Sean’s movie thoughts

Master Z Ip Man Legacy is good. Max Zheng stars as his character Cheung Tin Chi from Ip Man 3 and he wants to live a quiet life. He tries but he has run ins with a crime family and needs to fight back. There is a British criminal too. Max Zhang is good in this. He was also good in the latest Escape Plan movie and I think he has another movie coming to home video next month. I think I would like to see him play this character again. He is really good in the fight scenes and good in the quieter moments. Dave Bautista plays the villain, which the trailer reveals (this is not a spoiler) and Tony Jaa has a few scenes. Both are good here. Michelle Yeoh has a supporting role as the head of a crime family who wants to move the family into legitimate business. (If anyone tries to convince you to see this because it is a Tony Jaa movie, it is not.) Yeoh’s character wanting to move away from crime is similar to Zheng’s character wanting to leave his past behind. I thought that was nice. Fig...

The Wedding Dress is a corny TV movie staring Neil Patrick Harris. I like the occasional corny made for TV movie. I like Neil Patrick Harris. So, I am obviously the target audience for this. This movie features a wedding dress that moves in and out of people’s lives. (The dress is not alive or cursed or anything. That would be a different movie.) The dress is from the World War II era and it is inherited by Neil Patrick’s character Travis. This is a TV movie from 2001 and I have seen it before but not in a long time. I think I used to catch it on cable when the movie shifted to Margot Colin and Peter Wingfield’s story. (I think I didn’t see the first twenty or so minutes until I saw the film for the third or fourth time.)I think this is one of the few things I have seen him in besides Highlander the series. The performances are good, the stories are sweet, and it is a short movie. If I really examined the coincidences that drive the plot, I would say how contrived some (most) of th...

“I like Star Wars” is a different sentence than “I am a Star Wars fan.” The second sentence, from some people, means the franchise means a lot to them. In some cases it means too much. Star Wars can be something you enjoy but it is not part of your identity. At least it should not be. I have looked at some videos and some blog postings and web pages. It looks to me some people have taken Star Wars and made it too important to them. Sad music is for funerals and doomed romance movies, not a video about why you are not going to a movie. Losing interest in a franchise might be disappointing but using sad music is a step too fair. Also what is the big deal about seeing a movie opening day? Some guy said he quit a job because he could not get a day off to go to a Star Wars movie opening day. That seems dumb. See the movie when you can and if it is a few days after opening day, that should be okay. It is one thing to be passionate about a film series but at the end of the day, it is no...

This animated movie is inspired by the popular story line from a few years back. A mysterious new villain Hush is out to get Batman and seems to know Batman's secrets. Batman fights back and tries to determine who this villain is. This is good, not great. I think it moved at a good pace and I liked how involved Catwoman was in the story. There are changes from the original story line and at least one major plot point was dropped. I liked the changes and felt they worked for the adaptation. (I am avoiding spoilers.) The has a lot of the same voice actors that have been playing these characters for a while. It is a pretty good voice cast. Peyton List was Batgirl, which was a surprise (she was recently in Cobra Kai). The other actress named Peyton List played Posion Ivy. That is kind of odd. It could have used a bit more Damian Wayne. He had just a cameo. Damian is a character who either is hard to write well or a character who has become more likeable/relatable over the years. ...

I expected more Lana Condor than this movie delivered.  She plays Lexi and she is likable but I thought she would have a larger part in this movie. I might have liked this film more if she did. Maybe I need to re-watch the trailer to see if the trailer promised more Lana Condor than the film delivered. This film is about a bunch of twenty something friends in a small town in California. There is not really a strong plot or central storyline. Some of the friends are dating or have dated or want to date. There is an African American friend named Luke who only gives advice, which is weird in 2019. (This is not to say I disliked Luke or his actor.) The cast is pretty good. Victoria Justice has a role. Analeigh Tipton also has a role. It was nice to see her again, it has been a while.  (She had a short lived TV show a few years ago.) Justin Chatwhin has a role. I am not sure where I have have seen him before this but I think I have seen him somewhere.  I don’t regr...

Tough Turf is a 1980s movie with James Spader and Robert Downey Jr. Maybe it is not good but I kind of liked it. I might be blinded by nostalgia. Spader plays a new student named Morgan at a LA high school. He is considered a troublemaker and his relationship with his mother is strained. In a better movie, this would be explored more and so would his relationship with his older brother. Morgan runs afoul of some goons. Downey plays Morgan’s new friend Jimmy. They are fun together. Morgan falls for Frankie (Kim Richards) the girlfriend of the head goon. He pursues her. There is a scene where he is singing to her and that was kind of fun. The goons remain and complicate this would be romance. Especially because head goon Nick thinks that Frankie belongs to him. I think that Nick thinks he loves Frankie. Roger Ebert did not care for it. He found Spader too laid back and said he barely seems to be alive. He also said that Richards’ hair was lovely and often the only thing on scree...

I have never seen this movie before and I don't know what the film's reputation is. Julian Sands did not return as the warlock. Bruce Payne takes over. Ashley Lawrence (from Hellraiser) stars as Kris who inherits an old house. Kris is adopted and she is hoping  to find some things to give her a connection to her biological family. She and her friends go to the old house and a man claiming to be an architecture comes by to see the house. He is the Warlock. He wants to claim Kris as a bride but for Satan but he needs or wants her friends to forsake her.  He uses his magic and his cleverness to break them. That is new to the series. There are flashbacks to the 1600s establishing that the Warlock's has been around for a long time. This is good. It is really different from the first two films in the series but Payne is good as the Warlock and Ashley Lawrence was good too. Payne is more subtle or less dramatic than Sands but they are not playing the same character. (I don’t...

Batman and Robin is a bad movie. (The original four Batman movies came out again on physical media to celebrate an anniversary. Some madness took over me and I watched this one.)Sometimes I watch a movie I have not seen in a while or a movie with a bad reputation, and it turns out the movie is better than I remembered or it is not as bad as its reputation. This is not one of those times. This film is bad. Maybe the writers and director were going for a campy feel like the old TV show. It did not work. Set design is the only thing in the movie that works. Even that is overdone at times. George Clooney has talent but he was not a good Batman. I am not sure if it was just the script or the direction but something seems off. He never played another superhero after this film. Chris O’Donnell did not fare much better. Alicia Silverstone is not terrible but she was not good either. She never tried another action or superhero movie after this one (unless I am forgetting something). I am ...

I got a copy of John Woo’s Heroes Shed No Tears (HSNT). It was the film before his breakout hit A Better Tomorrow. Heroes Shed No Tears is not terrible but having seen it (about half of it before I lost interest), I understand why A Better Tomorrow was his break out film. I might loan HSNT later to a friend to get another opinion. I might try it again in a few months but I liked the article/booklet about the film. Double Impact is as good as I remembered. Jean Claude Van Damme plays identical twins but they have different enough hairstyles so it is obvious which twin is which. There was more gun action than usual for a Van Damme movie. It might be one of Van Damme’s best films. The action is good, the supporting cast is decent and it was good to see Bolo Young as a henchman. There was a scene where Alex (Van Damme) slaps his girlfriend and even though he was drunk, I don’t remember him apologizing later.  I think that scene would be done differently today. There are no truth in...

I think it would be okay if the traumatic car crash in the first act is not repeated for a while. It was in two movies this year and I already feel that was too many. In 2012 there were three or four movies where the villain wanted to be caught and I think that cliche has not shown up a lot since then. I have been to at least fourteen movies this year and only regret going to three. That is not bad. The bad three were Hellboy, Glass, and Men in Black International. Men in Black International was more disappointing (or really average) than terrible. This year had a movie with an opening so bad/misguided that it really hurt the film. Then there was a film with a ending act so bad that it made a promising movie fall apart. Then there was a movie watered down by its producer. Top Five movies seen in theaters 2019 Avengers Endgame Fighting. With My Family Godzilla King of the Monsters Happy Death Day 2U  Spider-man Far from Home Notable movies I skipped Aladdin The ...

Peter Parker (Tom Holland) aka Spider-man is going to Europe as part of a class trip. He wants to get closer to MJ (Zendaya). He also is struggling with the idea that people expect someone, maybe him, to step up as the new Iron Man. At the same time mysterious elementary monsters are attacking and a new hero named Mysterio(Jake Gyllenhaal) is on hand. (I will not go into more detail about the plot.) There are some nice things going on here and it might have nice if the whole movie had been about the field trip. (This was suggested by Christy Lemire on Breakfast All Day.) I guess no one would buy tickets for that movie. Although Peter’s Spdier-man duties interfering with his enjoyment of the field trip is something true to the spirit of the comics. The cast is good. Jake Gyllenhaal was rumored to take over for Tobey Maguire if Tobey had left the role. So it is nice to see him in a Spider-man movie now. Tom Holland is good as Peter/Spider-man and I think he has been since he star...