Sean’s movie thoughts

A friend made me a new logo for my film podcast . It is also called Sean's Movie Thoughts (it seemed like  good at the time to use the same title). If you like this blog, maybe you might want to try the podcast. That was nice of my friend. I have not gotten permission to use his name in this post but I did thank him.   

Britney Runs a Marathon is supposed to be pretty good. Jillian Bell stars as Britney and Bell gets to show a more dramatic turn in this movie. I hope it will open in a theater near me soon. I am not a huge fan of Bell but I have seen some things with her, it could be interesting to see her be dramatic. Apparently Terminator Dark Fate is supposed to be the first of a new trilogy.  So were the last two Terminator movies. Why? I guess can guess why (money) but maybe it would be okay to make the best Terminator movie you can and then if it hits figure out a sequel. I’d like to give this film a fair chance but I’ve been burned by the last two or three films in this series. Maybe I am not talking about films with enough people but the number of website articles about Terminator Dark Fate seems high for the level of interest in it I’ve observed. I think I said this before but I wonder at times if the film websites are just guessing about how much interest there is in an upcoming film....

Aladdin (2019) is decent. The original cartoon is a classic but this live action remake is pretty good. At least one of the songs was updated slightly. Will Smith is good as the Genie. He is not doing a Robin Williams impression, which is a good choice. Naomi Scott is good as Princess Jasmine and she gets her own song. She is in the new Charlie’s Angels coming out in November, so this could be a big year for her. I liked the actors who played Aladdin and Jafar. The original animated film is better than this but I enjoyed this. The songs are better in the original. I liked Will Smith in this role. It is not as good as the animated classic but it was worth seeing.

Rookie of the Year is a good comedy about a 12 year old boy named Henry who gains the ability to pitch like a big league pitcher. He joins the Chicago Cubs.  Thomas Ian Nicholas stars as Henry (this was in his pre-American Pie days). Yes this is silly but the Major League movies were silly too.This might on par with those films. The movie loves baseball but I don't think it overly romanticizes the game. There is a part when a character tells Henry not to take the game too seriously because one day your talent will be gone. The performances are good and the movie is corny.  Gary Busey played an older pitcher recovering from surgery. John Candy has a role as a sportscaster. It was nice to see him. There was another movie about a kid joining a Major League Baseball team called Little Big League. Maybe that might be worth seeing again.

Max Zhang is a rogue cop in this movie. He is looking into some gold smuggling, I am seeing a lot of Max lately, he was in Master Z Ip Man Legacy and the third Escape Plan film. (It was good to see him in that film because he made up for how little Dave Bautista is in it.) I guess I am becoming a fan. This is good. There are some very good fight scenes. There is a really nice fight scene on a boat during a storm. There are nice chase scenes as well. Max has blonde hair in this movie, so he looks a bit different. He is good in the action scenes and I think he is getting better in the character moments. I am not saying I want to see a movie where he doesn’t have a fight scene but maybe such a movie would be good. The villain is played by Shawn Yue, I think this might be the first time I've seen him in a movie. He is a good villain. I think this is not as good as Master Z but it is worth seeing. I will be looking for Max’s next film and in the meantimeI might re-watch Kill Zon...

This is a story about a Pakistani young man, Javet, in a small town in England who gets inspired by the music of Bruce Springsteen.  It is based on a true story. I liked this. I liked the actors and I thought the characters were relatable. Javet and his father might have some disagreements but Javet’s father is not a villain in this film. (I must have seen some bad teenage dramas where the father was a villain at some point.) The music is a large part of this film but it is not a musical. I think you can enjoy the film even if you cannot name any of Springsteen’s songs besides the really big hits.  It might help you enjoy the film if you already enjoy Springsteen’s music. It is set in the 1980s but aside from the music, I don’t think the film over does the 1980s references. There is that one large mobile phone and maybe some of the fashions heavily suggest the era but I think these things don’t overwhelm the story. I think I might want to see this again in a...

I re-watched First Blood. It remains good. Stallone was really good as John Rambo. I often look at Stallone and think about Rocky Balboa, he is so tied to that character. I did not really think of Rocky while I re-watched this. John, a Vietnam veteran, comes to town to see an old friend but the old friend died of cancer the year before John came to town. John is walking around town when the sheriff approaches him and the sheriff arrests John on some bogus charge of vagrancy and possibly resisting arrest. The sheriff was trying to get John out of town but John did not want to go. John is taken to jail and a few of the deputies treat him badly. John escapes the jail and then the police try to recapture him. John escapes into the woods, where his military background and training gives him some advantages. That is pretty much the plot. If the sheriff and his deputies had not been so harsh to John there would have been no problems. The sheriff looked at John and was convinced John wou...

This is a decent low budget Mummy film. It is set in England and features a cast of unknown actors. (At least they are largely unknown to me.) The lead character is a woman who is struggling with caring for her mentally challenged brother. After being told the antique shop she works for is going out of business, she gets involved with a robbery scheme. This scheme accidentally revives a Mummy. The Mummy starts killing people, as Mummies often do. (Mummies never seem to come to life and organize a baseball game.) A couple of women are possessed by evil spirits and become the Mummy’s handmaidens. They also kill people. I think I meant to buy the Mummy Rebirth, which looks like an update of the Brendan Fraser series. It is a little weird that there are 2 Mummy movies with such similar titles coming out the same year. The posters are fairly similar too. This one is decent. It has some good moments and some of the actors are pretty good. It is not great and I might not watch it again ...

Keanu Reeves stars as a LA cop in this movie. He is effective but he leaves a lot of bodies in his wake. He could have made more of an effort to take some suspects in alive. Some, if not most, of the people he kills in the line of duty are people of color. Internal Affairs is looking into him. His ex-partner is killed in a shoot out/robbery in a liquor store but things might be more complicated than they look. I cannot believe I have never seen this before now. Reeves is really good in this movie, I don’t think I him play such an anti-hero. He beats someone with a phone book. (I don’t think I have seen that in a movie in a while.) Chris Evans is on hand as a cop who gets pulled into Reeve’s investigation. He is less jaded or dirty than Reeves. This movie came out in 2008 but I don’t think it was set in 2007. The original screenplay was written in the 1990s according to Wikipedia and there is a reference to Rodney King. There are no other real clues that I can point out. I liked t...

The documentary about Star Trek Deep Space Nine is pretty good. It is made by people who worked on the show, so it is not neutral. I think it is critical of the show, especially the treatment of their LGBT characters. There is a bit of irony when people talk about the show having interesting/strong female characters. Maybe the show did but lead actress Terry Ferral left after feeling insulted and pressured by producers. She left after season six and all these years later it still bothers her. One of the major characters, Kira, was a former freedom fighter/terrorist. It depends on your perspective and the documentary suggests that if the show were made after 911. it would be harder to have such a character. Or at least it might be harder to sympathize with such a character. It is an interesting documentary but I wonder why Avery Brooks (Captain Sisko) was not in it. I think he should have been in it. Old interviews with him were used. I did like the writers breaking down the plo...

The music in this film is bad. There is not a lot of it but it is bad. I don’t want to know who did that cover of Time in a Bottle. They should be in movie jail or music jail. I might have heard a worse cover of a song but I cannot think of one at this time. Also the music seemed really loud. This is good but a bit long. I don’t know why this film needed to be 2 hours and twenty something minutes. I lost some interest in the film. Not every movie needs mid credit scenes or post credit scenes. Dwayne Johnson stars as Luke Hobbs, the US. government agent, and Jason Statham Stars as ex-British agent Deckard Shaw. They come over from the Fast and Furious franchise. Vanessa Kirby stars as Shaw’s sister Hattie, a current British agent. Idris Elba stars as the villain who wants a virus that could kill millions or billions to force humanity to evolve. He frames Hattie for stealing it and specialists Hobbs and Shaw are brought in to find her. Yeah, that is the plot.  Statham and Joh...

Some Kind of Wonderful is a teenage romantic movie with Mary Stewart Masterson, Eric Stolz, and Lea Thompson. It is more a drama than a comedy but there are some funny moments. Stolz plays Keith, a student wants to be an artist. His best friend is tomboy Watts (Masterson). Keith wants to date Amanda, a pretty girl (Thompson) who hangs out with the rich kids in his school. Keith is dealing with his father, who means well and wants his son to go to business school. Keith doesn’t want that but he is having trouble explaining this to his dad. The dad is not a bad guy though. (In a different film, the dad would be a bad guy.) Amanda starts the movie with a boyfriend but he is not a good guy. (The movie makes this clear really early.) Watts is in love with Keith but he doesn’t know it. This film is compared to Pretty in Pink, also written by John Hughes, but there are a few differences. I would not watch them back to back. Pretty in Pink is more the female lead’s story and this film i...