michael's movie reviews
2019
These are the movies I reviewed in 2019.
reviewed 2019.12.18
Well, in for a dime, in for a dollar. We all watched the original, causing sequels. In this, just the second of eighteen that would eventually be made, the Pets get mixed up in a circus, tangling with the dreadful owner of said in a battle ranging far beyond the normal realm of a few square blocks of Manhattan.There's plenty worse out there for kids...
reviewed 2019.12.15
This is a choppy heist movie by a director who absolutely nails the stunts and visual wizardry and often struggles to capture natural human interaction...
reviewed 2019.12.10
For a second time in as many decades, the Spider-Man movies have now been rebooted; they've started all over again...
reviewed 2019.11.15
This is a retelling of the classic Agatha Christie movie...
reviewed 2019.11.12
My eleven-year-old son and I watched this in the run-up to Christmas...
reviewed 2019.10.16
This is, at first glance, a murder investigation...
reviewed 2019.10.04
What a load of shit...
reviewed 2019.09.29
This is an interesting story that feels like an adaptation from a stage production...
reviewed 2019.09.28
This is a story of a young man who goes out in search of his estranged father...
reviewed 2019.09.25
This past few years sure has produced a lot of prequels and spinoffs...
reviewed 2019.09.23
I wasn't sure the title of this one is actually a word, but it is! That out of the way, this is a relentlessly unpleasant movie about one brother's bid to make his gangster brother pay for a large array of crimes ranging from having the vengeful brother imprisoned for seven years to enslaving well over a hundred other people through the threat of violence.Unfortunately, the story told involves t..
reviewed 2019.09.14
This is a splashy fun flick set in a future where cities are now mobile affairs, roaming the countryside and taking what they need directly...
reviewed 2019.09.09
This is the sequel to the only good zombie movie in recent years, "Zombieland", released a full decade earlier...
reviewed 2019.08.23
This is a near-future science fiction piece in which a car mechanic who loses his wife and the use of his limbs in an assault after his automated car crashes...
reviewed 2019.08.14
This is a movie featuring a male lead who always plays mild-mannered sweat-hearts and a female lead who always plays abrasive people with poor judgment and/or socialization...
reviewed 2019.08.12
Somehow, the early PC game "Doom" spawned a genre of movies...
reviewed 2019.08.11
Where to start...
reviewed 2019.07.28
When I reviewed the Disney direct-to-whatever movie "Descendants" two weeks ago, my hasty review contained a lie.> about the only thing I can say for it is that there aren't sequelsThis is incorrect, dear reader...
reviewed 2019.07.25
My daughter loves shark attack stuff, so naturally we watched this when the chance came...
reviewed 2019.07.18
This is an implausible tale of a crook who is freed from hospital by a nurse...
reviewed 2019.07.15
This is a direct-to-whatever movie from Disney...
reviewed 2019.07.12
Arnold Schwarzenegger uncharacteristically plays a corrupt DEA agent in this movie of suspected revenge by one of his gang's victims...
reviewed 2019.07.10
I watched this again after several years, and I think I've belatedly come to realize that this movie had quite an effect on me when I first saw it twenties years ago. Specifically, I suspect it had a part in kicking my butt to start doing something more with my life than paying the bills. Because within a year I was living on the other side of the world.Anyway, it's taken on something of cult st..
Asterix - the Secret of the Magic Potion
reviewed 2019.06.30
This is a charming attempt at bringing the Asterix books from many a Boomer and Gen-X childhood to the flat screen...
reviewed 2019.06.25
This is the tale of a girl from a rough background who is simultaneously a ballerina and maybe also a prostitute or any way seems to be living with a gangster. Anyway, she becomes a spy for the Soviet regime, following the well-worn trope of the lethal female Easter Bloc spy who of course will use sex as a weapon. Will she survive the rigors of her training? How will she function as a spy?It's c..
reviewed 2019.06.18
This is a good Adam Sandler movie...
reviewed 2019.06.11
Some kids' movies are good enough to grab the whole audience and keep them engrossed. Fantastic Mister Fox. Paddington. Wallace and Gromit.Then there are those that are at least worth a chuckle, like Despicable Me.And then, just above the ones you stop watching because you'd rather be doing your taxes, are things like Early Man, which will simply fade from your memory immediately like reading ..
reviewed 2019.05.19
This is a spy story set in the modern, post-Cold War era...
reviewed 2019.05.11
Sometimes they make a movie where they just land on a personality and a broad plot line and start rolling the cameras...
reviewed 2019.05.09
This is a sci-fi piece about a crew that hunts space whales! The crew is comprised of various scruffy types with their own agendas...
reviewed 2019.05.08
This is the story of a snow-plow driver from a mountainous area of Scandinavia. His son is killed, and he devotes his life to unmaking the crime syndicate responsible. A sort of Norse "Death Wish". Which would be "Dødsønske". His quest leads him to trigger a war between a domestic gang and a second band of violent thugs from Serbia*. It's entertaining and that's the point.Recommended...
reviewed 2019.04.24
It's Marky Mark vs Ip Man in a spy story that leans very heavily on violence in an un-named South-East Asian city (it was filmed in Bogota!)...
reviewed 2019.04.22
This is the story of three retirees who decide to pursue a life of crime to pay the bills after they're screwed by the company for which they'd all given a life's labor. Now being sucked dry by a bank (the scandal) it's time to arm themselves and knock off that bank.Things don't go according to plan, of course, and it's the consequences that drive half this thing...
reviewed 2019.04.20
To catch an international assassin, the police employ an imprisoned IRA agent. In a story that ranges across the world (there's even a scene spent sailing lake Michigan) the game of cat and mouse continues while the authorities try to prevent the assassination of a prominent US politician.It's a bit dated, and I think it being a foregone conclusion that they catch "The Jackal" is a bit t..
reviewed 2019.04.02
This is a movie in which a soldier, having been framed, agrees to travel to a space colony to rescue the daughter of the President of the US or some similar political body...
reviewed 2019.03.31
Sometimes you see a movie whose premise appears to be to assemble certain actors and let them do their thing...
reviewed 2019.03.15
According to my records, I don't have good luck with movies titled "Life". I see a review of a bomb with Eddie Murphy back in the '90s, and now this.This one is a Sci-Fi story that starts on an Earth-orbiting science lab...
reviewed 2019.02.24
This is a movie about two girls who are taken from their families and the efforts to bring them back, both by the police and one of the fathers...
reviewed 2019.02.03
This is a grim flick about a semi-retired contract killer who's attempting to live out his life in the woods outside a small town...
reviewed 2019.01.26
The Boy wanted to see this flick, so we did...
reviewed 2019.01.20
This is an interesting if challenging film about a lone young lady trying to find a solution to a major environmental catastrophe on a (very) dying planet Earth...
reviewed 2019.01.06
The kids like super-hero movies, so we're watching a bunch...
reviewed 2019.01.05
This is an uneven movie that grew on me as it went on...
reviewed 2019.01.05
This is a movie about a kid who discovers a robot thing. Maybe a toy, maybe a weapon. Anyway, he goes about befriending the robot and then doesn't want to give it up. Various parties become interested and the whole thing limps to an end.We endured it because the seven year old was fairly engaged...