The calendar year started with a movie. I think The Last Jedi on second viewing. The rest of my movie-watching year was superhero flicks. I think I only went to the movies to watch:
- Black Panther
- A Wrinkle in Time
- Solo
- Avengers: Infinity War
- Ant-Man and the Wasp
I did watch most of Grumpygus v ActionJesus: Wonder Woman Ex Machina in a hotel room (because I wouldn’t pay for that crap) in Bellevue and it was easily the type of movie the MST3K crowd would have a field day with. Bad writing, bad acting, bad lighting, bad everything.
Black Panther
This movie made me smile oh-so-much. The performances were great, the character interaction was great, the moral dilemma worked for me through this one. In fact the only thing that I didn’t like was a single line said by T’Challa in a normal voice while he was flying through the air. It threw me. It happens in comic books all the time but every time I watch that car chase that line just throws me.
Other than that it’s a damn-near perfect superhero movie. It’s not an origin story which is great because I’m a little tired of the formula, but it has an origin-like quality to it with the battle for being King. We’ve seen the Black Panther in earlier movies, again with no origin. The character doesn’t lend itself to an origin story because the title and powers are passed down from generation to generation.
I loved how the movie presented a clear conflict between maintaining tradition and living in the modern world. I loved it even more that T’Challa rejected the false dichotomy and found his own way through it all. I loved how he interacted with his sister. I loved the cool gadgets and technology and they didn’t over shadow any part of the story.
A Wrinkle in Time
I didn’t get into the book as a kid. My mother tried. Oh how she tried but I couldn’t get it. Then we watched a play of it at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland a few years ago and that blew my mind. The movie was visually stunning and fun to watch. The performances were fantastic. It inspired me to try to re-read the book. Still couldn’t get into the book. Ah well.
Solo
This movie was unnecessary but fun anyway. I couldn’t help thinking Disney was milking the Star Wars Cash Cow and taking a lot of trouble to make for the fact that George Lucas is a crappy writer. I don’t like the way prequels of any kind always look more advanced that the story they precede in the timeline. This usually happens because of the ability of storytelling and the available budget. The TV show Enterprise had a great looking ship but in the universe there is no way it would have evolved into the plain boring plastic of the original series.
The problem with the Star Wars prequel trilogy was cleanliness. Everything was CGI and so damned clean. Solo at least had the decency to look lived in.
It also didn’t rack up the tension well enough to really make me care. Solo has a love interest. Yawn. She’s going to die, I thought through most of the film. She’s dead. The fact that she didn’t die but still abandoned Solo was refreshing, but not enough.
Avengers: Infinity War
According to my FitBit I burned a lot of calories. I was in the Zone for most of the movie because it was unrelenting and was the most comic-booky of all the comic book movies and I let myself be taken away by it even though I’m pretty sure (as is most of the fan base) that it will be retconned in the next movie.
I’ve watched it on Blu-Ray at least once since, and the tension has gone down a bit.
Ant-Man and the Wasp
This was the palette cleanser after Infinity War and perfect for being so. Fun, light, manages to ignore the horrors going on for a smaller story. (Sorry.) The characters were still fun but the ex-wife didn’t work as well but Cassie worked even better.
That final credit tag, though…. ouch.
Fantastic Beasts 2: I really wish you wouldn’t
I wanted to like this one. I loved the first one. I loved the awkward heroics of Newt and the tragedy he felt was real to me.
Then there was this second movie that did nothing but try to set up the rest of the series. Newt kept his principals but now I’m afraid he’s throwing them away. The writing was pretty bad. I think these movies would be a hell of a lot better (I’m clearly not optimistic about the rest of them now) if Rowling just wrote the damn books first and then adapted them (or had some adapt them) to movies.
Next Year
Expected highlights include:
- Captain Marvel
- Avengers: Let’s Wrap this Up
- Star Wars Episode IX
It looks like there’s another Godzilla Movie and a Nick Park animation, A new Spider Man and New Mutants movie, yet another Terminator movie and Kingsman flick, and (for some unfathomable reason) a Charlie’s Angels reboot and (again–why?–) an Addams Family Reboot.
I’m going to have to go through the list with a fine-tooth comb and start picking out things that may actually be worthwhile to see.