Creedy 2nd

I've watched all the other Rocky movies, so of course I had to watch this.

The Creed v Drago comes back in this rematch as a sequel not only to the fourth movie but also the first Creed movie. Creed faces having to fight as he thinks he has to prove himself to his father as well as becoming a father himself. But it isn't even that simple as so Rocky needs to step in to help out.

This is a great character piece, as the Rocky movies generally are, that happens to include some moments of boxing. Indeed, the best moments are the ones around the boxing matches when we get to see the characters interacting and being human. We have great performances from Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson and of course from Sylvester Stallone himself.

Say what you will about Syl, he does great in these movies, and it's always great to see him in them. Although he's now bowed out so we'll see if the Creed set of movies even continue. Sure, there are more they can do, as it is a series of boxing movies, but they become centered around Rocky, even when they are about Creed, so we'll see.

In the meantime, whether you've seen Rocky movies or not, this is a good movie (although I doubt it will make much sense if you haven't seen the other movies).

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Northwest by North

The Embassy is doing a Hitchcock set of screenings, so this seems like a good time to catch up when times align. First up, North by Northwest.

A complete coincidence has a group of bad guys thinking that Roger Thornhill is George Kaplan. And from such small beginnings... Roger Thornhill proves to be a very able not spy and is caught up in big events and manages to survive quite well, coming across dashing women (well, one) and thugs, while managing to avoid gadgets and slow moving death traps.

Bond references? Yes, but this is a far more down to earth adventure than anything that English chap does through. Thornhill is not an agent, but does get caught up in a similar sense of events, and aside from some movie reality suspence is quite believable as things play out. (It's amazing how well action men managed to go on with not much food, while being able to cross large distances, and, most importantly, find many women to instantly attract.)

That said Cary Grant is quite attractive, as in Eva Marie Saint, so what the heck, of course they will go for each other. And hey, James Mason! (Although I kept thinking of Eddie Izzard doing his James Mason impersonations.) And is that Martin Landau I spy? Yes it is! And Hitchcock's own cameo is quite amusing.

These classic movies are classic for a reason, and I'm willing to affirm this classic status.

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MiBBie

I watched the previous three. They were fine. There was some nice comedy bits sprinkled throughout, and we aren't talking a tough plot with lots of twists. I like that in a movie at times. So I went into this happy to be watching it.

A new agent joins the MIB, teams up with an agent from another branch, and when an alien is assassinated they have to find out what's going on. So far the first movie, right? But what if the MIB are involved somehow? Huh? Bet you never saw that twist before!!!

For all that I just made it sound generic it is... perfectly fine. It isn't amazing, it's just fine, a perfectly adequate entry into the franchise. We get some places that aren't New York (so yay!), but as I mentioned, they were never going to really roll the boat out on a complex plot.

Acting wise, people where waiting for Hemsworth and Thompson and... they're fine. They look like they are cruising on easy acting here. We also have was is barely more than cameos from Emma Thomson and Liam Neeson and they are... fine.

Really, the whole movie is just fine. If you find yourself watching it, you will be entertained, but this isn't the next big thing you must see.

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Doerk Phanix

This is the last X-Men movie to be made under Fox before the merger brings it back into Disney/MCU hands, and... ooh boy.

Things happened to Jean in her childhood that now come back to her as she suddenly gains in power and... heard this before. Yeah you have. It wasn't great then, and now...

I was bored. There were just so many scenes of Jean angsting and people saying 'don't angst'. Now, that is true to the comic, but that doesn't make it good then either. Angst != character development, no matter how much of the former you might have. And as I remembered other X-men movies, we didn't even get the relief of new angst either.

Now previously, this was the third movie, so we already spent two movies with these characters. Now, all we have is whatever parts of Apocalypse you can remember, and most people can't even do that. So while this is seen as one of the key storylines people think they know, jumping straight to it isn't that interesting. Even the Batman movies don't break Batman's back immediately, and Superman isn't just meeting his Doomsday (although that also does happen... A LOT).

This movie doesn't have anything to offer, and takes two hours to not offer it.

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King Gojira

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are definitely in the zone of the sequel with even more monsters, but well... dammit, it's great! Big monsters fighting! That's what we want. The movie is still attempting to pretend the humans are interesting and there is a plotline involving them, but I seriously didn't care. And the motives for all this are cartoon villain worthy.

And if you want references to Kong, there are plenty of those.

Now, I don't know the Godzilla monster pantheon, but I could at least name the main ones. The movie does feature a fair few, but keeps a tight focus that you aren't overwhelmed with too many CGI beasts... although there is a lot of grey variant CGI on screen. Yes, you can tell who is who, but don't expect lots of colour on screen here.

Frankly, I look forward to the upcoming movie in which Gamera comes to help...

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Wicky Wicky Wick

Gun, gun, gun, gun... gun, gun Gun!

Following on from 2, John Wick is excommunicated and thus on the run from other people hunting him. For some reason, he has a plan that involves him talking to people, but others still want him dead, so he has to deal with them. And there are a lot of people who want him dead.

I can't even recall all the various scenes of fighting. There are a lot of them. I'm going to say this... there are too many. Do I need to watch another moment of John Wick shooting someone or punching someone? I'm good. There is a pretense of a plot going on, so maybe we don't need another few minutes of nameless, faceless mooks being tossed around and taken out.

There are some impressive camera work moments, with some long oners on screen. But then we cut to more people coming in, then more fighting and... it's hard to say "I was bored" in this movie, but somehow I managed to be.

So, a decent enough movie, but could have been trimmed down. And the worse thing? There was more than 15 minutes of trailers/ads before the movie. Is this a new trend? I hope not.

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Detective Peekatyou

I had a Pikachu plush once... it was in the Stats House building. You may be aware of what happened to that. I got another one, which I left behind in our new building over Christmas Break... and never saw it again. Gotta lose 'em all?

Harry is a detective who dies, and his son Tim has to deal with that. And so we have Tim dealing with daddy issues for the entire movie, and there are also pokemon and other things going on, but it's mainly about the missing dad.

I'm not a Poke-fanatic, although I've seen a fair bit of the original anime. This works well to have pokemon all over the place and it's reasonably believable in the pokemon/real people interactions. Mostly. There's a few times where you wonder where the eye line is actually is, and Tim holding air doesn't work, but hey, I brought it.

And then we hit the third act, and we find out what's going on, and... that's when I fell out of the movie. That's a plan a cartoon villain would blush at. And the action is more than a little ridiculous, even taking into account again that this is a cartoon based movie adapting a video game story. Nope, sir, I don't buy it.

I'd be happy if we get more, but there are some limits to what I will put up with.

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