michael's movie reviews
2017
These are the movies I reviewed in 2017.
reviewed 2017.12.19
We recently showed the kids the movie Home Alone and I stupidly mentioned a sequel...
reviewed 2017.12.19
"Uncle Jon" and The Boy and I went downtown to see this...
reviewed 2017.12.12
We watched this with the kids for "movie night"...
reviewed 2017.12.07
This is a (very rough) adaptation of Ursula K Leguin's novels that spanned decades of the world of Earthsea (as well as taking decades to write)...
reviewed 2017.11.23
This is a delightful Christmas movie featuring an office Christmas party that gets a tad out of control...
reviewed 2017.11.20
This is a perfectly-paced animated short about a rising flood that causes one aging gentlemen to progressively build new stories onto his home. When he drops his pipe into the rising waters, it's a cause for him to re-explore all of the previous levels and what each layer of his home taught him through the events that happened when he lived at each.It's delicately drawn, it's virtually silent, a..
reviewed 2017.11.18
This is my second review of "Tron", some sixteen years after the last time and I presume thirty years after I first saw it...
reviewed 2017.11.09
This is a crass and awkward retelling of a classic sci-fi/fantasy story in which people find a lost world of dinosaurs and lizardfolk under the Earth's surface. The tone is decidedly self-mocking satire and the actors seem to be having the time of their lives. While told in a linear fashion, it tends to veer and jump around quite a bit but given the insane and immature dialog that's just fine.I ..
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
reviewed 2017.10.22
This is a movie telling of a book I have read to my son...
reviewed 2017.10.06
This is the story of a girl who sets out to save her tiny Polynesian island, which is dying from creeping black plague that infects the food and eventually can be seen in the air...
reviewed 2017.10.01
This is an Adam Sandler movie in which he and a (rather excellent support cast of) team fight to save the world from space invaders that have chosen the form of all our favorite '80s video games...
reviewed 2017.09.27
This is an animated kids movie featuring a super-villain as its central character...
reviewed 2017.08.04
This is a Cold War piece about a lawyer who is hired by the US military to negotiate the freedom of a spy who has been captured by the Soviets...
reviewed 2017.08.04
My kids love these dinosaur movies, so we watched this - which must be our third this year?It's a whole new dinosaur adventure, with a new generation of lead actors to mug through some stiff dialog before the dinosaurs get free and raise hell...
reviewed 2017.07.23
This is a superb animated movie featuring a certain fox that decides it's time to return to old ways of pilfering the odd chicken from the farms in the area. He believes he's too good to be caught and carries on despite the misgivings of his wife and his friend (and partner in crime).Of course, he's not too good to be caught and the local farmers strike back with an escalating campaign of violen..
reviewed 2017.07.07
This is an engrossing tale about two teens who keep waking up in each other's bodies; one boy, one girl...
reviewed 2017.07.07
This is a film about a semi-sentient animal named Okja; she's a genetically modified super-pig, larger and tastier than ever and stationed by an eccentrically-run company with a young girl in Korea. Naturally, when it's time for processed meat the girl stands up to fight the system. She finds the ready support of eco-rebels hell-bent on taking down the company and setting free the super-pigs.I n..
reviewed 2017.06.30
If you're going to watch a Transformers movie, let it be this one...
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
reviewed 2017.06.18
This is a film about a boy who joins an unusual household full of bizarre children...
I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
reviewed 2017.06.11
This is a movie about a loser name Ruth whose home is robbed...
reviewed 2017.05.21
I don't know if this movie was strictly necessary, they covered Lego Batman in sufficient depth in the Lego Movie itself. But here we go.This is Lego Batman's story, but there's not much story...
reviewed 2017.05.02
I loved this movie...
reviewed 2017.04.24
I wonder if any good movie ever had the word "Sing" in the title...
reviewed 2017.04.16
This is a strange and violent story about transplanting the memories of a dead spy/soldier into the brain of a death-row prisoner with a neurological condition that means he'll never have empathy and will never deviate from his life of violent disregard for society. With an absolutely top-notch cast I had high expectations for this thing.But it doesn't seem that everyone showed with the same lev..
reviewed 2017.04.16
This movie centers on a small scientific team that's worked out how to prove the existence of the afterlife...
reviewed 2017.04.09
Well, it had been almost 17 years, so I decided to show the kids this flick for "movie night". I don't really know why. The Boy is nine now and sounds like a Youtuber tearing these things to shreds.And I have to say I feel sorry for Sam Neill, I like his acting and yet he's in so many dismal movies...
reviewed 2017.04.02
This is one of the sequels to the stellar Jurassic Park...
reviewed 2017.03.29
This is a movie about a person involved by an agency in fighting certain crimes in the past...
reviewed 2017.02.24
Someone decided, "Let's put Johnny Knoxville from Jackass in a movie with Jackie Chan." Everyone round the table agreed, and here we are.I have to say, I enjoyed it but won't recommend it...
reviewed 2017.02.18
There's a variant of the film noir where the detective is accidental...
reviewed 2017.02.06
This is a Demons-and-Angels bit of Fantasy about an immortal "Witch Hunter" who, in the modern time, gets wrapped up in an effort by (un-Hunted?) Witches to bring about the end times. It's got a great cast and the tone is consistent but at the price of being a bit on the self-serious side.I enjoyed the combination of characters, sets, and action and while it's hella CGI-heavy that is the times w..
reviewed 2017.01.23
By all accounts, Adam Sandler is a decent guy who treats people well and there's no denying that he's made his own path...
reviewed 2017.01.04
This is an interesting Sci-Fi piece set in a world where people can opt to spend the remainder of their days as an animal of some kind...