The Clock with the Walls in its House

Children's fare? Well, it's for children, fair.

Kid's parents die (family picture!), so he goes to live with his uncle. Who lives in a kooky house because magic is real! However, in an attempt to impressed a so called friend, the kid brings a dead warlock back to life, and who hasn't done that? But then they have to fight, and it turns out there's a clock in the house that's really bad, so we can't be having with that.

On the one hand, this is light hearted fun. On the other hand, this is light hearted fun. This is the good and bad because the writer/director tries to turn up the whimsy, which just results in cutesy for the same of being wacky and no real sense of menace, despite how often Jack Black says 'creepy'.

Which is the other issue. This does feature Jack Black and Cate Blanchett but neither of them are trying. You can tell they see this as an easy child-friendly gig, and just relax and just cruise on through the movie. Owen Vaccaro isn't too annoying as the kid, although don't worry, he is annoying. But the overham performance goes to Kyle MacLachlan, which is impressive considering that the main role is Jack Black.

It's certainly a breezy movie that won't challenge you, so if that's what you are after, go for it.

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Frist Mon!

Hey, it's that one guy from the space program that people know of! And people only really seem to know that one guy, despite Tom Hanks' movies.

Neil Armstrong is flying a plane really high, has a small problem, and gets back down. He has some time with his family, has a tough time of it, then goes back to work. He goes up in a shuttle, has a bigger problem, but gets back down. He has some more time with his family, but is really stiff, and goes off to work. Finally, he gets to the moon, but comes back to be with his family.

Yes, this is relating the events of history (more or less, you can look up how they truncated the timeline and such elsewhere), but this is more about Neil the man rather than the astronaut, and as such there is a certain repetition of events to drive the story home that he was better astronaut than husband/father.

My star of choice in this is Claire Foy, who, as the wife, gets some excellent moments to play off against Ryan Gosling's more controlled stance. And, hey, Kyle Chandler is still getting work. But...

You know what... dammit! I want a Michael Collins movie! He gets no love. You could do it as a comedy where he's up there having slapstick adventures with the ship having problems while the others are oblivious, or have him do the "real mission" while the other two are a distraction.

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In Blackest Night...

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In Brightest Day...

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The Pre Dater

Yeah, I have some "big" movies to catch up on, so let's go with this original...

Two Predators are attacking each other, and one ends up on Earth. We then switch to Predator vs the military, then switch to random militia group vs military, then vs another Predator. With also a 'lone kid' plot. And also there's a plot about Predators upgrading themselves... or not because we saw the original had the human dna, not the upgraded up...

What I'm saying is that there's a lot of plot threads here, and the movie jumps around a lot of them as it wants to without really settling down and getting something sorting out. I'm sure Shane Black had an idea, but what we end up with a large hodge podge of different scenes with recurring characters. And the kid is considered important and special to the plot... does Shane Black have kids that he wants to show this too?

Not to say it's bad, there are good scenes, fun characters, there is a lot going on, and lots of effects. It's just that I'm not sure what the point of any of this is.

Still, there is a set up for a sequel, so I'm sure that's going to happen...

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Glarsh

I had not heard great things about this, but I wanted to see it anyway. I reckon that's the cause of most people seeing it.

Through a contrived set of circumstances, Bruce Willis in a Poncho, James McAvoy with Multiple Character Schtick, and Samuel L. Jackson in a wheelchair all end up in the same hospital. And I hope you like that hospital because the majority of the movie takes place there, with talking, more talking and then other characters talking. There are a couple of action sequences, but by the end M. Night is going "I am amazing, don't let others bring me down!"

The premise is "what if they aren't superheroes?" when the fiction of the previous movies already established "hey, they are superheroes". So guess how well that is going to go down. Frankly, most of the time I was spent waiting for them to get on with it, and while the waiting wasn't terrible it was just watching a lot of filler.

The ending may annoy people, but there are different bits that will annoy different people. That we don't get the location doesn't bother me. The first twist I saw coming. The second twist ties into the "I'm really amazing" aspect M. Night is trying to sell with this. So your own patience may vary with how you want to deal with aspects of that.

This feels meh. Not great, but as long as you don't have high expectations of M. Night at this point, it clears the bars.

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Spoiderverse

Everyone who says this movie says it is good nee great. I am really adverse to seeing over hyped movies. However, I also found myself with time to go to a theater so there you are.

So the premise is that Peter Parker dies and co-incidentally Miles Morales gets bitten and is there when that happens. And the time that it happens there's a breach across multiple parallel universes, making the various Spiderpeoples of those universe turn up in this one. They must come together, and Miles must learn what it is to be a Spiderbeing, in order to save the entire city (and several realities) from collapsing.

A common thing people talk about is the animation styles, and that is styles as each Spider gets their own style in keeping with their original comics. It can get a little confusing with mess on the screen at times, and other times I watched the dots overlaying the animation rather than the pictures themselves, but for the most part it was fine and helped kept things fresh. (And then there was the end credits joke - Ha! I joke that! Memes!) Although I did spend far too much time not accepting their model of Wilson Fisk.

Story wise, aside from the parallel reality thing, yeah, this is fairly standard. New hero is born, needs to learn how to be a hero while contending with threat that killed off previous hero. That's a trope I plan on using myself! Performances are good, with a few voices that you might not get until you see the credits list (at least I didn't). Production side... there were a few moments where the visuals and the sounds were a big overwhelming and I couldn't work out what was being said, so that could have been tweaked. But only a few moments of that.

So yeah, the movie is good. I'm not going for great, and I know some people immediately felt like seeing it over again and I'm nowhere near that hard for it. But it is at least good.

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