Terrible Plan! Movie Reviews

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 p...

What I liked: There was a lot to like about this movie, mostly owing to the fact that it starred a lot of dinosaurs. I mean we got dinosaurs and a volcano, what else could you want in life? I liked the variety of dinosaurs that we got to see. There was the dinosaur with a nose the perfect size to fit in a fire escape. There was the dinosaur that seemed to be living in a sealed tunnel. There was the dinosaur that plays possum and the dinosaur that is brand new and some dinosaurs from Australia. I really liked the scene with the dinosaurs running from the volcano. I kind of wish this was the whole movie. The lava was fast, the dinosaurs were fast, and shockingly the people were just as fast. I was particularly impressed that while running from lava, the dinosaurs took the time to try to eat the people and each other. It was also fortunate that the clouds of ash did not instantly Pompeii the dinosaurs. The dinosaur evacuation was a very impressive feat. I really want to know how they got ...

What I liked: Jack Jack. Edna Mode. Jack Jack and Edna Mode. Pretty much anytime one or both of those characters are on screen it is awesome. I liked the interdimensional baby monitor and the motorcycle, I can't say it looked comfortable but it was pretty cool. Stretchy superheroes have never been my favorite. I don't know of anyone when we play the "what super power would you have?" game who says they want to be super stretchy. But given that, Elastagirl does an admirable job at bad guy beating. It was fun to have the theme songs in the credits. The Incredobile was fun. 2018 has been a good year for raccoons on the silver screen. There were raccoons in quiet place. A raccoon features in the most recent Avengers film. Now we have a show stealing raccoon in Incredibles. I'm not sure if I should tell the talented raccoons I know to send in audition tapes or encourage them to go to community college because the industry is saturated. What I didn't: Ok, we need ...

What I liked: I really liked the opening play and the drummers. I liked that the greatest ambition of the evil conspiracy was to eliminate all dogs from Japan and that the main force uncovering the conspiracy was a middle school newspaper. I liked the approaches to science and medicine especially the analysis equipment. And that when dogs take medicine they turn transparent so we can directly observe systemic delivery. I found the sushi making entertaining. The whole film is full of clever and entertaining word play. I liked the military issue teeth, the giant trash compactor, and the evil robot dogs. I also liked that the dog pack was a majority rules democracy. What I didn't: Why was the henchman a hulking zombie? I'm not sure how I feel about the the kid's headset and pretty sure how I feel about his head injury. I don't love the foreign exchange student. In contrast to the dog pack, I have concerns about the city's political system. Who should watch this? ...

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 ...

What I liked: This is an inspiring story. Not, as one might imagine from the title and cover art, in an early 20th century "We bought a zoo" kind of way or even a look at all these cute zoo animals kind of way. It is inspiring in a Schindler's List kind of way, the story of a Polish family who used their destroyed zoo as a cover to smuggle more than 300 Jews out of the Warsaw ghetto. This is similar in scale to the efforts of the ten Boom family and about 1/4 the scale of Schindler's operation. But it this endeavor, in addition to hiding the Jews and passing them on to other safe houses, included a massive smuggling operation to extract them from the ghetto. The characters make courageous decisions in terrible terrible circumstances. Clearly the main characters are brave and mastermind an elaborate rescue operation, but all of the side characters ring true too. I don't know if the characters represent individuals or are composites but the film did an excellent j...

What I liked: This is a solid monster movie. So if you have been looking for the next Creature from the Black Lagoon, where it takes the super fast, super perceptive, super strong monster an hour and a half to eat three people and a raccoon, look no further. This film does an excellent job of playing on stress. The best comparison I can make is to a syllabus. You know exactly what is coming and exactly how it will happen, but you have no choice but wait the entire semester for it to happen. This makes normal things, like going up and down stairs, stressful. It also makes you wish the monsters would just hurry up already. Because the monsters have highly acute hearing the main characters communicate predominantly in sign language. The actress who plays the deaf daughter is actually deaf which is pretty cool. Several parents I know will feel vindicated to learn that noisy toys are the ultimate downfall in the movie. You have been right all along. Similarly, I have spent enough time on ...