Upon the recommendation of one of my coworkers (you see, for me, “incredibly bad” is a recommendation), I took the time to watch Geostorm. Even the recommendation kicked off a discussion of classic (from the 90s) disaster movies, so I both expected this movie to be bad and to enjoy it immensely. At an atmospherically high level, this movie delivers on the disaster movie promise – cgi action heroics of one guy saving the world…
I recently did a movie marathon with Brooke where we watched the three Hobbit movies: An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of the Five Armies. I’d only ever seen the first movie of the trilogy prior to this event, and that was immediately after I’d read the book. It’s been five years now, so I have a slightly different perspective, but, as someone who liked The Hobbit, you can expect me to have words about this film.
This review is a bit tricky because I very much have two opinions on this trilogy of movies – as The Hobbit, a concise novel that I know and love in its original form, and as eight hours of visual entertainment that stands on its own. Expect spoilers for both as I think through it. Continue reading A Trilogy of Hobbits→
I haven’t really sought out Disney animated films over the last few years, instead waiting for them to come to me for various reasons. Brave is a pretty good film with story that’s at least a little off the beaten path, but close enough to standard faire to be unobtrusive.
Over the weekend, I went to see Ready Player One in the theatre. It’s a movie I’ve been thinking about, and the opportunity to see it in a nearly-empty theatre was too good to pass up (even though I’m not a huge fan of theatres, in this case I got to go with someone). Generally, I thought it was a reasonable adaptation of the book, but it was missing something critical that I’m surprised that I missed… Continue reading Ready Player One: The Movie→
I have a habit of looking over the cheap movie shelf at my local Wal-Mart, just to see if there are any movies that might be interesting. Almost inevitably, low-budget science fiction movies that haven’t even made their way to IMDB catch my eye, and yet these are the ones that are most likely to make it into my cart. I realized at some point, that this was something of an odd habit – why would I go out of my way to pick up what is surely going to be a B movie, when there is a perfectly good movie right next to it at the same price?
After thinking about it, I’ve had a general dissatisfaction with mainstream Hollywood science-fiction for a few years, that has prompted me toward riskier movie buying choices. Continue reading Why I Buy Low Budget Sci-Fi→
Last week I talked about Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane – the first two movies in the Cloverfield trilogy. Today, I’m going to wrap up by talking about The Cloverfield Paradox (the movie that kicked this little two-part analysis off), and the trilogy taken as a whole.
A while back, I started hearing things about a new Cloverfield movie on Netflix – The Cloverfield Paradox. When I heard that it was pretty bad, I immediately figured I should make the time to watch it for a good laugh. It had been a long time since I had seen the original Cloverfield, and I was aware of 10 Cloverfield Lane (but hadn’t seen it), so I decided a trilogy viewing was in order, and promptly made plans for a Saturday with nothing else going on.
What follows is my thoughts on each movie, and how they work as a whole. There are definitely spoilers, but each movie segment is short, so it may not be too bad. Continue reading The Cloverfield Trilogy – Part 1→
At the end of my Moulin Rouge! review, I said that I likely would have enjoyed The Notebook more than Moulin Rouge!. To test out this theory, I borrowed The Notebook, and made the time to watch it. Romance for its own sake is not really my genre (as I’m more used to love stories being embedded in some other genre), but it seemed worth a shot to see if I was movie savvy enough to enjoy such a movie if it was well executed.
To that point, it fell somewhat short of enjoyable, but kept itself above the threshold of painful. For more, you’ll have to see my full review after the jump. Continue reading The Notebook→
As part of a bunch of movies being tossed around the office, I ended up watching Frozen. Disney animated movies haven’t been my movies of choice for quite some time, but I can see why they retain their popularity; Frozen was a decent little feel-good film whose themes rang true to me.
I’ve got spoilers on this one, but it’s a Disney animated film, so your mileage may vary. Continue reading Frozen→
As revenge for my movie assignments, another movie came my way. This time, it was Moulin Rouge!, and no, that exclamation point is not because I’m excited about this review. It’s to make sure this movie from 2001 is differentiated from the 1952 and 1938 movies of the same name (without the exclamation point) and I’d rather not disparage a movie I’ve not seen.
