Tag: movies

Before Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation, the theatre showed the trailer for the next James Bond movie, Spectre. In it, Bond is chasing after a shadow organization bent on taking out MI-6. Spectre is just one charismatic person, the uber Bond villain.

As I watched Mission Impossible, I had the distinct impression that I was watching the James Bond movie.

Mission Impossible had a charismatic bad guy running a shadow organization bent on taking down IMF. No need to watch the next James Bond. Catch this instead.

This installment of the Mission Impossible films rolled all the previous Mission Impossible movies into one. It had the back-stabbing of the first installment, the boring-ness of the second, a nod to the rabbit’s foot in the third, and Simon Pegg as Benjie, the comic relief from the previous one. It should’ve been awesome. It wasn’t. This installment lacked the propulsive force of the previous two and returned back to the sneaky capers of the first two. In fact, it felt like the first Mission Impossible film — the intrigues was more important than the action pieces.

Cruise was running in this one. He also had his stunt hanging on the plane. Good, but not the best. The girl was a Bond girl. She was very competent. I hope she shows up in the next one.

Watch it, but it will be better on FXX.

3 of 5 stars.

Ant-Man is the beginning of Marvel Cinematic Universe’s end.

Not really. I’m just making that up because I have nothing better to write in this blog post.

It’s been over two weeks since I saw this. I liked it at the time. I still do like it, but it ain’t the best summer movie.

I liked Paul Rudd. I liked Michael Douglas. I thought that Evangeline Lilly was ill used even after she was granted the Wasp costume. (SPOILER ALERT!) I thought Michael Peña was the best thing of this movie. They need more of that criminal group. In fact, that looked to be the stuff left over when Edgar Wright left the movie in a huff.

At least, it’s not Fantastic Four.

3 of 5 stars.

Dope reminds me of the early 90s. Not because the protagonist was a 90s hip-hop loving nerd, but because the movie felt like it was made by a black director of the new school 90s auteurs.

It’s worth seeing, but only for the N.E.R.D. culture.

3 of 5 stars.

Was everyone dumb in Jurassic World? Chris Pratt and his horde of velociraptors? The head of the park, her heels, and her fear of kids? Her underling acting babysitter? Those kids! Gaah! Those kids: let’s roll out of bounds! THOSE KIDS? The park visitors? The control room duo?

Gaah! Everyone was dumb! Including me to have watched this film and expected something else.

I wanted this to be rated R so that we could’ve gotten more gore. I wanted to see the fleeing victims ripped to shreds. I wanted to see the dumb park wranglers get ripped to shreds. I wanted to see THOSE KIDS ripped to shreds. I wanted mayhem level of blood on the screen. But I didn’t get it.

This was epitome of mindless summer entertainment. Don’t be fooled.

2 of 5 stars

I wish the guys who did The World’s End, Hot Fuzz, and Shaun of the Dead had done Spy, because it would’ve been funnier and more action packed. It was fun and funny, but it could’ve used satire a bit to make fun of the spy movie genre. It was flat in points, and its tone was mixed through the movie. Was it supposedly a satire or was it a real action movie? Who knows? That’s why you don’t even remember that it was in the theatre just last month.

Hunh? Where’d it go? Here! On this blog post which I done wrote a few weeks after I had watched it.

3 of 5 stars.

It should’ve starred Simon Pegg.

Tomorrowland continues Brad Bird’s infatuation with Specials. The spunky girl protagonist is special. The young George Clooney is special. House is special. Only special people have the wherewithal to make the world a better place. Yeah, that message is tired and needs to be retired.

With that said, I enjoyed the movie. It may not be a good one, but its earnestness with trying to make the future a better place is nice to have in this day and age. Tomorrowland is future and hopeful.

Also, CG is bogus after you have seen Mad Max: Fury Road. The first jet pack flying seen? Its not as shiny and chrome as actual War Boys on poles catapulting after cars. CG? THhhphhhtttt!

3 of 5 stars.

When first announced, I thought Mad Max: Fury Road was going to be a waste of time. Do we need to go down that road once more? Mel Gibsons not Max. This rehash of 80s movies is getting out of hand. Why another one?

YEAH! I was wrong.

It was awesome. The best action movie of the millennia. I’ve seen it twice. I want to see it again in 3D!

Don’t miss it. It makes all other action films with CGI look like films done inside a computer. Mad Max: Fury Road brings back live filmed stunts. There were CGI shots, but the majority was cars crashing into cars. It just made the movie.

5 of 5 stars.

If you wanted to see an AI built from the hubris of man, you can watch The Avengers: Age of Ultron. You could also watch Ex Machina. This AI was just as hell bent on destruction of a more personal kind.

The film, for those who haven’t seen it which is all of you, is about a programmer sent to his boss’s remote home to conduct a ‘Turing Test’ on a robot to see how human she is. Ava, the robot, has a woman’s face and hands, but the rest is a sleek, sexy android. Data has nothing on her. She was built by a programmer modeled on a mishmash of Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and the founders of Google. His company is also a mishmash of those actual programmer’s companies: Facebook, Microsoft, and Google.

The worker was chosen as being the best in the company. It was a test of who was the alpha programmer. It really was the boss who was the alpha. He played his underling, but played himself into a corner.

I thought this was sly. I thought the robot was being naive. She was really being human — complicated, conniving. I really wondered if we were all being played.

3 of 5 stars.