Movies Seen, July-September, 2018
Dec. 14th, 2018 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayne07/01 Incredibles 2
07/07 Ant Man and The Wasp
07/13 Coco (vod/v)
07/20 Queen of Katwe (vod)
07/21 Mamma Mia (vod/v,rw)
07/24 Mamma Mia Here We Go Again
08/10 Demolition Man (rw,v)
08/10 The Hobbit 1: An Unexpected Journey (rw,v)
08/11 The Hobbit 2: The Desolation of Smaug (rw,v)
08/12 The Hobbit 3: The Battle if the Five Armies (rw,vod)
08/14 LOTR 1: Fellowship of the Ring (rw,v)
08/15 LOTR 2: The Two Towers (rw,v)
08/16 LOTR 3: The Return of the King (rw,v)
08/20 Christopher Robin
08/24 The Spy Who Dumped Me
08/25 Run, Lola, Run (v,rw)
08/28 High Fidelity (v)
08/31 Inside Out (v,rw)
09/01 Johnny English (v,rw)
09/01 Johnny English Reborn (v,rw)
09/02 Spy Hard (vod,rw)
09/03 Happytime Murders
09/08 The Player (v,rw)
09/12 The Men Who Stare At Goats (v,rw)
09/13 Saving Mr. Banks (v)
09/14 Cowboys and Aliens (v,rw)
09/14 Magic Mike (vod)
09/20 How to be a Latin Lover (vod)
09/23 Hot Fuzz (v,rw)
09/29 Spy (unr, v,rw)
09/29 Zootopia (v,rw)
09/30 Shrek (v,rw)
Once again, my parenthetical codes are V if I have it on DVD or Bluray, and VOD if I saw it on Video On Demand. If I list both, I have it on disc but watched it on VOD because I was feeling lazy. RW is a rewatch
This brings my movies seen up to 56 as of the third quarter of 2018, so well beyond a movie a week. I just wish they were all new and seen in a theater, but that’s not going to happen up here! Only six of these 32 seen this quarter were in the theater, and of these 32, twelve were new to me. So just over a third were fresh, which is good! Only one foreign, Run Lola Run, and that was a re-watch as I finally got my wife to sit down and watch it with me. Excellent film, I gushed about it previously.
Comments under the cut with minimal spoilerage for the more recent films.
Incredibles 2. It’s rare to see a sequel come out years after the original and pick up seconds after the first, of course it’s a lot easier when it’s animated. They did just an amazing job with this story. Though I hate how many studio properties The Disney Beast has sucked up, I have to admit that they can do incredible jobs writing when they really put forth the effort. Wreck-It Ralph 2 was another amazing sequel. But back to I2. Sort of a role-reversal from the original, in this case Elastagirl gets to be the hero of the family and Mr. Incredible has to play Mister Mom for the family. And it is not a role that suits him. The spousal unit and I really enjoyed this one. I wish we’d taken the time to re-watch the original before seeing the sequel, but it didn’t happen. Perhaps when I get around to buying the DVD we’ll do a double-header.
Ant Man and The Wasp. Yet another case of not getting to watch #1 before seeing #2. One thing that I’d completely forgotten from the original was when Luis (Michael Pena) started telling a story through flashbacks and the characters in the story were lip-syncing to his voice. I absolutely loved it! Well, this time instead of a corporation wanting the Ant Man tech invented by Dr. Pym, it’s a villain who wants revenge on Dr. Pym, and Ant Man and Wasp are in the way. The story is a bit more complicated than that, naturally, and lots of fun ensues. The segments in the credits are VERY important as they tie directly into Avengers: Infinity Wars and The Snappening and link Ant Man into Avengers 4: The Unsnappening.
Coco. I was very keen to see this when it was in the theaters: my wife, less so, and it didn’t happen. Eventually I was able to get her to watch the video with me, and it was nothing short of awesome. So much goodness in here that it defies description. Miguel, a little boy, is obsessed with becoming a singer and guitarist like his hero. But his family of cobblers has a complete ban on music due to a tragedy of his grandmothers after she was abandoned by a musician. Miguel goes into the land of the dead during the Dia De Los Muertos festival and trouble ensues. Amazing movie. It won two Academy Awards and 99 other awards and deserved them.
Queen of Katwe is a true story of chess and African poverty. A young girl from the slums Katwe, Uganda proves to have an amazing natural gift for chess and learns the game from watching, rapidly gaining the skill to beat everyone around her. With coaching, she is rapidly beating everyone in Uganda. Fascinating movie. It caused us some confusion when we resumed watching the second half of the second season of Sense8, and it was ‘Doesn’t Capheus have a sister?’ I used to run scholastic chess tournaments in Arizona and help with some pretty prestigious tournaments elsewhere, and it was nice to see the chess games depicted correctly.
Mamma Mia. I loved the play, saw it twice at ASU and in Albuquerque, no idea how many times I’ve seen the movie in the theater and on DVD. With the sequel coming out, had to watch it again (such a hardship!). While I love the movie, I preferred the play. I just thought the story was a little better. Minor stuff, plus the fact that everyone in the cast were professional singers, not just actors. (sorry, Pierce) Basic story: young woman, Sophie, living on a Greek island in a hotel run by her single American mother, Donna, is getting married soon. Doesn’t know who her father is: there’s three possible dads, as her mother was going through a bit of a fun time at that particular point of her life, and invites all three to the wedding. Mom hasn’t seen the three since that particular point in her life. Chaos ensues. Written by the two men in ABBA, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaes plus Tim Rice, lots of awesome ABBA music, some of which was tweaked for the musical and some original stuff.
Mamma Mia Here We Go Again, the sequel, I was really disappointed in. They re-used too much music from the original, and I think they made a huge mistake casting an actress for Young Donna who looked too much like Sophie. Anyway, same island, now Sophie is running the hotel. The movie is a massive series of flashbacks, which when you take a long look at it the flashbacks make absolutely no sense because the person who could experience the flashbacks ISN’T THERE. This movie is a strong contender for most disappointing movie of the year. Not worst movie – it was not a bad movie and was a good enough movie – but most disappointing in that I think they really blew it with the script and it could have been a much better story. They made, in my ever so humble opinion, two huge mistakes which set me against it early on. First, letting slip that Meryl Streep was not going to be a major character, then information leaking as to why. Second, announcing that Cher was in it. There was only one possible role that Cher could play. And she only performed one song, and even that song pissed me off! Yes, admittedly she knocked it out of the park, but that song is so amazing with harmony and it could have been sung with harmony and it wasn’t. I hate to say it, but this movie is not going in to my collection.
Demolition Man is one of my guilty pleasure movies. It has one of my favorite stars in it: Nigel Hawthorne. He stars in one of my fav Britcoms: Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister and also The Madness of King George III and a brief role in one early episode of Dad’s Army. Brilliant actor. He hated making this film because of the egos of Stallone and Snipes, but his career was slumping and he needed something. Anyway, just plain stupid fun. Loved Sandra Bullock, loved her martial arts move then Stallone asking her how she learned it: watching Jackie Chan movies from the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library. And the line “We’re going to Taco Bell!” So much silliness, just gotta watch it every few years.
Early August I bought a new TV in preparation for having, once again, sinus surgery. Operation number sixteen. *sigh* The recovery actually wasn’t too bad as they didn’t have to do any packing. The pain wasn’t terrible and I only had to do the industrial-strength pain meds for a couple of days. My wife scheduled a big block of time off to take care of me, and we planned in advance that one thing we could do was watch the entire Hobbit/Lord of the Rings series back-to-back. And we did. In seven days we watched all six movies, taking an evening off between The Battle of the Five Armies and Fellowship of the Ring. All of the LOTR movies were the extended edition/director’s cuts, which was interesting because I saw things that I didn’t remember seeing in the theaters, which was cool. And it was lovely blasting that sound through my B&W speakers! Such awesome speakers, it’s incredible how well they perform considering they’re over 30 years old!
I’m not going to talk about the movies individually, there’s just too much material. It would’ve been nice if there’d been more female characters, but considering when JRR wrote them, that’s just the way it was. We did have the creation from whole cloth of Tauriel, who worked really well, and I’m sure Peter Jackson caught hell for that. I personally really wanted to see the Scourging of the Shire as that really elevated Merry and Pippin, but Jackson wanted a happier ending and I guess the final film was long enough as-is.
In the case of watching Hobbit 3: Battle of the Five Armies, I thought I had the DVD, but I couldn’t find it, so we watched it On Demand. Then I found the DVD. Fortunately I found it before I bought another copy! I hate it when I buy dupes, several months ago I bought a copy of Sing!. Grrrr….
Christopher Robin was a lot of fun, with Ewan McGregor playing the title role. In this case there was no father who created a series of books, just a vet from the Great War who has a bit of PTSD and a job that demands the impossible who thinks that things from his childhood are childish and should be put away. Turns out that Pooh & Co. have a few more things to teach him yet. Quite an enjoyable movie.
The Spy Who Dumped Me was a tremendous amount of fun in the spy farce group of movies where two naifs are thrust into the world of espionage where – big surprise – they do quite well. Boyfriend more or less abandons girlfriend, girlfriend drunk texts him that she is going to burn all of the crap that she left at her apartment since he’s been missing for so long. Turns out he’s a secret agent and all sorts of people are out to get him. Various alarums. Lots of fun. Could easily have a sequel in a few years.
Run, Lola, Run. Love this movie. German with subtitles, recommended to me by a co-worker who thought the actress heading up the film was Mila Jovanovich. She isn’t, she’s still quite amazing. Previously reviewed in March. I love action/suspense/spy movies set in Berlin so I have a chance of seeing places that I’ve been, and even though this movie doesn’t go to places that I’d been to, it still has the flavor that I experienced and I love it. This is now a desert island movie for me.
High Fidelity. I really enjoy John Cussack. But I did not really enjoy this movie. It had its moments, but I thought he really needed to grow up. Yes, he showed some growth towards the end, but it seemed to me that the least little setback and he’d still be single and running that record store in to his 60s. I may or may not keep this movie as it was a two disc set with Grosse Point Blank, which I love. We shall see.
Inside Out. What a great movie. Poor little kid has to move across country to San Francisco when her dad gets a new job and her life falls apart: leaves friends behind, no more ice hockey team, no more snow! And then we see what’s going on inside her head with all her emotions personified. Just amazing. And then we get to see what’s going on inside her parents, teachers, all sorts of people. Absolutely love this movie. And one of my favorite comedians, Paula Poundstone, has a short role! So much fun.
Johnny English. James Bond and Mister Bean have a love child and during a drunken tryst with M, get him accepted into the MI-6 academy. I don’t know that there’s an easier explanation. Johnny is a working as a paper pusher at MI-6 when the cover of every secret agent in the UK is blown just as an evil plot is detected. As it happens, Johnny is a fully-trained agent, and as he’s never been in the field, his identity was not blown. Mayhem ensues, and John Malkovich is the villain….
Johnny English Reborn, not that he died in the first one. More plotting, more mayhem, more Johnny. I re-watched these two because a third Johnny English movie was released this year, sadly it did not show here though it was supposed to. So I gotta wait for it to appear on one of my streaming services. *sigh*
Spy Hard. I love me some Leslie Nielson. Seriously. I have his autobiography – SIGNED. But this movie – blech. They were trying to replicate the humor of the Airplane movies in a spy format. They did not succeed. I think I may dump this one, I have no desire to see it again.
Happytime Murders. Melissa McCarthy. Buddy cop movie. Only her buddy is a muppet. This was one wild ride with lots of laughs. Muppets are a major part of society, only they aren’t policemen because her partner, a muppet, blew it and was fired. So it’s also a redemption movie. With murders, lots of ‘em. And muppets can get murdered in interesting ways. The clips shown in the closing credits showed how they managed to conceal muppet operations while filming, and it was quite something. If you remember the marionette projectile vomiting scene from Team America: World Police, well, Happytime Murders does it one better. Lots of fun, probably will be adding it to my collection.
The Player. This is an all-time great movie. 1992, directed by Robert Altman, starring a scary young Tim Robbins and Greta Scacchi with walk-ons by an amazing array of Hollywood A-lists. Tim is a Hollywood exec, he’s the studio gatekeeper: his job is green-lighting scripts to be made in to movies. He’s receiving threatening notes from a writer whom he scorned, he promised to read his script and didn’t do it. The notes become increasingly nasty, eventually the he calls in the studio head of security, Fred Ward, to investigate. Tim identifies a likely guy, tracks him down, confronts him, and accidentally kills him. Except the notes keep coming…. Part police procedural, part psycho drama with the guilt pressuring him, love triangles, all sorts of great stuff in this movie. Absolutely love it. Finally got my wife to watch it and she really enjoyed it. Highly recommended.
The Men Who Stare At Goats. For some reason I thought this was a Coen Brothers movie. It is not. It seems to sort of try to be, and it doesn’t pull it off. It has its moments, and it’s not a bad movie, it’s good enough, but it’s not a great movie. And the interesting part is that it’s based on real things. It revolves around a reporter, Bob (Ewan McGregor) whose life is falling apart. His wife is divorcing him, his job is going nowhere, so he decides he needs to go to Kuwait and get into the Iraq Invasion. Maybe by becoming a genuine war correspondent he can get the recognition that he surely deserves and reignite his flagging reporting career and that’ll get him new love in his life, etc. There he meets Lyn (George Clooney), who is actually a former Special Forces operator who was part of a special unit of trained psychic spies. And it’s true. It’s partly fictionalized in the movie, but there is a Lyn Cassady and he was part of a group known as the Jedi Warriors. Absolutely crazy stuff. A fun movie with a great ending and an amazing cast (including Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey). But not on par with a Coen Brothers film. One thing that I did love about this movie, and that really frustrated my wife, was that I recognized that they used White Sands as their desert location! She crushes hard on Ewan and was mad to find out that he was here for the filming and she didn’t know about it.
Saving Mr. Banks. I’ve had this movie sitting around for a while and finally got around to watching it, and absolutely loved it. It’s the story of Walt Disney and Ms. Pamela Travers, the woman who created Mary Poppins. She was born in Australia and moved to England and wrote a total of eight books in the series. Disney hounded her to be able to turn them in to a movie, she was resolute in them not being done so as she was convinced that they would be ruined. Eventually her agent convinced her that there was nothing to be lost by her going to California, on Walt’s dime, and working with him and seeing if an arrangement could be made. An overwhelming argument in favor was the fact that she was almost out of money as she hadn’t written any books in some time. The story of how the film came together and the revelations of her backstory that led to the creation of the magical nanny were quite interesting, especially with the remake about to release. Very well worth watching.
Cowboys and Aliens. I like this film, but it really kind of falls in to a guilty pleasure B movie. It barely made a profit, it lost money in the American profit and barely pulled in $10mil over production costs in the worldwide market. But with Daniel Craig as the steely-eyed outlaw hero and Harrison Ford as the cattle baron villain whose gruff exterior turns out to have a soft heart, you have so many great tropes to exploit that it’s a lot of fun. Aliens invade the old west to fix their starship by mining gold and plan on destroying the planet. Very silly, lots of fun, just eat your popcorn and turn your brain off.
Magic Mike. I’d never seen this, and I knew it was a staple for my wife’s slash community and friends, so one night while she was at work I pulled it up on demand. It was fun. The story of a construction worker by day who is trying to hustle to start his own business, and a male stripper by night. Not a bad movie. Looking forward to seeing the sequel some day.
How to be a Latin Lover. I really wanted to see this in the theater, at least I got to see it. I loved the trailer where this aging Latin lothario/gigolo darkens his gray chest hair with shoe polish to impress the ladies, jumps in to a swimming pool to swim the length, and leaves an oil slick behind him. I nearly busted a gut when I saw it. It was hilarious, at least I thought so. Definitely a movie for certain senses of humor. Aging gigolo who lives off of older woman loses his meal ticket to a younger man and finds out that he signed a prenup that leaves him with nada if the marriage ends in divorce. Ends up moving in with his sister, Selma Hayak, and makes a half-assed attempt at straightening himself out and failing miserably. It was a lot of slapstick fun, another turn your brain off and eat your popcorn.
Hot Fuzz. This is a regular re-watch for me, I love Simon Pegg movies where he stars. This is the third of the Cornetto trilogy which I talked about last December. Cornettos are a UK ice cream treat, the other two movies are Sean of the Dead and World’s End, Hot Fuzz is #2.
Spy. I watched the unrated edition on DVD. An unconventional fish out of water movie, similar to Johnny English with Melissa McCarthy being a full-fledged CIA agent, but she’s actually competent at what she’s doing. Talked about it back in 2015!
Zootopia. Very fun animated frolic, first bunny to become a cop in Zootopia, uncovers big conspiracy. Previously talked about in early 2016
Shrek. Animation classic. It’s been ages since I’d seen it, and Russet was doing one of her work weekends, so I dug it out and cranked up my stereo. Still lots of fun, it’s aged well. Love me some John Lithgow! This film is 17 years old! It’ll be interesting to see if it still holds up well when it’s 25, I suspect it will. Myself, I’m not as keen on the second and third installments. I think the first one is ground-breaking, but the joke just doesn’t carry forward as well. I have #2, so I really should dig it out and give it a viewing, but I don’t have #3, maybe one of my streaming services does.
07/07 Ant Man and The Wasp
07/13 Coco (vod/v)
07/20 Queen of Katwe (vod)
07/21 Mamma Mia (vod/v,rw)
07/24 Mamma Mia Here We Go Again
08/10 Demolition Man (rw,v)
08/10 The Hobbit 1: An Unexpected Journey (rw,v)
08/11 The Hobbit 2: The Desolation of Smaug (rw,v)
08/12 The Hobbit 3: The Battle if the Five Armies (rw,vod)
08/14 LOTR 1: Fellowship of the Ring (rw,v)
08/15 LOTR 2: The Two Towers (rw,v)
08/16 LOTR 3: The Return of the King (rw,v)
08/20 Christopher Robin
08/24 The Spy Who Dumped Me
08/25 Run, Lola, Run (v,rw)
08/28 High Fidelity (v)
08/31 Inside Out (v,rw)
09/01 Johnny English (v,rw)
09/01 Johnny English Reborn (v,rw)
09/02 Spy Hard (vod,rw)
09/03 Happytime Murders
09/08 The Player (v,rw)
09/12 The Men Who Stare At Goats (v,rw)
09/13 Saving Mr. Banks (v)
09/14 Cowboys and Aliens (v,rw)
09/14 Magic Mike (vod)
09/20 How to be a Latin Lover (vod)
09/23 Hot Fuzz (v,rw)
09/29 Spy (unr, v,rw)
09/29 Zootopia (v,rw)
09/30 Shrek (v,rw)
Once again, my parenthetical codes are V if I have it on DVD or Bluray, and VOD if I saw it on Video On Demand. If I list both, I have it on disc but watched it on VOD because I was feeling lazy. RW is a rewatch
This brings my movies seen up to 56 as of the third quarter of 2018, so well beyond a movie a week. I just wish they were all new and seen in a theater, but that’s not going to happen up here! Only six of these 32 seen this quarter were in the theater, and of these 32, twelve were new to me. So just over a third were fresh, which is good! Only one foreign, Run Lola Run, and that was a re-watch as I finally got my wife to sit down and watch it with me. Excellent film, I gushed about it previously.
Comments under the cut with minimal spoilerage for the more recent films.
Incredibles 2. It’s rare to see a sequel come out years after the original and pick up seconds after the first, of course it’s a lot easier when it’s animated. They did just an amazing job with this story. Though I hate how many studio properties The Disney Beast has sucked up, I have to admit that they can do incredible jobs writing when they really put forth the effort. Wreck-It Ralph 2 was another amazing sequel. But back to I2. Sort of a role-reversal from the original, in this case Elastagirl gets to be the hero of the family and Mr. Incredible has to play Mister Mom for the family. And it is not a role that suits him. The spousal unit and I really enjoyed this one. I wish we’d taken the time to re-watch the original before seeing the sequel, but it didn’t happen. Perhaps when I get around to buying the DVD we’ll do a double-header.
Ant Man and The Wasp. Yet another case of not getting to watch #1 before seeing #2. One thing that I’d completely forgotten from the original was when Luis (Michael Pena) started telling a story through flashbacks and the characters in the story were lip-syncing to his voice. I absolutely loved it! Well, this time instead of a corporation wanting the Ant Man tech invented by Dr. Pym, it’s a villain who wants revenge on Dr. Pym, and Ant Man and Wasp are in the way. The story is a bit more complicated than that, naturally, and lots of fun ensues. The segments in the credits are VERY important as they tie directly into Avengers: Infinity Wars and The Snappening and link Ant Man into Avengers 4: The Unsnappening.
Coco. I was very keen to see this when it was in the theaters: my wife, less so, and it didn’t happen. Eventually I was able to get her to watch the video with me, and it was nothing short of awesome. So much goodness in here that it defies description. Miguel, a little boy, is obsessed with becoming a singer and guitarist like his hero. But his family of cobblers has a complete ban on music due to a tragedy of his grandmothers after she was abandoned by a musician. Miguel goes into the land of the dead during the Dia De Los Muertos festival and trouble ensues. Amazing movie. It won two Academy Awards and 99 other awards and deserved them.
Queen of Katwe is a true story of chess and African poverty. A young girl from the slums Katwe, Uganda proves to have an amazing natural gift for chess and learns the game from watching, rapidly gaining the skill to beat everyone around her. With coaching, she is rapidly beating everyone in Uganda. Fascinating movie. It caused us some confusion when we resumed watching the second half of the second season of Sense8, and it was ‘Doesn’t Capheus have a sister?’ I used to run scholastic chess tournaments in Arizona and help with some pretty prestigious tournaments elsewhere, and it was nice to see the chess games depicted correctly.
Mamma Mia. I loved the play, saw it twice at ASU and in Albuquerque, no idea how many times I’ve seen the movie in the theater and on DVD. With the sequel coming out, had to watch it again (such a hardship!). While I love the movie, I preferred the play. I just thought the story was a little better. Minor stuff, plus the fact that everyone in the cast were professional singers, not just actors. (sorry, Pierce) Basic story: young woman, Sophie, living on a Greek island in a hotel run by her single American mother, Donna, is getting married soon. Doesn’t know who her father is: there’s three possible dads, as her mother was going through a bit of a fun time at that particular point of her life, and invites all three to the wedding. Mom hasn’t seen the three since that particular point in her life. Chaos ensues. Written by the two men in ABBA, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaes plus Tim Rice, lots of awesome ABBA music, some of which was tweaked for the musical and some original stuff.
Mamma Mia Here We Go Again, the sequel, I was really disappointed in. They re-used too much music from the original, and I think they made a huge mistake casting an actress for Young Donna who looked too much like Sophie. Anyway, same island, now Sophie is running the hotel. The movie is a massive series of flashbacks, which when you take a long look at it the flashbacks make absolutely no sense because the person who could experience the flashbacks ISN’T THERE. This movie is a strong contender for most disappointing movie of the year. Not worst movie – it was not a bad movie and was a good enough movie – but most disappointing in that I think they really blew it with the script and it could have been a much better story. They made, in my ever so humble opinion, two huge mistakes which set me against it early on. First, letting slip that Meryl Streep was not going to be a major character, then information leaking as to why. Second, announcing that Cher was in it. There was only one possible role that Cher could play. And she only performed one song, and even that song pissed me off! Yes, admittedly she knocked it out of the park, but that song is so amazing with harmony and it could have been sung with harmony and it wasn’t. I hate to say it, but this movie is not going in to my collection.
Demolition Man is one of my guilty pleasure movies. It has one of my favorite stars in it: Nigel Hawthorne. He stars in one of my fav Britcoms: Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister and also The Madness of King George III and a brief role in one early episode of Dad’s Army. Brilliant actor. He hated making this film because of the egos of Stallone and Snipes, but his career was slumping and he needed something. Anyway, just plain stupid fun. Loved Sandra Bullock, loved her martial arts move then Stallone asking her how she learned it: watching Jackie Chan movies from the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library. And the line “We’re going to Taco Bell!” So much silliness, just gotta watch it every few years.
Early August I bought a new TV in preparation for having, once again, sinus surgery. Operation number sixteen. *sigh* The recovery actually wasn’t too bad as they didn’t have to do any packing. The pain wasn’t terrible and I only had to do the industrial-strength pain meds for a couple of days. My wife scheduled a big block of time off to take care of me, and we planned in advance that one thing we could do was watch the entire Hobbit/Lord of the Rings series back-to-back. And we did. In seven days we watched all six movies, taking an evening off between The Battle of the Five Armies and Fellowship of the Ring. All of the LOTR movies were the extended edition/director’s cuts, which was interesting because I saw things that I didn’t remember seeing in the theaters, which was cool. And it was lovely blasting that sound through my B&W speakers! Such awesome speakers, it’s incredible how well they perform considering they’re over 30 years old!
I’m not going to talk about the movies individually, there’s just too much material. It would’ve been nice if there’d been more female characters, but considering when JRR wrote them, that’s just the way it was. We did have the creation from whole cloth of Tauriel, who worked really well, and I’m sure Peter Jackson caught hell for that. I personally really wanted to see the Scourging of the Shire as that really elevated Merry and Pippin, but Jackson wanted a happier ending and I guess the final film was long enough as-is.
In the case of watching Hobbit 3: Battle of the Five Armies, I thought I had the DVD, but I couldn’t find it, so we watched it On Demand. Then I found the DVD. Fortunately I found it before I bought another copy! I hate it when I buy dupes, several months ago I bought a copy of Sing!. Grrrr….
Christopher Robin was a lot of fun, with Ewan McGregor playing the title role. In this case there was no father who created a series of books, just a vet from the Great War who has a bit of PTSD and a job that demands the impossible who thinks that things from his childhood are childish and should be put away. Turns out that Pooh & Co. have a few more things to teach him yet. Quite an enjoyable movie.
The Spy Who Dumped Me was a tremendous amount of fun in the spy farce group of movies where two naifs are thrust into the world of espionage where – big surprise – they do quite well. Boyfriend more or less abandons girlfriend, girlfriend drunk texts him that she is going to burn all of the crap that she left at her apartment since he’s been missing for so long. Turns out he’s a secret agent and all sorts of people are out to get him. Various alarums. Lots of fun. Could easily have a sequel in a few years.
Run, Lola, Run. Love this movie. German with subtitles, recommended to me by a co-worker who thought the actress heading up the film was Mila Jovanovich. She isn’t, she’s still quite amazing. Previously reviewed in March. I love action/suspense/spy movies set in Berlin so I have a chance of seeing places that I’ve been, and even though this movie doesn’t go to places that I’d been to, it still has the flavor that I experienced and I love it. This is now a desert island movie for me.
High Fidelity. I really enjoy John Cussack. But I did not really enjoy this movie. It had its moments, but I thought he really needed to grow up. Yes, he showed some growth towards the end, but it seemed to me that the least little setback and he’d still be single and running that record store in to his 60s. I may or may not keep this movie as it was a two disc set with Grosse Point Blank, which I love. We shall see.
Inside Out. What a great movie. Poor little kid has to move across country to San Francisco when her dad gets a new job and her life falls apart: leaves friends behind, no more ice hockey team, no more snow! And then we see what’s going on inside her head with all her emotions personified. Just amazing. And then we get to see what’s going on inside her parents, teachers, all sorts of people. Absolutely love this movie. And one of my favorite comedians, Paula Poundstone, has a short role! So much fun.
Johnny English. James Bond and Mister Bean have a love child and during a drunken tryst with M, get him accepted into the MI-6 academy. I don’t know that there’s an easier explanation. Johnny is a working as a paper pusher at MI-6 when the cover of every secret agent in the UK is blown just as an evil plot is detected. As it happens, Johnny is a fully-trained agent, and as he’s never been in the field, his identity was not blown. Mayhem ensues, and John Malkovich is the villain….
Johnny English Reborn, not that he died in the first one. More plotting, more mayhem, more Johnny. I re-watched these two because a third Johnny English movie was released this year, sadly it did not show here though it was supposed to. So I gotta wait for it to appear on one of my streaming services. *sigh*
Spy Hard. I love me some Leslie Nielson. Seriously. I have his autobiography – SIGNED. But this movie – blech. They were trying to replicate the humor of the Airplane movies in a spy format. They did not succeed. I think I may dump this one, I have no desire to see it again.
Happytime Murders. Melissa McCarthy. Buddy cop movie. Only her buddy is a muppet. This was one wild ride with lots of laughs. Muppets are a major part of society, only they aren’t policemen because her partner, a muppet, blew it and was fired. So it’s also a redemption movie. With murders, lots of ‘em. And muppets can get murdered in interesting ways. The clips shown in the closing credits showed how they managed to conceal muppet operations while filming, and it was quite something. If you remember the marionette projectile vomiting scene from Team America: World Police, well, Happytime Murders does it one better. Lots of fun, probably will be adding it to my collection.
The Player. This is an all-time great movie. 1992, directed by Robert Altman, starring a scary young Tim Robbins and Greta Scacchi with walk-ons by an amazing array of Hollywood A-lists. Tim is a Hollywood exec, he’s the studio gatekeeper: his job is green-lighting scripts to be made in to movies. He’s receiving threatening notes from a writer whom he scorned, he promised to read his script and didn’t do it. The notes become increasingly nasty, eventually the he calls in the studio head of security, Fred Ward, to investigate. Tim identifies a likely guy, tracks him down, confronts him, and accidentally kills him. Except the notes keep coming…. Part police procedural, part psycho drama with the guilt pressuring him, love triangles, all sorts of great stuff in this movie. Absolutely love it. Finally got my wife to watch it and she really enjoyed it. Highly recommended.
The Men Who Stare At Goats. For some reason I thought this was a Coen Brothers movie. It is not. It seems to sort of try to be, and it doesn’t pull it off. It has its moments, and it’s not a bad movie, it’s good enough, but it’s not a great movie. And the interesting part is that it’s based on real things. It revolves around a reporter, Bob (Ewan McGregor) whose life is falling apart. His wife is divorcing him, his job is going nowhere, so he decides he needs to go to Kuwait and get into the Iraq Invasion. Maybe by becoming a genuine war correspondent he can get the recognition that he surely deserves and reignite his flagging reporting career and that’ll get him new love in his life, etc. There he meets Lyn (George Clooney), who is actually a former Special Forces operator who was part of a special unit of trained psychic spies. And it’s true. It’s partly fictionalized in the movie, but there is a Lyn Cassady and he was part of a group known as the Jedi Warriors. Absolutely crazy stuff. A fun movie with a great ending and an amazing cast (including Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey). But not on par with a Coen Brothers film. One thing that I did love about this movie, and that really frustrated my wife, was that I recognized that they used White Sands as their desert location! She crushes hard on Ewan and was mad to find out that he was here for the filming and she didn’t know about it.
Saving Mr. Banks. I’ve had this movie sitting around for a while and finally got around to watching it, and absolutely loved it. It’s the story of Walt Disney and Ms. Pamela Travers, the woman who created Mary Poppins. She was born in Australia and moved to England and wrote a total of eight books in the series. Disney hounded her to be able to turn them in to a movie, she was resolute in them not being done so as she was convinced that they would be ruined. Eventually her agent convinced her that there was nothing to be lost by her going to California, on Walt’s dime, and working with him and seeing if an arrangement could be made. An overwhelming argument in favor was the fact that she was almost out of money as she hadn’t written any books in some time. The story of how the film came together and the revelations of her backstory that led to the creation of the magical nanny were quite interesting, especially with the remake about to release. Very well worth watching.
Cowboys and Aliens. I like this film, but it really kind of falls in to a guilty pleasure B movie. It barely made a profit, it lost money in the American profit and barely pulled in $10mil over production costs in the worldwide market. But with Daniel Craig as the steely-eyed outlaw hero and Harrison Ford as the cattle baron villain whose gruff exterior turns out to have a soft heart, you have so many great tropes to exploit that it’s a lot of fun. Aliens invade the old west to fix their starship by mining gold and plan on destroying the planet. Very silly, lots of fun, just eat your popcorn and turn your brain off.
Magic Mike. I’d never seen this, and I knew it was a staple for my wife’s slash community and friends, so one night while she was at work I pulled it up on demand. It was fun. The story of a construction worker by day who is trying to hustle to start his own business, and a male stripper by night. Not a bad movie. Looking forward to seeing the sequel some day.
How to be a Latin Lover. I really wanted to see this in the theater, at least I got to see it. I loved the trailer where this aging Latin lothario/gigolo darkens his gray chest hair with shoe polish to impress the ladies, jumps in to a swimming pool to swim the length, and leaves an oil slick behind him. I nearly busted a gut when I saw it. It was hilarious, at least I thought so. Definitely a movie for certain senses of humor. Aging gigolo who lives off of older woman loses his meal ticket to a younger man and finds out that he signed a prenup that leaves him with nada if the marriage ends in divorce. Ends up moving in with his sister, Selma Hayak, and makes a half-assed attempt at straightening himself out and failing miserably. It was a lot of slapstick fun, another turn your brain off and eat your popcorn.
Hot Fuzz. This is a regular re-watch for me, I love Simon Pegg movies where he stars. This is the third of the Cornetto trilogy which I talked about last December. Cornettos are a UK ice cream treat, the other two movies are Sean of the Dead and World’s End, Hot Fuzz is #2.
Spy. I watched the unrated edition on DVD. An unconventional fish out of water movie, similar to Johnny English with Melissa McCarthy being a full-fledged CIA agent, but she’s actually competent at what she’s doing. Talked about it back in 2015!
Zootopia. Very fun animated frolic, first bunny to become a cop in Zootopia, uncovers big conspiracy. Previously talked about in early 2016
Shrek. Animation classic. It’s been ages since I’d seen it, and Russet was doing one of her work weekends, so I dug it out and cranked up my stereo. Still lots of fun, it’s aged well. Love me some John Lithgow! This film is 17 years old! It’ll be interesting to see if it still holds up well when it’s 25, I suspect it will. Myself, I’m not as keen on the second and third installments. I think the first one is ground-breaking, but the joke just doesn’t carry forward as well. I have #2, so I really should dig it out and give it a viewing, but I don’t have #3, maybe one of my streaming services does.
