Spoilers and Such. Yet another post apocalyptic movie about what bastards humans are for destroying the world. But unlike such uplifting films as The Road Warrior, there is no hope left for life on earth. So we have to send out a team of intrepid explorers to find a new world for us to ruin. Interstellar is like a lot of recent films. It has a mostly all star cast, amazing visual effects, a few tear jerker moments and a plot that makes no damned sense at all. The characters spend a lot of time talking about Relativity and Gravity…
Category: movie review
The Giver
Spoilers and such. Yet another story of a future utopia/dystopia where a handful of disgruntled people who know the truth want to bring it all to an end. As usual in the past few years, the hero here is a precocious teenager and the villain is an old person. But there is an old person who is sort of a hero as well, as with all of these kinds of films, it’s up for debate whether or not destroying the world is a good idea. Or if, in fact, there are any heroes here. In Book of Eli, it was…
The Normal Heart
About thirty years or so ago, gay men defined their very existence by fucking anything that moved. A lot of these people were also major league assholes, another defining trait of the times. And yet, when they started dropping like flies, they were honestly shocked that no one gave a damn. They were equally shocked when it was suggested that maybe it might be a good idea to keep it in their pants for a while. In the end, countless gays decided they would rather die than give up sex. The Normal Heart tells the story of one man who…
Guardians of the Galaxy
Spoilers and such We start off with a moody kid in 1988 listening to a Walkman as his mother dies in a room nearby. He goes outside for a cry and is taken up by a very large spaceship. 26 years go by and we meet our hero on a deserted planet where he is doing a bit of looting and dancing to some classic rock. We can assume that he’s been doing this sort of thing for a while. He steals a shiny metal orb and kills a number of people who try to stop him. He calls himself…
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Featuring an all star cast and a wonderful story, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a beautiful film. It brought to mind Amélie with its strong use of color and costume and brilliant set dressing. It was a bit of nostalgia wrapped up with a bow. A visit to a world that is gone, and perhaps, a world that never existed in the first place. We do a bit of hopping about in time and slip easily into the narrative of one person after another. How one came to be here or there and own this or that. How fate intervened…
Edge of Tomorrow
Tom Cruise is a smiling happy PR man in the opening scenes of Edge of Tomorrow. He’s in the army, but he’s not a soldier. His job is to get people to sign up for the Big Push to beat back the alien invaders. This is one of the weakest aspects of the story. Europe has fallen to an alien invasion and the rest of the world won’t be far behind, do you really need some smiling recruiting officer to get people to join the fight? Tom is smiling and happy as he meets up with the Commander of the…
A Dangerous Method
The story of Sabina Spielrein, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung and the birth of the talking method of dealing with mental instability. Jung is doing his best to follow Freud’s methods, but finds them too restrictive. Still, he is having some luck with his patients, and this is where Sabina comes into the story. She had an abusive father and she came to like the abuse. Jung and Sabina start out as Patient and Doctor, but this soon enough changes into Dominant and Submissive. Jung is a bit concerned about Sabina’s desire to be beaten and they eventually end the…
Godzilla
Spoilers– The new [easyazon_link identifier=”B00KG2SXII” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Godzilla[/easyazon_link] starts with the opening credits being redacted. This was a cute bit of business where lines were blocked out as we watched. Then we see a mine where Something has hatched and hightailed it out of there. We soon find Bryan Cranston, a man who works at a nuclear power plant, trying to figure out what is going on. Soon disaster strikes and Bryan’s wife dies because she didn’t run fast enough to escape the fallout from the reactor breach. Bryan is bummed out. Flash forward fifteen years. So, a lot of nothing…
Monument Men
Sixty years ago people were not as interested in art as they could be. Well, except for the Nazis, who were kind of obsessed with the stuff. Our heroes are men who work for the US Army and are trying to recapture the artwork taken by the Nazis. Several times the leader of the Monument Men is asked why he cares about this stuff, men are dying, so what if some old painting or sculpture is lost or destroyed? It’s a question key to the time period of the film and one that is all but impossible for the modern…
Godzilla King of the Monsters
I grew up watching Godzilla movies. My favorites were the terrible ones where he fought King Kong and a robot Godzilla. The original Godzilla was kind of serious. Well, as serious as a story about a thirty story tall monster can be. 1954’s Godzilla King of the Monsters was a strange movie. Watching it now I can easily see the countless times Raymond Burr was wedged into the story and doubles were used for the actors in the original film. These are all shots with Raymond facing the camera and whoever he’s talking to has their back to the camera.…