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Captain Marvel (2019)
kitttyyyyy! saw it for the cat; cat did not disappoint
Saw this with a fellow cat lover who hasn't seen any other Marvel movies, and we both enjoyed it. (Now she wants to catch up with all of them and see them all so she can appreciate Goose's next appearance! Which will undoubtedly be when Thanos is defeated, right Marvel? Right?) When I reviewed Black Panther I asked for more cat and Marvel delivered, so you're welcome everybody, lol.
There were several times when, in this nearly-deserted weekday matinee theater, we leaned over to each other and whispered "Kitttyyyy!" And one time-- this is the only spoiler in here but I just have to relate it because it's funny and nostalgic-- I leaned over did my best impression of "I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle." And I had been joking but then on the screen, haha, they actually did it! She didn't say it but they cut away to her riding and she clearly has on a jacket that's not her uniform jacket. lol. I thought the Terminator homage was delightful.
Capt. Marvel isn't a character I was ever a fan of, but I liked the character in this movie. The Carol / Vers thing had a Robocop or Ghost in the Shell kind of thing going on, which is a theme I like. The extensive flashbacks as the character overcame her amnesia could have been confusing or repetitious but they handled it just right so viewers could understand it without being hit over the head with it. I liked her character development. I liked that she wasn't actually good at fist fighting because I get tired of "waif fu" (itty bitty girls fighting like the Hulk without even using superpowers-- I'm a woman martial artist and I know better.) I don't know about how this version of Capt. Marvel compares to the comics.
I liked the 80s / 90s references. The analog world, pagers, that whole era from my youth. A lot of movies featuring that kind of nostalgia have come out recently, not just Ready Player One, but for example Red Sparrow even though it was awkwardly updated to try to pretend it was about today. I appreciated the nostalgia trip in Capt. Marvel. That might get old eventually but it hasn't yet.
I'm not going to bother telling you about the fx or about Fury because everybody else has already said everything, there are over 5k reviews at this point so I doubt anyone is even going to read this except my personal friends, so I just talked about my personal reactions to the movie. My bottom line: if you like cats, see it, because cat. If you plan to see whatever movie Marvel brings out where Thanos is going to be fought again, see Capt. Marvel because it's clear this character is being set up to fight Thanos. See it if you like analog era nostalgia.
Aquaman (2018)
nonstop fun, and hey it's Jason Momoa, what more do you want?
I went to see this with another lady and of course you know we would have gone to see it even if everybody said it sucked, because how could we resist Jason Momoa in a bathing suit? lol. But fortunately it totally didn't suck.
The main character:
The character Arthur Curry is basically King Arthur, but underwater. So it's got that whole "based on mythology" thing going for it, like the original Star Wars movie did.
The visuals:
The fx are great. That's fortunate because there are a ton of them. Since so much of this movie is set underwater, and both the underwater and non underwater scenes have a lot of action and fighting, this is really a big cgi fest. If you don't like looking at cgi you won't like it. But this is the new cgi, not that older stuff that will make you seasick because it flickers like older animation. This stuff is seamless, so give it a try.
The story:
There's a lot going on, but basically the two intertwined plots are about a bad guy who is against Aquaman for personal revenge, and a bad guy who is against Aquaman because Game of Thrones and sea Nazis who hate genetic impurity. Oh and a love story. Nicely handled, too. Not the one with Arthur's love interest, that's way too "defeat big bad and get the girl," I mean the one about his parents. I liked it.
The worldbuilding:
Inevitably, because this is a story about a hidden kingdom where the main character has to fight in personal combat in front of a crowd to win the throne, it will be compared to Black Panther, and it's going to fall short in the worldbuilding dept. Black Panther was a fantasy of Africa in an alternate universe in which it had never been colonized; the language, dress, customs, etc. were all based on real African cultures. Aquaman is not like that. This story borrows the popular culture myth of Atlantis, which is not a real place. (OK, I know there is probably an archeologist out there who is going to make an argument for a Greek island, but seriously, pop culture Atlantis is a fairy tale.) It can't possibly measure up, and it wasn't intended to.
Conclusion:
Plus, it has sharks. Oh yeah, and some great actors, too. And Russian language, which is always a cool plus for me. And dinosaurs, a cool plus for Betty. It's definitely not just for us ladies. There's more than sex appeal going on here. It's fun, see it.
Ready Player One (2018)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory meets Tron
Basically it's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The eccentric owner of a company sets death trap puzzles and the young protagonist has to solve them to gain control of the company. Remember in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that a rich guy had his employees unwrap chocolate bars to find a golden ticket? Yeah, this one has a rival company use employees to play the video game, except the employees are debtors like in The Diamond Age --assuming that throwaway idea was still in the book after it was retitled; originally read it as an ARC when it was called A Young Lady's Primer or something like that. And that's the exact kind of geekdropping that this movie is chock-full of. So if you liked all the 80s nostalgia stuff in Atomic Blonde and you either don't make a lot of CGI or plan to watch it while doing housework (which is what I did, I watched it via you know who that starts with an n and ends with a flix) then you'll probably like it.
Red Sparrow (2018)
a real Soviet era spy thriller (except inexplicably set in the modern dayi)
The "sparrows" (or "swallows" as previous translations usually put it) were a real Soviet spy program. The entire plot was lifted entirely from real Cold War era spying. The plot makes an excellent thriller, with lots of twists which are nonetheless never too confusing. There is not a lot of fighting, but the level of realistic violence is quite high. All the characters were distinct enough from each other to tell who they were, so the twists on who was a good guy and who was a bad guy were easy to track.
For some reason I cannot fathom, they updated the setting of this story to modern day Russia. This is only apparent in the teacher's speech at the school and in calling the Russian security apparatus by the modern name instead of KGB. Everything else was a perfect 80s-era period piece, which is what this should have been. Thus, one point off.
Bottom line: if you like spy thrillers and you don't mind seeing a really graphic movie that you should definitely not bring your kids to, then see it.
Black Panther (2018)
great world-building
This is a solid superhero movie. It's entertaining all the way through, with action, humor, plot, character, and most of all great science fiction futuristic world-building using various African cultures which remained identifiable and individual in their dress, music, etc. while participating in a super-modern society. I loved the African music. If I had been watching this at home instead of in a theater I would have gotten up and danced. In think the animals were CGI but I liked them anyway. I would have liked to see more of them. I hope there will be a battle rhino sequence in Infinity War. I liked that the people of Wakanda are openly pagan, worshippers of Bast, the Egyptian cat goddess, and I would have liked to see more about that, too. I would have liked to see more of a lot of the world-building elements of Wakanda, in fact, and I hope there is more in Black Panther 2. And if that's not already in development, get on that, Hollywood. Next time, more cats, please.
The hero
I like that this superhero has a completely different reason for wearing a mask and superhero suit than the standard superhero. Black Panther is not trying to hide his identity. He is more identifiable as the King of Wakanda when he's in the suit than when he's not. He wears a mask because the Panther mask is his crown. It's part of his culture, rooted in African customs around ritual masks. There's even a part of the movie where African ritual masks in a museum are glossed with their ages and cultures of origin.
It might be a little odd for an ultramodern society with really advanced science to still pick their leaders through ritual combat, but it definitely worked as a plot device and an excuse for action and for showing ritual and having great ritual dress and songs. This is not the only story where an advanced society still does that; it's one of the fundamental plot elements of the Pride of Chanur series too. That's about lions, though, which actually do have pride males that challenge for dominance of a pride. Panthers don't actually live in packs like that. Oh, well, that's a really minor quibble. I could say more about T'Challa but I don't think I could come up with anything else that would be original, that other reviewers haven't already said, so I'll just say I am looking forward to seeing him again soon in Infinity War where I expect he will be working with Capt. America (and according to the second after credit scene-- spoiler alert! With Bucky / Winter Soldier, too.)
The villain
I like that they gave us a "villian" so relatable that a lot of people think Killmonger is the hero. His view that Wakanda should help the less fortunate black people of the world is a view shared by Black Panther's love interest, and (spoiler alert!) Black Panther softens his stance in this area at the end of the movie. (There's another villain who is more villainous, Klaue the arms dealer, but he's a small-timer whose corpse Killmonger stands on, on his way to the top of the heap.) I also liked that Killmonger only remained true to his principles until he actually got power, and then basically turned into a colonizer, with his "sun never sets" line that echoes the famous line about the British Empire. This not only showed that Killmonger was in fact the bad guy in this story but also is true to human nature in that way that, as they say, power corrupts.
On the Nature of Good and Evil
One expects a superhero movie to have its good guys all good and its bad guys all bad, and this one breaks that expectation in many ways. Not only is the main villain not really evil, but the same characteristic is present in some of the good guys and bad guys. For example, the first scene that shows Killmonger is supposed to be a bad guy is when he is willing to kill his lover to achieve his goal, which he of course believes is a noble goal. Later, the general of the Doras displays this exact same characteristic, willing to kill her lover for Wakanda in their civil war, and she is one of the good guys. This makes these characters very human, in that no one is all good or all evil.
Bottom line: Good movie, see it.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
Very much a Star Wars movie in the tradition of the original
Non spoilery party:
The Last Jedi is a lot like the original trilogy. It's got lots of action, but it isn't just all action with no plot suspense like the prequels, where we all knew what was going to happen from the start. The Force and Jedi stuff is right on and very SW-y, and could have been original fanfic (and I mean that in a good way, nobody loves the canon like trufen.) Yes, it has its flaws, but so did all the other movies.
And what fan could resist seeing Carrie Fisher's last performance? Which was great, btw. I loved that Leia still looks kinda like me even though I've got gray hair now.
Slightly spoilery part:
So Luke basically turns into Obi-Wan. I guess that must be what the actor didn't like. He wanted his guy to stay the pure good hero. No character our age is ever going to be the hero. We are the teacher now. Despite not liking the direction his character went in, Hamill knocked it out of the park with his performance.
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
great action! great fun!
This might be the best Thor movie yet. It has great action, with lots of fighting. The effects are smooth and believable-looking, and never gave me any of that out-of-sync or blurry nausea that earlier CGI sometimes did.
A few things I loved:
I loved how Surtr looked. He was almost exactly how I pictured him when I wrote my own novel about Ragnarok (which is not published, you can't read it anywhere.)
I loved Loki's emotional moments with his family. The expressions on his face told whole volumes of stories in just a few seconds of screen time.
I loved that they had to destroy Asgard and fulfill Ragnarok. Did I love that because it dovetailed with my own vision, in my unpublished behemoth? Probably. But it also worked perfectly with the movie's plot and premises.
I loved that Loki got to be the hero his fans always knew him to be.
Some things I thought I might care about that I didn't:
People online have been complaining about the Hela character being changed from Loki's daughter to Odin's daughter. I can see why they did that for this story, because it makes her a proper claimant to the throne of Asgard. It's kind of silly to think of beings that don't age having any tradition of children succeeding their parents, but then, if we wanted a realistic movie about what the heathen gods were really like we'd have to call it Cloud Appreciation or something like that.
People online have been complaining about how different the Valkyrie character looks in the movie from how she looks in the comics. I never actually read the comics -- I read the original mythology. Meh, I thought she looked fine. She had some great fighting sequences.
One thing I didn't like:
The opening scene where Thor swings around on a chain and keeps telling Surtr to wait until he goes back to facing forwards and Surtr politely stops and resumes his villain speech where he explains everything was supposed to be funny, but it wasn't. If a moment of humor that didn't come off had been buried in the middle somewhere, I wouldn't have cared so much, but the beginning of a blockbuster should make me say wow. The reason I gave this movie of 9 instead of a 10 is because the beginning fell flat.
One last note:
My companion really likes Immigrant Song so it was really cool that have that in the soundtrack.
Atomic Blonde (2017)
Bond. Lorraine Bond.
The fighting is really realistic street fighting. There's plenty of it, and features lots of improvised weapons. The movie promised ass-kicking, and it does not disappoint.
The plot wasn't too confusing for me because I studied cold war politics (I actually have a degree is Soviet Political Analysis) and I understood all the Russian dialogue, some of which was not subtitled. It was a fairly complicated plot, though, and people less familiar with the history might have gotten lost. I was in the Soviet Union just a couple of months off of when this story takes place, and I can well imagine everything that happens in this story really happening and just sort of being folded into the general confusion and violence taking place at the time and passing without a ripple into history. Lorraine could have been me, if things on the world stage had happened just slightly faster or slower, so I really identified with the main character.
I liked the nostalgic music. Combined with the sets, costumes, props, etc., it really provided the atmosphere of the times. I also liked the Lesbian scene.
Even though I liked all those elements of this movie, I still didn't find it that exciting. The frame story structure ruined the tension. I get that the frame story served several purposes: 1. to provide an excuse to show the lead actress in the bath. 2. to introduce Goodman's character so the audience will understand the ending 3. to sort of explain the plot a little. However, all those things could have been handled a different way. As it was, knowing in advance that the main character made it out of there alive spoiled it for me. When she was fighting her opponents, I wasn't afraid for her, because I knew she was going to make it back to London. When she was in the sinking car, I wasn't afraid for her, only for her passenger. I could not get emotionally involved in the main character's struggle for survival because the opening scene already told me she would succeed.
So, I'm giving this a 7. It's watchable and has many enjoyable elements, but I could neither fear for nor cheer for an outcome I knew in advance.
Daeripgun (2017)
excellent war movie
This has some really great fighting in it. It's not martial arts, though, it's war. Sword versus sword, arrow versus cover, siege ladder versus wall, and, when the Japanese Army arrives, suddenly, in the midst of this medieval style warfare, guns. The war scenes are stunning.
The main groups of characters are: the king and his advisers, the prince and his courtiers and regular soldiers, the Japanese invaders, and the proxy soldiers. Proxy soldiers are professional soldiers who make their living by doing other peoples' mandatory military service for them. Of course the people who pay are the rich and the ones who get paid are the poor, so the proxy soldiers have a lower status than regular soldiers. Some of them have a goal of becoming regular soldiers after their proxy terms, and the access to that career path is something officials manipulate them with.
This movie is subtitled in English, and when the Japanese characters are talking, also subtitled in Hangul. There are a ton of cultural details in this film that I would not have understood if my companion had not been whispering explanations to me. (We were 6 rows away from the nearest other people in the theater, so it wasn't disruptive.) For example, there was a point in the story where volunteer soldiers start to arrive to fight for the Prince. Some of them were wearing what looked like swastikas on their shirts. My companion explained those were monks who were like Shaolin monks but the local Korean variety. (The name sounded like Sherenji but I have no idea how to spell it.)
This is apparently based on a true story, which accounts for how confusingly byzantine the plot was. The reason I gave this a 9 instead of a 10 is because there were a few times I didn't really understand what was going on, and also because at the beginning I wasn't sure who I was supposed to be rooting for. That cleared up eventually, though. We are rooting for Tow, the proxy soldier who becomes the martial arts mentor to the young Crown Prince. Until the moment Tow starts instructing him, the Prince is pretty useless. Eventually we start to root for the Prince, too, as he grows into a good man, warrior, and king.
If you like movies about war, see it.
Wonder Woman (2017)
outstanding!
Fighting:
This movie has some really excellent fighting. Even the training scenes are great. It was really cool to see the Amazons training and fighting, and I liked that some of them are real fighters. I liked the horse tricks, too, which reminded me of the Cossack riders of the Moscow Circus. The Amazon costumes look good while still being practical to fight in.
The horrors of WWI trench warfare are shown, including the big guns, the gas, and the wounded coming back from the front. Diana has been trying to reach the front to achieve her goal, but she doesn't stay hung ho when Chief tells her the sound she thought was thunder was the sound of the war.
There's a moment in the trench scene when Trevor tells her, "This is No Man's Land. That means no man can cross it." I was sure she was about to say "I am No Man." But she didn't say it-- she did it.
I liked that the group's sniper doesn't actually snipe. It's realistic that soldiers sometimes don't actually shoot their weapons in battle. Of course that provided an excuse for Wonder Woman to save the day, but that could have been achieved without that touch of realism.
Humor
The script didn't go overboard with the humor, but there was enough there to relieve tension in what was otherwise more of a war movie than a superhero film audience might expect. Yes, there is a penis joke, but hey, Shakespeare did penis jokes, too, right? I liked that the sword-in-the-dress scene, which I knew about from Facebook friends sharing "got your back" pics, turned out to be a moment of humor instead of a serious fight scene, because the actual fight scene that happened later was way better than it would have been in a room full of noncombatants.
Stranger in a Strange Land
This movie did the fish-out-of-water thing way better than the first Thor movie did. In part that was because Diana didn't know things, like whether men slept, that were really basic things about our world but which she genuinely had a good story reason not to know. There was the inevitable "getting local clothes" scene, but it wasn't overplayed.
The villain
At first, when the backstory of Ares was explained by the Amazons, it seemed like Ares was going to be the sort of evil villain that does evil just for the sake of evil. Of course a superhero story needs a supervillain, and given that Diana is the daughter of Zeus (which I already knew before they made this movie, but which Diana herself doesn't know until late in the movie) of course no mere human villain could be much of an obstacle to her. In the actual Greek mythology, a human/ god offspring is a demigod, and like Hercules, is expected to be better than any human being. The same goes for the story logic here. So of course only another god could be much of a challenge to her. So I saw story logic, rather than the excessive influence of Christian dualism, in turning Ares into some kind of Satan in this movie. I was prepared to accept that for the sake of the story, which is, after all, fiction. But oh, they did so much more with him by the end.
Ares turned out to be completely different than Diana had thought. Not only was he a different person, with a different name and body, than she had thought, but his motivation turned out to be exactly the same as her own: to eliminate evil by killing it. Diana went to find Ares to kill him because she thought he was evil and responsible for war and suffering, and Ares was trying to kill humankind because he thought humans were evil and responsible for war and suffering. Diana and Ares were alike, two of a kind, in a way that went far beyond being brother and sister gods. Ares only appeared to be evil if one first centers humanity and bases moral judgments off of what benefits or harms humankind. It turned out, this was not a story of dualism at all, not a story of an evil being fighting a good being, but a story of two beings that share the same motivation and dedication to eradicating evil, but differ only on their opinion of mankind. This complicated view of how one defines evil was a truly wonderful thing to find in a superhero movie.
The hero's character arc
Diana starts out as a young idealist and enthusiast of the fighting arts from a warrior culture that believes in love in the abstract, toward humanity. Along the way she loses her naivety and gains romantic, attached love. She develops as a warrior and hero the more she loses her fascination with fighting for its own sake and gives her attention to saving others, especially those she loves. That is a standard journey of maturity for a hero, and it barely references her gender except in the details. The bones of the story could have been told about any superhero; the story was fleshed out in such a way that Wonder Woman was both truly a wonder and most definitely a woman, and those two things did not conflict with each other.
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
The ghost is more important than the shell
With great action, great effects, and just the right amount of philosophical truth, this is an excellent addition to the cyberpunk genre. Its world visually reminds me of Blade Runner, and a little bit of Firefly. The plot and main character are basically Robocop, if Robocop had been built from the brain of... SPOILER... an executed dissident.
The philosophy or spirituality is baked into the premise of a human brain in a robot body, so although it's in the title, the questions of what makes a person don't hit the audience over the head quite as much as the spiritual questions do in The Matrix or Dr. Strange. I loved how they blended seamlessly into the plot.
The complicated plot was fairly easy to follow once it got going, but there were a few moments of confusion, especially in the beginning, when I was a little lost because I had not read the manga. There were a number of quiet scenes, some of which helped me understand the plot or characters, some of which were just places where I mentally started writing my review because there wasn't anything going on, so that's why I gave this a 9 instead of a 10.
The internet buzz leading up to this movie mostly focused on the casting decision to put a white actress in the role of Major. Actual Japanese people from Japan were not the ones complaining, though; it seemed to be white Americans doing the complaining, so, I didn't let that deter me from seeing the movie in the theater. I'm glad I didn't pay attention to American keyboard warriors' attempt to torpedo this Japanese-approved movie for not being Japanese enough. Major's body is a robot. She's rebuilt several times in the movie after being damaged. Her arm has wires under the skin like the Terminator. Her face comes apart exactly the same way the faces of the more mechanical appearing geishas do in this movie. Her body's appearance is arbitrary, created by a robot engineer, and designed to match her implanted memories of being a "refugee" rather than her real memories. The scene where she finds out her brain came from a Japanese person and she... SPOILER... meets her real Japanese family would have had a lot less impact if she hadn't been wearing a body that totally didn't match her original body. The entire point of Ghost in the Shell is that the ghost-- the soul, the mind-- is what counts, not the shell-- the body. The people complaining about what the shell looks like are totally missing the point.
Logan (2017)
I really related to Logan being the family caregiver
Unexpectedly human in its portrayal of disability and caregiving, this movie had everything I wanted as a Wolverine fan and even gave me a new way to relate to Logan, as a family caregiver dealing with his own physical problems related to aging.
Here comes the spoiler. Obviously the big thing that wasn't in the trailer is that this is Wolverine Vs. Dark Wolverine. It was an excellent addition to the story, because after all, who is the most perfect opponent for Wolverine but someone just like him, but younger, stronger, and crazier?
Of course, Lara is also just like him but younger and crazier, only she's a cute kid, so... yeah, I predict the next movie in the Wolverine franchise will be Teen Lady Wolverine. Speaking of teens, it's kinda too bad that the level of violence in this movie made it an R, because it seemed like the plot was designed to give kids someone to identify with in Lara, and that her story was about the fantasy of the perfect father. So many children don't know their dad, and they imagine if they found him he'd always have their back. But then many of them do find their father and discover he's emotionally unavailable. Those two characteristics are big parts of how Logan and Lara relate in this movie.
The action in this movie was great, and the plot had just enough twists, and dealt with some real life issues. Having a major character who speaks Spanish and whose goal is to cross an international border brought up real world political questions, but thankfully, the movie didn't try to answer them, but stuck to being an action movie.
Flawless. See it.
John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
a feature length fight scene occasionally interrupted by brief dialogue and pigeons
Lots of great fighting. Not much else. Except there is a dog in it. See it if you want to watch a feature length fight scene occasionally interrupted by brief dialogue and pigeons.
So, kind of like Matrix 2. Except with pigeons instead of a sex scene. There's even a bit of reflection on the nature of reality. Sort of. Or else it's a comment on how modern art is a funhouse mirror to real art. And makes a nice sparkly tinkly sound when you shoot it.
Also, we get to see the pencil thing. There's really quite a lot of good fighting, with guns, with fists, with knives, and yes, even with a pencil. And did I mention there is great fighting?
The plot is very basic and straightforward, but since it's easy to follow and does what it needs to do to move the fighting-- er, I mean to move the story forwards-- that's fine for this kind of movie.
It's an almost perfect example of its genre. I took a point off for AGAIN mispronouncing Baba Yaga. Filmmakers, you have had 3 years to think about it, are you sure you don't want to go with saying it how it's spelled? How it's spelled in Cyrillic letters, I mean. You know written Russian is phonetic, right? One letter, one sound, one kill. Er, that is-- anyway kudos for being OK with having a totally badass male character go by a nickname that means granny witch.
Hidden Figures (2016)
The movie of the year. coming to an awards show near you.
This is the movie of the year.
I saw this movie because my online friends recommended it. Several of them said it was funny, and they were right. There were some great moments of humor, and not the kind of humor one might expect. Most movie humor is either slapstick or cheeky lines, but this was different.
I had not planned to see this movie after seeing the trailer. The trailer made it look like a dry history lesson. My friends on social media told me to see it, and I am so glad I did. Yes, it's history. But it's not dry.
Maybe it was even sensationalized a little. Of course movies have to have drama and action, and this one does, and it uses some great visuals from the space program, but there were also some unexpected points at which I really identified with the main characters, and I wasn't expecting it.
Here come the spoilery parts.
One of the plot points was that the women were not given credit for their work or opportunities because they didn't have the college degrees and qualifications on paper to do what they were already doing. There was a line that went, "Computers don't author reports." Replace that with "techs" and that's an experience I've actually had at a job.
I was expecting to see depictions of racism and sexism, and those were there, of course. (I'm not going to go into more detail about that because more qualified people have already written about it.) I wasn't expecting that -ism that doesn't even have a name which made me see myself in the main character.
I was already identifying with her a little from the start because the story started with a bright child far ahead of her class, and that was me as a kid. Coincidentally, right before the main movie came on, the theater showed a preview of another movie that also had a bright child in it, and the drama was between the dad who wanted to give her a normal childhood and the grandmother who wanted to give her educational opportunities. When the preview was over I leaned over to Tom and whispered, "Speaking as someone who was a gifted child once, I'm rooting for grandma." And then Hidden Figures started and there was another bright child on the screen. I'd be primed to identify with her immediately. Maybe it wasn't so coincidental?
I really enjoyed seeing the NASA stuff, too. Who doesn't like rockets? When I was a child, my parents were always telling me that I was born the year a man first walked on the moon. My whole generation grew up idolizing astronauts, didn't we? A lot of people think only the Boomers are still interested in the space race, but a lot of people my age grew up watching the moon shots on TV. I had read and watched a lot about the space program and even met one of the moon men once, but I hadn't heard the story told in Hidden Figures before. It was amazing to see this familiar subject, so drenched in golden nostalgia, made fresh and new again.
I predict awards for this movie. I also predict the new geek catchphrase is going to be, "I'm not Russian." I know I'm just waiting for a chance to say it sometime.
Rogue One (2016)
I saw this movie the day after Carrie Fisher died
I saw this movie the day after Carrie Fisher died, so I can't separate my feelings about Rogue One from my mixed grief and nostalgia. I was one of those kids who dressed up as Princess Leia, and of course, added a toy lightsaber, because obviously she was supposed to have one even if it wasn't in the movie. Leia was one of the very few characters I identified with as a child who matched my physical gender, although I have to admit I actually identified more with Luke. The last Star Wars movie showed me General Organa looking like a genuine older woman, and for the first time, in my whole life, I have looked at a major hero character in a science fiction show -- movie or TV -- and thought, that character looks like me. People like me exist in that universe. Because of that, I am writing a spoilery review because I cannot otherwise express how much I loved this. The very last scene in Rogue One unexpectedly showed me Princess Leia, looking exactly like she did the first time I saw her. I don't know if that was footage deleted from the original Star Wars like some of the stuff in the battle scenes (Gold Leader's lines for example) or whether it was a digital recreation like Tarkin. Whatever it was, it took my breath away. It was a fitting tribute to the late actress, and was stunningly more appropriate than the filmmakers could possibly have anticipated when they put it there.
If I hadn't been watching this through the lens of Fisher's death, I might have just seen it as a war movie. Putting the wars in Star Wars, this is basically The Dirty Dozen in space, and I like it. There is action, action, action, and no darn ewoks or jar jar or anything equivalent. There's even a sort of Jedi, although it's not clear if he's actually a real Jedi or just a devotee. I took one point off for having a slightly confusing beginning. At first I was unsure if the little girl was Rey or not. Turned out, not.
It didn't really detract from the story, but I wonder where the Bothans were? "Many Bothans died to bring us this information" is basically the entire reason for this movie, so it would have been cool if some of the fighters who died in the movie had been Bothans. Or I guess since they are just ignoring all the official Star Wars novels I've gotten from the bookstores over the years, maybe in the Disney Star Wars the Bothans aren't furry aliens. If Bothans were just a kind of human like Alderaanians then I guess this would work fine.
Bottom line: Fun movie with a huge bonus for Leia fans. The action and effects are worth seeing on the big screen. See it in the theater.
Assassin's Creed (2016)
meh -- confusing if you haven't played the game it's based on
This is watchable, and has good fighting, although some of the special effects aren't really that great. It's got its good points and bad points.
The most interesting part of this movie is the complicated morality of the hero and villain organizations. The Knights Templar are the bad guys. As we all know, the Knights were founded as a Christian order but were declared heretics. In this movie, their heresy is that they want to destroy free will. Free will is one of the core principles of Christianity. (Not that we heathens think you can't make your own choices, it just isn't the way we answer a question about our gods. In Christianity, Free Will is the answer to "Why does God let bad things happen?") At the beginning of the movie, it seems like they want to get rid of free will for a good cause, to eliminate criminal violence. It turns out that only some of them want that. Some of them want power over others.
The assassins are the good guys. This is based on the real history in which assassins originated in Arab culture, and some of the good guys are Arabs. A lot of both the good and bad characters in the historical flashbacks are Spanish. Large portions of this movie are in Spanish, with English subtitles. Despite having an English sort of name, the main character Cal is also Spanish, and born in Mexico.
The plot was really confusing to me, as I had not played the game Assassin's Creed. The constant flipping back and forth between our time and the historical sequences made it hard to get emotionally involved in the story. It also took me a while to figure out who I was supposed to be rooting for. I think the filmmakers did that on purpose. For example, in one historical scene, the assassins start out by saying "Our mission is the child." I didn't know until the scene ended whether they were trying to rescue the child or assassinate him. I think the filmmakers did that deliberately, possibly to increase tension, although to me that just left me cold and not knowing whether I wanted the assassins to succeed or not.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)
Queenie / Kowalski for the win?
Darn it, Fantastic Beasts, now you've got me mentally composing Queenie / Kowalski fan fiction in my head. You did this on purpose, didn't you? Ending with two characters forbidden by law to marry getting back together and restarting their romance. You wanted people thinking about how they could hide or go abroad or change the laws-- and applying it to real world situations. Didn't you? Ha, don't deny, movie makers. I know a "give them sexual tension with no resolution so they'll write fanfic and get invested in these characters and come back for more later" when I see one.
We went to this movie because it looked like it might have some great action, and it did. Tom caught me up on what I needed to know about the Harry Potter universe because we went, which wasn't really that much, just stuff about how magic works in that universe and some terminology. I had no trouble following the plot or understanding the characters, even though I have neither read the Harry Potter books nor seen the movies.
I really liked the character of Newt, even though he kind of high-handedly dragged people and animals into his adventures without seeming to consider the effects on them first. If he is supposed to have Asperger's / High Functioning Autistic then that kind of goes with how society views such people, but I'm not really sure it's how such people actually are. I'm suspecting that he's supposed to be an Asperger's type person because he doesn't look people in the eye, doesn't like touching people but has no problem touching and relating with animals. He seems to prefer animals to people, and that's the thing that makes me really relate to him, because I prefer animals to people too. Except for the not looking in the eye thing, I have pretty much all his traits and eccentricities. (Yeah, I'm even a writer, too.) I don't like to kiss either. I think this may be the first time I've seen a major American movie with an adult main character who doesn't like to kiss. It's actually really nice to have that affirmed as an OK way to be. I love the part where Newt is in the middle of a fight / escape scene and sees a cat (OK it's a big cat, but whatever) and is suddenly happy and excited and content to be where he is. That is so me.
I didn't have a lot of expectations for this movie going in, except that I had seen the trailer at another movie and saw some great special effects in it. So I expected great fx, and this movie delivered them. It was unexpectedly watchable for a movie based on kids' books. The reason I'm not giving it a super high rating: 1. the opening sequence with the newspapers, which no doubt gave important info about the plot or characters, was unreadable from where I was sitting, far left second row. 2. because the way it ended left a major plot hole hanging, the whole magical people are forbidden to marry non magical people thing, and I'm sure they did it on purpose, and now I can't stop thinking about how to resolve the secondary characters' romance and it's Thanksgiving and that's not what I am supposed to be thinking about. I'm kind of mad at the scriptwriters for that.
Doctor Strange (2016)
Marvel Does the Matrix
As a person who both believes in science and works magic, watching this movie felt like remembering things I already knew. It reminded me of things I'd forgotten along the way, foundations buried by the dust of mundane life over the years. Some great stories sweep one away to another world, but this one swept away the dust off of this world, and showed it to be great and wonderful as any other.
I'm giving this 10 out of 10 even though I do have a criticism, because my criticism did not occur to me while I was watching it. I had read a lot about the casting of Tilda Swinson as The Ancient One when the casting choice had been announced. I don't really know why they chose to change the Ancient One, but if it's because of the reasons bandied about in what I read back then, either reason is problematic in its own way. The most obvious reason would be to give any large, important speaking role to a white person for the sake of giving American audiences people they can relate to. Aren't we past this point yet, though? I mean, the Ancient One is basically a martial arts mentor, we had an Asian martial arts mentor in the old Kung Fu TV series even though the title character was played by a white guy, and American audiences had no problem with that. In the previews that played before Dr. Strange was a preview for a movie about the Great Wall of China, and, guess what, a white guy was the star. I'm just over hear shaking my head, wondering what sense that could possibly make in the story. OK, so there's that possibility, but the other one I read about back when the casting choices were made is more insidious if it's so: that they changed the Ancient One from being Tibetan so they could get the movie passed censorship by the government of China. So it could play in the Chinese market. So, now we're blaming Hollywood erasing Asian characters on China. OK then. I really would have liked the Ancient One to stay Asian. Given how much fighting the Ancient One does in the movie, it would have been great to have him played by an actual martial artist, too. All that said, though, none of that detracted from my enjoyment of the movie while I was actually watching it, it's just bugging me now, the next morning.
Dr. Strange is a great spectacle. Even if you're not into the mysticism it portrays, the portrayal of the other worlds and the bending of time and space is done with excellent special effects that are great to watch. It reminded me of The Matrix in that it uses fx and fight scenes to show something deeper. On the surface, it's about gaining powers and defeating a bad guy like any other superhero movie, but underneath it has something to say about the nature of reality. There is enough plot to keep it from being just a psychedelic fx show. Each of the effects is necessary to the story.
There are some great moments of humor. I especially liked the physical humor with the cloak. I laughed out loud at the near-pratfalls caused by the Cloak of Levitation.
The character of Dr. Strange is one I can relate to because he's basically a human. Even though he starts out as an exceptional surgeon so he's up at the top of professional success, he's still just a human without any powers when he starts out. He's not a mutant or a demigod or an alien or given powers by a spider or gamma rays or any of the other ways superheroes usually get their powers. Strange is just a regular human being who learns stuff from books.
I really liked how time and mortality were portrayed as positives. When the villains first explain their motivation, they don't sound like villains at all. They want to free the world from mortality, and that sounds great at first. It's only when we see the true nature of what they serve that the viewer realizes how wrong they are. I also like how questioning and bending the rules is portrayed as a positive. There isn't a hard line between the white hats and the black hats; the top good guys are gray.
This movie delivers the action, fx, and humor one expects from a Marvel movie, including the obligatory Stan Lee cameo and a scene during the credits setting up another movie. Re-filling beer stein for the win, lol. It also serves up a mix of magic, technology, choices, and personal development that will please fans of Star Wars and The Matrix.
Suicide Squad (2016)
fun with delicious characters, lots of fighting and stuff on fire
I loved Harley. She steals every scene she's in. Reviews I've read that said the Joker sucked were wrong, he didn't suck, he just got outshone by Harley. We're used to seeing a Joker who owns every inch of celluloid real estate he comes close to, and that wasn't this guy. In this movie it's Harley in the spotlight.
Also I think reviews that said the Joker / Harley relationship was too nice were wrong. There's a scene near the beginning of the movie where she's still Dr. Harleen Quinzel and Joker says he's going to hurt her a lot and then he zaps her brain with electricity and the next thing it cuts to her being Harley and totally insane. It's pretty clear he drove her nuts by hurting her; I don't think it was "too nice" or "not abusive enough to be true to the comics" at all. I mean, how graphic do we really want to see that in a movie with live actors? This was plenty to get the point across.
Besides Harley, the two other characters with good character development and an arc are Deadshot and El Diablo. Deadshot, Will Smith's character, is clearly the star. El Diablo is almost a nonentity right up until the bar scene, but then he's great. Since the beginning of the movie had a lot of characters' backstories I get why they held off on this guy's backstory until later. The final strong character is Waller, arguably the real villain, as several other reviews have said. On that point I agree with most of the reviews I've read.
Plot? What plot? Just toss the characters on the screen and let them kick ass. It's fun. I think this was the best DC movie so far. They just let the action be action and the characters be themselves and it worked. Yeah, I could wonder why a character like Boomerang who doesn't have any powers is trying to fight alongside mutants, and against mutants, er oh excuse me "metahumans" like whatever DC. Anyway, never mind the why, that's not what this is about. Waller just opened her crayon box of cray and scribbled all over the city, never mind why anyone would think Harley belongs fighting alongside the crocodile from the sewers and fireball guy. Oh, and that fireball stuff: yeah I like. Destroy, destroy, destroy! Burn baby burn! Mwahahahaha! And if it's still twitching Harley can smash it with a baseball bat.
The action is fun, even if we have kind of already seen most of those effects before. The creepy bubble head things were different, though. Don't bring along your squeamish friend, but do see it if you like fighting and things being burned down and cool villains.
Nine Lives (2016)
funny and sweet! I lol'd!
This is a purrrrfect example of its genre, the "animal movie." The animal movie is designed to appeal to the "entire family" meaning it's really for adults but safe to bring the kids to see. The target audience is lovers of the specific animal who is the main character, in this case, a cat. It features the animal's behavior in both funny and serious ways. It may have an uplifting message or tone, even if it deals with serious situations. Yep, checkmarked all those perfectly.
The point of view character is the dad, Brand, stuck in a cat's body. Brand is a rich guy obsessed with building a giant tower with his name on it, who likes to fly through the air and land on his tower. So basically he's Tony Stark as a dad. How would Tony Stark be as a dad? Well, not that great. Until he learns to embrace cat-hood.
I think this movie may have been mis-marketed a bit. All the previous that ran ahead of it were kids' movies. But the person the viewer is supposed to identify with is the parent. There are kids in the movie, but the dad-cat is the character who has a growth and redemption arc and is the focus of most of the scenes. The movie deals with some serious subjects such as death and divorce. The plot turns on knowing the meaning and significance of terms like "articles of incorporation" which you will need to be able to read off the screen and immediately understand to get what's going on, so younger kids might not be able to follow all of what's happening in the plot. They'll still enjoy the cat antics, though.
I loved the destructive cat stuff: the jumping around, knocking things over, scratching things up (and scratching people up) and I literally laughed out loud a few times. I think I laughed the loudest when Mr. Fuzzypants peed in Brand's ex-wife's purse. There were some internet celebrity cats featured in the movie, too. It was hilarious! Go see it if you like cats.
The Legend of Tarzan (2016)
great action and great animals
This is a great action movie! It's one great action or fight scene after another, with a minimum of still, quiet scenes. Also, there are kitties. Great big ones.
Great stuff: Effects:
There are some great effects, but the best ones are the ones I can't tell from reality. Most of the animals must be CGI but they don't look like weird jumpy cartoons like most CGI always has. The part where Tarzan and the gorillas swing from vines had to be CGI too but except for a couple of seconds here and there it looked really realistic. Did they do something to make the actor's hands and arms look like he really walked on his knuckles and swung from trees? If they did, it was a great effect, and if it was real it was even more impressive. I haven't read up on the movie yet to see which it was; I like to give my review fresh from seeing it before learning too much from other sources or reading other reviews.
Animals:
It was wonderful to see animals in a movie actually acting like animals. Movie animals usually act like humans. These animals don't have silly "witty" dialogue. They talk only with their own animal cries and body language. It was a real treat for me to see the lions doing the cheek- rub thing like house cats do. They act like cats! All the animal scenes are really well done. A couple of minor points: the stampede seemed to a bit more destructive than one would expect, but perhaps some of the destruction was from someone shooting, there was so much going on I might have missed it; and when Tarzan goes toe to toe with a gorilla, even though that was a dominance display and not a real fight, I thought Tarzan was little bit less banged up than was entirely realistic, despite having to have some surface first aid. Human vs. gorilla is just really no contest, even a human at the absolute peak of human strength. Those are really minor quibbles, though, and they don't detract from the plot because they are just action details.
Africa: I really liked the singing. I don't know enough about Africa to know if the songs, clothing, customs surrounding births and rites of passage, etc. were authentic or not, but they seemed to be. I also liked how the script worked in some history and managed to make the actions of the Belgian soldiers and villains believable.
Not so great: Women Jane was OK, and the village women and their songs were really fun, but the best female character was the gorilla, Tarzan's mom. The only reason I'm giving this movie a 9 instead of a 10 is because I was just kind of meh about Jane. If you have to have a really good human female character in the movie to enjoy it, then this isn't the movie for you. I'm enough of a tomboy to be able to identify with Tarzan, but that's just me. If you are going to be identifying with Jane you might not find this as enjoyable as I did.
Conclusion: if action is your thing, see it.
Free State of Jones (2016)
a great war story intercut with boring weird genealogy stuff
I liked this movie and thought it should have had a wider release. Its run was so short and there were so few showings that Tom and I had to go all the way across town to see it, and it's apparently disappearing from Las Vegas next week. However, it would have been a better movie if it had been shorter. It included a bunch of stuff that was not necessary to the story.
If the script had been edited down to just the stuff that actually relates to the title, the Free State of Jones and how it come to be, it would have been an excellent example of the war movie genre. The stirring victory could have been the third-to-last scene, with a couple of scenes of how things came out later -- the whole section about voter registration and voting could easily have been edited together into one scene, and the stuff about how agriculture was handled after the war could have been cut together into another one scene, and then the movie could have ended on another high note with Knight rescuing the child. The stuff about Knight's descendants could have been thrown onto the screen in text on the end, like many historical movies do. There were already several scenes that began with lots of text on the screen, especially towards the end, so that would have fit nicely with the rest of the movie. The first time they cut away from the middle of exciting fight scenes and character motivation scenes to show a different group of characters in a different century sitting around talking about ancestors and laws I literally turned to Tom and whispered, "What the hell?" We shrugged at each other. If I had been watching this on TV instead of in the theater I would have checked to make sure I was still on the same channel. Subsequent cuts away from the real story to this descendant stuff were not as confusing, but were still totally unnecessary to the story and interrupted it weirdly. The movie was way too long, including stuff that should have been edited out in the script stage, not just with the intercuts to the future but also with the stuff that occurred after there was no more Free State of Jones, after the end of the war. This was 2 different movies with the same characters glued back to back, plus a third of another different one with different characters chopped into it. Despite all that, the main story was so good I STILL think it's a great war movie.
Before I went to see this, I was a little bit concerned it might be another "white savior" movie like Dances With Wolves and its science fiction reboot Avatar, but it isn't. The main character isn't motivated by being some other culture's new Messiah, he's just a man fighting for his own reasons and his own family.
This movie was a fascinating look at a part of our history that I knew nothing about. Even Tom had not known about the Free State of Jones before, and he's been something of a Civil War buff. Why did we not know about this before? Why is this not taught in school? We knew about Texas being its own country once, so why not this? Everyone who cares about American history should see this. Since this is the end of its theatrical run, I guess most people will have to see it in a recorded medium or on TV.
Fun inside joke to pull: from now on the actor is just named McConna because the gh is silent.
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
I am impressed! Also, I am now a fan of the Winter Soldier!
I'm impressed. Not just with the action and stuff but the political message, too. I am really glad they're keeping Cap true to his character. All the characters seem to be their own selves rather than turning into a background ensemble. I like. Also: I was not really a fan of the Winter Soldier character before, but NOW he reminds me strongly of the protagonist of my Punch series (both the Winter Soldier, who is referred to as Manchurian Candidate at one point in this movie, and the protagonist of my Punch series are based on Cold War era fears about North Korean mind control experiments on American POWs. This is a topic dear to my heart because of my father's service in that war.)
Keanu (2016)
purrrrfect
An excellent mix of comedy, action, and CAT! There were some jokes that other people in the theater laughed at that Tom and I didn't get, but there were still plenty of laughs. There was less comedy and more action than we were expecting, and that's all to the good. The action was excellent, and some of it was physical comedy, and that really worked.
I wanted to see this movie because I love cats and the star is a kitten. AND it's not aimed at little kids. I usually look at cat stuff on the internet instead of movies or TV because the media-generated cat content is mostly aimed at children, so I prefer the user-generated cat content on the net. But when I saw the trailer for this movie in the theater when Tom and I were seeing a Marvel movie, I could tell it was aimed at grown up cat lovers. I convinced Tom to take me to see it even though he was afraid an entire movie of Key & Peele comedy might get to be too much silliness. We were both pleasantly surprised at the action to comedy ratio, and by how well the cat was worked into the action and the plot.
9 out of 10 stars because a few of the jokes fell flat but other than that it was a purr-fect cat movie all the way through.
Thor (2011)
OK for heathens
Heathen message groups have been buzzing about the Thor movie since it began filming. Every casting decision announcement was endlessly ripped apart, and some people proposed organizing protests. In the end the consensus was that even if it s*cked it would be good in that it might cause people to read about the real mythology. And that what sets us apart from other religions is that we have a sense of humor, so we should give it a chance and see it before deciding to be offended. So it was with some trepidation that I went to see it. These are our gods, after all. Can you imagine Hollywood making a similar movie about Mohamed, in which God casts him out of heaven and he ends up being restrained and drugged in a mental ward of a hospital, and his abs are displayed as eye candy for the ladies? Heads would roll. But I'm pleased to say the movie didn't s&ck. Although there were a few cringe-worthy moments, especially when the film attempted humor, and the whole premise that beings who don't age might still have a human-style tradition of sons succeeding fathers to kingship is a little silly, overall it was enjoyable and a positive depiction of our gods. I think Thor is pleased that America has honored him with a movie, and that little children are calling his name, and that is why he has blessed us this year with so much rain.
review by gythia Erin Lale, author of Asatru For Beginners