As an avid movie watcher, it’s fun to see how versatile an actor can be.   One of my favorite things to watch is when an actor goes completely out of their normal character to play one we’re not accustomed to seeing from them.   For example when a serious actor plays a funny role.   Remember when Robert De Niro was in Meet the Parents?  That blew everyone away.  It just came out of nowhere.

And I also like the opposite: when a really funny actor plays a serious role and pulls it off.

Here are five funny actors who did well in serious roles….

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When you’re a kid, old people are pretty lame. They’re slow, they don’t smell like the rest of us, and some of them are related to you. But here’s the lamest part: while you grew taller and wider and hairier, your grandpa stayed pretty much the same the whole time. (Seriously, he couldn’t even beat me at street soccer throughout my entire high school career. Not once.)

Know what would have been way better? A whole tag team of grandpas for different eras of my childhood, bringing something new and awesome to the table as I evolved from a boy to a ma—well, a taller person. Growing up would have kicked so much more ass with these gentlemen as my familial elders…

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I love a good mindf*** ending. The kind of ending that swoops in from some direction no one is looking and switches the whole story up. I like it because I have lived a crazy life, and can honestly say, the mindf*ck endings mimic situations in real life far more than the good guy getting the girl does. The happy endings (snickers) is far more elusive in real life than Hollywood has led you to believe. Life will throw you curveballs when you are least prepared for them. You will often be blindsided by the unexpected.

Sometimes, someone will step in from the sidelines that you didn’t even know was there, and change your whole life. It is the idea that one single moment can change the tone and tempo of every moment that came before it, therefore redefining the entire experience. Here are six endings with surprising twists the made the entire movies infinitely more enjoyable for me. And I also do my best to avoid the Fight Clubs and Sixth Senses we all have talked to death, and focus on a few lesser known films that some of you guys may have missed.  Tread forth with caution, though, for a pack of vicious, underfed spoilers lay waiting in the brush ahead. I do my best to avoid dropping huge bombs, but some aspects of the films will be revealed.

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So, back at the beginning of the month, there was a comment by Shoggoth_King on one of Paul’s posts that suggested we write up a list of directors who haven’t made a science fiction movie yet, but totally should. I kicked myself for not thinking of it first, and then convinced Paul to let me.

Surprisingly (or not), a lot of my favorites have already done work in the genre before, especially when you count early movies (David Fincher, Alien3) or movies that are technically science fiction (Joe Wright, Hanna). I may have fudged the line once or twice with these guys, but not by much.

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When I saw the trailer for God Bless America a couple months ago, I thought I’d been incepted. The entire package echoed sentiments I’ve been carrying around for years, and somebody did my job for me by data-dumping them all into one blood-drenched movie. YES.

You can imagine how pumped I was to hear GBA was available on tor—I mean, on iTunes. And after going through all the appropriate procedures of legally procuring said film, I realized something. I was kind of excited. I mean, I get excited about older movies that pile on the nostalgia sometimes, but I’ve been pretty cynical about contemporary media lately. Ironic since I’m part of it, I guess.

But personal biases aside, I think I can objectively say this movie is awesome, and here’s your first spoiler alert: I’m giving it 5 out of 5 stars. I’ve parsed this review out into specific things that sealed the deal for me. Let’s do this thing.

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I still stand firmly behind my belief that MST3K was one of the funniest shows that was ever on TV and one of the simplest ideas made easily consumable for a wider audience. The idea of taking terrible old films that are in the public domain and making fun of them is brilliant, and for them to have been smart enough to often riff on the terrible foreign ripoffs of great American films only made it that much better. And from Troy and Abed watching Kickpuncher and making fun of it on Community, to gags in Family Guy, the far reaching hand of the show can still be felt today.

For some viewers, it can take a little while to acclimate yourself with the brand of humor used on the Mystery Science Theater, but once you are a fan, you tend to be fan for life. Whether you enjoy subtle references or are a fan of more in-your-face humor, the show had something for everyone. In case you may have missed it when it aired so many years ago, here are five installments that go down in the annals of history as the greatest MST3K episodes ever.

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I have no idea why, but something in my daily travels recently reminded me of the movie Hook. And when it did, my very next thought was this: “I need to watch that movie again immediately.” I woke up last Sunday morning without really knowing what to do with myself, and since it was too early for pants: Neverland time.

And oh my God was that the best decision. I haven’t seen this movie in at least 15 years, and it’s just as awesome as I remembered. This thing sent me into nostalgia overload, and I wasn’t even stoned. (As our editors have mentioned before, here at Unreality we do not condone drug abuse.) In all seriousness, though, I’d be hard-pressed to find a single friend or acquaintance who didn’t love this movie, and I distinctly remember my obsession with human flight after watching it at the age of six. What’s kind of cool, though, is that two decades worth of growing up makes me love the flick even more. As it turns out, six-year-old TJ wasn’t super attentive; if I had a time machine, I’d go back to 1991 just to slap him in the back of the head and yell, “Pay attention, doofus! You’re missing all the good stuff!” (That’s a lie. I’d probably travel back to 15th-century England with a few iPads and a solar charger. I’d go down as the raddest wizard in history.) Continue Reading »

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It is often said in the movie industry that nothing can compare to the uncertainty of working with babies and animals. They say that you wait around on set for hours for the baby or animal to “work”, and basically, everyone is at their mercy. I say we one up that and say working with zombies is probably the very worst. From their constant need for redirection to the risk of the ingestion of living members of the crew, the risks are aplenty. The payoffs, though, can be pretty remarkable as well. From the feral to the downright funny, here are 6 performances from zombies that will leave you wondering why there is not an undead category at the Oscars.

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Guys, I’m excited. For a variety of very personal, serendipitous reasons, it has been a banner week for me. And it’s only Tuesday. I’m excited, I’m inspired, I’m restless, I’m hungry, and I need an outlet for all this positive energy. In fact, Paul green-lit my pitch for this article just yesterday afternoon at precisely 12:32pm. Not a ton of time to bang out 1,200 words of clean copy for a 10:00am post, but fortunately for me, that green light may as well have been a lava throne, because I can barely sit down long enough to edit my sentence fragments.

I should mention, by the way, that I don’t really view myself as a role model for…well, anyone. I’m not amazing with kids, and at the age of 27, I still don’t really consider myself to be an adult. To be honest, the idea of someone using my words as a basis for subsequent actions is terrifying to me. I’m not your guy.

But I still have something to share. Over the weekend, a friend of mine sent me a link to video #1 on this list, and the message behind it was precisely what I needed to hear at precisely that moment. If you’ve followed me from day one here at Unreality, you already know how amped I get when dramatic movie scenes are paired with epic musical scores.

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After seeing Cabin in the Woods this past weekend, I was reminded of how great a horror film can be when it steps outside the confines of its genre. This isn’t to say that “traditional” horror movies can’t be good – horror as a genre is built on a foundation of unspoken rules and pitfalls.

Of course films like The Shining and Alien will always hold a rightful share of the throne. Still, there is something entirely refreshing about seeing a horror movie that bucks the trend and does something truly original. Below are seven films that accomplished this rare feat.

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