Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker

The constant barrage of emotional moments is a bit much, but aside from that, I liked the tone of The Rise of Skywalker. There isn't a whole lot to the plot, but the characters are likeable and it looks good, which is about all I expect from a Star Wars movie.

I wasn't really into the first six movies, so I don't have any allegiance to what "Star Wars" is supposed to be. I did like the two new ones, though.

I can appreciate that it's a closing of the arc, but I didn't like how every 5 seconds they hit you with saying goodbye to another big character. There was also a constant barrage of triumphant moments. Somebody described the movie as being waterboarded. Sure you like water, but that's too much water. I kind of agree.

Leia looked kind of weird. I always like Rey's outfit, though. I liked the new droid, but it's kind of weird that they keep introducing new ones.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is a cool movie, if you're in the mood for that sort of thing. The tone hits all the right notes; it's farsical and, dare I say, quixotic. Jonathan Pryce and Adam Driver bring a lot of charisma, and the side characters are interesting, too.

I read excerpts of Don Quixote in school, but I haven't read the entire thing. I remember liking it, though. I don't think I've watched anything Terry Gilliam has been involved with, other than Tristram Shandy, which I felt like was one of the worst movies I had ever seen.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a fully "okay" movie. I still like the magic and the creatures. It raises some questions about characters I previously thought of as "good," like Dumbledore and Queenie. I'm interested to see where they go with the rest of the series.

I had a lot of problems seeing Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. I wanted to see it in a theater on my birthday. It was only playing into theaters by then, one in Shoreline, and one in Tacoma. The one in Shoreline only had one showing a day. I don't see movies in theaters very often (in fact, it's about once a year, on my birthday). I didn't realize that a lot of the theaters have switched over to having you pick your seat when you buy the ticket.

I didn't get to the theater until about five minutes before the movie started. The only tickets that were left were in the front row. I tried it out, but it was impossible to see anything. I should have just seen a different movie, but I wound up not seeing anything at all, which really sucked.

I wound up waiting until Grindelwald came to the $4 theater to try again. I normally sit in the back row of the theater, but the screen at the Crest was so small that I wanted to sit in the middle. I ended up not being able to do that, even though there were open seats where I wanted to be. So I had to sit all the way in the back. For about the first third of the movie, I felt like I couldn't even see it, and I kept missing a bunch of dialogue because I couldn't hear it, either.

I read a review that said Newt's affect gets really annoying. Maybe my perception was just colored by that, but I definitely agreed. Like, just stand up straight at least.

The Ballard of Buster Scruggs

There are some interesting themes and visuals in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and of course a lot of great actors, but overall, it's just not my thing.

The Coen Brothers are hit or miss with me, and The Ballard of Buster Scruggs falls squarely in the category of "meh."

Pacific Rim: Uprising

Pacific Rim was great, but you can stop there. The writing and acting in Uprising are horrible, and it isn't worth your time.

When I saw Pacific Rim, I liked it so much that I wished I had seen it in theaters. But I heard that the sequel wasn't that great, so I wasn't planning to see it. I wound up watching it anyway, except for about 15 minutes in the middle. I don't think I missed anything. In contrast to Gladiator, at least there were women in it. I appreciated that the cadets were split about 50/50. Cailee Spaeny is a terrible actress, though. All of the characters were horribly written. They were like caricatures.

I liked getting to hear John Boyega's British accent. The opening 30 seconds with him as a party boy were the best part of the movie. I want to see a movie about that character. I didn't *like* Charlie Day's character, but there's something about it that was interesting to watch.

A Quiet Place

The concept of A Quiet Place is great, and I'd love to see it executed without the characters constantly making maddeningly thoughtless choices.

I have a lot of problems with A Quiet Place. First, the fact that the family didn't really seem to understand the importance of staying quiet.

Ready Player One

Ready Player One is a really simple movie, and there are a lot of things about it that don't make sense, but it was still fun to watch.

I haven't read Ready Player One. A lot of people hated the movie, but it seemed like something to see, anyway.

Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange looks good and the magic stuff is fun to see, but it’s still a pretty unremarkable movie, and Dr. Strange himself is a jerk.

I didn't know anything about Doctor Strange before I saw this movie, other than his scenes in Thor: Ragnarok. They really set him up in the beginning of the movie as a complete jackass.

What We Do in the Shadows

I liked Flight of the Conchords, but What We Do in the Shadows is profoundly not my thing.

I liked Flight of the Conchords, but I didn't have any interest in seeing What We Do in the Shadows. The version I watched wound up having the opening text in a language that was similar to German, so I missed out on a bit of context there, but looking it up now, I see that it wasn't critically important.

I'm starting to think that Taika's sense of humor just isn't my thing. There's something off about it. It's sort of flat, and cringey, and not funny.

Faces Places

Faces Places is an enchanting French documentary about the beauty of life and everyday people. It's not exactly thrilling, but it's worth seeing.

I've seen 13 documentaries, and Faces Places is only the third that's gotten at least 3/5. So you could practically call it a 5, relatively speaking. I like the idea of it. Agnes and JR are such an unlikely couple. I like the way the narrative is laid out, starting with how they met each other first through their art. I liked the narration of them reminiscing about their travels.

It was cool getting to see different people and places in France. The pictures looked neat on the buildings and things, too. Kind of reminded me of Banksy's work. The score was great. It turns out Agnes was very involved in making it. She also did the editing. So in a lot of ways, it was really her movie. 

Thor: Ragnarok

Thor: Ragnarok isn't as great as the trailer makes it out to be. The humor is different, but it felt too much like it was from a gag reel instead of an actual movie. Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" is basically the best part of the movie.

I haven't seen either of the first two Thor movies, and I don't really feel like I need to. The trailer for Ragnarok looked cool, probably mostly because they used Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song." That song pretty much made the entire movie, too. At least it's apropos, since it's about Vikings. It's also crazy that it came out *50* years ago.

The movie had a weird sense of humor. You could say it's because the director is from New Zealand, but the writers were American. A lot of the jokes seemed like they were from the gag reel, even the opening one with Thor twisting on the chains. And they kind of overdid it when they kept going with that joke.

American Made

American Made is about a selfish guy who doesn't have the sense to quit when he's ahead. The camerawork is atrocious, and as with so many other movies, the point of making or watching it escapes me.

American Made is so forgettable that by the next day, I had completely forgotten that I had even seen it, if that tells you anything. I'm not a fan of Tom Cruise. I can't even think of a movie I've seen him in other than Rain Man, and I had to watch that for a class in college. American Made didn't interest me based on the trailer, or, it turns out, the movie, either.

It's understandable how Seal got roped into everything, but he should have gotten out of it a lot sooner. He was just being greedy. He didn't even have a use for all of that money. He should have taken it and moved his family to another country where the government and the Contras wouldn't find them.

Atomic Blonde

Atomic Blonde is probably the best movie I'll see all year, which is unfortunate since it's only February. It's directed by the same guy who did John Wick, and it has a similar feel. It's really a love letter to Charlize, Berlin, and a slick modern/future version of the '80s. The action is solid, there are some inspired song choices, and the cinematography is striking. I recommend seeing it on the big screen if you can.

I'm not a huge fan of Charlize Theron, but I don't think I've ever seen James McAvoy in a movie that I didn't like. And the action for Atomic Blonde looked like it would be cool. It turns out that it was directed by the same guy who did John Wick. I can see that.

The first 20 minutes of the movie are definitely the best. The first three songs that they play are great, the action is nice, it looks good overall, and the characters are interesting.

Blade Runner 2049

The entire atmosphere of Blade Runner 2049 isn't my thing, a lot of the musical cues are totally off, and there are some really annoying scenes where you know exactly what's going to happen.

I didn't like the original Blade Runner, but it's been about a decade since I've seen it, so I don't remember why. I did give it a 3/5, so I guess I didn't hate it.

Blade Runner 2049 was okay. It was kind of long and boring. I wasn't really interested in it. I had a problem with the first half, because with most AI movies, there's a moral dilemma. But with this one it was so cut and dry. The replicants are humans, so we don't have the right to kill them, end of story.

Dawson City: Frozen Time

Dawson City is about the history of the town, and how the last remaining copies of hundreds of film reels wound up being preserved. It sounds cool, but the way they presented it is actually pretty boring.

Dawson City is a documentary about old film reels. In the early 1900s, silent movies were recorded on explosive film. And this town in Canada was the end of the distribution line, so most of the reels stayed there and never went anywhere else. In the '70s, they wound up having about 300 reels that were the only surviving copies of those movies. So that's pretty cool.

The movie lays out the history of the town, ever since it was started, and the gold rush, all the way up to the '70s. There's also some footage of the films they found, and newsreel footage. The weird thing is there's no narration. Maybe they did that in homage to the fact that all of the movies they found were silent movies. There was some music in the documentary, but it was really terrible, and I was dying to hear someone say something.

I didn't like having to read all the information, and it was super boring. The most interesting part of the whole thing was after it was over and one of the special features talked about the people who found and restored the films, and showed where they're stored now.

They had to have the military transport them through part of Canada, because no one else would touch them. And when they brought the American ones to the United States, they took them to a building that had just burned down because of all the film that was in it. I was surprised they took them there. They obviously didn't have very good storage practices.

The actual old film footage turned out to not be very interesting. It was kind of cool learning things about the town, like the fact that the business district burnt down every year for the first nine years after they built it.

11 Minutes

11 Minutes isn't exactly fun to watch. It does succeed in creating a feeling of tension, but I'm not sure that really pays off.

11 minutes is a Polish movie. The concept is that you see the same 11 minutes from the perspective of several different people. It opens with sort of "found footage" of cell phone and security cameras. I was kind of concerned that it was going to stay that way, but luckily it switches to regular camerawork fairly quickly.

It's a weird movie. It's super confusing trying to figure out what's going on all the time. The score is frequently abrasive and unnerving. There's some kind of black spot in the sky that's never explained. And there's always just a general feeling of tension.

I wonder what the movie is trying to say, exactly. I wish there were a commentary for it. It would probably be interesting to go back and watch it again, being able to understand more about it. It does get some "interesting" points just for being set in Warsaw. I always like to see things in different countries.

Robin Hood

Robin Hood takes its place in a long line of movies where I'm not really sure what the point of making or watching it was.

I hadn't ever heard of this version of Robin Hood. I'm kind of ambivalent about Russell Crowe, but he is good at playing this sort of character. The characters were the strongest part of the movie. They were all pretty likeable and interesting. The movie did seem to go on forever. But I was watching the director's cut. Although I think most of the scenes that were added actually were beneficial to the movie.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Star Wars: The Last Jedi doesn't do a lot to advance the plot considering the length of the movie, but it still feels pretty epic in places.

I didn't really know what Star Wars: The Last Jedi was going to be about before I saw it. I guess it's not really about much of anything. It definitely feels like a middle movie. I didn't like the old Star Wars movies, although I don't really remember them, so I should probably watch them again. But I do like the new ones.

This one seemed really "big," like it was a spectacle, and I was glad I saw it at the theater. There were a couple of times when the music went up and you felt the grandiosity of things, and it was nice.

I liked what they did with Kylo and Rey connecting. Kylo really is a lackluster villain, though. He always just seems whiny and weak. The entire First Order seems pretty hackneyed, especially that red-headed general they featured so much this time.

They went really heavy on the animals, with the big donkey horses, and the ice foxes, and the bird things. It just stood out, it didn't really blend well.

Science Fiction Volume One: The Osiris Child

The acting and the dialogue in Science Fiction Volume One: The Osiris Child aren't always the greatest, but I enjoyed it anyway.

I didn't know that Science Fiction Volume One: The Osiris Child was a small-budget movie. I just saw a trailer for it and thought it looked interesting. The trailer kind of misrepresents what it is. It basically shows the first 10 minutes of the movie, but there's a lot more to it than that.

The timeline is kind of crazy. It's all over the place. But I liked it. It kept things interesting. And I liked the chapter headings. The only thing that didn't work at all was the slo-mo during the jail fight. That was super weird.

Swiss Army Man

Swiss Army Man is a weird movie. It makes a valid point, but the presentation is pretty rudimentary.

Swiss Army Man didn't pique my interest when I saw the trailer for it. I think any reviews I saw about it said it was "okay," which certainly didn't motivate me to see it. When I started watching it, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it starred Paul Dano. I remembered that Daniel Radcliffe was in it.

They kind of beat you over the head with the theme that we're really all the same, and we all do embarrassing things that wouldn't be embarrassing if we would stop making people feel bad for doing them. It's a valid idea, but the way in which it was conveyed wasn't terribly entertaining.