The more I’ve heard about other people’s reactions to this the more I think that reading the book was really a necessity. Too much of the characters’ actual intentions gets lost.
I saw the new Dune a few nights ago and thought they did ok with the narration and explaining what was going on. But I did read the books (decades ago) so I already knew roughly what was happening. Probably best for a novice to read an explainer of some kind before seeing it.
I thought it was a good watch and look forward to the next installment.
Red Notice (Netflix) - Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot. Sort of a cops ad robbers movie where there are three Cleopatra “eggs” that Reynolds is trying to steal and Johnson is trying to stop him. Gadot is also trying to steal them. The film was OK, a few nice twists, but not too tricky to see coming. The real problem with this movie is that Revnolds dead pan style with jokes is very similar to Johnson’s and they ended up stepping in each others way all the time. Sort of having too many stars that have the same skill set. Still entertaining enough.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (HBO Max) - Another in the Marvel series, provides enough origin story that we probably don’t need that in the future. Very entertaining. I thought that there was enough of a plot for this story. It wasn’t really deep or confusing, more straight forward.
yeah, saw Odd Couple recently. I didn’t get any of the humor
Shutter Island. I knew from about five minutes in that I had seen it before, although I cannot figure out when or why I would have.
Duplex. Always a fun one.
Titanic.
But I wonder if that was also part of a “deep-plot” element . . . they’re trying to get in each other’s way within the plot proper . . . they’re also getting in each other’s way (intentionally) in their acting chops.
Watched both these as our Saturday night double feature.
enjoyed them both.
Biggest complaint was on Red Notice.
Ryan Reynolds probably had twice as many quips and one-liners than I needed from him. Lots of groans where his Ryan Reynoldsness just took me out of the scene. I never felt that way with Johnson’s jokes.
Overall, really enjoyed it and will watch the eventual sequel. It was a fun, popcorn movie.
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Watched The Mask last night. No where near as good as I remembered it…
<3 My fav.
The god and goddess of acting in their infancy.
I don’t think either of them really have any bad movies.
And poorly directed so their talents were wasted.
But the director was also a god.
He’s seems great at directing a CGI team.
Raya and the Last Dragon
Good animated movie about a land overtaken by evil creatures because of mistrust between the peoples of the land. Raya, a young woman/warrior, seeks the last dragon to try to fix things. Good story, good animation. The only real problem was that they didn’t really have time to develop all the characters, so many are fairly one-dimensional.
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No Time to Die
The last Daniel Craig Bond movie. Pretty long, but it seemed to work for the most part. I think they resolved a lot with this movie. Seems like a good time for a new actor to play Bond. Craig was really getting too old for it. In this one, he’s retired, but gets pulled back into things. Watched it on Apple TV for $20.
In The Earth (2021)
It was interesting, but increasingly I don’t care as much for tense gory horror-y movies. In a post-virus world, a researcher is being escorted on foot to a research area deep in a woods by a woman park ranger and, well, stuff happens, obviously. The end gets very trippy and the trippy effects are pretty well done.
Summary
I’m not sure if the end was supposed to be a surprise. It seemed pretty obvious that Dr Wendle was gonna sacrifice them. But I guess that just meant more tension, less surprise, then.
They put two big laughs amidst the tension by having different characters say the same line at different times, which was nice to break the tension.
King Richard (2021) on HBO Max.
Good. Our Samsung is having trouble buffering. Too much in memory that cannot be deleted.
good movie (more like a feel good movie)
good acting by smith, but not top tier acting. he’ll probably win the oscar if they can bear to bring the bar down low enough
Problem I had with Will Smith, is that he looks like Will Smith. Just too iconic of a star for a biopic. Yeah, even his Ali was not suspending disbelief.
Same issue for me with Jimmy Stewart playing Glenn Miller and Charles Lindburgh. He and Will are better off playing characters that could look like them, and putting them in situations in which you want the actors to get out of.
But for some reason, not Hanks. He’s played several real-life people, and he was pretty good at all of them.
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Went to see Eternals today. Not the best MCU movie, but enjoyable enough.