Terrible Plan! Movie Reviews

What I liked: The battle of Dunkirk is an amazing story of both strategic failing and civilian courage. I liked seeing the snapshots of soldiers on the beach, pilots, officers, and civilian boaters. The main thing this movie did well was capture the urgency and desperation of the situation. A lot of this was achieved by some pretty impressive sound engineering. If you liked the sounds in Inception (not the music part, just the BAAAAAAAM BAAAAAAAAM BAAAAAAM part) then you will love the sound effects in Dunkirk. I liked the effective building to the climax there was a palpable release of tension when the boats appear. I also liked the ending which was the Churchhill speech about "we shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them on the landing grounds..." It was a good reminder that this is just the very beginning of a long and terrible war and that the courage and resourcefulness demonstrated in the movie is pattern that persisted throughout the rest of the war. What I...

What I liked: Of the three attempts at the Spiderman franchise in my life this is the best. My favorite things about Spiderman from his brief appearance in Civil War remained true in this movie too. Spiderman is a doofy highschool kid. He is super excited about having super powers (Ha!) and about getting to be on a super team and shows the remarkable lack of judgement that we all recognize and love in 14 year olds. He loves science bowl and builds a giant lego death star with his best friend and has to get rides everywhere. While other superheroes make appearances it doesn't seem too unreasonable that they don't immediately intervene and save Spiderman from his teenage self. The problems and villians that he faces are bite sized (No he isn't fighting an army of bagel bites and pizza bites, though every teenager I have ever met has all the superpowers necessary to vanquish that particular foe). He is still learning not just how to use his super powers and super suit but al...

What I liked: Baby Groot is the best thing about this movies. If you have seen the trailer with the extended conversation between Rocket the raccoon and baby Groot about when to push the detonation button, you have seen the best of the movie and if you're pressed for time, can probably leave it at that. If you have more time you could expand your viewing to include the opening fight scene, with some pretty awesome alien smashing action, rainbows, and classic rock music, and the concluding fight scene, which involves baby Groot, explosions, and Pacman. If you really want to branch out you can watch a fight scene in the middle that mostly involves about 100 mercenaries being beaten by a raccoon in the woods. I liked that Rocky has moved on from his boxing career to being an intergalactic criminal, it really seems like a step up. I predict that in the next movie he will be the underdog in a boxing match with an alien and will make an incredible comeback to win. I liked that the bad ...

What I liked: For a movie based on what is in essence a fictional encyclopedia, this movie has a surprising amount of plot. Not great plot, but more than I usually get from reading an alphabetical reference book. I liked the dopey sidekick, his facial expressions were great and he was the only one who acknowledged that what happening on screen was not actually normal. I liked that the president led the tiny army of US wizards to their tiny battle in a subway. So as military victories go, this was not one for the history books, for many reasons. But it did lend more meaning to the phrase Commander in Chief. I felt like Dr Who was once again a bow tie wearing socially awkward guy who lives in a box that is bigger on the inside. Some of the creatures were cool but the CGI didn't quite make them alive. I liked the sloth monkey, I don't really know who it was or what it was doing but I would support a slothmonkey planet of the apes crossover. I like that the guy from SWAT has fina...

What I liked: There were lots of things to like. I like the Amazons. I like that they jump off cliffs and do flips and shoot 5 arrows at once. It does become rapidly apparent that they should upgrade their arsenal but doing flips with a mini gun is a) not a cool looking as doing flips with a sword and b) pretty dangerous. That's probably why the Terminator and the Punisher don't do flips. They just stand there. And they don't have fun split skirts. Yet. Wonder Woman has some pretty awesome fight scenes. My personal favorite involves her taking down a tank. The one at the end is bigger but the tank is cooler. I like the way they used her lasso of truth. It is a pretty effective interrogation tool but also quite handy in a fight and it doesn't look too cheesy. But possibly better than Wonder Woman's awesome fight scenes is her character. She is full of idealism and hope. The recent trend with superheroes is to humanize them by giving them massive character flaws. Wo...

What I liked: By far the best part of this movie is the zombie sharks. Undead vengeful pirates? I've seen those before. At the rate this franchise burns through them I think they must have gotten them at a wholesale closeout bargain. But zombie sharks, those are new. If they didn't smell so bad I bet more people would use them. I also liked the ghost pirate ship that ate other ships. It kind of looked exactly like this bug. I was impressed by the structural integrity of the bank at the beginning. Clearly the foundation was poorly constructed but whoever was responsible for the walls did a phenomenal job. I liked the visuals of the island of stars. There was a scene involving a revolving guillotine which had some funny imagery. Admittedly nothing about that sentence sounds amusing, but just trust me. What I didn't: I went to see this movie with friends and had pretty low expectations for the 5th installment of a film franchise based on a 15 minute ride. My low expectatio...

What I liked: This was a great movie. The message is inspiring and important. The characters are delightful, more so because they are real people who accomplished real important things. They were relateable. All of the kids were adorable. Unlike Imitation Game which came across as a one man program, I felt like this movie did a good job of capturing the immensity of the efforts depicted: the space program and the civil rights movement. I laughed many times. I was touched by some of the moments. I unexpectedly found myself trying to explain the 1960's, segregation, and the civil rights movement in whispers to my Chinese roommate. This both emphasized the absurdity of the segregation laws and was a little unnerving. What I didn't: We got to the theater a little late so the only seats were in the front row. I wouldn't recommend watching it IMAX style. Once again this fits in the category of things that really never should have happene d so obviously I didn't like the pe...