Movie Log

 Back in Canada for the summer.  Everyone flaked out for the evening, so I slipped out to the rural cinema for Baby Driver.  Fan-tas-tic! The stunt driving was incredible (if Ken Block is not one of the stunt drivers I will be very surprised).  The story is OK, but the characters continue to delight throughout the unfilding of the plot.  The shining gem of this film is the use of foley to accent and punctuate the soundtrack.   Such a good film.

 I can see how people were disappointed with this movie, expecting the next 5th Element.  But I think it is a great movie: good characters, interesting story, and a great premise. The oddity of the variety of aliens was fantastic!

 Great fight choreography and eighties punk and pop music drive this film.  A good movie.

 I went to this much anticipated film with Finch and Flood.  I was excited since the name suggested more aviation, Star Wars style, which is always so thoroughly inventive and thrilling.  It was interesting to see a U-Wing used even though there was very little dog fighting. H2SO was s show stealer and unexpected.  I wasn't as impressed with the nods to the original films piloted by George Lucas as most people, but is is cool to see the old and new meld together so well.  I might go back to cinema just to see how the space battle looks in cinema 3D.   There was a lot of weapons and characters for multiple viewings in the future.

 We're all being surveilled and Matt Daemon beats the shit out of a lot of people.

 Suicide Squad had extreme potential of cast, and costume, and story, but the edit just plopped the footage in front of you.

 I have kids now so I don't go bonkers seeing as many films as possible while the film festival is going on in town.  But I usually see just one each time these days.  This time, with Finch at an unusual venue, we say The Arrival - so good.  Edge to edge a piece of art.  If you haven't seen it.  See it.

 I saw the 2016 version of The Legend of Tarzan today.  I'm glad I did have some spare time on my hands or I would have skipped it.  It was a far better film than I had anticipated since it is the third . . . no fourth movie of the same story made in my lifetime and I've seen them all.  Anyway, the story was framed well and the Tarzan story details were cool since the titular character had assimilated well in to human culture and we were spared the exhausting Tarzan grammar.  Also the modern CG of the gorilla family allowed a much more emotional portrayal of Tarzan's relationship with his adoptive gorilla family.  Of course there were some disappointing aspects to the story, but as a whole, this version of Tarzan was a pleasant surprise.

 Independence Day 2 was pretty good.  I especially like the updated special effects for the invading aliens. The bummer of this film is its obvious intentions to tee up a franchise from the original premise. I think that Scott's Alien had explored the basic direction that the intention might end up going . . .

Lately, I've finished my semester and have some free time.  I dropped BbingBbong off at daycare since he wanted to see his little friends there and went to a matinee to kill the time.  I saw a crummy film about a dystopian Chicago.   I think it is called Insurgence.  There is a lot of story from previous films that I missed, but I've seem more than enough.

 I hesitatingly went to see Batman vs Superman.  I have to agree with Finch - the edit is too long.  Although there were outstanding parts of the film, there were just too many working parts to run smoothly.  The entire premise seems ridiculous to me so I will weigh in, Batman is simply no match for Superman.  You can play the Kryptonite card here, but I can walk up to Superman to Kryptonite him, I don't need to be a hero to do it and it's not much of a story.

 We're off for a snowboarding trip to Niseko tomorrow, and everything is set, so I slipped off to catch DeadPool in case it has a short run and it's gone before we get back. These guys had a lot of fun breaking a lot of rules (including Stan Lee's cameo for the line that I am sure that the comic legend must have eaten up as a strip-club owner, "Money can't buy love but it can buy three minutes of love."  I was afraid all the glib comments which are really the fabric from which the film is woven would get old, but they are all backed with great writing.

 I redo of the the first film from the original series in 1978.  The story is fresh but the archetypes are the same and the story line is the same.  Great movie.  It's refreshing that the new Jedi is a woman.  I am a growing fan of the Millennium Falcon.

 Finch and I headed to a small theatre that had surround projection for advertisements.  This might be a new way of presenting films. The movie was great.  It had a fantastic first act; the second act was good. The third, final act was a bit slow but needed to be there in order to float the first two acts and facilitate the Romeo and Juliet-esque ending.  This film came along at a perfect time for me since I've been on a Tom Hardy kick and this movie seems to satiated that impulse quite well.

 BbingBbong is old enough now to see the good stuff that Danger doesn't consider entertainment, so the two of us had "Djarin and Son" marked on our calendar for a chance to consume all too much flavored popcorn in the IMAX.   I was cautiously excited once the film began -- the movie as a massive footprint to fill with such an effective and groundbreaking TV series and the origin of The Volume driving it, along with the  expectations for a Star Wars feature.  At the outset, I thought that the story and delivery might fall short, but that was just the might of the paring of Filoni and Favreau picking up speed.  Filoni, likely egged on by his friend and the film's director who keeps reinventing himself and almost singlehandedly pulling Hollywood out of its grave over and over again was not too proud for a well deserved and welcome cameo.  The movie delivers what the viewers are anticipating then surpasses those expectations. The story, sounds, and charact...