Category: Movies (Page 1 of 24)

Seriously behind, but better late than never, I guess.

“Maiden” is a first rate documentary about a British ex-patriate barmaid who, over the course of ten years, organized and skippered an all female crew in what was then the Whitbread Round the World sailing race. It’s an absolutely amazing story and very well presented.

“Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw” is a spin off of a series that has been half soap opera and half testosterone-drenched action. This one eliminates the soap opera and doubles the action, which leaves it pretty mindless, but still amusing.

“The Kitchen” is a gangster movie with a female twist. If you like gangster movies, you will like this, I think. I certainly did.

“Dora the Explorer and the Lost City” is targeted at nine-years-olds to the point that I ALMOST gave up on it after the first fifteen minutes. I didn’t, but I am still not sure I made the right choice.

“Brian Banks” is a mostly triumph from tragedy story that is both compelling and kind of toxic. Banks was a young foolball star whose life was destroyed when he plead guilty to a rape charge in spite of being innocent. The story ends happily, but a story that hinges on a false rape charge is not what the world needs at the moment.

“Ready or Not” is an over the top horror story that is a great deal of fun if you don’t mind the gore.

“Blinded by the Light” is wonderful. Given that it hinges on the music of a singer/song-writer that I have ZERO use for, the fact that the movie works says a great deal for it.

“Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” is a pointless story that has so much Cate Blanchett being interesting that it ALMOST plays the freight. I’m not sure.

“Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” is a horror anthology with an oversized framing story that integrates the other stories so well that it stops being an anthology. It has NO sparkle whatsoever, but as a by the numbers horror story, it’s nearly perfect.

“Angel Has Fallen” is the third entry in this franchise, and it delivers exactly what it promises. We have liked all three.

“The Farewell” is a story based on the peculiar Chinese custom of not informing the guest of honor when a death watch is in progress. It’s a fascinating look at the culture, but not really a very good movie.

“Hustlers” is a pointless, ugly story that has a great cast and good character work. I don’t quite regret seeing it. That isn’t a recommendation.

Uncle Hyena

WAY behind on movies; it’s been more than two months, and that adds up, even at less than one movie a week.

“Five Feet Apart” is a “young dying people in love” movie. It is a pretty solid example of a bizarre and highly questionable micro-genre.

“Wonder Park” is a strangely narrowly targeted animated thing. It’s a bit too complex and scary for really young kids, and offers NOTHING for anyone with the least pretense of adulthood.

“Shazam” is a fun and silly almost-spoof superhero movie. It benefits a great deal from the trend for stories about obscure and unloved characters to be better than expected.

“Hellboy” ties a large quantity of mangled Arthurian legend into the Hellboy universe, and the result is a train wreck that manages to be moderately amusing anyway. 

“Teen Spirit” is a triumph of the underdog story that happens to be largely based in real life. It’s a well done example of a genre that is reliably hard to mess up.

“Missing Link” is an animated thing that marginally exceeds it significantly low expectations.

“Dumbo” has some great effects, but suffers from its central conceptual flaw: the original movie STARRED Dumbo, and in this version, he is really only a McGuffin around which the human actors circle. Given that the original plot was a soap bubble, it’s not surprising that the resulting story is far less than compelling.

“The Avengers: Endgame” has a silly/ stupid plot, and an epicly lame villain, but it has MANY (probably too many) really wonderful character moments that pretty much pay the freight.

“Tolkien” is a moderately accurate, rather sleepy, and somewhat pretentious rendition of the first half of Tolkien’s life. The last line of the movie isn’t spoken, but rather calligraphed, and if you didn’t know what it was going to be before the pen hit the paper, you weren’t paying attention. It ripped my heart out anyway.

Uncle Hyena

A passel of movies:

“Aquaman” demonstrates that while DC has managed to learn how to make REALLY good superhero movie TRAILERS, they still have a ways to go when it comes to superhero movies. A strong cast and an unlimited effects budget don’t make up for a script that gives us cardboard characters and fails to sell a complex alien mythology. DC is getting better; this movie is at least as well constructed as “Wonder Woman”, but that isn’t saying a lot.

“Replicas” is a train wreck with a strong cast. I suspect that the director thought he was saying something important, but failed.

“On the Basis of Sex” is a first rate bio-drama on the early career of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Given how dry the subject matter is, this movie is simply amazing.

“Stan & Ollie” relates the last tour of the legendary comedy team. The narrative has been heavily massaged for dramatic purposes, but the portrayals are absolutely magical.

“The Kid Who Would Be King” is incredibly silly, but it is ultimately a “triumph of the underdog” story with Arthurian trappings, and it demonstrates once again that the formula works if given half a chance.

“Cold Pursuit” is a deeply flawed revenge fantasy. It demonstrates that just because you have translated the script from another language (Norwegian, in this case), you haven’t necessarily translated the cultural nuances (which may not be translatable at all).

“Fighting With My Family” is a light hearted biodrama of a WWE star. Given that we have ZERO interest in professional wrestling, we enjoyed this movie a great deal.

“Alita: Battle Angel” isn’t quite a train wreck. The world building is awful (but inheirited from the source material); the effects are good, and BEAUTIFUL; the characters are… strange. There are MANY really good character scenes, but the characters aren’t really consistent from one scene to the next, and the whole doesn’t quite fit together. But it’s pretty.

“Captain Marvel” interweaves two plot arcs. One of them is an extremely well done character arc, and the other is an effects heavy alien war stew that was lame when it was introduced fifty years ago. The end result is a tolerable movie that may be as good as it could possibly have been, given the horrific convolutions of the source material.

Uncle Hyena