Hotshots Movie Reviews
Hotshots Movie Reviews by Dan Culberson
Million Dollar Arm “Thousand Dollar Movie”
May 22nd
Posted by Channel 1 Networks in Hotshots Movie Reviews
(“Thousand Dollar Movie”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
MILLION DOLLAR ARM is a comedy about sports, and it is about an underdog who eventually achieves success.
It is also a Disney movie, and so you might think it could practically write itself, but it didn’t, because it is based on a true story.
Jon Hamm plays JB Bernstein, a sports agent who along with his partner, Aash, have been on their own for three years, and they can’t manage to sign a new client.
In fact, all their good clients are retired.
At the beginning of the movie, JB is trying to sign a professional football player named Popo, but Popo says that he wants a $1 million bonus in cash up front.
JB tells Popo, “What? I can’t do that. No one can do that.”
The agency’s situation is so bad that Aash says he doesn’t think he can keep doing it.
So, one night JB is bored and flipping through the television channels when he comes across a cricket match and “Britain’s got Talent,” in which Susan Boyle amazed Great Britain with her singing.
JB gets the idea of combining the two concepts and that leads him to going to India and conducting a talent competition in the hopes of finding a cricket player who can be trained to pitch a baseball and eventually become a professional baseball player in the United States.
And the first half of the movie is about JB in India trying to find two pitchers to bring back to the U.S. to be trained and be good enough to get a tryout with a professional baseball team through the competition he created called “Million Dollar Arm,” promising $1 million to whoever wins and succeeds.
So, the second half of the movie is about the two leading contenders, Rinku and Dinesh, being trained in Los Angeles in a sport they know nothing about.
You see, JB believes that if he is successful, he will have created a market with a billion new fans of American baseball in India rooting for their homeboy.
Alan Arkin is also in the movie playing the same cranky oldtimer that he seems to always play these days, and Lake Bell is also in it as a potential love interest for JB.
MILLION DOLLAR ARM is not much more than just a thousand dollar movie.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Neighbors “Bro’s before Neighbors”
May 15th
Posted by Channel 1 Networks in Hotshots Movie Reviews
(“Bro’s before Neighbors”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
NEIGHBORS won the top spot at the box office its first weekend of release, which is another reason that this film should not be confused with the 1981 NEIGHBORS, which was John Belushi’s last film.
However, the plot about the arrival of rowdy new neighbors who disrupt the lives of a couple who are already living there is the same, except that the part of Dan Aykroyd has been replaced by an entire fraternity house led by Teddy, played by Zac Efron.
The couple are Mac and Kelly Radner, played by Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, they have a baby daughter named Stella, and when they see some of the shenanigans taking place next door at the Beta Psi Delta fraternity house, Kelly says to Mac, “Just because we have a house and a baby doesn’t mean that we’re old people.”
You see, at first Mac and Kelly envy the youthful exuberance of the fraternity boys and their parties attended by attractive college students of boys and hot-looking girls, and they go next door to welcome the new neighbors to the neighborhood.
Teddy accepts the fraternity’s new neighbors and their surprising gift and invites Mac and Kelly to the party of the moment so everything will be cool later.
Teddy tells Mac and Kelly that if any of the parties gets too noisy, they need to call the fraternity first and not the cops, which is a good indication of what is going to happen later, right?
Well, the fraternity brothers have a goal that they want to achieve, which the audience learns at the beginning of the movie, and to achieve that goal, they party every night, which causes Mac to call the police what he believes to be anonymously after he can’t get anyone at the party to pick up the phone.
Naturally, the fraternity brothers retaliate when they are told by the police that Mac called them, which they know because the police have caller ID.
And the game is on, escalating with each retaliation by the two parties, so to speak, culminating in an attempt by Mac and Kelly to interfere with the brothers’ mantra of “bro’s before ho’s” and get them to fight among themselves after a violation of Teddy’s relationship with his girlfriend.
NEIGHBORS is enjoyable, but probably only to young people.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Brick Mansions “Totally Preposterous”
May 8th
Posted by Channel 1 Networks in Hotshots Movie Reviews
(“Totally Preposterous”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
BRICK MANSIONS is an action movie that might be of interest only to very huge fans of Paul Walker, the star of the FAST AND FURIOUS movies who was killed in 2013 in an auto accident.
The reason is that it is probably the last movie that Walker completed before he died.
The movie takes place in 2018 in Detroit, and it is a remake of the French film, DISTRICT B13, which was written and directed by Luc Besson.
The title refers to a precinct in Detroit that is walled off and become a lawless zone inhabited entirely by hoods and criminals, and Detroit itself is called the most dangerous city in America.
Walker plays Damien Collier, and undercover policeman in the narcotics division who says, “I handle what needs to be handled,” and at the beginning of the movie we see him break up the drug operation of a notorious drug manufacturer and distributor that involves a massive shoot-out and an incredible car chase with Damien performing some unbelievable stunts.
Speaking of stunts, the movie also stars David Belle as Lino, who invented a training technique known as parkour, which, according to the notes, “uses vaulting, flipping, swinging, rolling and above all bodily momentum as a means of overcoming physical obstacles.”
The main story is about how the mayor of Detroit wants to restore the city to its former glory, and that means cleaning up Brick Mansions and getting rid of its undesirables.
Well, unfortunately, the top Bad Guy in Brick Mansions, Tremaine Alexander, had hijacked a government truck with a neutron bomb in it, and he accidentally started a timing mechanism that will cause the bomb to explode in 10 hours.
So, Damien is charged with infiltrating the dangerous district, avoid being discovered and identified by the undesirables, find the bomb, and disarm it.
No problem, right?
As his partner, Damien teams up with Lino, who knows Brick Mansions like the back of his hand and who also has a personal interest in bringing down Tremaine, as does Damien.
Unfortunately, when they start out, Lino doesn’t know who or what Damien really is, which makes for some intense fighting between themselves.
And as if that isn’t enough, Tremaine has done something with the bomb that endangers all of Detroit.
BRICK MANSIONS is ridiculous and totally preposterous.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”