Ocean's Eight Review

What I liked: Oceans 8 actually had all the stages of a heist, no corner cutting for them, take that Solo. The crew was fun, they had funny lines, and the plan was elaborate so they really hit all the bases. The step 4 sneaky twist was less sneaky than you might hope but fairly satisfying. I liked the top off of the team to make 8. Both of them. The first chunk of the movie seemed like she would have been right at home in Catch Me if You Can. I liked the little old ladies and the jar of Nutella. I did not have equal faith in all members of the team. Some of them were really good at their jobs but some of them, especially the designer definitely had issues. And while likely completely unnecessary and very dangerous, I liked the dramatic exit. It was fun to see everyone all done up.
What I didn’t: For being a jewelry heist there was a disappointingly low amount of repelling and
backflips. Pretty much all of the sneaking involved disguises and not you know jumping fences or parachuting

down elevator shafts. So their plan probably worked better but just think how cool they would have
looked. I think that the body guards could have been employed by the Empire. Did we really have to set
up Danny Ocean not being dead? I’m glad he didn’t crash the heist but he’s a con man, so it really
wouldn’t push it too much to say he faked his death. So the sneaky twist was well executed of course,
you have a pretty good idea that it is coming but they clearly pulled it off with precision. But it
definitely made me wonder about the necessity of the dramatic exit. I was glad they all got fancy outfits
and it was a fun sequence but it did seem unnecessarily risky. Also I would like to have seen how
they all snuck in and got changed with the museum in lock-down. It was a short lock down so we
would have to have 6 women sneak in with formal wear, get changed, do their hair and make-up
and join the party without anyone noticing. Very impressive.

Who should watch this? People who like heist movies.

Would I watch it again? Sure.

Comments

Ready Player One Review

What I liked: I bet all of the developers loved making this film, I saw so many video game and movie references in the background of scenes. I bet all the developers just inserted their favorites like the ninja turtles, a whole platoon of halo soldiers, and orcs. That it was a video game made it possible and exciting to have all kinds of absolutely random physics and logic defying things happen. Obviously, I loved the T. Rex and who would not enjoy seeing Mechagodzilla or a cyborg orc driving a monster truck? Early in the movie they made good use of the video game architecture in a way that reminded me a bit of secret rooms in super mario. The characters visit the world of the Shining, which was amazing and hilarious. I loved the variety of characters, vehicles and weapons that we get to see and it is more fun (at least for me) that they draw from more than strictly the 1980's. I also really liked the music, for the most part the selections were great for the scenes. The book was...

Fast and Furious 8 review

What I liked: This is the first Fast and Furious movie I have seen but I have watched a number of the trailers. They always teemed with absurdity. Now instead of a 3 minute trailer, I got to sit through an hour and a half of turbo powered sports cars saving the world. As you can imagine the list of things to like is quite long. The movie starts off strong with a car race in Havanah (I guess that US-Cuban relations are going really well if a FBI agent is having his honeymoon there). The reason for the car race was a bit complicated but essentially the main dude was trying to win back his cousin's car. In the course of the race he manages to light it on fire, explode it, and launch it into the ocean. But at least he won it back. I'm sure his cousin was very grateful. I also find it noteworthy that the race was 1 mile long and took 11 minutes to complete. The moral of this story is that while both racers are excellent at theatrics, they take safety seriously. After blowing up B...

Solo Reveiw

What I liked: The architecture of a heist movie has 4 stages: stage 1 explain how hard the job is, stage 2 come up with a ridiculously elaborate plan to accomplish the job and acquire hard to find equipment, stage 3 execute the plan but something goes terribly wrong, stage 4 sneaky twist and huge pay off. The Solo movie takes the bold move of streamlining the first two and a half steps, picking up with stage 3.5 "Something goes terribly wrong". This saves everyone the slow wind up to the actual action. This saved time translates into a movie with not one but all the heists. We have grand theft, customs evasion, train robbery, vault robbery, the classic hustle, and of course smuggling. I guess they may have tried to crowd too a little much in because they also almost always skip stage 4. This stage skipping also means that we don't know if the things they are doing are actually hard or they are just incompetent. I'm surprised more heist movies don't explore this ...

Terrible Plan! Movie Reviews

Search This Blog