Sean’s movie thoughts

Matt McCoy stars as Preston, a man who has been partially paralyzed in a rock climbing accident that killed his wife. He comes back to his cabin as a form of therapy. (It is not his idea.) He notices odd things happening and it turns out that a monster in the woods is killing people. Preston contacts the cops. However the head cop thinks that Preston is still traumatized by the death of his wife, and ignores Preston’s message. Preston tries to contract the women in the other cabin to warn them. (It is a bachelorette weekend.) This is a good movie, I think it was originally shown on the Sci Fi network or whatever it was called in 2006. It has been restored and some of the special effects have been updated/refreshed. The musical score is good and there are some good actors like Jeffrey Combs and Dee Wallace Stone in small supporting/cameo roles. Matt McCoy is really good in this movie. He might be best known for a supporting role on Seinfeld. The rest of the cast is fine but it is ...

I am not sure what the subtitle means, if it means anything. It sounds kind of nice and I guess it looks better on the poster than Jurassic World II. Maybe Justice Smith needs a new agent. He is a likeable actor, he can do more then he was allowed to do in this movie. It was nice to see him again after Paper Towns. In this sequel, Claire and Owen go back to the island to save the dinosaurs. The volcano is going to explode. They are hired by a guy played by James Cromwell, who probably shot all his scenes in two or three days. (If adds for this movie are showing a lot of Cromwell, they are are being misleading.) Of course the plot is more complicated than that and there are human villains. Musical score is good and the dinosaurs look good. Chris Pratt and Dallas Howard are good. (I am not sure where Pratt’s character Owen learned to fight in between films.) Toby Jones has a supporting role, and it is good to see him. There is a plot point that I am not sure what the point of it ...

Rampage has problems. Three animals are exposed to strange chemicals and become monsters and go on a rampage. The chemicals were designed to make animals bigger and more aggressive. They make  their way to Chicago because of a odd noise that attracts them and makes them even more aggressive. I liked parts of it and I am glad that Jeffery Dean Morgan was on hand for this movie. He seemed to be having fun. If he is doing the same thing he’s doing in the Walking Dead, I don’t care because I don’t watch the walking dead. Dwayne Johnson is supposed to be playing a miserable or hateful person or at least bitter person in this film. (Maybe bitter is the right term.) His character relates more to animals than to people. His performance just did not work for me. It is not terrible but I have seen a lot of cities wrecked on films in the last few years and maybe this is just an average movie. Some movies are good, some are bad, and some are average. Maybe if I re-watch it in six months ...

I miss Roger Ebert. It has been over five years since he died and no film critic has really assumed his role as the most prominent film critic in America. I wonder what he would think of some of the movies being made and how franchises dominate. Franchises were pretty important before he died but franchises seem even more dominant now. Marvel announces like four films at a time or DC/Warner Brothers announces six or seven movies at a time. I like Ebert’s work. Even if I did not agree with his view on a film, I enjoyed how he wrote his reviews. He expressed himself well. His most infamous review is his review of the movie North which he hated. (I think he used the words hate or hated over a dozen times in his review.) Sometimes I wonder what he would think of the decline of the romantic comedy or about his reaction to the third actor to play Spider-man on the big screen.

Get Smart was a TV series in the 1960s that spoofed James Bond. It was created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. It stared Don Adams and Barbara Felton. It used to be on Nick at Night and it might still play on some cable channel. Steve Carell stars as Maxwell Smart, agent of Control. He starts off the film as an analyst but it is promoted to agent after the rest of agents’ identities are exposed. He is a bit of a bumbler. He is teamed with Anne Hathaway’s agent 99. They have a nice chemistry. Dwayne Johnson has a costarring role. Terence Stamp is one of the villains. His organization is called KAOS. He is fun. He treats the people who work for him very poorly and some of the thing he says to them are kind of funny. There is a hulking henchman in the vien of Jaws on hand. This is a fun movie. There are a lot of good jokes and some of the jokes are unexpected. There is a fun dance sequence with Max and a woman at a party. The movie has a cameo from a member of the original show’s cast...

Have you ever heard people talking about a movie and they really like it or love it, and you at most kind of like it? Have you ever looked at film websites and they have list of best comedies since 1990 and you look at the list and think “that movie, are you kidding me?” This is how I feel about Anchorman. People, mostly men, seem to love this movie but I don’t. I don’t hate the movie but if I never see it again, I would be okay with that. I might watch it on some rainy day if I am flipping through the channels and it is on but I don’t plan on seeing it again anytime soon. I am not going buy any new special edition Blu-ray edition of the film. I think Will Ferrel has made better movies and so have Paul Rudd and Steve Carroll. It is not Paul Rudd’s worst movie, hopefully that will remain Halloween VI. (It is pretty bad from what I’ve heard. If I have seen it, I might have only seen it once but that has been at least ten years ago.)

Pacific Rim Uprising is a good movie and I might have liked more on a second viewing. It opens 10 years  after the first movie and the Kaiju have not been back. The son of Stackard Pentecost, Jake, meets a young girl who has built her own Jaeger (robot for fighting Kaiju) and they both get drafted into the Jaeger corps. (Jake was not mentioned in the first film.) Meanwhile a Chinese company is working on drones to make the Jaeger corps obsolete. A rogue Jaeger attacks and it turns out that some Kaiju are coming through the breech. Battles ensue. The human villain is revealed. This movie is better than Independence Day Resurgence. The two films have very similar endings hinting at a storyline for a possible sequel. It seemed better on re-watch. Maybe I expected too much the first time. John Boyega is a likeable hero. Maybe I was too harsh towards Scott Eastwood when I first saw the film. The young recruits seemed likeable but they didn’t get a lot to do. This movie is not a...

It has been a week of conflicting Star Wars movies. One rumor/report is that Lucasfilms has put all stand alone Star Wars movies on hold because of the box office results of Solo. The rumors are that there were plans for at least two more stand alone movies.  Then Lucasfilms released a statement saying that previous report was inaccurate. I am not sure what is true. The site, Collider,that reported the stand alone movies being put on hold has a decent reputation from what I know. The site is not known for printing wild rumors. (There are sites, reportedly, that will print anything even if they know it is not true.) I would be okay with the stand alone movies ending. So would some other people from reactions I have seen online.

There never was a third Journey movie. I haven’t heard anything about one being made or being planned in a long time, so it is probably not going to happen. I guess that is okay but the Journey movies were fun. Maybe I should re-watch them this weekend instead of going to a movie. Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom opens this weekend. Maybe I can skip it or wait until the next week. I like big monsters as much as the next guy but I have an odd feeling about this one. Maybe reviews will help me decide. Tag was pretty good but there were a few plot points that I did not like towards the end of the movie. Overall the movie was worth seeing in theaters. I did not think it was too long but it was almost two hours long. (At least it didn’t have long improv scenes.)  It has been a good year for comedies so far. Maybe I could re-watch Project Alamanac or Last Action Hero soon. Maybe I can figure out why they didn’t work. Last Action Hero might be more fun to dissect.

Billy Zane was really good in the Phantom. For someone best known for playing villains, he was really likeable. It would have been nice to see him return to the role. The movie is fun. Remo Williams is a minor classic. Fred Ward was really likeable in the role and I like the character of Remo. I guess Chiun would have to be played by a Korean actor to avoid charges of white washing. I would have liked to see Ward return as Remo. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was fun. I think a sequel could have been fun. Surely there were other evil wizards in the world for Jay Baruchel's and Nicholas Cage’s characters to fight. It would be nice to see a sequel to Behind the Mask, the Rise of Leslie Vernon. The end credits show that Leslie survived and it could be fun to see the character again. Leslie is probably the most charming/oddly likeable murderer in years. It would be to see a Man of Steel sequel directed and written by someone who actually understands Superman. That doesn’t seem like ...

Comcast has made an offer for the Fox entertainment properties. This complicates the Fox Disney deal, which seemed to be a done deal at one point. The Disney/Fox merger might not happen and maybe that is not a bad thing. Disney is already pretty powerful. They have leveraged their power recently, an example being the conditions theaters had to meet to play the Last Jedi. (Basically they won some concessions from theaters that made the deal better for Disney, not for the theaters.)With the Fox entertainment properties, Disney would be more powerful. The marketplace would go from having six major studios to having five major studios and maybe that is not good for fans. Also would a combined Fox/Disney studio make as many movies as the two studios do now? I don’t think so. After a point the company would be competing against itself. I could be wrong about this but I could also be right. The X-men series has been pretty good at times but it had its ups and downs too. Logan was really...

I like the New Star Trek films. I was not sure of the reboot idea when I first heard it but it worked out. Chris Pine has been very good as Kirk and Zachary  Quinto has been very good as Spock. Karl Urban has been good as Bones. None of the three are doing impressions of the previous actors who made the roles famous but each are a good fit for their characters. Zoe Saldana has been really good as Uhura. (She was let down by the writing of the second film.) John Cho has been good as Sulu and the late Anton Yelchin was good as Chekov but they did not have a lot to do in the second film. I like Simon Pegg as Scotty but maybe not as much as I like some other members of the cast. Of the three films, I think Star Trek Into Darkness is the weakest. It is not terrible but some members of the cast did not feel as involved as they were in the first film and there were a few other script problems. In hindsight it is a bit too much like the Wrath of Kahn. (Also maybe I am missing something...

I am just thinking about Solo, again, and maybe part of the tepid response, for a Star Wars movie, to the movie was people love Harrison Ford as Han Solo, not the character himself. Maybe there is not a separation between the character and the actor for some people. Maybe Han Solo is not James Bond, a role that people seem to accept new actors taking over. There have been 6 James Bonds over the years and each one has his admirers but audiences seem to give each new Bond a chance. Daniel Craig is Bond for now but there will come a time, and maybe soon, when he is not and the series will go on. (I am pretty sure about this.) I guess knowing that people won’t accept another actor as Han Solo is hard to know until you try to replace Harrison Ford as Han Solo. Ford played Han Solo in all five Star Wars movies the character appeared in before Solo and maybe some people had no interest in seeing another actor as Han. I think some person at Lucasfilms should have known or thought of that. ...

Okay, it is rumor time again. There was a rash of rumors about Daniel Craig not making another James Bond movie. Well, he is coming back. Now, the rumors are that Ben Affleck won’t be coming back as Batman. I liked Ben Affleck as Batman, even if I did not like a couple of movies he was in. I’d be good with seeing him play the part again. Rumors are that, at this moment, the Batman solo film will be about a younger Batman and that Ben Affleck won’t be back as Batman in any future Justice League movies, if there are any. The biggest difference between the Batman rumors and the Bond rumors is that Daniel Craig made a lot of comments about not wanting to come back as Bond. Some of the cooments were pretty strong. Affleck has not been as vocal.

Top films seen in theaters so far in 2018 It is June, this seems to be a good time for a list of the best movies seen in theaters so far this year. Black Panther Avengers Infinity War Deadpool 2 Blockers  Upgrade Upgrade being on this list is a bit of a surprise but I really liked it. Maybe I could have replaced it with Ready Player One or Tomb Raider. It has been a good year at the movies so far.

The Incredibles 2 opens this weekend. I hope it will be good. Previews have looked good. Early reviews have been positive. I wonder if I should re-watch the original before watching the new one. It has been a while since I saw the first one. It was really good. I think Toy Story might be the best Pixar movie but the Incredibles is also really good. I don’t think anything else as interesting as Incredibles 2 opens in the next two weeks. Tag might be fun but I have a feeling that it might not work. (I am not sure why though.) Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom might be okay but I don’t think it will be special.

This movie is odd or confused. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as cop Jack Slater, a tough maverick cop. However a kid with a magic movie ticket enters Slater’s latest movie. The kid tells Slater that he is a movie character. This movie doesn’t seen to know what it wants to be. Is it a comedy? Is it an action movie with comedic elements? It is not thrilling enough to be a great action movie and it is not funny enough to be a great, or even good comedy. The basic idea of making fun of movie cliches sounds good. It is not awful or at least it is kind of interesting. This movie was destroyed by Jurassic Park at the box office. Jurassic Park became a franchise but Last Action Hero is an afterthought or a failure to be mocked. Bruce Willis’ film Hudson Hawk might have been a bigger bomb though. Update: I re-watched this film and it is a misfire for sure but I have seen worse. There are some laughs and I liked the last act. Charles Dance is having fun in his role. However it never quite co...

After Anton Yelchin’s death in a bizarre accident, it was announced that he won’t be replaced as Chekov in the next Star Trek movie. I am glad. He was good in the role and I would not envy any actor who would have stepped into the role. Of course, Yelchin had a career outside of Star Trek. He will be missed beyond Star Trek. No one knows (and no one can ever know)what other projects he could have had made or what career path he might have taken. At least his character was more important to the third Star Trek movie than he was to the second one. I like all the new Star Trek movies but some of the crew did not get to shine in Star Trek Into Darkness. Maybe some day someone else will play Chekov in a Star Trek movie or TV episode. Right now the role is vacant and I think that is the right choice.

How much does a bad ending damage a movie? Say you are watching a movie and it is pretty good, maybe even better than that at times, but you dislike or hate the ending. How much does that damage the movie? Can a bad ending make a movie, that was good up to that point, bad? I did not like the ending of Game Night. I still like the movie overall but I don’t like the ending. I think maybe the movie would work better if that ending was changed. I think Game Night might be better than Blockers but Blockers has a better ending. So, does that make Blockers as good as Game Night? If I were giving ratings to movies, would the ending of Game Night cause me to give the movie a lower rating? Maybe. I think when I do my list of ten best movies seen this year that I will still consider Game Night. I don’t mean to pick on Game Night. It is just the example that comes to mind first right now. There have over good movies with bad endings. I remember not liking the ending of True Lies but I haven’...

This is Anton Yelchin’s last film. He has a supporting role as a drug dealer. He was good. It is hard not to think about this being his last film now. (The film was dedicated to him.) Sort like it will be hard to see the next Star Trek movie without noticing his absence. This film is about two girls and their odd friendship and a murder. Lily(Anya Taylor-Joy)hates her step father, who doesn’t seem to have any warmth. Amanda (Olivia Cooke) is an old friend but Amanda claims to have no feelings. Amanda is very blunt and direct. As the film continues, it is revealed that Lily might have her own emotional problems. Maybe friendship is the wrong word for their relationship. It is interesting to watch their relationship progress though. At first I was not aware that the girls had been friends when they were younger but had grown apart. This film’s strength is in the performances. Taylor-Joy and Cooke are both very good. Taylor-Joy came to notice after the Witch and Split. I first notic...

I think I might want to see the Bumblebee movie. I saw the first two Transformers movies and then skipped the rest. I liked the first one well enough but the second one was a bit of a chore.  (I am not sure but that might been the movie that inspired my feelings about too much comic relief.) Well, the trailer for the Bumblebee movie came out and it actually looks interesting. I am surprised. I was making jokes or snide remarks about this movie. “Bumblebee is getting his own movie because, as you know, we all love Bumblebee.” The trailer looked good. Maybe having a teenage girl in the lead role makes the film seem different than the other Transformers movies. Travis Knight directs this movie. He might be best known for directing Kubo and the Two Strings. This is his first film in the franchise and this his first live action movie. (This is the first film in the franchise not directed by Michael Bay.)Hailee Stenfeld has the lead role. She is usually good. So I am considering go...

The Debt Collector is the latest film staring Scott Adkins. He plays a man named French who out of desperation becomes a debt collector for the mob. (His gym is failing.) Adkins gets to use his British accent in this one. French gets paired with a former boxer named Sue (Louis Mandylor). Sue has a classic car from 1971 and the pair collect money and give warnings to people. They get a big job tracking down a former bar manager but something about the job doesn’t feel right. It is fun. The fights are good. Adkins fights guys who are big enough to throw him around and through at least one wall. Adkins and Mandylor make a good buddy pairing. It is not great but it is worth seeing. I put a link to another review below. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-capsule-the-debt-collector-review-2018053o-20180530-story.html

Instead of remaking movies that were good or making new movies about King Arthur or Robin Hood, maybe it would be better to remake movies that did not quite work out. Find a movie that had a good premise and a good cast but didn’t quite jell and remake it. Project Alamanac, for example, did not quite work out. This is the story of a group of friends who build a time machine and use it. (A father of two of the friends designed it and left instructions on how to finish it.) At first time travel is fun. Then complications develop and unexpected things happen, most of them bad. It is not a bad movie but I don’t think it works completely. The cast is pretty good. Maybe a remake could work. I liked the film but thought it was a little slow to get started. The time travel rules were inconsistent. Maybe a remake could fix these issues. A better title would be nice too.

The Dirty Harry series stared Clint Eastwood as maverick cop Harry Callahan working in San Francisco. Harry was not overly concerned with the rights of criminals and he was usually threatened with suspension at some point during a film. There are five films in the series and recently I re-watched a few. The original Dirty Harry came out in 1971and featured a villain similar to the Zodiac killer. The movie, like the original Death Wish, was a response to the rise in crime and also a feeling that criminals had too many rights. At one point Harry is told he violated the suspect’s rights and Harry responded “What about the victim’s rights?” These are good films and even the last film the Dead Pool is pretty good. Harry doesn’t get a lot of character development over the series and his background is not explored. He has a different partner in each film. My favorite film in the series might the Enforcer where Tyne Daly was his partner. I have not seen Sudden Impact in a long time. San ...

Very soon afrer I bought this on blu-ray, it poped up on Netflix. Perhaps that was a sign that I did not need to buy it. Too late now, heh. This is the 6th movie in the Tremors franchise. Micahael Gross returns as Burt Gumer, the survivalist and anti-government person. He has fought the monsters called Grabboids several times and is now an expert on them. (Grabboids are huge snake like monsters that live underground.)His associate and possible long lost son, Travis,is played by Jaime Kennedy. They make a nice buddy pairing. Grabboids are in Canada near a research facility. They are not known for dwelling in cold climates. Burt and Travis go to investigate and kill the Grabboids. One of the people working at the research facility is the daughter of a pair of Burt’s friends. The Grabboids at least look pretty good. If you have Netflix and have fond memories of the original Tremors, this is worth checking out. Gross seems to have be having fun. Kennedy isn’t bad but the movie overal...

Upgrade is good. It is a bit of a mix of science fiction and horror. In some near future year, technology has increased to the point self driving cars are widely used and digital printers might be able to make food.(That was in a dream sequence but still counts, I think.) Our hero is Grey Trace (played by Logan Marshall-Green) and after he is paralyzed in an attack that leaves his wife dead, he gets a computer chip called STEM that allows him to walk again. However that is not all the chip allows and the chip starts to talk to Grey. Grey and STEM start to hunt down the men who killed Grey’s wife and STEM can take control of Grey’s body. (A lot, if not all, of this is revealed in trailers.) With STEM in control, Grey becomes nearly superhuman. I thought this was pretty good. Logan Marshall-Green was really good in the lead role. I am not sure if I had seen him in another film but I am interested in seeing him in another. It is a pretty violent film. Leigh Whannell wrote and direct...

Maybe releasing a new Star Wars movie every year is not a great idea. Maybe there is something to releasing a Star Wars movie every other year or once every three years. Also maybe it is good for the franchise to take a few years off. This is just my opinion and it is strongly influenced by my feelings about the Solo movie. (Short note, I didn’t find the movie compelling or at least there were stretches of the film that were dull.)If I liked that movie more maybe I would not be having these thoughts. We will see what happens after the failure of Solo. Maybe Lucasfilms will start to slow down. Maybe they won’t. Solo is a failure largely because of the budget which expanded because of the reshooting. I don’t have budget figures but reports are that 70 percent of the movie was reshot or shot after Ron Howard came on as director. Hopefully no other movie in the franchise will require such lengthy reshooting. I am not comparing Star Wars movies to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I thin...

Melissa McCarthy’s Life of the Party movie was compared to the classic Back to School (both are about older people who go to college) and I started to think about Back to School. I think Back to School might really be a classic. I think there are three reasons Back to School holds up. One is Dangerfeild was never better in a lead role than he was as Thornton Mellon. He is really likeable in the role but there is some sadness in the role too. Another reason the movie holds up is there is a strong conflict between Thornton and one of his professors. Thornton bought his way into college and a business professor resents that. Thornton thinks the business professor is naive or too idealistic  and unwisely says so at times. This increases the conflict between the two. The relationship Thornton has with his son, Jason, is the third reason the movie holds up.  Thornton and Jason are a bit estranged at the start of the movie and their relationship develops over the movie. Back ...