Mark's Movie Reviews

[marklawrence]

I have movie pass and more than a little time on my hands, so I see most everything. It's odd to realize that seeing the movie in a theater is cheaper than renting it six months later. But the local theater people like me just fine.

Death Wish

Bruce Willis is out for revenge for his wife and daughter, and becomes a vigilante. The city, Chicago, mostly approves of his work. An excellent shoot-em-up.

[marklawrence]

I went to see Annihilation.

As the movie ended, a guy in the front row stood up and said, "And we paid money to see this!" A guy next to me said "Worst movie I've ever seen." I replied, "That's a bold statement." His friend said, "Yah, what about American Psycho 2?" He then said, "Ok, it's the second worst movie I've ever seen."

I didn't hate it, but I've not seen an audience reaction like this before.

[marklawrence]

Game Night.

Generally I'm not a big fan of comedies, but this one was fun. It started well, slowed a bit in the middle, and finished with several unexpected plot twists. I liked it.

[claymaker]

Sort of irrelevant but kind of on topic and interesting fact of life, but last week on a local sports radio show one guy said he'd never seen Die Hard or Back To The Future. I could feel the awkward look of disbelief over the radio waves from his co-host.

By the way, I enjoy off topic stuff like this.

[marklawrence]

Hurricane Heist

Yet another shoot-em-up, not very plausible. A hurricane is heading in. Some bad guys determine this is the perfect cover to steal $600m from the Federal Reserve. The hurricane turns out to be like the worst ever, 'cause global warming change climate sea levels. No one is properly prepared, so the hurricane turns into a major plot element. Until they're done with it, then it's suddenly turned off like a light switch, blue skies, happy birdies. The best character in the movie is the hurricane chaser's humvee. $400m in 20 dollar bills gets scattered by the wind over several square miles of farm land, no one seems to notice this but definitely there will be some very happy farmers in the next few days, and John Deere is going to sell a lot of stuff next year. Feel free to see this one from Redbox for $1.50, or skip it entirely.

[marklawrence]

A Wrinkle in Time

I read this book when I was perhaps 10. I read the book to my kids when they were young. I read the book again a couple times since, including last month. It's a nice little book, a bit thin on science, but kids love it. It also has christian undertones.

The movie has all the christian undertones stripped out. One of the major parts of the book is that Mrs Which, Who, and Whatsis are all formerly stars that gave up their lives in the fight against evil. Yah, that's missing, now we just get Oprah and friends with a bunch of weird powers and platitudes. The movie's main claim to fame seems to be that it's diverse - indeed, Charles Wallace is adopted so he can be a third (fourth?) race in the Wallace family, and the teenage twins are missing entirely, who could have been yet another two races adopted.

Kids seem to like the movie - it's done in bright primary colors and has a certain visual entertainment level. But the story is chopped up to almost nothing, the pacing is poor., the science has gone from thin to impossible (92 billion light years like that, as Cap'n Kirk snaps his fingers. The universe is 13.7 billion years old, there's no where 92 billion light years away. We're told they stay in our galaxy, and that's only about 200,000 light years across. Again, it helps to be nearly illiterate to watch many movies.)

If Disney's goal was to take a nice little book with christian themes and turn it into yet another advertisement for diversity, well, they've failed: it's getting poor reviews and not many people going out to see it.

Also we get previews of Disney's upcoming flicks which apparently are to get us used to high school students being gay. And trans. And such. Many movies are now far-left propaganda.

[marklawrence]

Red Sparrow

I have come to really dislike Jennifer Lawrence (Ironic, that), because of her outspoken political views. This movie has gotten rather soft reviews - not nearly as bad as her last, Mother, but not the rotten tomatoes rating that would drive you to go see it. None the less I liked it. I was unimpressed with the action scenes, especially the rape and the torture scenes, but the book had a very interesting plot and the movie retained that. The ending is quite surprising, especially as you learn that all the clues were there to figure it out.

[marklawrence]

I can only imagine

I didn't intend to see this movie - it's not on my list. But it got extremely high reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, so I gave it a try. I was very impressed, this is a very moving movie. This would be a fantastic date night movie. If I dated.

It's the more or less true story of a young man who is abused by his father. He breaks his leg rather badly playing HS football, and finds himself unwillingly in glee club, where he discovers he has a quite good voice. He gets out of HS, kicks around the country for a while having only small success with his band, then returns home briefly where he finds his father has found God and is dying of cancer. He writes a song about his experience, "I can only imagine," the highest rated christian song ever. For the record I'm a Buddhist, so my recommendation has no Christian bias.

He also rides a 1974 Honda SL350, a beautiful old bike which is perhaps one of the worst motorcycles ever designed - hardened steel cams riding directly on a cast aluminum head with no bushings. Not so great for long term reliability, especially as 70s oil was not all that great. And if you take it off-road, which seems to be its mission in life, in short order you will bend the foot pegs rather badly and blow all the suspension seals. Don't ask how I know all this.

[marklawrence]

Pacific Rim:

Plot, Dialog, Character Development, Suspense, Insight into the Human Condition, Cutting-Edge CGI: This movie has nothing. To call this movie an unmitigated piece of junk is to do a grave disservice to decent, honest unmitigated pieces of junk the world over.

[marklawrence]

Entebbe:

It's an ok movie. It's not a knock-your-sock-off rendition. The movie tries to explore the politics behind the decision for the Israelis to fly 2500 miles into a neutral country and perform a raid in their soil. In the way of politics, it worked, so after the fact is was ok. Just win, baby. Meanwhile we're given just the tiniest glimpse into what the terrorists are thinking.

[marklawrence]

Tomb Raider

I'm not a big fan of Angelina Jolie, but I have to admit it's true: she was born to play this role. Alicia Vikander, not so much. She seems a bit over-matched by the action and the role. It's an ok movie, but you'll be more entertained to pull out a DVD or Netflix of the original and go with that.

[marklawrence]

Ready Player One

I'm not sure I'm the right audience for this movie. I've never been a computer game player. Except Advent, the very first game, aka adventure. Which figures into the ending of this film, but the version they play I find unrecognizable.

Steven Spielberg investigates a dystopian future where most everyone is destitute and lives in virtual reality playing a non-stop game "The Oasis." The guy who built the basic program died a trillionaire with no heirs. He left clues in the game, if you track down the clues you win the estate. There's a bad guy with a huge corporation who wants to win, he's ruthless and clueless. And there's our heroes who are the first to make progress, so they quickly pop up on the bad guy's radar. A deadly race for a trillion dollars and control of the world ensues.

CGI is, of course, top notch. Dialog, character development, pacing, you know, it's Steven, it's all excellent.

Will you like it? If you're over 50 and never played a video game, maybe not so much. If you're under 30, yah, of course.

[marklawrence]

Chappaquiddick

I liked this movie. It went into detail about Kennedy's damage control after killing Mary Jo Kopechne.

The director says this movie was not for Republicans or Democrats, but for the truth. That seems right to me.

Unfortunately truth seems to be what the director could prove. Kennedy was careful to make sure Mary Jo never got an autopsy and her body was shipped to New Jersey ASAP. So we're left with some big unanswered questions: why did Teddy leave the party? Why did he take Mary Jo? Why did she come? Was she Teddy's mistress? Was she pregnant?

Anyway, this movie purports to give an inside look at the Kennedy machine in action, and I found that compelling.

[marklawrence]

A Quiet Place

Critters appear on earth - big, mean, ugly, toothy critters. They're as fast as a cheetah, they're armored, and they think we're very tasty. Ever since "Alien," the mean aliens have all looked more or less alike. 'Cept these aliens are blind, they operate by sound and hearing and maybe some built-in bat-like radar. Our heroes are living on a farm somewhere - maybe colorado? I dunno. And they have to find a way to survive. Ask any Jew, all Jewish holidays basically celebrate "They came, they attacked, we survived, let's eat." When mom has a new baby surviving gets extra special tough. So does mom. A friend once told me, "When I first got married if I saw a spider, my husband had to come home from work. Then I had my kids, a grizzly bear could have walked into my kitchen and I would have beat it to death with a broom stick. Now my kids are grown and gone, and if I see a spider, my husband has to come home from work."

All our heroes got is a shot gun - not so great against armor. Our founding fathers meant for us to be ready to repel alien attackers, but Boulder just outlawed all high-capacity semi-auto guns. No AR-15s. No Ruger Ranches. No AK-47s. No 9mm hand guns (10 bullet limit). All I got to say is I'd like to see the bio-armor that stands up against 7.62 x 39 FMJ. But not in Boulder, they're all gonna get et right quick. . .

The movie is very effective, like most everyone else I liked it. I'm not generally a fan of horror films, but this was pretty good.

Spoiler alert, stop reading here if you haven't seen it. I spent half the movie thinking, "Laundry detergent and gasoline make a pretty good poor man's napalm. Let's see how their armor holds up against that jellied gasoline shit." They never try it. It sucks watching movies and knowing some science.

[marklawrence]

Rampage

This movie is just silly.

Bio-engineers are trying to make, um, well we never get clear on that. What they do make is a spray that turns anything huge, fast aggressive. Then one of their rats destroys their space station (yah, they're doing their experiments in space so it's "safe"). The genetic stuff crashed to earth in reentry-proof containers ("safe") and infects a gorilla, a wolf and a croc. So a little later we got godzilla v. king kong with a giant wolf thrown in, all fighting and destroying chicago while they're at it. And Duane Johnson is running around 'cause he was friends with the gorilla back when it weighed 500 pounds. The science is bogus on too many levels, the CGI is below average, but there is enough comic relief so that you keep watching the movie. Rent it at redbox in six months for $1.50.