michael's movie reviews
2016
These are the movies I reviewed in 2016.
reviewed 2016.12.24
How better to spend X'mas eve than with a slick continuation of a movie from your childhood? In which your favorite character dies for no reason, the most iconic hero of the 20th Century is reduced to a petulant cripple, and the plot is a mess...
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
reviewed 2016.12.23
Which aristocrat will marry which daughter? Or will the zombies win out, having already over-run 95% of the UK. Will the modern viewer be able to tolerate the sexism and patriarchy woven into the story of half a dozen ass-kicking warrior women?I thought I'd enjoy this more than I did and found that the whole thing just didn't work...
reviewed 2016.12.23
This is a "Star Wars" story, telling the tale of the many Bothans that died bringing Princess Leia the plans for the Death Star -- as referenced in the very first "Star Wars" in 1977...
reviewed 2016.12.05
This animated kids movie is such a frenetic mess that it lost the attention of our four-year-old and we stopped watching it...
reviewed 2016.12.04
Jon and I went to the local cinema to watch this sci-fi flick about first contact with aliens...
reviewed 2016.11.28
This is a story of a man who is shipwrecked on a deserted island...
reviewed 2016.11.20
This is an excellent animated movie about an anthropomorphic, talking bear who decides to travel to London to find a home after being pushed out of his own by an earthquake...
reviewed 2016.11.13
This is a lovingly-made animated story about a boy who sets a monstrous spirit loose on the world and must walk the path of his ancestors in order to set things right. It's stop-motion and looks so good you wonder what on Earth everyone else is up to. The voice-acting cast is excellent. The plot and pacing is superb, and the whole thing is far smarter than I would have imagined.If you must sit i..
reviewed 2016.11.11
This is an animated flick from Japan, about a young boy kidnapped to an alternate world (of ghosts or demons, I want to say?) who winds up living with a bluff beast of a man. Hence the title. The brutish adult is indeed quite rough, in the time-honored tradition of being quite useless and belligerent. And the boy is indeed a needy child, and it's the voyage that matters.There are a couple of dis..
reviewed 2016.10.24
This is yet another super-hero movie...
Captain America: The First Avenger
reviewed 2016.10.14
We watched this for "movie night" with the kids...
reviewed 2016.10.04
Finally, a Super Hero movie I enjoyed. It's the story of a convict who meets a girl whose father is a mad scientist. The scientist's experimental technology grants our hero a strange power -- shrinking down to any imagineable size while retaining his abilities and strength. (You have to remember these are based on comic books; I really wonder how much of this is just Gen-X fan-service.)What make..
reviewed 2016.09.30
This is the story of Hachiko, the dog who is immortalized with a bronze statue at Tokyo's Shibuya station...
reviewed 2016.09.23
This is an update of an early science fiction story from a full Century ago...
reviewed 2016.08.21
The kingdom has never been under greater threat than when a pissed-off water-buffalo with unlimited strength and the ability to command certain wild magic aims to I dunno, take over.Once again the action is superb, the interplay between the characters - heroes and villains alike - is engaging, the story arc works...
reviewed 2016.08.02
I was amazed at how much I enjoyed this comedy about an out-of-shape, middle-aged analyst who is sent into the field to handle a sensitive case of a stolen nuclear weapon...
reviewed 2016.07.14
This is yet another Super Hero movie that my kids were interested in for "movie night"...
reviewed 2016.07.03
This is a movie about a thief and con-man who pushes into the TV cameraman line of work after witnessing a crew in action...
reviewed 2016.06.30
This is an animated telling of the Rapunzel story with some updates...
reviewed 2016.06.08
This is a gripping story about a man who is evicted from his house during the Great Financial Crisis, but through a series of events winds up working for the crooks that had him evicted...
reviewed 2016.05.23
I wanted an action flick, and this appeared on a streaming service...
reviewed 2016.05.12
This is a sci-fi movie that goes to great lengths to be pro-science and defend humanity's space record and so on but when push comes to shove it veers into mysticism...
reviewed 2016.04.15
As much as I like Mila Kunis and suspect she deserves a break for being on Family Guy for so long, this movie was a troubled project by the (now) sisters that made the "Matrix" movies...
reviewed 2016.03.15
This is a dramatic telling of real events that happened during the Great Financial Crisis...
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
reviewed 2016.03.08
Well, we got it over with, today...
reviewed 2016.02.17
This is a Wes Anderson movie in which a hotelier runs afoul of the "pock-marked fascists" in the years leading up to and including WWII...
reviewed 2016.02.04
This is a spy movie in which a new agency is created to tackle special cases on a global basis. It pulls together a disparate cast of rogues and puts them against .. a dispirate cast of rogues. Set in the sexy sixties, a US agent and a USSR agent join forces to prevent a rogue Italian billionaire from founding a terrorist organization armed with nuclear weapons.The movie's tone and pacing and pu..
reviewed 2016.01.10
This is anime with the lid off...