Category: movies

Read the credits after you watch a movie. Aren’t you amazed at how many people were paid to contribute to creating it? These are good times indeed.

Speed Racer (2008)

The colorful fantasy car racing scenes are magical, but they’re also emotional, because the underdog main character’s victory is a victory for Justice itself. Speed Racer demonstrates that integrity matters, that you can win by being honest (though not by being naive), that cheaters, in fact, never prosper in the long run. It’s not subtle. It’s not realistic. But it has an awesome kind of purity. There’s nothing quite like it.

It scrambles the timeline in the sequence at the beginning, which seems like genius to me now that I know who all the characters are and where the plot is going, having seen the movie several times. It probably didn’t make nearly as much sense the first time through.

See below for a detailed plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

BTW, this story perfectly fits the Save the Cat genre called “institutionalized,” in which the main character encounters a group or a system and has to join, escape, or destroy it.

Continue reading Speed Racer (2008)

Superman (2025)

Some scattered thoughts:

  • I didn’t realize, until I read some reviews online, that this movie was… politically divisive. (Sigh. Can we please not polarize everything? Or is it already too late?)
  • You may love dogs in spite of what they destroy, but me? I don’t want anything to do with such agents of chaos. That being said, Krypto was a pretty convincing CGI dog. (And has nothing to do with cryptocurrency.)
  • I found it distracting that Lex Luthor had so many supporters who were emotionally invested in his success. I wanted the movie to reveal their motivation. (It didn’t.)
  • It took me a while to recognize Nathan Fillion. (Green Lantern’s haircut truly is awful.) I didn’t recognize Alan Tudyk. (He voiced a robot.)
  • Hawk Girl (played by Isabela Merced) reminded me of the character Skye (played by Chloe Bennet) in Agents of Shield.
  • In the positive column: someone on the CGI team must have been familiar with bismuth crystals! They’re gorgeous.
  • The fight scene at the site of the entrance to the pocket universe was a lot of fun.
  • The best aspect of the movie might be the theme: you are not your destiny, as determined by your blood or your parents’ wishes; you are who you choose to be. Whatever else is going on in the movie, it does uphold that theme.
The Chinese name for the movie (and the character) is literally “Super Man”.

It was really weird seeing different actors for Superman/Clark, Lois, Jimmy, Perry White, and Clark’s parents, because I’ve been watching the 1990s Lois and Clark TV series. That show belongs to a completely different era. (I like the show better than this movie. No contest.)

F1: The Movie (2025)

You might think car racing films are all the same. The main character is a driver with a tragic backstory or an attitude problem (or both), and he needs to move on or grow up (or both). But, just like no two murder mysteries are really the same, the details make each car racing story different.

For example, what makes The Love Bug special is that the eponymous Volkswagen beetle is sentient and can drive by itself.

What makes Speed Racer special is that it’s about an honest underdog fighting a dishonest system.

What makes Death Race special is the stakes: prisoners enter car races to win their freedom—or die trying.

Cardboard Brad Pitt at our local mall’s movie theater.

What makes F1: The Movie special is that the main character, driver Sonny Hayes, “the best that never was,” doesn’t care about being in the spotlight. Eventually the story reveals why that is, and transforms this detachment from a weakness into a strength. Meanwhile, the audacious stuff he does is absolutely hilarious, albeit unrealistic.

See below for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading F1: The Movie (2025)

IMAX How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

After watching the 2025 remake of How to Train Your Dragon and reading people’s reactions on Reddit, I conceived a desire to see the movie on an IMAX screen. Siqi humored me, and we bought tickets and went and watched the movie again, at a slightly-father-away theater.

IMAX HTTYD 2025 Chinese movie poster.

See below for a detailed save-the-cat beat sheet plot summary of How to Train Your Dragon (2025). Beware SPOILERS.

Continue reading IMAX How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

This movie is a remake of the 2010 animated movie How to Train Your Dragon. That means it’s time once again to play Spot the Differences!

Although there are some changes that I personally don’t like, I think they did a great job overall. (Still, the original was better.)

DreamWorks did less revamping than Disney has been doing in their live-action remakes of animated classics. It may be that few changes seemed necessary because 2010 wasn’t that long ago (the live-action Cinderella movie was made 65 years after the 1950 original), or it may be because DreamWorks made a conscious decision to change as little as possible, or it may be both. (Often it’s both.)

So what did change, and why?

You probably don’t want to read this post if you haven’t seen the new movie, and it won’t make sense at all if you haven’t seen the new movie or the old movie. Instead, please enjoy this photo of the counter where I bought gelato after exiting the cinema.

I chose sea-salt coconut, tiramisu, and blueberry. Mmmm!

EDIT: I added some notes after I watched it again.

Continue reading How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025)

I was disappointed with this movie for two reasons, one general and one personal:

  • The ending didn’t feel final, after so much buildup.
  • There was entirely too much water.

To elaborate on the lack of emotional finality: Some reviews say the ending was a gracious and moving send-off that tidily wraps up the whole movie series with meaningful callbacks and clever retconning. That is, of course, what they are supposed to say, so even if such assertions are sincere, they sound hollow. It’s an expensive movie, made by experienced people; naturally, we are expected to like and approve of it. But other reviews agree with my view: whatever the moviemakers may have been trying to do, it didn’t work as well as one might have hoped.

To elaborate on the excess of water: Classic case of “Well done, thanks, I hate it.” I personally hate underwater scenes. Hate hate hate them. They make me disproportionately anxious. I do not find them fun and entertaining, unlike other forms of danger (e.g., precipitous heights, car chases). I enjoy action movies in general, and action movies are exciting because the fictional hero (and in the case of Tom Cruise and Jackie Chan, to an unprecedented extent, the actor playing the fictional hero) is placed in life-threatening danger. But I hate water scenes. And this movie had one that went on for… I dunno, 20 minutes? I Googled and couldn’t immediately find the duration online, but one article said there was a single take in the movie that was 4 minutes long, so I don’t feel like 20 minutes is an unreasonable guess!

Canvas poster on display at my local movie theater, Wanda Cinema Yuhang.
We watched MI:8 in the biggest cinema hall the evening after the movie opened in China. Sadly, the theater was mostly empty. (Where my Chinese Tom Cruise fans at???)

More thoughts on Final Reckoning below, including plot spoilers.

Continue reading Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025)

Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (Season 1)

This 1990s TV show is a wholesome romance thinly disguised as science-fiction. Specifically, it’s about the relationship between two capable and kind-hearted but emotionally vulnerable young professionals. Rewatching Season 1 filled me with the glow of nostalgia.

See below for more on the characters, plot, and themes of the show. No spoilers.

Continue reading Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (Season 1)

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

It’s a niche classic. A strange blend of a lot of things at once.

It’s sci-fi, it’s action, it’s horror; it’s hand-drawn and computer animation; it’s made in Japan but set in Hong Kong; it’s about evolution but upholds the idea of the soul; and it’s futuristic but looks and feels and sounds like the past.

I wish I liked it, but I don’t; I still think it’s clunky and weird. Here are some previous thoughts (because apparently this is my third blog post on this same movie, omg):

Watched in 2017 (around the time of the remake)

Watched in 2013

How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

I didn’t see this 2010 movie for the first time until 2014, and I’m not sure I fully appreciated it at the time. It is probably one of my top five favorite movies ever.

It has a dragon who is unbelievably powerful and cool but also catlike, silly, and adorable; it has a geeky underdog protagonist with a gratifying self-actualization plot; it has a romantic subplot featuring an immensely capable and hardworking girl; it has an awesome soundtrack; and it has the best aerial joyrides!

Siqi put in the DVD of HTTYD to test our new living room audio setup: he connected a new (used) pair of speakers behind the sofa, so now our system is 5.1 instead of 3.1. Pretty awesome! 🙂