Sean’s movie thoughts

I found a missing Blu-ray. That feels more exciting to me at the moment than a fifth Indiana Jones movie. (I might be kidding a little.) Stories end and that is okay. I have mixed feelings about this because I think the director James Mangold is really good but I kind of don't want to see Harrison Ford punch out stuntmen half his age or younger.  I have not re-watched the Tomorrow War. I liked Michael Keaton as Batman as much as the next guy but he was Batman over thirty years ago. Maybe it will be nice to see him as Batman again. Maybe it won't. When your movie’s big moves include bringing back an actor to a role he last he played over thirty years ago maybe that is a bad sign. I am still on an old movie kick. I watched some westerns in the last few weeks.

I re-watched Dragons Forever. It was fun. I don’t think it is Jackie Chan’s best film but it is pretty good. It was the last film he made with Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. (Yuen Wah being on hand was a nice bonus.) I watched some special features on the Blu-ray, so that was nice.  I have almost no interest in the next Guardians of the Galaxy film as yet. Perhaps this will change as the movie’s release date approaches. Maybe I want a break from the Marvel movies, I did not finish Eternals or Thor Love and Thunder.  I am not sure I see the point of Black Panther Wakanda forever without Chadwick Boseman.  (Maybe if I watch it, I will figure out the point.) I hear from some that Eighty for Brady is awful but at least one critic I trust said it was good to see Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, Lily Tomlin, and Sally Field onscreen together. I am not curious enough to seek out more reviews of the film to see where the consensus is. I heard Tom Brady’s cameo was bad but is it really that ba...

I have almost no interest in the new Ant-man and the Wasp movie. Maybe the first trailer was not great. Perhaps another trailer will be better and I will become interested. Unless something goes horribly wrong, this won’t be Paul Rudd’s worst movie.  (Hopefully that will remain Halloween the Curse of Michael Myers.) I think I might be in an old movie phase at the moment. All my recent physical media purchases have been older movies. I think the blu-rays I currently have on order are older films. Even the next movie I am thinking of ordering is an older movie. I am not saying I’ll never see the new Ant-man and the Wasp film. I probably will. I just don’t much interest in it, yet. This, of course, could change. Am I superheroed out? 

The Valley Girl remake is maybe a bit better on re-watch. It is not a classic but it has some nice moments.  The original is better. This stars Jessica Roth. The musical numbers were fun. Maybe they could have been better but I liked them. (There are a few that might be better than the rest.)Maybe the producers needed to bring in a few actors with backgrounds in musicals.  I think oddly enough the parents are the biggest change. The parents seemed more likable in the original. It could be my fondness for the original movie making me feel this. Julie’s parents are not awful in this but the parents in the original were very likable. I think maybe someone who hasn’t seen the original might enjoy this more than I did. This is a lot better than He’s All That, another remake.

The Glass Onion, the sequel to Knives Out is decent. I liked the performances, it is nice to see Dave Baustia play a different character than Drax.  Kate Hudson seems to be having fun playing a dumb blonde, and I think Daniel Craig likes his role as a detective. (Maybe I don’t follow Hudson’s career closely but this seems to be the first time I have seen her in a movie that is not a romantic comedy.) The billionaire that Edward Norton plays is not a riff on Elon Musk. I feel this is a generic tech billionaire. There have been generic tech billionaires in movies since 2011, if not earlier. If this movie's tech billionaire seems like Elon Musk, maybe that is because Musk is the tech billionaire most often in the news lately. However, I thought it took a while to get started. I think the film could have been edited a little. (Oh well I guess a slow start is not the worst thing in the world.) One of the people I follow on twitter called this a big budget version of Murder She Wrote....

I wanted something different for the first movie of the year. Blackjack with Dolph Lungren  might have been a made for TV movie. Lundgren is playing a former US Marshall named Jack turned bodyguard. At one point, he uses playing cards as weapons. He also adopts a young girl. Most of the movie he is guarding a supermodel. I do like Dolph Lungren. This was fun but maybe not worth seeing again. (I did not hate it and I never felt the urge not to finish it.) It does feel a bit like a pilot of a tv series. It was directed by John Woo, it might be one of his lesser efforts. It is not a bad start for 2023.

 5 (or more) Things I don’t like about movies Flashbacks (This is probably not surprising if you have read earlier blog posts by me.)  I have become anti-flashback in the last few years and even if I don’t mention this sometimes in a blog posting about movies, this remains true. Too Much comic relief is something that has bothered me for years. Sometimes I think the amount of comic relief in movies or movies being too jokey is getting better. Every so often another movie comes along that is too jokey or has too much comic relief. Sometimes I wonder if I have just adjusted to the fact that some movies have more comic relief than I’d like. When the movie poster/box cover/thumbnail promises more of an actor than the film delivers. I get it promotional materials are designed to get people interested in a movie. I think if Scott Adkins, for example, has a supporting role in the movie, the promotional material shouldn’t make it seem like he’s the star. Maybe this is related to too m...