michael's movie reviews
2020
These are the movies I reviewed in 2020.
reviewed 2020.12.26
I really wanted to enjoy this movie about a scientist struggling to resolve a global climate crisis while a space mission is returning to the ruined planet. The mission includes his daughter but also has the knowledge of a planet to which humanity can relocate (as if we deserve it).But the movie's many problems got in the way: too slow, too bleak, and too much of a forgone conclusion that things..
reviewed 2020.12.26
Of late, Robert Rodriguez has been making kids movies...
Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey
reviewed 2020.12.25
This is a musical number about a genius inventor who is ripped off by his apprentice...
Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
reviewed 2020.12.20
This is a Batman spin-off, or perhaps a spin-off of "Suicide Squad", which is a spin-off of Batman...
reviewed 2020.12.13
I tried showing my kids this flick for "movie night"...
reviewed 2020.12.12
This film was a recommendation from a friend, and I was completely blown away...
reviewed 2020.12.05
This is a story about a man stuck on Mars, who must Animal Crackers
reviewed 2020.12.05
For "Movie Night" my daughter and I watched this one...
reviewed 2020.11.28
This is the '80s classic featuring a bunch of kids who decide to explore a house where they think some evil-doing is afoot...
The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two
reviewed 2020.11.27
Proving once again that there can't be a good movie without a sequel, this is the unnecessary follow-up to the endearing Netflix Christmas Special featuring Kurt Russell as Santa Claus...
reviewed 2020.11.22
This is a classic science fiction movie from twenty years ago, before financial crises, calamitous presidencies, and terrorist strikes at the heart of the global financial industry. It's the one that gave us red-pill/blue-pill, "the matrix", and scenes of dodging bullets mid-flight. There's a lot of tight leather and sunglasses and posturing.The plot is this: a hacker is plying his trade when he..
reviewed 2020.11.21
This is a kids' movie from a Chinese studio that features an ancient tale from that same country of a goddess who winds up stranded on the moon / living in association with the moon...
reviewed 2020.11.17
This is a fun Sci-Fi flick about a cop whose son is becoming a petty crook. In an effort to track the boy down one night, he discovers that an alien invasion is underway. Impossibly, he decides to and then actually boards the alien craft. During his attempt to liberate his son while in the ship, it travels to Asia and an entire new sequence begins.The story is pretty different from the usual ali..
reviewed 2020.11.07
Today we watched a movie the kids only know from memes. We'd tried to watch it when The Boy was younger, but he panicked at the idea of an alien in the very earlier scene where Elliot - the main character - meets the E.T. This time, with him being twelve and his sister made of sterner stuff, we had no such trouble.I hadn't seen this in maaany years, and I was not surprised to find it somewhat da..
reviewed 2020.10.06
This is a sci-fi/super-hero movie about a disgraced photographer and the alien symbiote that he meets while breaking into a lab owned by a billionaire. The symbiote is an amorphous black puddle with a callous disregard for life, so they make a pretty good team.Naturally, the material here can only be played a couple of ways and they seem to have chosen to keep it a bit kid-friendly but also pegg..
reviewed 2020.09.24
This is an imaginative new story about the young sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, who defies her older brothers by striking out to find their mother, who seems quite fixed on not being found, for reasons unknown...
reviewed 2020.09.18
Every time I sit in front of a Spike Lee movie, I'm hoping for "Do the Right Thing" or "Malcolm X", and not, say, "She's Gotta Have It" or "School Daze" (which was the first of his works I saw). "Da 5 Bloods" is a mix, combining strong narrative story-telling with the direct-to-viewer stuff that speaks either to ego or a misunderstanding of the medium that I can't believe would be possible.Using..
reviewed 2020.08.29
We watched this for "movie night". It's about a bunch of kids that determine that their mother is a former spy and try to help her when she's drawn into one last job. It's quite an uneven thing, with some bits working and others not. I didn't find it interesting enough despite a great cast and a story that really just had to be a kid-friendly version of "Long Kiss Goodbye".There'..
reviewed 2020.08.09
This film is a ...
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
reviewed 2020.08.09
This is the tale of a young man who learns how to set up a wind-driven pump to bring up ground-water and save his family's farm in a time of drought and conflict in rural Malawi...
reviewed 2020.08.05
For "Movie Night" my daughter and I watched this flick about a robot that's escaped the Evil Clutches of a boy genius who's been driven somewhat mad and then loses control of the AI he's created...
reviewed 2020.07.23
This is a story of a band of mercenaries and former soldiers who come together to rob a drug lord...
reviewed 2020.05.23
This is a movie in which a man returns to the house of his parents following an eight month stay in an institution...
reviewed 2020.05.12
This strangely-named movie is one of the best thriller/action films I've ever seen...
reviewed 2020.05.02
This was a surprisingly good action film about a mercenary who's sent into Bangladesh to extract a kidnapped child...
reviewed 2020.04.25
This is a science fiction movie about a future that feels a lot more realistic than Star Trek ever did...
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
reviewed 2020.04.05
"Badges? We don't got to show you no stinking badges!" This line came as a surprise toward the end of this gritty 1948 tale about some desperate Americans in Mexico who successfully mine gold out of a hillside. Two of them are basically homeless drifters, who meet early in the film and eventually meet the experienced prospector who makes the mine possible.The pacing of the movie is somewhat slow..
reviewed 2020.04.05
This is a movie about a tough who works as a door man in the early 1960s. His club closes for renovations, and he needs income as things were already pretty tight. The mob is interested, but he doesn't want to work for them doing "things" as they describe it.Across town there's a concert pianist who needs a driver who can handle himself, because the pianist is touring the Southern US states and ..
reviewed 2020.03.26
This is a movie about the state of the "war on drugs", as told from the point of view of an officer from a local law enforcement agency who is drafted following a significant drug bust...
reviewed 2020.03.16
This is the story of what becomes of little Danny from The Shining. You remember Danny! "Danny's not here right now, Mrs. Torrence," Danny. Yeah.Anyway, the answer is: not much...
reviewed 2020.03.10
This is an unpleasant movie about a reclusive genius and tech billionaire who has been dabbling in artificial intelligence androids - to make women to keep under his thumb. It's told from the view of one of his staff who wins a lottery to visit the recluse's home. Will the visitor develop real feelings for his favorite artificial woman? Will a struggle ensue? Whither the beautiful sex-slave?Who ..
reviewed 2020.02.26
OK, I've sat through two of these with the kids...
reviewed 2020.02.26
This is a telling of Alan Turing's contributions to the British war effort in the Second World War...
reviewed 2020.02.22
This is a gangster film from the United Kingdom, cleverly told as recounting of a movie plot being pitched by somebody knee-deep in the story himself. It's about a long-time drug dealer who's made it to the top and has stayed there through ruthless violence. He's now trying to sell up and clear out, which attracts unwanted attention and sets a bloody course of action.This movie's made by the sa..
reviewed 2020.02.16
This is a live-action kids' movie about a fellow who is trying to hang on to his family's circus...
reviewed 2020.01.25
This is a downer of a story about a much of mutually antagonistic members of a drug cartel that's imploding over internal strife. Crossing a great swath of North America, the "protagonists" trudge through their duties knowing they'll die if they don't.And, it turns out, die if they do...
reviewed 2020.01.12
The way this movie was advertised didn't appeal to me, somehow...