Friday Night Shots – Summer Movies

Welcome back, everyone!

I know it’s been a while, not just for a Friday Night Shots post (almost 2 months) but also for any posts in general (my last news post notwithstanding).

I’ve been off of work since the beginning of July, ended up getting a new computer and having a bunch of stuff to do to get ready for that.

Not to mention just having “endless days” and having trouble finding the motivation to write something.

I was determined to do so when the vacation began, but with the new computer stuff, things just cascaded so that I lost my motivation.

This is my attempt to get it back, by starting with a nice frivolous post about what we’ve been doing in July.

So have a seat at the bar and let’s chat.

The jukebox is still on the fritz.

Why is it playing Disco Duck non-stop?

I have no idea, but I’ll have to get somebody in to fix that.

One Rick Dees song is already too much.

Anyway, what have I been doing in July?

Along with resting and recuperating from all of the technological bullshit going on at work, we’ve been watching movies!

Not just watching…actually going to them.

We have a cineplex very close to our place, so a large part of our movie desire for July was “we can leave the apartment very shortly before it starts and go see it while still missing all of the ads.”

As of this post, we have seen every movie at our local cineplex.

Quite an accomplishment.

So let’s see what I think of what we’ve seen!

Before I get into the movies themselves, am I the only person who feels a little uncomfortable with commercials containing anthropomorphized food encouraging you to eat them?

Thankfully Cineplex has changed their concessions commercial to popcorn that’s vacationing, but for the first few movies mentioned below, they had a commercial where the popcorn was on a quest to find the Big Butter Display.

Unless your kink is slathering yourself with butter, how is this anything but the popcorn encouraging us to eat it?

I don’t want my food talking back to me!

Anyway…let’s begin.

Sinners

The first movie we saw, the first Monday of our vacation, was Sinners (directed by Ryan Coogler).

We managed to see this on the last week before it disappeared from our local cinema.

This is the story of two brothers (both played by Michael B. Jordan) who return to their Mississippi hometown in the 1920s after making a name for themselves up north in Chicago. Unfortunately, what’s waiting for them is much darker than anything they faced up north.

This film works beautifully as both an examination of the racial issues in the 1920s South as well as a horror movie involving vampires (that’s not a spoiler, as all of the ads for the movie mention this).

It works as both, with the horror aspects working brilliantly and Coogler’s world-building is wonderful as well.

Especially notable for me are the two Asian characters, as I wasn’t aware that Asians played such a prominent role in southern US society in that time period.

The script is great, Jordan is wonderful playing both brothers. The horror elements are well-imagined and (since I love Blues music so much) the homage to Blues music just makes this movie sing.

This is probably the best movie we saw this month.

But that doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy the rest.

F1

This isn’t something we were looking forward to when we saw the trailers (constantly), but when we decided that July was going to be a month of movies, we decided to go to it while it was still in the IMAX theater.

As an actor, we love Brad Pitt (not so much as a person, but there you go) and F1 really highlights his abilities.

The basics of the plot is that an F1 manager (Javier Bardem) is having trouble with his new phenom and wants his old friend (Pitt) to race for him as well as shepherd said phenom into the brilliance that he’s capable of.

While the movie is pretty predictable, the performances and camerawork (especially in IMAX) are amazing. It was nice to see Bardem in a role where he doesn’t look lie a weirdo with a bad haircut. He’s stylish in this one, and his acting is just as good as it usually is.

Also, I’m a sucker for an Irish accent, so seeing Kerry Condon as the team manager…well, let’s just say that it hit me very hard.

But she’s also one of the most competent people in the film, so it’s certainly not a token role.

The film is amazing in IMAX or on the big screen, so I’m not sure how it will translate when you’re not seeing the visuals as they should be, but it was an enjoyable movie that even my wife, who knows nothing of F1 and doesn’t really like the concept of F1, enjoyed it.

Pitt gives a great performance, as usual and the other ones are pretty good too.

Jurassic World: Rebirth

This was a movie that neither one of us had on our radar.

We haven’t seen any of the other Jurassic World movies other than maybe the first one (I know I’ve seen it, but I don’t remember about the wife), but the cast was pretty good and we decided to go for it.

The basic plot is that special forces turned mercenary Scarlett Johannson is tasked by the CEO of a pharmaceutical company to lead a team to the original Jurassic Park island in order to extract dinosaur DNA for a massive medical breakthrough.

The film also involves a family that gets caught up in all of this because their boat was capsized by one of these seafaring dinosaurs and they are rescued by the team.

First, I have to tell you (in case you are like some people and don’t want to see animals harmed) that not a single dinosaur is killed in this movie (one of them might be, but I think it appears later in the film).

It has some thrills and chills, but is otherwise fairly predictable. The humans who are going to be eaten are telegraphed a mile away, but there is still some suspense in how the others will get out of their predicament.

This is another “see on the big screen if you can” movie because the visuals are really well done. I don’t know if the movie itself is worth seeing that much without the visuals.

Johannson is somewhat miscast as a special forces operative, but she carries the rest of it pretty well. She does really well with the “I lost somebody on a mission and I don’t want to do it again” vibe, and she’s extremely talented in the role.

I just don’t know if I buy her as special forces.

The rest of the cast is fine, though I could have done without the “oh, the kid discovers a cute dinosaur so let’s try for maximum cuteness” aspect of the movie.

The dinosaurs are very cool, though.

28 Years Later

We did a crash course on this franchise, watching 28 Days Later and 28 Months Later prior to going to see this one.

That wasn’t really necessary, as there is no relation between this one and the others, other than the fact that the Rage virus has turned the UK into an isolated nation, where the infected run rampant and there is an island off the coast of England where survivors have created a new civilization.

Twice a day, the tides roll in and recede, offering a land route to the mainland and a way for young boys (or people, though in this movie it’s just a boy) a way to become a man by going over and killing their first infected.

The movie works as a coming-of-age film as well as a horror movie, as father and son make their way through the world. As part of the process, he sees (and then hears about) a doctor on the mainland who may be able to cure his mother of the unknown illness that she is suffering from.

Even though everybody says that the doctor is a madman, he takes his mother on a journey through the wasted land in order to see if he can save her.

Jodie Comer is wonderful as the mother in this, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson is also great as the father who has his own secret. Newcomer Alfie Williams is great as young Spike, the boy who just wants to save his mom if at all possible.

Ralph Fiennes also does a magnificent job as the doctor.

The movie adds some interesting lore to the “28” universe, with an infected who ends up giving birth to a baby that’s not infected.

I was not expecting the movie to make me cry like it did. It’s very touching if you’re a sentimental type.

But it also has some great action with them running and dealing with the infected beings.

This was a surprise hit for me.

Looking forward to the second (of three, maybe?) film continuing this in January.

Superman

This was the movie I had been waiting for.

Not because I’m a huge fan of DC comics movies, but with James Gunn in charge, I’m not going to give them all at least some consideration.

We saw this opening day and it was an amazing movie.

Gunn did such a great job with this.

It was really cool that we come into the movie with Superman already being an established hero, so we didn’t have to see his origins.

Instead, they are referenced.

Lois and Clark are already established as a couple (and Lois knows he’s Superman), which removes even more awkwardness that many of the previous Superman movies had to go through.

Being the first movie of Gunn’s DCEU (the DC equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe), the movie also establishes some of that universe in the form of the Justice Gang (I found that hilarious).

However, even with these other heroes featured, this is very much a Superman movie.

David Corenswet is great as Superman/Clark and Rachel Brosnahan is probably the best Lois Lane I’ve seen in film.

But Nicholas Hoult is simply amazing as Lex Luthor.

I don’t think I’ve seen a better Lex performance, even from Gene Hackman back in 1977.

The film works both as a wonderful Superman movie as well as an introduction to the whole DCEU. I want to see more of Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific. I loved him in The Blacklist and he was great here too.

And I’m here for any DC movie right now, as long as Gunn is running the show.

We saw this one twice, both on Friday and then the next Tuesday.

It was that good.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

This is another movie that, initially, neither one of us had any real desire to see.

But we were in movie mode and it was at our short trip cineplex, so we thought “why not?”

This is an update on the original 1997 film, with a new generation of young adults who do something stupid and thus incur the wrath of a sadistic killer.

A group of old high school friends (including somebody who hasn’t been part of the clique for a while) end up going up onto a hill to watch the July 4th fireworks, but zany hijinks ensue and result in a car swerving off the road and down the side of the cliff.

Next year, the bride-to-be is given a note as a wedding present, saying “I know what you did last summer” and thus the pursuit of vengeance begins.

This all harkens back to what happened to a similar group of young adults who basically did the same thing.

Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinz Jr reprise their roles as the only survivors from 1997, helping to usher along a new generation who are now going through the same thing.

Horrific murders happen while the group tries to get the local police and developers to believe what is happening, even though they want to just avoid it all because of the new summer festival the seaport town is having.

Are they going to suffer the same fate as so many of the previous group did?

Or will the survivors be able to help them also survive?

We went into this with no expectations other than “this is a summer movie that’s not far away so let’s just enjoy a movie” and I was pleasantly surprised.

It is by no means a “good” movie, and it’s predictable as hell (though my wife saw one twist that I admit I didn’t see coming, but should have), but it wasn’t nearly as bad as we thought it would be.

If you’re a fan of the old movies, then this one will probably be good for you.

We certainly didn’t regret going to see it, though it’s not something we would normally seek out.

As horror movies go, this wasn’t bad!

How to Train Your Dragon

We’ve never seen the original animated movie, so we went into this one completely blind (though we’d been inundated with trailers for it during all of our other movie watches so we had a very good idea of what would be happening).

I have to say that this movie would have been so good in the IMAX theater, but we missed that.

It was still very good on the big screen. The effects were gorgeous and the story was, again, very predictable. We knew every beat before it happened (with one mild “I wasn’t quite expecting that” as an ending consequence that I won’t spoil).

It’s definitely a kids movie, but it was still heartfelt and I have to say that Mason Thames really was a great Hiccup.

Gerard Butler was wonderful as well, but that’s to be expected in stuff like this.

I do have to admit that the racial diversity was a bit forced in this one.

Not that it existed, because I loved that there were a couple of Asian and Black characters sprinkled in among the townsfolk.

What I’m talking about is the village meeting where Stoick pointedly calls out the fact that the village is diverse, noting where these characters are from.

To me (and it could just be me), if you have to point the diversity out to people, it actually lessens the impact of it. I think they should have just left it as it was and let the bigots and idiots point at it and say “there weren’t any Asians in Scandinavia!” Let them demonstrate how prejudiced they are.

Anyway, it was a fun movie. Not really our type of movie, and we probably wouldn’t have gone to see it if we weren’t in “Vacation Movie Mode,” but we didn’t regret it at all.

Also, fans of the original seem to be saying that it’s very faithful to that one, so that’s a bonus!

Though if you’re a fan of the original, you’ve probably already seen this one.

Fantastic Four

The final vacation movie is Fantastic Four, on opening day! (Well, what used to be opening day, but now they always seem to have showings on Thursday, and sometimes even Wednesday night!)

Anyway, this is the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, bringing the Fantastic Four into the MCU (kind of) after Disney/Marvel finally got the rights back from Fox.

The cast is really great, and I love how (unlike the Fox films) the four actually feel like a family, the First Family of Marvel in a way.

I always love Julia Garner and she does a great job as the Silver Surfer (we even see a scene where she’s not in all of the SFX make-up!) and it was really nice to see Galactus as a galactic humanoid threat instead of an amorphous cloud.

The SFX in general were amazing, especially for Galactus.

I’m not sure how I feel about the 60s retro-technological feel of the whole world, but since this is probably the only time we’ll see it, I’m not too sussed about it.

I’m also not a fan of the whole world fawning all over them to the point where it’s not even clear that there are any country governments out there (there are country boundaries, of course, but these four could run the entire world if they really wanted to).

I thought this might lead to a bit of “raise somebody on a pedestal so high that the fall is catastrophic” thing, but the one time this comes close to happening, a speech by one of the characters wipes all of that away.

Overall, the movie was very good. Nowhere near the best Marvel movie out there.

But pretty good.

So there you have it.

More movies will be debuting in the coming weeks (really looking forward to Nobody 2 and also kind of looking forward to the Liam Neeson Naked Gun) but our July has been a movie extravaganza.

And we love it.

Now it’s back to work, so while we will continue to see movies, it won’t be at this rate.

Have you seen any of these?

What do you think of them?

Let me know in the comments.