musical recommendation. Before that, it was La La Land,
But I think at this point, if you haven't seen
La La Land, you're never going to watch La La
Land because that type of movie probably doesn't appeal to you.
But if you are a fan of La La Land,
haven't seeing tick Tick Boom, Or maybe you're a fan
(15:02):
of a Star's Board or The Greatest Showman. I think
all of these movies kind of fall into movies that
people call musicals, fall under that genre, but there's more
substance there to grab onto if that's not your thing.
Next up, I want to talk about action movies, and
whenever I recommend an action movie that I think most
(15:23):
people will like, always have to think about my dad,
because my dad and I have probably bonded very little
over movies, because, unlike anybody else I've ever met, he
doesn't watch any movies, he doesn't watch any TV shows.
He goes to work, comes home, he eats, and he
goes to sleep. But every now and then he'll be
(15:44):
sitting on the couch on like a Saturday afternoon, and
we'll throw on a movie to try to get his attention.
It always just has to be an action movie because
my dad can understand there's a bad guy, there's a
good guy. Bad guy wants to shoot good guy. Good
guy has a fight back, Like my dad con grass
that concept um if you're not familiar with my family.
My parents moved here from Mexico. They speak primarily Spanish
(16:09):
but no English, so when they're watching a movie, you know,
some of the language barrier is there and they won't
understand all the dialogue. So I think with an action movie,
it's very deliberate with what's going on. You don't really
have to follow along the plot line, do you understand it?
So our go to genre is the action movies or
(16:29):
like old three Stooges skits from back in the Day
and the movie I want to Show Him now is
a movie that came out last year was Bob oden
Kirk called Nobody. I love Bob oden Kirk. You probably
know him best as Saul and Better Call Saw and
Breaking Bad. He did some really great work as a
comedy writer in SNL back in the day, wrote one
(16:50):
of my favorite Chris Farley sketches ever. And it's kind
of cool seeing him having so much success with Better
Call Saul and now being a movie star, which he
I mean, he's been in movies his entire career as well,
but it's cool seeing him as a leading man and
in a movie like Nobody, where I kind of feel
like it's the movie adaptation of Breaking Bad that it
(17:12):
should have got. Like I didn't like El Camino on Netflix,
but I kind of had that same feeling watching nobody
of it exists in that world. I don't know just
because it's Bob hooden Kirk that I had that feeling.
But he plays a character named Hutch who had this
kind of dark past of doing these things that you
kind of learned throughout the movie. But he has a
very kind of special set of skills, maybe a little
(17:33):
derivative of like Taken, and he's trying to defend himself
after two thieves broken to his house and you know,
threatened his family, so he kind of goes back into
reverting into that lifestyle. And there's a lot of fist fights.
There's a lot of gunfire, you know, squealing tires, like
all those things that make up a great action movie
(17:54):
are in this movie. And it just has kind of
a good, fresh feel to it because it is Bob
boden Kirk. It's like an older guy but still being
able to crush anybody who comes at him. I just
kind of love that aspect of it. So if you're
a fan of movies like The John Wick movies. It's
not as violent as a John Wick movie, but kind
of up there too, you know Jason Bourne, the die
(18:16):
Hard movies, or even if you just love Breaking Bad,
I think you would really like Nobody. And I tell
anybody looking for a great action movie, you gotta check
this one now before you go watch anyone. But I
kind of feel like this is my go to like
guy movie recommendation because I know it'll pass my dad's
test of like, man, that's a good movie just by
seeing all the flying action in it. I decided to
(18:37):
throw in a bonus one here. And it's a movie
I haven't been able to talk about on the podcast.
I'm really found a place for it yet. But it's
a movie called The Worst Person in the World, and
it is now my go to foreign film recommendation. It's
in Norwegian and I remember seeing the trailer kind of
pop up here and there, and the first thing that
(18:58):
stuck out to me about this movie is the title.
That's such a great movie title, the Worst Person in
the World. And know, it's not a movie about me.
It's a movie about this young woman and it kind
of follows her life of indecisiveness and not being able
to fully commit to a relationship. And what I loved
about The Worst Person in the World is even though
(19:18):
I don't speak Norwegian, it didn't really matter while I
was watching this movie. And my favorite aspect of it
is that you don't entirely root for her throughout the
entire movie. It shows the good parts of her, but
it also really shows the bad parts of her, and
she's almost not a hero in her own movie because
(19:38):
she's doing some things that as the viewer, you're like, man,
you're kind of a bad person for doing that. And
it just kind of shows a realistic depiction of somebody's
struggle trying to find love, trying to find their worth
in life, and it's a very realistic but entertaining approach.
There's some great visuals in this movie, even just from
(19:59):
watching the trailer. There's a scene where she's like running
through and time is frozen. There's some other kind of
funny elements and somewhat bizarre moments throughout the movie as well,
But overall, it's just a very realistic and depiction of
life that I really haven't seen before. And maybe that's
because it is a Norwegian film, but I have been
(20:21):
trying to get into a little bit more of foreign films,
kind of expanding just beyond my American brain of wanting
to watch the big Hollywood movies just to see how
different people tell stories. And it kind of goes back
to what I was talking about with my dad of
you know, even though he doesn't fully understand all the
English dialogue, he still gets when there's good storytelling there
(20:44):
or when there's just great action there. And I think
that's the same thing when watching a foreign film, me
being American and watching a Norwegian film. If the writing
is there, if the acting is there, and it's all
done at a really high level, it doesn't really matter
what language it's in. So if you're a fan of
movies like Parasite or also came out in the past
(21:04):
year Parallel Mothers, which I really enjoyed back in the day,
Eat the MoMath and began with one of my favorite
foreign films, Like me, you're just looking for maybe something
in a different language that just has a really great story.
I would say, check out The Worst Person in the World.
And last up, I wanted to talk about thriller. I
think that's kind of at least in my top three
(21:26):
genres because when a thriller has done really well, it
does what I look for in a movie going experience.
I want to feel like I'm on a roller coaster.
I want to feel like I'm taking on an emotional
ride that gets my heart rate going, but also like
plays into what's going on in my brain of analyzing
all these scenes and dialogue and characters. I just feel
(21:48):
like thriller really gives you the most bang for your
buck because it has the elements of drama, it has
the elements of action, and it's not like a superhero
movie that has any kind fantasy aspect to it. It's
just very set in real life. And I think that's why,
when done well, I just love a good thriller. And
the one I recommend the most is also from and
(22:11):
it is starring Jake jillen Hall called Nightcrawler. I feel
like one of his best performances he's ever given, but
received zero OSCAR nominations for this role. And the fact
that Jake jillen Hall has only received one OSCAR nomination
out of his entire acting career, I believe it was
a travesty. So what this movie is about, It's this
(22:32):
guy played by Jake Jillen Hall living in Los Angeles
and he's trying to get by on this newly stumbled
upon career as a cameraman, and he is trying to
get footage that he is selling two new stations. So
he gets a police scanner, starts listening for violent crimes,
goes there with this camera and gets the most upfront
(22:55):
and brutal footage that he can because that's what pays
the most. If bleeds it leads, they tell him in
the movie. So he gets obsessed with this idea of
going there being the first they're getting the closest shot,
getting the most gruesome shot, because because that's what's driving
the news ratings, and if he can get that exclusive shot,
he can make more money for it. But what happens
(23:16):
is it gets very dark, and he starts to descend
into this madness of being so obsessed with it that
he doesn't really have any more values, and the news
organization he's working with almost doesn't really care how he
gets the shot, so you can imagine where it goes
from there. All he cares about is getting that shot.
(23:37):
Jake Jillen Hall really dives into a really dark place
to do this character and if I think he's like
one of my dream interviews to have. And I know
he's been doing press for his new movie that I
will be reviewing here in a bit, and I would
just like to ask him he plays like a demented character,
so well, where does he go with in his brain?
He seems like a pretty chill, down to earth dude
(23:59):
when he's on on camera, but seeing him in a
role like this in several of his movie roles where
he's just overwhelmed with emotion and looks downright scary, I
just wonder, like, how do you get to that place
as an actor? But if you liked movies like Drive
or Taxi Driver back in the day, movies like No
Country for Old Men, Hell or High Water New Wars
(24:20):
style movies, I think you'd really like Nightcrawler if you
haven't seen it. So that is my go to thriller recommendation,
and that will take us into this week's movie review.
I'm gonna talk about Ambulance starring Jake Jillen Hall after this,
I want to get into this movie review. Now, let's
(24:43):
talk about Ambulance. It's in theaters now, directed by Michael Bay,
starring Jake Jillen Hall and Yaka abdual Matine. The second
a big, fun action ride, lots of explosions. If you're
into that, I think this could be the movie for you.
Before I get into my full review of it, here's
just a little bit of the ambulance trailer. I got
(25:03):
a cop shot. You gotta get him to the hospital.
You're my brother. Have I ever gotten anything that couldn't
get you out of block everything down? We're just trying
to get home. We don't get to walk over into
the suns. I have a plan. So what this movie
is about. Jake Jillen Hall and Yaa are brothers, and
(25:27):
Yahya's character is a veteran. He is a war hero,
but now he's needing money to pay for this medical
procedure that his wife needs and he's really having no
kind of luck. So he goes to his brother, Jake
Jillen Hogg, who is a very sophisticated bank robber, and
then Jake Jillen Hog gets him involved in this bank
highest and part that goes wrong is a cop gets shot.
(25:51):
An ambulance tries to go and rescue the cop, and
then they hijack that ambulance to escape from the bank,
and the entire movie is just this big police chase
involving them trying to get away. So that's basically the
plot of the movie. There are a lot of other
twists and turns, and I honestly think this is one
(26:11):
of Michael Bay's best movies in a very long time.
He kind of went back to his roots. And you
can hate on Michael Bay. I feel like some people do,
because everybody says he just uses explosions. If you think
about his movies that have made his name known, primarily
the Transformers franchise, but also Bad Boys Armageddon. A movie
(26:32):
I really like from him is called Pain and Gain,
and yes, he throws in a lot of special effects,
but Michael Bay knows how to make an entertaining movie
on the big screen, and this movie does exactly that.
So what really sticks out with this one is he's
gotten a little bit away from He used a lot
of what is called lens flare and Transformers, which was
(26:54):
this very like stylistic thing. He kind of made it
so popular because of those movies and probably used it
a little bit too much that it's a little visually jarring.
And I think he's evolved a little bit from that.
There is some of that in this movie, but the
new kind of thing he is focused on is these
crazy aerial drone shots that he uses a lot. If
(27:14):
you go watch the trailer, it's straight up like going
up a building, does a spin, and then focuses on
another part. It's very visually stimulating. You watch this movie
and it has a style to it, and that's what
I loved about it. I I felt his voice in
just that direction and just the look of the movie.
So even if you took the same movie with the
(27:36):
same script, the same actors without that style, I don't
think it would have been as entertaining. So I gotta
give it to him. He really knows how to make
something that's fun to watch in theaters, and those shots,
for me, made it a lot more enjoyable. If you
get a little bit motion sick while watching something like that.
If you just see the trailer and that's like, oh,
(27:56):
I can't handle that. The entire movie maybe uses it
a little it too much, but it's just so cool
that I think he kind of had to. And then
the pacing throughout the movie is pretty good because it
does kind of remind me of speed and you think,
how long could you watch a chase scene and still
be entertained by it. It maybe went on just a
little bit too long and the third act, but there
(28:17):
was just so much gunfire, car crashes. He got really
into like cars running into things on the sidewalk and
you know, exploding and going everywhere. So those kinds of
things are very fun in this movie. Now, when you
talk about the actors here, I thought it was a
really fun role for Jake Jillen Hall. And I was
even watching him on SNL over the weekend, and in
(28:40):
his monologue he kind of addressed that. He even talked
about the movie Nightcrawler, which I was talking about earlier.
I recorded that segment of the podcast before I watched
as anel, so it was kind of cool to hear
I mentioned that movie because I am a big fan
of that. I think he knows that. But I'll play
you this clip from his SNL monologue which kind of
explains I think it was a little bit more in
ref friends to him in his choice to host us
(29:02):
and now, But I also feel like he's also kind
of talking about why he did a movie like this.
You know, it's funny. I got this reputation for being
this serious, intense method actor, but honestly, I wasn't even
that good at method acting. I was only doing that
method stuff because I thought that's what you had to
do to be a serious actor, and I kind of
(29:23):
forgot how to have fun. That's when I realized something
I should have realized a long time ago. Acting is
a really stupid job. It's pretend and it's it's fun
and it should be filled with joy. Well, I'm finally
embracing that joy again, and that's why I'm back standing
on the stage. And I felt like he was really
(29:44):
embracing that in this movie. And you think someone at
his level of acting maybe wouldn't do a movie like this,
But it was fun to see and he really kind
of dived a little bit into that darker side that
he does have, not as much a little bit of
his character in Spiderman Mysterio. I felt like came out
a little bit in this role. But it just felt
(30:06):
like him wanting to do a big, fun, entertaining movie
and didn't take himself entirely seriously. There were even some
lighthearted moments in all this chaos, But I just thought
he was perfect in this role. Also really enjoyed ya
Ya in this movie. I really loved him in The
Watchman and also in Candyman, and I just think he's
(30:26):
a really great action star and showed even a little
bit more of his range in this movie. But again,
you're not gonna go into watching Ambulance with the premise
like this, with the special effects that Michael Bay has
in this movie and leave feeling like you just watched
a OSCAR nominated or you know, best actor worthy performance.
But it's just a fun, turn your brain off and
(30:48):
watch things explode and crazy things happen type of movie.
And I felt like I really needed that right now.
And even my wife Kelsey went with me, and she's
not super into these type of movies, but she found
it very entertaining. Maybe not her favorite movie that she's
seen this year, but at one point she was like,
I have to go to the bathroom, but I don't
(31:09):
want to leave because it's so good. I think her
biggest complaint was that it did feel a little bit
long at two hours in fifteen minutes, And yeah, I
think if this movie was under two hours, it really
could have made that third act a little bit stronger
and not feel any lull whatsoever, it would have just
been NonStop action. So Ambulance had everything I was looking
for in Michael Bay action movie. It had the cheesy lines.
(31:33):
Not as cheesy as The Fast and the Furious movies,
but cheesy in the sense that it had a little
bit of a cliche cast of character types, like the
seasoned cop who's trying to catch them, the more sophisticated
FBI guy who's working alongside trying to talk Jake Jillen
hauled down from hurting anybody else in this chase. And
(31:56):
there was one line in particular that I feel like
I would used if I was making a parody of
an action movie like this. One of the characters is like,
tell my wife I love her, and the other person
is like, you'll tell her yourself. It just felt very cliche,
but I loved it so overall. I think if all
the things I've been talking about sound like what you
(32:16):
would be interested in in an action movie, you'll have
a fun time watching this one. I give it three
point five out of five money bags. Now it's time
for the part of the podcast where I break down
a movie trailer of a movie coming to you very soon.
In theaters or streaming on demand. In a segment we
(32:38):
call it's time to head down to movie, and this
week we are talking about a movie called Father Stew
that is coming out starring Mark Wahlberg. I really love
movies where the actor considers it a passion project, and
Mark Wahlberg has been wanting to make this movie for
(32:59):
a very long time. I'm based on a true story,
a story he just really believed in. So I think
when an actor is that invested in a project, I
already feel like it heightens my expectations going into it.
It's not just the movie he took on to get
a paycheck. If they truly believed in it, truly just
loved the story, I feel like it's going to be
(33:20):
a heightened movie going experience. So we'll talk all about
this movie, but here's just a little bit of the trailer.
I'm going to be a priesteen. I've all been wrong,
and we've all done some wrong, but he came to
forget us. Everybody will be treated all this thing. There's
no easy way to deliver news. You have a progressive
(33:42):
muscle disorder, the muscles weakened. Then until he sees the
function is there anything that doesn't mess with Yeah, I
rutile function. I'm trying to be a p the wise
man will bound down. So Mark Wahlberg plays this character
who has had a bit of an identity crisis, trying
out all these different jobs and career paths, and in
(34:02):
the movie gets started with him wanting to go and
be an actor in Hollywood, and then he meets this
girl who was a Mexican American, find that relatable and
then ultimately decides that he wants to be a priest.
And this comes to him after a near death experience.
In the trailer, you see he's on a motorcycle and
gets hit by a car and then somehow survives it.
(34:26):
So as he is trying to be a priest, he
is also hit with this diagnosis that's called inclusion body mitosis,
which is extremely rare. It's basically a disease that has
the same kind of symptoms as als. It's incurable, and
you see his body start to break down. So just
(34:48):
in the trailer alone, you see Mark Wahlberg go as
the Mark Wahlber we all know ripped up very in
shape too. What he actually did to prepare for this
role during this role was gained thirty pounds, and you
see that in the trailer, and what he actually did
in real life is he had six weeks to put
on about thirty pounds, started consuming seven thousand calories a day,
(35:10):
and then eleven thousand calories. The final four weeks of
this weight game, he was straight up just drinking olive oil.
So that's a commitment to the role. And for somebody
like Mark Wahlberg, who in the past has been very
open with how crazy his schedule is. He wakes up
at like two am and works out, has all these
meals like throughout the day, does so much before like
(35:32):
seven am. Then most humans do, and it's very strict
and all that process of you know, going to sleep
very early, and at his age, still has a physique that's,
you know, still a Hollywood movie star physique. So I
think that has to be hard on you too, if
you're going to really commit to a movie to the
(35:52):
point to where you are taking away all that all
those things you work for, I mean knowing he can
probably get it back within a couple few months because
of how intense he is. I just think that's an
extra level of commitment, and it's not unheard of for
an actor to put on weight for a role. We've seen,
you know, drastic weight gains or weight sheds be sometimes
(36:15):
the reason that people go on to win Oscars. And
you don't really put Mark Wahlberg in that category because
I don't know, I feel like people don't take him
seriously enough. And I really like his work. I like
his action movies, I like his dramas, I really like
him in comedy. I think he is one of the
most underrated A list actors. So what this movie is,
(36:36):
it's this bad boy type with a good heart, has
a big health scare, and it's just trying to do
something that gives them purpose in life. So if you're
looking to get your Mark Wahlberg fix, you want to
watch something based on a true story or just looking
for maybe something uplifting. This movie comes out early this week.
He comes out on Wednesday, April, just in time for
(36:59):
the Eastern weekend. So there you go. This makes addition
of bar and that'll do it here for another week
of the podcast. And what I like to do at
the end of every single episode, give my listeners shout out.
You can do that just by hitting me up on
any form of social media. Send me an email Movie
(37:20):
Mike D at gmail dot com If you need quick
links to any of the things, they're all down in
the episode description. And I think this is the first
for the listeners. Shout out is I have a physical
letter here, and something I never really expected, because I
feel like it already takes so much just to send
a d M or tweet, even just to send an email,
(37:42):
like that's going above a step, you know, to a
podcast you listen to. So to have a physical letter
in my hands to read during the listeners shout out
is something I never thought would happen. And the letter
is addressed to Movie Mike. It is from Barbara Sears
and Williamsburg, Kentucky, and she writes Mike D. Thanks for
being the glue that keeps the whole show together. Lunchbox
(38:03):
thinks he is the m v P of the show,
but we all know that it is you. I enclosed
the gift and I cannot use it, so I am
paying it forward to you and your sweet wife. Have
a good day. Hashtag pimp and joy. I actually got
to meet you at Bobby Show in Somerset, Kentucky a
couple of years ago. Signed Barbara Sears, Williamsburg, Kentucky. So
I really appreciate the letter, appreciate you listening to the
(38:25):
Bobby Bones Show into listening to this podcast, and also
just really appreciate the gift Barbara. So thanks to everybody
for listening this week. I hope you have a great
rest of your day, and until next time, go out
and watch good movies. I will talk to you later.
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