Category: movies

Wow. Just wow. How is it that I had never seen Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure before?

The California dude voices. The vocabulary. The simplified historical content involving figures who (thankfully) were not depicted as speaking English unless they were actually English speakers. Futuristic George Carlin. (George Carlin!) The time travel phone booth. (Phone booth!)

The coolest part was probably how the characters solved problems in the present by planning to return to the present later to do something that would benefit them right then.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/bill-teds-excellent-adventure/id309099454

The movie 13 Going on 30 seemed like it was going to be, and was, something like the 1998 Tom Hanks movie Big only with a girl protagonist.

I liked the fantasy element and the message, which is about being loyal and genuine and appreciating the now. Overall I thought it was cute and fun to watch if rather awkward in places.

The idea of magically becoming a different age is similar to the idea of body-swapping in movies like Freaky Friday (1976 and 2003), whose premise is that a girl changes bodies with her mother, thus gaining an adult perspective.

One review I read pointed out a similarity with Devil Wears Prada (2006): there’s a backstabbing New York career plot element.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/13-going-on-30/id264038287

The media response to Now You See Me 2 expresses the typical disappointment for the typical sequel. I agree that this one made less sense than Now You See Me. (It was still fun to watch.)

I think part of why it’s difficult to make a good sequel is that you have to use characters in a way that introduces them to new viewers while not boring those who already know them. Another part of why they’re hard is that, since they’re heroes in the first film, sometime near the beginning of the second film, you have to take something away from them. The second quest is more dire… they’re not underdogs anymore; they run the risk of being completely destroyed and they’re fighting not to win but merely to survive. Otherwise you just have a stale repeat of the original, and obviously that’s no good.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/now-you-see-me-2/id1117669501

I’m not the only one who thought the title was disappointing.

More on the plot and what I thought of it below, including SPOILERS.

Continue reading Now You See Me 2 (2016)

Zoolander 2, the sequel to the now classic Zoolander, was better than I was led to believe. It seems to have failed to meet high expectations, but I didn’t think it was incoherent (whereas Point Break (2015), for example, was).

It had an interesting plot, but it wasn’t all plot… it had themes, too!

⦁    failure
⦁    ageing
⦁    fatherhood
⦁    abandonment
⦁    gender identity
⦁    obesity
⦁    loss

In fact, maybe there were too many themes. I’m not sure there was a theme overall, because all the issues that were raised were worked out in the end, and it’s not clear which was the central one. It’s not clear that a comedy would really need one, though… can’t a successful comedy just be an endless string of mostly unrelated jokes? Recycled jokes, even?

I liked Don Atari, the character who spoke nonsense, thus adding a lot to the “stranger in a strange world” disconnect that Derek and Hansel struggled with when they returned to the world of fashion. It was really painful to see how they were treated in their fashion relaunch, but that was the point.

I usually find comedy hard to stomach because inevitably some of the one-off jokes are offensive or just disgusting; certainly that’s true here. Nevertheless, other jokes succeed. Probably no two people would agree which jokes were funny and which weren’t.

I probably overlooked more than half the celebrity cameos since I don’t follow celebrity or fashion news. The cameos seem to be a major reason the movie was criticized… they’ll seem even less relevant to the movie in the future when these celebrities are less well known, assuming people even watch this movie in the future. Who knows, though? The first Zoolander movie wasn’t popular when it was first released either.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/zoolander-no.-2-magnum-edition/id1077824273

I enjoyed the heist aspects of The Thomas Crown Affair, but I hated the characters.

Although the movie is named after Mr. Crown (played by Pierce Brosnan), when the insurance investigator (played by Rene Russo) shows up, it seems the movie is going to be about her trying to catch him, or at least about him trying not to get caught. However, it’s actually about whether clever, cynical Crown can ever trust anyone, which is less interesting than a heist. Maybe it’s not a heist movie. Maybe it’s a romantic comedy with a heist in it. I don’t know. I’m confused. And so is Rene Russo’s character. In fact, she’s spineless. I hate spineless characters. (Like Elsa, for example. Don’t get me started.)

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-thomas-crown-affair-1999/id220257569

SPOILERS BELOW. Read on if you want to know why I think you should save yourself the trouble of watching this movie.

Continue reading The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)