Spider-Man: Far From Home - 5/10

Less worse than the last one, but that's not really saying much. Clearly no point in outlining the rationale to the aggressively defensive hive mind, though, so I'll just leave it there.

 

Toy Story 4 - (6/10) While I enjoyed it, without giving anything away I have just three words for it...

Holy. Fucking. Hell.

 

Toy Story 4 9/10

No words to describe this other then wow. Just when you thought TS3 was the perfect conclusion....

Spider-Man Far from Home 7/10

While both Spiderman PS4 and Spiderman Into the Spiderverse are still among the best spidey fiction in recent years this is still well made. It really did take some turns I wasn't expecting. I mean really unexpected.

 

Spider-Man: Far From Home:
So we get our first taste of the world after the Avengers, and yeah, it's a bit sour to say the least. Poor Peter had to deal with a lot of crap in this.

The movie itself was great, but I think the first "half" was a bit on the slow side (especially when you're familiar with Mysterio's reall character) but still entertaining. Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio was really great. Definitely one of the best MCU villains ever, but I don't know if it's just me but I felt I was watching Jim Carrey as the character because Gyllenhaal's performance really made me feel I was watching Jim Carrey as Mysterio instead.

His powers were also spectacular (no pun intended) and were very true to his powers that he's known for. And I like the fact that they're so easy to understand thanks to advanced current technology in movie making.

The movie is heavy on the emotion side. For those who want Peter to be Spider-Man and not Iron Man Jr., you're getting what you asked for here. Those who called Peter "Spider-Boy", now you're getting "Spider-Man".

8/10

 

The Lion King - 9/10

Probably my favorite Disney animated movie. Cute, fun, funny, charming, atmospheric and surprisingly mature for a children's movie. I have a lot of nostalgia for Lion King, and I'm happy to say it always holds up. If anything, it gets better as an adult. Things that could potentialy be annoying (like Timon and Pumbaa) manage to completely avoid that. There are very few flaws in this movie, and very few things I'd change. Uhh...maybe I'd give Scar a bit more of a plan once he takes over the Pride Lands instead of just lounging around? That kind of begs the question of why he'd even want to be king, he was probably better of before, since he pretty much exhausted the food supply. Aside from that (which is a small nitpick in the overall story), I don't think there's a lot of room for improvement. The Lion King is a true animated masterpiece.

The Lion King II - 6.5/10

I never watched this one much growing up. My sister was scared of the villain, so it was a movie me and my dad used to watch when she was gone. I saw it maybe four times, at most. As an adult, I don't think it holds up spectacularly well. The voices are iffy, the dialog is off, and the animation just doesn't have the same grandeur. There were a couple jarring jokes, that don't quite work in-context (one involving Timon pretending to talk into a walkie-talkie...huh?) I will praise the songs. I thought all of them were almost as good (if not equal) to the first film's songs. They're just as catchy. It's been about ten years since I've seen this movie, I didn't even remember much of the plot, but I did remember the songs. But overall it was underwhelming, and I have more nostalgia for the experiences surrounding it than I do the movie itself.

The Lion King One and a Half - 8/10

This is the 'sequel' I used to watch more often growing up. And as an adult, it still holds up. It's the perfect kind of dumb. Instead of trying to recapture the magic of the first film (like Lion King II did), this movie takes a drastically different approach. It's a straight up comedy, exploring the origins of Timon and Pumbaa, showing how they secretly influenced the events of the first film by accident. And it's actually a great origin story. There are a couple weird leaps in logic (mainly one really awkward time jump), but it works very well, and a surprising amount of the humor still lands as an adult. Since the new footage has to blend with the original movie, the animation is legitimately good. Much better than Lion King 2's animation (Sometimes it's hard to tell exactly what's new). In all fairness, the quality is probably closer to a 7.5, but I'm going to give it an 8 because I have a lot of respect for what they were trying to do, and how often they succeeded. It's a very clever movie.

 

Anna
bretty gud. Needed to be 30 minutes shorter though and I think the chronological structure of the movie could have been streamlined without losing much

Dark Phoenix
Not so good

 

Yep. Also didn't know Sean Astin played the younger brother, Mikey. Jeez, Sam from Lord of the Rings AND Thanos from the MCU in the same film, both going after jewelry.  

 

Black Panther 10/10

 

Toy Story 4 - 10/10.

 

I rewatched TMNT 2007 the other night and wanted to share my thoughts.

Back in 2007 this was an event movie for me. I was thrilled that I was getting a TMNT movie. I’d grown up loving TMNT 1990 and Secret of the Ooze, the handful of 80’s VHS’s I had, and TMNT 2003 was my show. So getting a movie was great. I remember running with my family to the car to get to the movies on time for a showing that started 15 minutes after school let out. It was amazing.

The film itself? Even back then I didn’t think it was that terribly good. It felt average, but an average I could still enjoy maybe out of love for my franchise. In the years since, my view soured as I really grasped the favoritism on Leo, the generic script and plot, etc. So how did I like it in 2019?

A lot of my feelings remained the same. The script is really awful. Lots of quips about Girl Scouts and stuff that just don’t land, they’re just the writers attempting to be funny. There’s still some funny jokes, though. Mikey and Donnie’s “your mom” exchange is still classic. Casey noting that Raph’s disguise fails since he still looks like a big metal Turtle is funny. But the script still generally feels juvenile and cliche.

The biggest problem of the movie is the story. 13 monsters, invasion of the world every 3,000 years, etc etc, that’s fine, that’s really the backdrop of the film. The real story is Leo and Raph’s relationship after a prolonged absence from each other. The film leans too heavily to Leo’s side when both of them show convincing rights and wrongs. Raph is right that Leo needs to regain the group’s trust and respect if he’s to lead them again, and Leo is correct that Raph is nonetheless too eager to disobey authority and is risking their safety being a vigilante and all. And neither brother is willing to talk about how they’re feeling until they get into an ugly fight. Raph is still painted too much as the bad guy and Leo as the right guy. I’m sorry, but if Leo’s best argument for why he’s leader over Raph boils down to mocking him, “I’m better than you”, he really doesn’t need to be leader. Neither does Raph at that point in time, but still. Splinter should’ve put a strict no leaving the lair policy if things were this bad.

I don’t find myself fan-raging about the Leo favoritism, but it’s a serious flaw and it ultimately goes unaddressed. Yes, Raph breaks down and Splinter helps him (in an effective scene), but Leo doesn’t apologize for his actions either. Again, Leo is right and Raph is wrong, everything is hunky Dory.

Let’s talk about the good stuff, the best of which is the art design. This movie really does look like a slick comic book and it can be downright gorgeous. The 300-style prologue, the shots of the Turtles on the rooftops. The lovely rain and lighting effects that make the characters shine. The film looks gorgeous. Animation can only do so much on a $90 million CGI budget in 2007, but I think it mostly still looks okay. The new characters, the Stone Generals and Yaotyl, look great and have great voice actors (Kevin M. Richardson, Patrick Stewart, Fred Tatasciore). Are they deep characters? No, but you can see why the Stone Generals turn on Yaotyl even if it doesn’t get touched on too much. Like literally, one scene is all it takes for them to turn on him.

Pre-MCU Chris Evans plays Casey and does great, Sarah Michelle Gellar is good as April, and Ziyi Zhang is a great choice for Karai’s film debut... even though she mostly serves to tease a sequel that never came. Kevin Munroe once wished for the three to reprise their roles in a live action TMNT film and I can’t say I’d be too opposed to the idea. The late, great Mako is of course perfect as Splinter, but sadly he didn’t get to finish all his lines, so the ever reliable Greg Baldwin stepped in to close the gap and did wonderfully as always. Greg Baldwin/Mako as Splinter is one of the finer casting choices of the franchise for sure. And the actors chosen for the Turtles are perfect as well. Nolan North is appropriately edgy and gruff as Raph, Mikey Kelly is fun, and Mitch Whittifield is a great, dorky Donnie. James Arnold Taylor is a good choice for your standard leader type character as Leo.

Is the movie still crap? Yeah, it is. But it’s my crap, you know? My franchise. And plenty worse has come out of this franchise anyway. I don’t mind popping it in once in a blue moon to get some generic Turtle stuff. 5/10.

Also, the game was really fun if nothing spectacular.

 

Batman vs. Ninja Turtles - 9/10

Shredder fighting Batman was worth the price of admission alone but the character interplay in this is just a fucking treat. Mikey and Batman, Raph and Damien, Donnie and Barbara. Hell there's even a charm to Shredder and Ra's working together.

I'm only docking a point because I didn't feel Shredder's voice had sufficient menace.

 

Jurassic park 1 10/10 hulk 2008 7/10

 

Jordan Peele’s Us - 9/10

 

Venom

I often talk a lot about stuff that I am not really interested in but despite liking Tom Hardy and the comedy, I just can't think of anything to say.

5/10

Spider-Man: Far From Home

This movie was a lot of fun. Good comedy, good characters Tom killed it as always, and a fantastic villain. Caught some of my mates off guard. I said a lot in this movie's thread, but this is about as good as a globetrotting Spider-Man gets. "Back in Black" makes a glorious comeback too.

Best movie I have seen all year. Makes Endgame look like a bad Blade movie. 8/10

 

Jurassic park 2 10/10 the blues brothers 9/10

 

Jurassic Park is "perfect" movie??? Really? A 12 year old gymnastics kid kills a predatory dinosaur doing a gymnastics routine in that movie....

 

And better than Blues Brothers? I weep for the future.

 

Original vs. Remake Marathon

Anthony Zimmer (2005) - 8/10

The Tourist (2010) - 2/10

Pour Elle (2008) - 9/10

The Next Three Days (2010) - 6/10

 

While I don't think it's perfect, or even near perfect, I sure do love it. Especially for ridiculous things like that. The whole franchise after the original film is filled with silly stuff like that. So, why not? After the original film, Lost World is probably my favorite.

The only disappointing part of the film is that Pete Postlethwaite's character doesn't get to recapture the T-Rex at the end during the San Diego scene. But, is by far my favorite character in all these films. He was awesome as that big game hunter. Absolutely love Jurassic Park 2.

But, is it better than Blues Brothers? lol No.

 

I love dinos and blues brothers is better because that end scene is great fun