I watch a lot of movies, mostly kids’ movies and Hollywood action blockbusters, but in principle I’m willing to watch anything that isn’t horror. I’m keeping a list of the movies I’ve seen. Read these posts for my reactions and plot summaries, many of which are in the form of a beat sheet as described in Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat.
Kings of Pastry offers a glimpse into the lives of those aspiring to the highly respected designation “Meilleurs Ouvriers de France (MOF)”, awarded in France to the world’s top pastry chefs.
Although there were some aspects of the documentary I found interesting or dramatic, I didn’t think it was particularly good overall.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/kings-of-pastry/id414573195
Logan was bloody, morbid, and sad.
There were some darkly funny and grimly satisfying moments, but in general I’m not a fan of the trendy “decrepit superhero” trope, which is what governs the entirety of this 137-minute film, a gritty, R-rated, sci-fi/western production marking the end of the seventeen-year era in which Hugh Jackman has played Wolverine.
I was impressed by the female star’s Hugo Weaving-like frowny face, which she used for almost the entire movie, and the character (portrayed by a digital collage of the actress, her stunt-double, and a laboriously created CGI avatar) seemed pretty capable.
It’s hard to call the movie a triumph for her, though I would have liked to. For one thing, the tone of the movie is hardly triumphant, and for another thing, the movie isn’t about her, or even about her relationship with Logan, it’s about Logan. (It says so right there in the title!) So although she drives the plot, and one or two of the cars in the plot, unquestionably, she’s still second fiddle.
Keep reading 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 Logan (2017)
Jiro Dreams of Sushi is an amusing, eye-opening, and well-produced documentary about an exacting Japanese sushi chef named Jiro Ono, whose dedication to his craft is remarkable as much for its relentless lifelong perfectionism as for its world-famous success.
What I least liked about it was seeing dead or soon-to-be-dead sea creatures being inspected, bought and sold.
Visually, what I liked best was seeing each individual piece of sushi placed on a lacquered, rectangular dish on the softly-lit counter top, where gravity briefly, subtly altered its shape in a kind of slow, glistening ooze.
The strongest impression I’m left with, though, is Jiro’s seemingly unflagging sense of purpose: to make the most exquisite sushi he possibly can. Nothing else seems to matter in the slightest.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/jiro-dreams-of-sushi/id542088376
Huh. Well, I really don’t know what to think of Annie. On the one hand, it’s really long, and as some reviewers point out, it doesn’t really go anywhere or mean anything, but on the other hand, I’m super nostalgic about the songs! I had fun watching it, but I have no idea whether a child or adult who has never seen it before would enjoy it.
Keep reading for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.
Also below: Some things about the movie that surprised me, and the history of the character as she has appeared in a wide range of media from 1885 to 2014.
Although iTunes calls Timeless a drama, there’s a healthy dose of science-fiction as well. It’s a time-travel show, for Pete’s sake!
The three main characters, who have a pretty nifty-looking time machine, are struggling with some kind of shadow organization that has control of a newer one.
The sets, costumes, and special effects are fun (the show must cost a fortune to produce), but I found the expositiony dialog intolerably overbearing. Clearly the writers are trying to contrast prejudiced views of women and minorities in the past with views of women and minorities in today’s more enlightened times, but the well-meaning messages are written in clumsily.
Since the good guys and the bad guys both wind up changing history and killing people, there are interesting moral issues at play, involving questions of the good of the many vs. the life of an individual and whether the end ever justifies the means. Why couldn’t some of the same subtlety be brought to bear on issues of race and gender?
See below for two grating examples of political correctness in Episode 8, “Space Race”.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/timeless-season-1/id1142726283
Well. Point Break (1991) was about fifty million times better than Point Break (2015). It had some actual characters and plot.
It also seems to have been a cultural touchstone, though not one that I was ever particularly aware of. If the interviews on the special features menu are to be believed, it introduced the zen of surfing to the masses.
My personal opinion is still mixed. On the one hand, the movie was horribly bloody. On the other hand, the skydiving was awesome.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/point-break/id547103622
Now, having just seen a Keanu Reeves movie and a Sandra Bullock movie, I feel like I need to re-watch Speed.
I remember seeing Ghost Protocol among the new releases in a DVD shop years ago. Somehow it didn’t register as a movie I wanted to see. Since then, I’ve realized how iconic that 1996 Mission Impossible movie is and therefore will probably watch however many more are made, as long as Tom Cruise reprises his role as Ethan Hunt. At some point I decided I’m basically willing to watch anything Tom Cruise is in, though that doesn’t mean I like everything he’s in—I hated Jerry Maguire, and Minority Report was a horrible mess.
I really enjoyed the fight scene in the mechanical parking garage, but parts of Ghost Protocol were hard to watch; surely they filmed those Spiderman stunts with a greenscreen? Um, no. No, they did not. And it wasn’t a stunt double. Tom Cruise really had himself filmed on the outside of the Burj Khalifa. I don’t know who’s crazier, him or Jackie Chan.
A lot of heist movies show you the plan and show you the hero executing most or even all of the plan successfully; it’s fun because there are parts of the hero’s plan that you don’t know, or because you see the bad guys fall into traps set up for them. There’s still conflict because sometimes the bad guys get the upper hand, or someone on the good guy’s team turns traitor, but the good guy often has a secret backup plan, so it turns out he was never in danger, or at any rate is fully capable of getting himself out of it again.
What was fun about Ghost Protocol was the sheer number of things that went wrong for the characters. It was just one thing after another! The plans went awry over and over again! Or I thought they were going to, and that was worse!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/mission-impossible-ghost-protocol/id501587325
Miss Congeniality came highly recommended by Blake Snyder, author of Save the Cat. I think he and I have different taste in movies.
Sandra Bullock plays a rather slovenly female FBI agent who is selected by a co-worker she has a love/hate relationship with to go undercover and participate in a beauty pageant to catch a terrorist, so Michael Caine gives her an unrealistically rapid makeover, and she winds up making friends with her competitors, who are grateful to her for being herself and protecting them.
I tend to think of makeover movies as rather offensive, but I was impressed at the way Miss Congeniality transformed the “tough girl” character without requiring her to alter the core of her identity. Sandra Bullock’s character in fact expresses her own skepticism about the value of a beauty contest in assessing the worth of a person, but comes to believe that people aren’t ever as superficial as they seem, even—or especially—beauty pageant contestants.
And to be fair, makeover movies probably aren’t as superficial as they seem, either. Everybody loves a good Cinderella story; Cinderella is always kind and good before she gets the fancy dress and shoes, which is why we believe she deserves them.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/miss-congeniality/id328167954
Looper has a time-travel premise, but it wasn’t at all what I expected. It was better.
I was perhaps expecting something like Edge of Tomorrow, if only because I read a reference to this movie when reading an article about that one a year and a half ago. But no, there is hardly any Groundhog-Day style repetition, just two simultaneous versions of one guy: a younger one (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and an older one (played by Bruce Willis).
As I was watching it, I started to think maybe Looper would be like Paycheck, a sci-fi movie in which a hunted, mind-wiped character has to figure out some mysterious clues he gave himself, or Predestination, a time-travel movie in which there are some really strange relationships between the characters. But although it’s just as flawed as any time-travel movie, Looper isn’t really that complicated.
Looper has some dystopian futuristic stuff and some magical sci-fi stuff (mostly done with practical effects and not overbearing CGI), but the heart of the movie is not sci-fi, it’s drama. The themes include justice, redemption—and motherhood, of all things! The resolution of the conflict doesn’t hit you hard because it’s a clever gimmick, it hits you hard because it’s a deeply felt moral choice.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/looper/id575490887
Keep reading for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.
Note to self: There is no need to ever watch Blade Runner again.
I think we Netflixed it sometime in the New Jersey era (2003–2008), and parts of it seemed vaguely familiar this time around. I didn’t like it then, and I didn’t like it this time, either.
Yes, Blade Runner is a classic. And yes, the rainy/neon Japanese/German/Spanish vision of the future, with giant pyramid skyscrapers, is wonderfully creative (if not realistic for 2019). And yes, the movie has an interesting, philosophical sci-fi premise. But it’s just brutal. And it goes on for too long.
We watched the theatrical version this time; maybe the international version? I dunno, there are lots of versions. In the version we watched this time, there were silly voice-overs, a happy ending, and no unicorn dream.
The premise is that bio-engineered people (originally created to do dangerous work off world) have developed realistic emotions and thus resent their short lifespans. Four of them are back on Earth for some reason and Harrison Ford’s character is supposed to “retire” (execute) them, which is a creepy thing to have to do because they’re not that different from regular people.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/blade-runner/id594314564
The reason my husband and I watched Blade Runner again was that we are typically intrigued by movies made from Philip K. Dick stories.
Have not seen:
Okay, I guess I would watch Blade Runner 2049, which is supposedly going to be released later this year. Not a remake, but rather some kind of sequel. With Harrison Ford in it.
