Terrible Plan! Movie Reviews

What I liked: This movie was ridiculous in the best of funny ways. In contrast to MI4 which is ridiculous because of the situations like rappelling out of a building or having a fight scene in a robotic parking garage Man from UNCLE was funny because of the characters. Yes they were doing absurd spy things but their interactions were perfect and hilarious. I liked their banter. I liked the way they were all good at different things and were always shocked that the other ones were good at something they were bad at. I loved the boat chase scene. I liked the sets especially east Berlin with the tiny east German cars. What I didn’t: I’m writing this review about two weeks after watching the movie. Sadly I can’t remember any specific epic fails beyond what one expects in this genre. Of course the evil plan was less than water tight and the heroic missions less than brilliant. Yes I recall shouting incredulity at the TV but mostly what I remember is laughing and thinking that I liked th...

What I liked: The Force Awakens more than anything else it did or failed to do felt right. There were new characters and new aliens and new planets. There were familiar faces, places, and plot devices, some we hoped to see some could have been avoided. But even without everything familiar the film would still have felt like star wars. There were models, there were muppety things, there were quirky smugglers playing the xylophone, the spaceships broke, as Han said we were back home. I liked the way they worked in elements from the old movies, the crashed star destroyer and cameos by old characters. I liked the new characters; of the three main ones, I think Finn had the most developed character and backstory but look forward to seeing how the others will grow to fit their roles. They started off with a good dynamic which hopefully will continue to build. Most of the comic lines hit home the few that didn’t with me did with other people in the audience. I had fun. I laughed, I cheered,...

What I liked: Scotty is by far the best part of MI 4 and MI 5. Ethan Hunt has finally lost it; yes he is still the star and yes he still saves the day but there is nowhere left for his character to go besides a retirement home or an insane asylum. The girl is as replaceable as everyother girl in these movies: good trade craft, good looking, good side switching, goodbye. Hawkeye is very concerned, he is concerned about his job, his friends, his country. He is a very responsible suity type, would probably make a great PA. No, Scotty is the one who we connect with, who we cheer for, who we laugh at; Scotty saves the day. As always with MI movies I liked the gadgets (sadly I only remember one mask) and the absurd situations (notably the car chase of death and, as dad calls it, the computer washing machine). At two points I did feel like they were channelling National Treasure and may have quoted the lines that no doubt everyone else was thinking. I liked the moment when hawkeye and sco...

What I liked: An interesting story telling approach. It was a good drama and period piece. The main take home I left with was doing great things requires great people with enormous resolve (often taking the form of annoying perfectionism) and willing to make great sacrifices. It seemed that everything she accomplished (from political position, to policy success, to political downfall) was the purely her force of will. I learned a lot about 1980s British history, though to be fair I didn’t know much so if this is your area you probably already know all about it. I really liked the scene when she is teaching her daughter to drive and may quote it frequently on the freeway. I was impressed with the way they handled her relationship with her husband; it succeeded in being touching and pointing out the strain that ambition and public office put on marriages. I liked the ending, admittedly it was anticlimactic and not great as endings go for a biography. What I liked about it was its fra...