When you’re describing a movie that stars Jonah Hill and James Franco, your mind automatically goes to Knocked Up or This is the End. As you watch True Story, you’ll be mostly wishing you were watching either one of those. You get the overwhelming sense that Jonah Hill wants you to forget his roots, while James Franco doesn’t give a $#*!.

True Story is unsurprisingly, based on actual events, adapted from Michael Finkel’s memoir by writer-director Rupert Goold. It’s one of those fascinating stories that is way better in real life than on screen, because True Story seems played out from the opening frame.

Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill) is a stud New York Times reporter, and as cocky as you’d expect someone to be who has locked down 10 covers in three years (“not that I’m counting”). He beats last-minute deadlines while bluffing his way through an office poker game and continually ignores his wife when his wife is Felicity Jones. As a repeatedly ignored, wasted character, I almost feel worse for Jones’ Jill than Christian Longo’s murdered family members.

When Finkel’s called into the office to talk about his newest cover story, a profile on an abused cocoa farmer, Finkel’s dreaming of something that rhymes with “schmulitzer,” but the audience is blissfully prepared for some righteous comeuppance. And it comes: his article has holes, the facts don’t check out, and it’s clear that Finkel combined various people into one for the benefit of his article. And just like that, Finkel’s out of a job and banished back to his beautiful home and beautiful wife in beautiful Bozeman Montana, where he desperately rifles through his contacts in search for his next story and comeback.

Christian Longo (Franco) is a man accused of murdering his wife and kids. When he’s caught, he refers to himself as Mike Finkel, news that tickles the real Finkel. It’s hard to make a guy more unlikable than a dude who probably killed his entire family, but that’s kind of where we’re at, when Finkel, who cares so much about his name, his reputation, and wanting to be liked, that he writes to Christian Longo that he’s “honored” that the man who’s accused of drowning his wife and kids would take his name (“When you had my name, they took mine.”) The movie is full of ham-fisted lines befitting a Lifetime Movie: “I thought you could tell me what it’s like to be me.”

It’s obvious to everyone but Finkel that Longo did it, but Longo manipulates him easily, professing to be a long-time fan. Longo wants to write, and in exchange for Finkel’s tutelage, offers him exclusive rights to his story. Quite quickly, Finkel’s envisaging a bestseller, and sells it to HarperCollins, which we know won’t end well.

Neither actor is able to wade away from the heavy handed nature of the script, or escape the considerable baggage of their personas. Jonah Hill is saddled with an unlikable character without an arc or redeeming qualities, and the movie isn’t good enough to survive that. Franco is better as Longo, but you want more. Thanks to his dead and glazed over eyes, Longo is creepy, but mostly he just looks like he needs a nap. I wish the roles were reversed; I’d love to see Jonah Hill play a deceptively charming family killer, and to see Franco enlivened as a journalism desperately seeking a second chance.

Even scenes of mild catharsis, such as when Jill comes by to visit Chris (because everybody can meet this guy) and starts screaming at Chris, are flattened by the dialogue: “If he can understand you, he can understand himself.” There are far too many lines that feel lifted from the movie’s poster:  “Everybody deserves their story told,” Finkel believes. “Don’t you see this as a second chance?” Finkel begs his wife, highlighting with permanent marker the themes of the movie for the audience.

At one point, a cop refuses Finkel’s evidence because Jonah Hill’s character no longer has any credibility. By this point, neither does the movie.

There is a compelling relationship in this movie, but in many ways, it starts where it should begin. In real life, Finkel and Longo still speak regularly, which is fascinating to me, considering Longo played him for a fool, and pretty much sunk his writing career. In many ways, he did become Finkel: Longo has been published in The New York Times from Death Row, and Finkel hasn’t since his justifiable firing. True Story is based on events that scream movie.  The adaptation feels like it’s screaming at you that it is a movie.

TRUE STORY ARRIVES IN SELECT THEATERS ON APRIL 17, 2015.

In 2010, Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon came out and charmed everyone in theaters, young and old alike. The film was adapted from Cressida Cowell’s book, and featured a sterling voice cast headlined by Jay Baruchel (This Is The End), Gerard Butler (300), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (SuperBad) and Kristen Wiig (Bridesmaids). Now four years later, a sequel is coming, arriving June 13th.

At WonderCon this year, star Jay Baruchel and writer-director Dean DeBlois sat down for a press conference to inform us about the next adventure in the series. What follows are the highlights from the genial conversation.

The first question concerned Valka, the mother of Hiccup, voiced by Cate Blanchett. Apparently, DeBlois wanted Valka and her genes to be a big reveal in the movie… but DreamWorks changed that with the first trailer. Dean describes Valka as a Dian Fossey like character, who lives with dragons and learns their ways.

Since the first movie, the HTTYD world has expanded, thanks to its Cartoon Network TV series (and video games), Dragons: Riders of Berk, which serves to bridge the gap in movies. It helps present a full, complete story. According to Baruchel, the cool thing about the  TV show is that they’re able to delve into the everyday life at Berk. The show enables them to put the audience in that neighborhood, on that island, and reveal the minutiae of everyday being a Viking.

In the first film, Hiccup got everything he wanted. So the filmmakers had to go on to the next problem. They didn’t want to make a sequel for the sake of making a sequel (and making a viking boat load of cash). Dean planned a trilogy, and this sequel is the middle act, immersing everyone in the disappearance of dragons and what happened, while completing Hiccup’s coming of age story. DeBlois states there is a lot of stuff to explore, to venture off into the rich world that Cowell created. For DeBlois, it’s a “fun world to live in, [and] very easy to write.” Lucky dude.

It’s pointed out how rare it is for a big star like Jay Baruchel to work on an animated television show like Dragons. But according to Baruchel, it had to be him, as he feels a certain loyalty to the character, and ownership of Hiccup. He believes that’s a part of acting, and clearly feels very strongly when he says: “I just didn’t want anyone else to play him.” Dean DeBlois responds, “Neither do we,” to which Baruchel sighed: “Thank you, that’s good news.”

Baruchel gets asked what it’s like returning to the character of Hiccup, but “selfishly,” the show has “kept me in that mind space.” He “never left” Hiccup.

How does Jay get ready for voice acting? He wakes up…showers, hell, sometimes he doesn’t even have to. That’s the great thing about voice acting: no costume or makeup. Sometimes, he even gives himself a mission tonot shower for two weeks. Maybe because of that, he “adore[s] it.” When Baruchel started acting, when he was twelve years old, now twenty years ago, one of the first gigs he had was dubbing shows from French to English in Montreal. “If you can do dubbing, you can do anything. Its as intensive as voice acting gets.” Baruchel is a “chronic daydreamer…and that’s what’s required…as there are no dragons in front of me, or anywhere else in the world, I suspect.”

Dean and Jay have now worked together for 7 years, and they clearly have a comfortable shorthand, another reason Jay has stuck with the character so closely.

According to DeBlois, Baruchel embodies the character so well, that he’s become the authority on it. After Baruchel’s input, he’ll change the dialogue, and add more life to it.

Apparently there were ten different dragon genera (which is the plural of genus, btw) in How to Train Your Dragon, a fact presented that impressed Jay immensely. Judging by the trailer there a whole lot more this time around. How many can we expect in the sequel? The animation team utilizes a modular system “to create an endless variety of dragons…thousands of new dragons.” While there are a ton of dragons in the sequel, there are about the same amount of dragons who have hero moments in the sequel.

While making HTTYD2, Jay was only in the same room with another actor ONCE. It’s a very international cast, and “one of the cool things about voice acting, [is] that doesn’t step in the way, [we] still find a way to create.” Usually they do so in isolation, and DeBlois admits, “it’s nice when we get characters together…sometimes [they] go off script, and it feels right.” When making an animated film, “the voice acting is the only spontaneous element,” while “everything else is meticulously planned.”

How does the process work? They record voice actors first, then get breakdowns of those lines, and make the requisite animation, match the dialogue with the mouths of the characters. Sometimes they receive late notes that will “necessitate going back and adjusting.”

As per usual, the sequel is bigger than the original. The “scope gets really big,” as Hiccup discovers there’s a brewing conflict, a conflict incited by “a vicious conqueror” who’s creating a dragon army. That’d be Drago Bludvist, voiced by Blood Diamond‘s Djimon Honsou. Jon Snow himself, Kit Harington, plays Eret, son of Eret, an evil dragon hunter, while Cate Blanchett’s character tries to rescue the dragons.

Again, it’s pointed out how much Baruchel adores the character, and that he will argue his case for changes made to the film. He likes to think he’s one of the people who knows Hiccup the best, and “they allow me to chime in.” They more than allow it, as Dean puts it: “Hiccup is so similar to Jay in so many ways…” and that they normally side with Jay, because they know Jay is the “greatest authority on the character.”

What’s the plan for the franchise moving forward? They’re preparing for the 3rd season of the TV show, and “hoping to create a seamless narrative.” Essentially, they want to keep exploring Cowell’s novels, further developing the world, and “go as far as we can.” Dean isn’t aware of any of the specifics of other things beyond the sequel, in terms of other mediums and expansion.

The funny joke at the end for the press conference is that Dean does a lot of temporary voicing, as a placeholder before Jay comes in and replaces him. From the sound of it, it’s not very good, in a wonderful way. Baruchel, through legitimate snorts, admits that it “makes my life wonderful…his temp work…” He loves it, and it’s the reason he gets up in the morning.

On Friday June 13th, the only reason we’ll need to get up in the morning is that How to Train Your Dragon 2 has flown into the local cineplex. I suspect I won’t be the only one.

Thanks to a few Hollywood screeners, a lot of gift cards and unemploymentmy independent nature, I’ve never watched more Oscar nominated films than this year (and I’ll pretend that matters). In this age of scrutiny, controversy and Twitter, every movie has been hated on, drug through the mud or found wanting (some more deservedly than others). In fact, each movie’s director, producers, stars, and DP’s all likely feel (DP’d) a lot like Rufus Sewell’s character at the end of (best movie of all-time contender) A KNIGHT’S TALE right now:

But for a few minutes, can we check our attitudes at the door, pump the brakes on our eternal desire to make callous judgments without knowing what the fuck we’re talking about, and just talk about the movies themselves? Can we be a mindless drone in THE LEGO MOVIE (here’s one prediction: Best Animated Film winner, 2015) and accept that everything is indeed, awesome, and relish in the fact that this was one of the best years for films in recent memory (says someone every year), and dig that people get so heated up about movies? Sit back, pop open the Andre, and I promise, I won’t say awesome again for the entirety of this post.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

5. Julia Roberts, AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY: I almost feel bad for Julia (and her painfully obvious crowns in that awesome photo), and every other incredible actor (Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Ewan MacGregor, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sam Shepard, Margo Martindale, Abigail Breslin and whatever Juliette Lewis is) that somehow got roped into the hate-filled, manipulative, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? wannabe that is AUGUST: somewhere in Oklahoma. But then I remember how unfortunate a movie-going experience the film was, and I can’t help but be mad at them. Julia Roberts was probably the best of the bunch in a role that potentially foreshadows the next act of her career in movies (should she choose to accept it) as a real, approachable, tortured (but no less pretty) woman, finding herself back where she started (after the OCEANS movies, preggers and EAT PRAY YUCK), as the every-woman.

4. Sally Hawkins, BLUE JASMINE: The next four are fairly interchangeable (because they’re all terrific), but I’ll snub Sally Hawkins just like Cate Blanchett’s Jasmine continually snubs Hawkins’ Ginger. BLUE JASMINE is an unholy cocktail of a bunch of awful people (kinda like AUGUST and nigh every other movie that came out this year), and while Ginger screws up just as often as any of them, and you’re constantly wondering why she puts up with the mess that is Jasmine, overbearing bf Chili (Bobby Canavale, future Oscar winner in 2018) and how she keeps kids, boyfriends and a working class job together, but you never doubt how real this character is. It could’ve been a caricature, but instead, she’s heartbreaking. When Louis C.K. even treats you like shit, it’s time for a good cry.

3. June Squibb, NEBRASKA: I love June Squibb to death in Alexander Payne’s underrated NEBRASKA. Squibb is hilarious as the cranky, tough-as-hell firecracker of an 80 year old housewife, and the idea that the scene where she flashes her knickers at former would-be flames at the cemetery could be HER Oscar clip is proof that the world rules in some respect. But, the thing is, any 84 year old woman supplied with her lines would get buzz because of how startling and refreshing an image it is to see on screen. But June’s charisma and scene stealing presence is all her own.

2. Lupita Nyong’o, 12 YEARS A SLAVE: And now I regret doing rankings entirely, because things like this will happen, where I automatically become an asshole. Probably one of the cooler stories that is impossible to get tired of is Lupita Nyong’o’s casting and how she got discovered for Patsey. She was absolutely fearless and mined new depths of sorrow, and like the movie as a whole, makes you want to kill yourself. For art.

1. Jennifer Lawrence, AMERICAN HUSTLE: You either loved or hated or didn’t get AMERICAN HUSTLE, but anyone who saw it HAD to be in awe of whatever the fuck J-Law was doing on screen. In my textual fellatio/review for PopInsomniacs, this is what I said about her performance as the lunatic Rosalyn:

“Jennifer Lawrence breaks acting. She summons new depths of sheer insanity…she’s manipulative, sexy, unpredictable, dangerously naive and stupid. I found myself giggling with glee at each of her scenes, or the opposite: just speechless and giddy with her surely Oscar nominated performance. The only thing scarier than her character is how talented this woman is, and she’s still just 23 years old. Watch her song-and-dance routine to Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” and try to keep your head from exploding.”

Without question, watching her performance was the most fun I had a movie theater in 2013, and sometimes, I like enjoying myself at the movies.

NEXT: Best Supporting Actor, ranked in order of attractiveness.