Writer. Movie lover. Feminist. Secularist. No frelling apologies.
End of act one, overprotective Mom fires the nurse who dared to let sick daughter, Maddy, and her boyfriend be in the same room together. The new nurse is unfriendly and strict, and leaves little notes for her charge because she thinks that’s the best way to communicate with a teenager. She signs them “Nurse Janet”. Maddy takes a marker, crosses out “Janet” and writes “Rached”.
I was the only person in the theatre who got the joke. Man, I feel old!
Charlize Theron kicking ass. Check. Cold War spy drama. Check. LGBT protagonist. Awesome. This has got to be good, right?
The Big Sick was marketed as a rom com, a genre I usually avoid, but I wanted to see this one because the premise seemed genuinely different: a cross-cultural relationship that was ultimately more about meeting the parents.
Oh, boy do the critics hate this one! Trust me, they are wrong. While Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets probably has more of a niche appeal than more conventional SciFi, I am happy to admit to being in that niche.
It’s Space Opera in the vein of Flash Gordon or Star Wars, or TV’s Babylon 5. Beautifully filmed, with a very human story at its core, it’s not a perfect film, but it is well worth seeing if you enjoy this kind of fantastical, swashbuckling science fiction. Continue reading “Review: Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets”
Lots of people dislike Andrew Garfield’s Amazing Spider Man movies. But while I agree that the second one was a hot mess, the first was wonderful. When people argue against it, the main issue seems to be that the origin story wasn’t necessary. I agree, but that shouldn’t detract from the fact that it’s wonderful. Pretend the Toby McGuire movies never happened and watch Amazing Spider Man. It’s awesome.
So this is what I bring to Spiderman: Homecoming. First, I really dislike Tony Stark. Marvel let him take over what should have been Captain America 3 just so they could one-up DC and now they stuffed him into their Spidey film, like Marvel’s most popular superhero needs propping up. I mean, WTH, Feige?
Continue reading “Review: Spiderman: Homecoming”
Planet of the Apes is a weird property. The whole concept is strange and I never really had much interest in it before this trilogy. By the time Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was made, CGI tech was up to the task of creating realistic non-human characters, and I admit the main reason I bothered to see Dawn was Andy Serkis. And I loved it.
So in the first film a lab attempting to cure Alzheimer’s (if I remember correctly) is making its test animals – various species of ape) really smart. Somehow their formula morphs into a virus which kills off humans in vast numbers while making other apes, like those in zoos, really smart. Ceasar (Andy Serkis) is a lab ape who has been taught sign language and he finds himself leading the Apes to freedom.
In Rise of the Planet of the Apes we find the human survivors living in a compound, much of their technology gone, while Ceasar and his apes followers live among the redwoods. But not everyone wants to live in peace. Koba, who was badly mistreated by humans, wants to punish them and enough humans have similar feelings toward the Apes that fighting breaks out. Which leads us to War… Continue reading “Review: War for the Planet of the Apes”
I suppose I should come clean at the outset and say that war movies are not my thing, WW2 movies in particular. But I am a fan of Chrisopher Nolan as a director and I thought if anyone could make a war film I would enjoy, it would be him.
Sadly, Dunkirk is not that movie. Continue reading “Review: Dunkirk”