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Showing posts from January, 2020

Jumanji 2: the next level

What I liked: I liked that geometry could be a superpower. I liked that the correct response to driving directly at an army of giant carnivorous ostriches is to shout "Merge! Merge!" And really that every single animal in the entire world is able to eat you. I liked the old guy who talks really slow and appreciated everyone's frustration with him talking really slow. He was really funny. The cat burglar did the best job of channeling the other grandpa. I liked the horse's glamour shot coming out of the water. I liked that bluffing actually worked spectacularly well. What I didn't: I feel like maybe if you have a good life and responsibilities like kids and stuff, you should think long and hard about deliberately entering a broken, potentially fatal video game. I was expecting more from the glowing green water, it could really have been a source of many more jokes. I really feel like with the versatility of things that they had in the backpack they really could

Star Wars IX Rise of the Skywalker

What I liked: I liked the light saber battles. No surprise here but I particularly appreciated the coolness of whatever the force projection was. Now the characters weren't limited by being in the same place, they could have light saber fights across the galaxy and bring back souvenirs. This is particularly important in a situation where you have a hard deadline and several hundred years worth of lightspeed travel to get to all the places you need to visit. Not to mention it looked really cool. I liked the cavalry charge. At first I thought that maybe horses need breathable air, gravity, and to not be on something likely moving at hundreds of miles an hour; but then I remembered these are space horses and it was alright. I liked that they caught a sand worm from Dune. Rey continues to learn the force stuff remarkably fast, with no real teacher. So, I am left to wonder, why did we bother training Jedi in the past? Maybe they would have been more effective just figuring things out

Knives out

What I liked: The house. Someone comments that the guy practically lives in a clue board, which appears to be true. There are an absurd number of rooms, all of which can conveniently eavesdrop on each other, and every piece of decor reminds you that this is the location of an absurd, over the top murder mystery. My personal favorite was the multitude of crystal skulls tucked into the background (eat your heart out Indian Jones), the ridiculous knife circle thing, and the creepy pictures. Nana. We don't know how old she is. We don't know how with it she is. But we do know she is amazing. The car chase. If you have read my other reviews you know that I am a sucker for a good car chase. I like them all from Fast and Furious parachuting out of a plane to the Italian Job mini coopers in the subway. This one had great elements and unexpected elements and I thought it was great, not least of all because I was decidedly unimpressed with James Bond's driving. That the main charact