Recently Watched Movies 2022

[Palatine]

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Went last night with my daughter, home from college. There is an element of tribute to Chadwick Boseman here, and I think that’s fine. The story is mostly pretty decent, although the overselling of technology and “vibranium“ is a bit much. It’s a metal people. The new MIT genius is ok I guess. If any of you remember the old Sub-Mariner (Namor) from the comics, well he makes his arrival in this. They changed his backstory and made him a sort of bad guy. Wakanda is in trouble because it won’t do what he wants and battle ensues. They need a new Black Panther to take on Namor, who will it be. Cinematography is pretty good, CGI and otherwise. I do appreciate the colors in Africa and in this one, in Haiti. Costumes are excellent.

Namor was always sort of the bad guy in the original Fantastic Four comics. He has a thing for Suzie and she liked him too. That set up a romantic triangle between The Submariner, the Invisible Girl and Mr. Fantastic. Great stuff. Namor didn't like the land people because they were screwing up the ocean. Have NOT seen WF, but the original Namor back story always had him as sort of a bad guy, he was definitely a heavy.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Namor was always sort of the bad guy in the original Fantastic Four comics. He has a thing for Suzie and she liked him too. That set up a romantic triangle between The Submariner, the Invisible Girl and Mr. Fantastic. Great stuff. Namor didn't like the land people because they were screwing up the ocean. Have NOT seen WF, but the original Namor back story always had him as sort of a bad guy, he was definitely a heavy.

That fits with this. They changed his back story a bit but he’s kinda of a heavy, but not evil. This movie is pretty decent really.

 

[nwhoopfan]

"Slumberland" on Netflix. A bit goofy, and loud and chaotic at times, but I enjoyed it. Jason Momoa was totally hamming it up. Chris O'Dowd and Kyle Chandler are always solid. The young actress they got for the lead--Marlow Barkley--I was unfamiliar with. To me she bears an uncanny resemblance to Saoirse Ronan when she was around that age (see her in "City of Ember" for comparison).

 

[Hey Adrien!]

Murder Mystery (2019). Netflix.

Another enjoyable Netflix/Sandler collaboration.

A fun, light comedy/murder mystery movie that is led by the very funny banter between married couple Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston.

This whodunit's best strength is its wide range of memorable characters, plus its shot nicely with most of the scenes taking place in Monaco.

It's funny, it's light and overall a fun and enjoyable 90 minutes, which was needed after yet another holiday with unnecessary family drama.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Went to the theater for the first time in forever with my folks today, saw "Devotion." It was good. Really more of a character study than a war movie. I continue to really like Glen Powell. Johnathan Majors was good in the other starring role.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. Disney+. This is 44 minutes long, so not quite a movie. Has almost everyone from Guardians, plus one special guest apearance (not from MCU). Mantis and Drax hear some of the story about Peter’s first Christmas in space as a kid, and decide to return to earth to get him a special present. This short opens and closes with the Pogues, Fairytale of New York. Anytime something starts with “It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank”, you probably have something good, and it is. This is really funny and clever and they absolutely nailed it.

 

[Hey Adrien!]

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: End Game (2019)

I'm not a Marvel guy, I find all that stuff boring, but my 9 and 11 year old nephew are obsessed and are dying for me to wath the movies.

So as a way to bond this holiday weekend, we had them over, ordered pizza (Colony for my wife and I and Dominos for the unsophisticated palates of preteens) and watched both movies.

Overall, I was mostly bored, as expected, and fell asleep halfway through Endgame, but I did appreciate the production value: the colors were beautiful and the landscapes were incredible, like a LOT of time and care was put into this movie.

Downey as Iron Man was my favorite character and was amazing at the vast cast of both movies. On the plus side, Elizabeth Olsen is a celebrity crush of mine while Scarlett Johansson was one of the past, both of which are supported by my wife who shares their Nordic heritage, so there's that.

If I had kids, I can see the interest in these movies, especially if your kids are jazzed about Marvel, but respectfully, these aren't for me, but I totally get their widespread appeal.

 

[CL82]

Moonfall (2022)

Pretty much ten gallons of suck in a one gallon container. The plot is, and unsurprisingly, that the moon is falling because a bunch of homicidal nanobots are sucking up energy from the dwarf white star that powers its gyroscope. What? If only our intrepid heros can restart their gyro the moon would immediately go back into orbit. Huh? Interestingly, that’s not even the biggest stretch to the laws of physics in the movie. As the moon passes over the earth, it’s gravity cancels out the much larger earths gravity and starts sucking things off the much larger planet. How does that work exactly? Spoiler (kind of ) alert: eventually the moon does nick the earth shearing off a mountain top just as the Gyro gets restarted and the moon goes back in the orbit.
I’m not a scientist or anything, but wouldn’t gravity be an issue there? Never mind the fact that a bunch of moondust manages to shear off the top of a granite mountain with hardly scratch to the moon. If you are a science-fiction fan you’ve probably seen a senior to with Scotty from Star Trek complaining to Captain Kirk that he “cannot change the laws of physics“. The writers of this movie did not in any way feel so constrained.

There are other little stupid plot points, like a family using oxygen tanks because, somehow, the moon has depleted earths oxygen. The dad nobably gives up his mask for his daughter and then tells her to keep walking straight and not look back as he slowly suffocate on the ground. Hello? Ever hear of buddy breathing? Just walk together and take a head off the oxygen as you need it. Frankly, I think Darwin would have approved of the father’s death.

For as lame as the plot is you would think that the acting would shine in comparison to it. Nope. It is absolutely wooden and the actors seem utterly disinterested with a ‘give me my check so I can get the eph away from this show’ attitude. Halle Berry is mildly attractive so there’s that. Michael Pena plays the IQ challenged dad. I didn’t recognize anyone else.

Unless you are a masochist, this is a movie to avoid.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Slumberland. Netflix. The trailers for this are awful. They make it seem like a completely different (worse) movie. This is incredibly sweet and heart warming. It's also fairly cleverly done. The lead is an 11 year old girl (who does look like a young Saorise Ronan) who lives in a lighthouse with her dad. The catch is that she begins to go on adventures in her dreams (Slumberland) and meets a roguish "outlaw" Flip, who was a character in stories her dad told her about his wilder, youthful days. Really enjoyed this as one of the nicest family movies in a long time.

 

[Dove]

Nope (2022) - We enjoyed this one a lot. Totally captivatng. An unmoving cloud houses an alien ship that occasionaly comes out and vacuums the Earth of humans, then regurtitates metal objects and blood. A great cerebral battle ensues.

The Swimmers (2022) - Cute movie about two Syrian sisters and a cousin who leave Damascus amid war and become refugees looking to get to Germany. The sisters are world-class swimmers and the youngest has dreams of being an Olympian and representing Syria. The movie slowly has the viewer experience the long journey and succssfully shows how tough things were.

She eventually gets to the Olympics, but as a representative of the newly-created Refugee Olympic Team. She did it in 2016 and 2020.

 

[CL82]

Matrix Resurections (2022)

Blah blah blah bullet time blah blah blah flash backs blah blah middle-age people screaming in slow motion blah blah blah zombie agents blah blah Neo has the Force blah blah Trinity is Superman.

It was vaguely okay. The problem with using flashbacks is it reminds us when the special effects in the storyline were new to us. Now we’ve seen it all before.

 

[Palatine]

Matrix Resurections (2022)

Blah blah blah bullet time blah blah blah flash backs blah blah middle-age people screaming in slow motion blah blah blah zombie agents blah blah Neo has the Force blah blah Trinity is Superman.

It was vaguely okay. The problem with using flashbacks is it reminds us when the special effects in the storyline were new to us. Now we’ve seen it all before.

They wanted to squeeze the last dollars out of the franchise and they did. Nothing new or very interesting. One last payday.

 

[CL82]

I just watched Top Gun Maverick. Undisputably, this is a good movie hitting every point it needs to. It was really enjoyable.

My only question is would it make far more sense to send cruise missiles in to take out the target we know they’re faster than -18s and they’re specifically designed to come in ground hugging.. You wouldn’t need to send just two and make everything perfect you could just keep on flying them until you blew the thing up. But if you weren’t going to do that why not use stealth bombers? But if you couldn’t do that, wouldn’t you just run a series of sortees taking out the SAMS first and then going in and bomb the site? it just seemed like they took it the mission that had the least opportunity to succeed and went with that.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Spirited. Apple+. Stars Ryan Reynolds’s and Will Ferrell. This is a Christmas movie that takes a unique spin on the Dickens ”A Christmas Carol” story. It’s pretty funny and has a solid plot and storyline. It’s also a musical, and yes, both stars sing some tunes. The ghosts of past. present and future do their thing with a new target every year. This year they take aim on Reynolds’s character and that backfires in some ways. It’s clever, fun and has a good message. Recommended.

 

[nwhoopfan]

"Troll" Norwegian film on Netflix. I enjoyed it. Pretty decent for B grade. Gets you right into the action and never really lets up.

 

[nwhoopfan]

"Don't Worry Darling.' Sooooo slow. 3/4 of the way thru, still waiting for it to get anywhere. Florence Pugh can't rescue it. Why is Harry Styles being cast in movies? He's not an actor. He's a singer and a pretty boy, that's about the extent of it. He's just so clearly not up to par with almost every other member of the cast. Florence is acting circles around him. And so is Chris Pine.

 

[nomar]

Matrix Resurections (2022)

Blah blah blah bullet time blah blah blah flash backs blah blah middle-age people screaming in slow motion blah blah blah zombie agents blah blah Neo has the Force blah blah Trinity is Superman.

It was vaguely okay. The problem with using flashbacks is it reminds us when the special effects in the storyline were new to us. Now we’ve seen it all before.

When I'm scrolling on my phone while a movie is on, you know the movie sucks. Like this one.

 

[nomar]

"Don't Worry Darling.' Sooooo slow. 3/4 of the way thru, still waiting for it to get anywhere. Florence Pugh can't rescue it. Why is Harry Styles being cast in movies? He's not an actor. He's a singer and a pretty boy, that's about the extent of it. He's just so clearly not up to par with almost every other member of the cast. Florence is acting circles around him. And so is Chris Pine.

I was underwhelmed. I didn't mind the pace at all, it was just the reveal was unoriginal. And the plot holes were too large to get past.

 

[nomar]

Nope (2022) - We enjoyed this one a lot. Totally captivatng. An unmoving cloud houses an alien ship that occasionaly comes out and vacuums the Earth of humans, then regurtitates metal objects and blood. A great cerebral battle ensues.

The Swimmers (2022) - Cute movie about two Syrian sisters and a cousin who leave Damascus amid war and become refugees looking to get to Germany. The sisters are world-class swimmers and the youngest has dreams of being an Olympian and representing Syria. The movie slowly has the viewer experience the long journey and succssfully shows how tough things were.

She eventually gets to the Olympics, but as a representative of the newly-created Refugee Olympic Team. She did it in 2016 and 2020.

I was hoping Nope would be better than it was. I've been underwhelmed by Nope and Us after being incredibly impressed, like everyone else, with Get Out.

 

[nwhoopfan]

"See How They Run" was entertaining, but could've been better. Saoirse Ronan's character was a lot of fun. Some of the cast weren't given much to do.

 

[nwhoopfan]

"Wifelike." Hmm, what to say? A bit of elements of Stepford Wives, and various other movies or tv shows dealing with very lifelike androids and what role and rights they have in society (I got just a bit of a reminder of "Humans"). Starts out a bit exploitative/titillating, maybe the director felt that was necessary to set the tone for what happens later. It was okay, but not exactly good. Some of the dialogue and acting felt flat. Elena Kampouris was great as the main android. Her manner of speaking, the way she moved, her posture, all very convincing that she wasn't quite human.

 

[nwhoopfan]

"Dio: Dreamers Never Die." Documentary that came out this year about Ronnie James. Well put together. I had no idea he had such a long and varied musical career. Joined his first band in 1958!

Is Rudy Sarzo in every music documentary? It seems like it. Well, he's been in almost every band, so I guess that's why.

 

[gwhuskyfan]

Just watched the new Aubrey Plaza movie Emily the Criminal. Really liked it. I'd say it kept me on edge for most of it.

 

[87Xfer]

Just watched the new Aubrey Plaza movie Emily the Criminal. Really liked it. I'd say it kept me on edge for most of it.

Just watched this one too. I really enjoyed it and thought Plaza did a surprisingly good job in a good dramatic lead role.

 

[nwhoopfan]

"Ticket to Paradise" was billed as a comedy, but wasn't that funny. Like I expected the bickering between exes George Clooney and Julia Roberts got old real fast. When the movie and their characters moved past that and got more heartfelt, it was much better. Also as expected Kaitlyn Dever and Billie Lourd were the best part of the movie, and didn't get enough screen time.