michael's movie reviews
2015
These are the movies I reviewed in 2015.
reviewed 2015.12.02
This is a story of retribution via a stranger who comes to town and decides to put things right with his fists. You know, like the mid-'80s Code of Vengeance or whatever came out when you were fourteen. Wait, that was a rip-off of a show called "Equalizer"? Never heard of it.The story starts with our man long since retired from some unspecified..
reviewed 2015.11.22
This is a lack-luster animated movie about the son of the Easter Bunny, who decides to move to LA and be in an obnoxious, self-indulgent, and boring movie...
reviewed 2015.11.17
A friend leant me this, which turned out to be only okay. It's about four purportedly adults who return to the suburban home of their youth when their father dies. None of them is particularly likeable and some have problems that seem too large to be sustainable. Like, you wouldn't address a marriage this far gone?They get together for a big snit, really, making it harder for their mother..
reviewed 2015.10.12
This is an animated movie set in a near-future San Francisco ...
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
reviewed 2015.10.02
My son's interested in these movies, so we've been slowly seeing them through...
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
reviewed 2015.09.27
I thoroughly loved this story, based on an old poem, about a day-dreamer who is forced by a crisis at work to embark on a global adventure to track down a very larger than life photographer...
reviewed 2015.09.14
I can't explain how I agreed to see this paint-by-numbers revenge piece about a woman who discovers she is not a girlfriend but the other woman...
reviewed 2015.09.01
This is a distant sequel to the '80s Mad Max movies, which were guns-and-motorbikes romps through a post-apocalyptic Earth. With increasing plot complexity, the earlier movies wended their way through the descent of 20th Century society and the slow emergence of something else.By the time of this fourth installment, almost all signs of the Before Times ar..
reviewed 2015.08.17
This is the telling of a bunch of hot young Hollywood types who are Left Behind when the Rapture comes...
reviewed 2015.08.02
This is the story of Sleeping Beauty's wicked witch, who it turns out is rather a pained and resentful survivor with a lot riding on her slender shoulders - she's the queen of a fey realm beset on all sides by truly moronic humans, and she has herself been personally betrayed by the one who now sits on the throne...
reviewed 2015.07.23
This is a story about a princess with special magical abilities that let her control ice and snow...
reviewed 2015.07.08
This is a buddy-cop movie in which two jerks in the precinct take up an important case following the deaths of the actual stars...
reviewed 2015.07.02
This is an engaging animated movie set in Mexico -- and its after-life...
reviewed 2015.06.22
This is a tale set in 1970 Los Angeles, in which the stoner element is strong but the old guard elements of society still remain in some force...
reviewed 2015.06.10
This 2013 Star Trek movie was such a mess I couldn't sit through the whole thing...
reviewed 2015.05.09
This is a movie about an astronaut who's on a mission when debris strikes the station they're working on, trashing it and the shuttle that brought them. She then decides to get back to Earth. On her own.I found it beautifully made, well-scripted, and tonally consistent (which I find important)...
reviewed 2015.04.26
This was a fun flick about some guys who decide to strike back against their horrible bosses ...
reviewed 2015.04.16
This is a sequel to an animated movie that united Norsemen and dragons...
reviewed 2015.04.01
This is a movie in which an experimental drug sets a very average fellow free to do great things...
reviewed 2015.03.24
This is a super-hero movie based on the Marvel Thor comic books, which I never read...
reviewed 2015.02.27
This is the third in the series of the "The Hangover" movies...
reviewed 2015.02.07
This is a quirky science fiction piece about some journalists who decide to check out a weirdo inventor who is working on a time travel device...
reviewed 2015.01.28
This is an under-rated science fiction piece about a pair of humans assigned to oversee robotic drones that patrol a quadrant of the dying Earth...
reviewed 2015.01.14
I saw this a second time, recently, and felt that some of its shine had worn off...