Movies

[West]

Batman has far too many guns. He is also far to comfortable with murder and mayhem in this incarnation than I'm comfortable with Batman being. There's a chase scene where he punts a car full of thugs across the road with the batmobile and then he shoots that car with a bat-cable a moment later so he can drag it behind the batmobile where it careens and tumbles behind him so he can use it as some kind of kenetic hammer against other vehicles. The entire time I was thinking "jesus this batman is a maniac, if they weren't dead in that car then they sure are dead now." It sincerely felt like he was Jason Todd and not Batman.

Which really made the 'i hate Supes because he wrecks things' even more contrived.

Apocalypse is poorly costumed, has comically cliche lines, and lacks any sense of dread or menace. You never really worry about the fate of the world because ultimately he isn't the one destroying it.

Based on the amount of time he spends rubbing on Angel, I'd say that blonde surfers are the only ones in immediate danger from Apocalypse*.

* Not that there's anything wrong with that, just, there's a lot of scenes that include him 'costuming' Angel.

[West]

The Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition is probably called the Ultimate Edition because it's much more marketable than the Not Stupid Edition. Lot of differences, added scenes, extended scenes. And when I say 'extended' scenes a lot of time it's just a single line of dialog that got clipped but... it's definitely a more complete story. Nothing is going to change the big fails, but at least the disjointed, nonsensical feeling is gone.

3 hours is a lot to invest in a movie if you hated the first go around, so I'll sum up the two big take-aways:

Lex Luthor had been manipulating Superman and Batman (and public perception of them) for a long time to their fight.
He paid off inmates to murder fellow prisoners with the Bat-brand. He created 'witnesses' for the desert debacle. Etc, etc. He personally requested Kent cover the party -- so, yes, he was straight trolling them because he knew exactly who they were, and that he was architecting a showdown.

But as entertaining as that scene was, confirming it (by showing Kent's coverage as a specific request) now demands that WW's presence there was no accident given her photograph and makes you question that/how he's manipulating her.

Lex met Steppenwolf the Apokalips general
So the last scene is just overwrought, not Lex suddenly developed intergalactic precognition (as opposed to Batman suddenly developing interreality precognition).

[West]

Me Before You

Eh.

It's a remake of Dying Young, except I guess it's after the Hunger Games because Finnick's in a wheelchair. There really isn't much to it except Emilia Clarke doing Adorkable and showing off how amazingly animated her eyebrows can be, and Sam Claflin just being amazingly good looking.

It's also incredibly dismissive of the whole 'quadriplegic' situation since there's a male nurse who takes care of all the difficult stuff. I guess we know now what happened to Nic after he got his ass beat by Martin Freeman.

Really the only reason to watch it is if you're an Emilia Clarke fan or want some Claflin eye candy.


The Killing Joke

This was a must-see for me. It's an iconic graphic novel, and after the treatment of TDKR, I wanted to see how this would fare. The translation is... okay. It kind of exposes the stylistic differences of print versus action, and how text blurbs can actually be part of the art. Bolland's dramatic use of harsh lines and shadows doesn't translate very well.

But that's the translation of the comic. Because there's more. And it's not good.

Because the biggest Joke here is that there's a 20 minute add-in that's not in the comic book that's... unsavory. Not sure if someone had a hard-on for Batgirl or the super-awful Mockingbird/Batman tryst needed to be converted, but...

...Batgirl strips down on a roof and gets it on with Batman.

There's also a LOT of 'fan service' throughout the add-in. Lingering, accented shots of Batgirl and Barbara Gordon's anatomy, and all of this really turns the whole thing into a mess. I guess Barbara getting shot in TKJ was the green-light to basically objectify her?

I dunno. People were shocked at Zack Snyder's Superman killing someone. I think this is much, much worse. DC is really making some bad decisions.

[West]

N Y S M 2
Now You See Me 2

Hopefully the time I've taken formatting this post conveys just how much I want to like this movie -- for obvious reasons. The truth is, it's a shitty sequel.

It isn't as sexy, the tricks aren't as good, the 'twist' isn't as fun, etc, etc.

But the big things are probably that the group dynamic that worked so well the first time is missing in this one. A cast with chemistry is an amazing thing, especially when you think about just how fast NYSM set up their group dynamic in the opening sequence. It it either works or it doesn't, and, sure, The New Girl is funny and stuff but it just doesn't work as well.

The other big thing is the tricks suck. You keep waiting, waiting, waiting and all you really get is some card-throwing scene that's extended waaaaaaaaaay too long, and an admittedly stunning few moments of Atlas doing The Rain Thang. But compared to the first movie, there are only about 1/3 as many tricks and they aren't nearly as good.

My final gripe is the Insta-Hypnosis. Much like the Mission:Impossible franchise coming to lean on, depend on, and over-use the 'omg i'm someone else' masks, it looks to be the same for Merrick-nosis. It's everywhere, and the movie(s) collapse without liberal use of their chosen deus ex. The difference is, the sequel is tired enough for you to notice.

Don't get me wrong? It's a decent watch. You'll learn more about The Eye, it's kind of a second installment franchise builder, etc.

...but it's a little ironic that a movie about magicians mainly manages to dispel the wonder and magic of the original.

[InvertedMonkey]

Star Trek: Beyond

I came out of that theater theorizing that the pitch-meeting for that movie doubled as improv theater. Everyone had cool ideas of their own, and the answer was always "Yes, and-!" even if those ideas didn't mesh particularly well together. I also feel like it is a movie designed to support the stunning visual moments that someone imagined; "You know what would look really cool? If X did Y while Z was happening. Let's make a movie where we can do that shot."

It's a hot mess. A lot of it doesn't make sense. They had several plot threads going off in different directions, each with the capacity to be genuinely interesting, but all of them are dropped before they could be adequately explored. It's almost as though the movie is trying to tell a lot of different stories at once, but they've all been lost to the compressed 2-hour format and failure edit down to something that could actually work.

Other gripes include; far more fist-fights than I really want in my Star Trek, disappointment at the way the story treats Lieutenant Uhura, and cinematography that was clearly supposed to be mind-blowing but ended up being confusing and vertigo-inducing. Be prepared for sweeping wide-angle shots that constantly change orientation, and close-up extreme shaky-cam.

That said, it's kind of fun to watch. There's some tension and some humor, some good space-fight scenes, some really good visuals, and the cast mostly retains it's chemistry. I laughed several times, I was on the edge of my seat at least three times just because what was on screen was so pretty and exciting, even if it didn't make sense.

It does not feel like a Star Trek movie. It feels like a half-assed CGI-heavy action movie that had problems in the writer's room that nobody cared enough to fix.

It's fun, just be prepared to turn off your brain.

[InvertedMonkey]

Kubo and the Two Strings

I have very few quibbles with this movie, and a whole lot of good things to say about it. It's a great film, I enjoyed it thoroughly, I encourage you all to give it a try.

First of all, the claymation is breathtaking. Is there an Oscar for that kind of visual effect? If there isn't there should be, and if there is then Studio Laika should win. Holy frijoles, how they made a film that beautiful out of clay boggles the mind.

The voice acting was really excellent, especially when Kubo gets into drama-mode to start telling his own story, and the no-nonsense tone of the survival-guru monkey. The Beetle brings the laughs, I would've never guessed at the voice actor playing him, he's subtle but funny.

It is a child-appropriate film, and so the story it's self is a fairly simple arch. I think that the Eastern themes it borrowed really helped sell it as a little different from the typical Western Hero's Journey. There was only one moment where a story-device felt contrived to me, and only one sequence of the narrative that I felt they could've handled better.

I don't want to spoil too much for you. This movie is worth your time and money, should you choose to spend it.

[West]

Star Trek: Beyond

Not gonna re-hash what InvertedMonkey said, because it's mostly spot-on. Just a few additional thoughts.

The Enterprise gets destroyed. Again. They've turned something awe-inspiring and horrific into a trope. It's boring now.

Swarm ships: Interesting. Visually gorgeous, but, omg, seriously how did they manufacture them. Reminds me of an old PC game I forgot the name of where you built fleets to fight and one tactic was little gnat swarms.

Big thumbs up for the nod to George Takei's LGBT activism. Whatever your views on that, I don't care, that's just fucking cool to connect with 'original' Trek like that.

Speaking of, fml if I didn't get a little misty at the acknowledgment of Nimoy's death.

Loved seeing the crimson-movie-uniform cast shot.

Really dug the new character Jaylah. A lot. Cool personality and the incredibly awkward is-it-actually-there-or-your-imagination romantic tension between her and Scotty is fantastic! It's good enough I'm okay with Uhura being marginalized and more screen time given to Scotty/Jaylah.

I definitely get why Trek has become more action-y. It bored me as a kid. I was a BSG fan, and Trek was just... blah. But I also get why purists would be upset. That said, I think the movie misses the mark with the action. The first one was good because it was pretty limited. I loved the fight on the mining platform. This movie has long, protracted fight sequences that are just too long. It's funny to realize they put in action to keep it from being boring, but put in so much action, it became boring. Spaceship chases are like car chases: anything over two minutes and I'm over it.

Still!

It hits some nice nostalgia notes and also revolves around the interesting idea of disillusionment with Starfleet and monotony of space. I'd watch it again.

[West]

Jason Bourne

I think it's always pretty important with movies like this to know if a reviewer is familiar with the source material. I've read the Jason Bourne books from the first through 'The Bourne Legacy' which I believe was the fourth, having started on them when 'The Jackal' was all the rage in fiction. I've also read roughly a third of Robert Ludlum's fifty-odd book bibliography, so the Bourne books weren't the only ones.

Hey. This was before the Interwebs. That's what social misfits did. Read books.

So there's my street cred, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt, this movie embodies the source material's legacy better than any other.

...Which is to say it's intensely unimaginative, filled with a broody monosyllabic protagonist who is supposed to be the penultimate killer but can't Take The Shot, predicated on help from The Chick That Wants To Help The Broken Man So Much She'll Risk It All, reversals of fortune because of too-long steely-eyed stand-offs, Another Assassin who needs to get their ass kicked, and Oh My God The Treadstone Files. THE FILEZ.

Fuck, sue me, it was before the Interwebs. I had to read shitty books, too.

Sure, it's updated with an alliterative megadigitalcorp that reminds us of no one. It's a nice vehicle for Alicia Vikander if you can believe she's The Chosen One of the CIA at her tender age, and probably an unintentionally interesting statement on Hollywood "It Girls" as we see Julia Stiles murdered and left in the street so that we can have Alicia Vikander.

Unless you've got a thing for Matt Damon or Alicia Vikander, I'd skip it. The unimaginative script and weak action would make this a 'C' movie without the names on the billboard, budget, and questionable pedigree.