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.
This post is part of a series of posts on books and movies about the legend of Robin Hood. It discusses the 2006 television show.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/robin-hood-series-1/id275354656
See also:
I’m not an expert, but there seems to be a whole genre of Chinese historical-fantasy-war movies (wuxia). At any rate, that’s what this was. It had a dose of romance in it, too. Big budget. Nice effects. Entertaining. From my standpoint, actually, not that weird. It was good practice for me to listen to the Mandarin.
My husband and I agreed that this movie was okay but not… spectacular. Which is ironic, because of course the whole thing is nothing but spectacle. It’s an amazing, long, fancy, expensive spectacle, and my reaction to it was more or less a shrug.
See below for why. Beware SPOILERS.
I loved Hook when I was a kid. I am so, so, so glad I didn’t hate it when I watched it again. If it’s cheesy, then at least it’s still my kind of cheese.
I remember the terror of Peter returning home to find the house broken into and scarred by a rip in the wall made by Hook’s hook.
Probably when I saw Hook as a kid, it was about the evergreen joy of flying and the dubious joy of slapstick, whereas now it’s more about Peter’s relationships with the other characters.
The plot, an exploration of fatherhood and missed chances, reminds me of the song “Cat’s in the Cradle” sung by Harry Chapin.
Triple bonus points for the scene in which the gravity turns off! Titan A.E., a cartoon, is the only other sci-fi movie I’ve seen that has depicted the failure of artificial gravity.
The novel mix of sci-fi and comedy strained my willing suspension of disbelief, and I’m not sure I like the main character, Star Lord, but there was much to enjoy: the ensemble cast, the setting, the plot, and the expensive special effects.
A lot of the world-building that was showcased in the Blu-Ray special features could easily be overlooked in the movie itself, which felt fast-paced even though it clocked in at almost two hours.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/guardians-of-the-galaxy/id899347364
For me, buying this movie was a bit like buying a German-Spanish dictionary, in that it made me a consumer of the product of two cultures, neither of them mine.
Chandni Chowk to China is a Hindi musical martial arts comedy.
Just let that sink in for a moment.
The main character is a superstitious Indian guy named Sidhu who works as a lowly vegetable cutter in a place called Chandni Chowk in Delhi. He has a lot of self-pity but not a lot of motivation to improve his station in life. (One day while cutting potatoes, he finds one that looks like the elephant-headed god Ganesha, and uses the coincidence as an excuse to neglect his duties, which earns him a kick in the pants from his foster father.)
His life changes when two Chinese guys somehow decide he’s a Chinese hero reincarnated and a Chinese fortune-teller friend convinces him to go to China. It’s wacky but kinda fun.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/chandni-chowk-to-china-2008/id312058686
See below for more about the movie, including SPOILERS.
Okay, so I watched this AFTER I watched The Cannonball Run, which isn’t fair. This is the original coast-to-coast comedy road-race movie.
What was different about this first race was that it was more secret and people were eliminated more definitively.
“55 miles-an-hour is unsafe!”
“It’s boring.”
“THAT’S why it’s unsafe!”
“It’s fast enough to kill ya, but slow enough to make you THINK you’re safe.”
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-gumball-rally/id316802188
The premise of this awkward sequel to The Cannonball Run is that the father of the rich Arab who lost the Cannonball Run wanted his son to win, so he encourages his son to fund another race, putting up a prize of 1 million (which he expects the son to win back). Both father and son wish to bring glory to their family name, which is Falafel (groan).
The way the Japanese team join the race is pretty awesome. Because the team wanted to avoid a two-day customs quarantine of the computerized car, the car is released from the back of a plane that lands on a road near the airport, deploying and then releasing a parachute to slow it down. The driver ignites the car’s rocket, plunges the car into a lake, and calmly drives the car like a submarine.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/cannonball-run-ii/id606620435
“The most distinguished group of highway scofflaws and degenerates ever gathered together in one place” meet at a bar in Connecticut to kick off an illegal cross-country road race. They then proceed in their various vehicles, overcoming various difficulties, to traverse the continent.
Jackie Chan plays a Japanese character, apparently because someone thought all East Asians look the same. They must also have thought that all East Asian languages sound the same, because Jackie mostly speaks Cantonese in the movie.
As fun as Death Race, for all the same reasons. Yay, poetic justice!
Plus, since this is a prequel, we get to find out more about some of the characters from Death Race, like how Lists got his nickname, and how Death Race got started in the first place: it was better than what the prison was broadcasting before, which was a man-to-man fight called Death Match.
