Category: Home Video

On paper Atomic Blonde is perfect: it has the color and flair of the punk 80’s and the action of John Wick.  Plus, it features one of the greatest action stars currently working, Charlize Theron.  Mix in a little cold war era spy intrigue, and things get even better.  You look at everything Atomic Blonde has going for it, and you think it is going to be amazing, but sadly it falls a little flat in places, so it ends up being merely pretty good.  Watching a good movie should never make you feel let down, but when it had so much potential, it is hard not to be disappointed.

The hook for Atomic Blonde is fabulous.  You let Charlize Theron loose in Berlin just as the wall is about to come down, and she has to fight her way through every intelligence agency in town while trying to find some list with a bunch of spies’ names on it.  Can she trust the people she is working with?  Absolutely not, but we know she will claw her way to the top of the spy pile.

I was buzzing when I saw the first trailer for Atomic Blonde, and I was even more excited when I found out it was being directed by one of the guys that brought us John Wick, David Leitch.  Here is the thing, while Leitch did a great job bringing the style and filming the stunts, the spy stuff was all pretty by the numbers.  Sure there are the usual spy twists, but nothing that thrilling.  You just have to wait through it to get to the next fight sequence.

However, the fight sequences and the style do almost make up for the lack of an interesting plot.  I mean Atomic Blonde is so cool to look at, and you can feel every punch that gets thrown and every set of keys that get stuck is some dude’s face.  Theron was meant to be in movies like this.  I want to see her punch and kick everything and everyone.  I would faint if she and Keanu Reeves ended up in a movie together.

So where does this leave us?  With a movie that oozes style (and more than a little blood), and has some wonderful stunt choreography, but with spy-craft that is less than intriguing.  Hey, if you are just going in for the action, you will probably like Atomic Blonde, but if you were expecting a little more because of all the potential, it is hard not to be disappointed, so just temper your expectations, and things will be fine.

Considering The BFG was directed by one of the most celebrated directors of our time, Steven Spielberg, and it was based off a book written by one of the greatest children’s authors of all time, Roald Dahl, you would have thought it would have been a sure fire hit.  Unfortunately for Disney it was a major box office disappointment, and in just two short years it has been all but forgotten.  Thankfully its lack of success is not a measure of its quality.  The BFG is a fun family film, and one all ages should enjoy.

Like 99% of all Dahl’s books, The BFG is about an orphan.  In this case a young girl named Sophie (Ruby Barnhill).  She can’t sleep due to her insomnia, so she spends her nights taking care of her orphanage because the woman in charge of the establishment is incompetent.  One night after her rounds she sees something through the window.  It is a giant (Mark Rylance), and it snatches her away.  As you can guess by the title of the film it is probably not a spoiler that Sophie is just fine despite being kidnapped, and that she is probably better off with the giant than in the orphanage.  Even if all the other giants do want to eat her.

The BFG is quintessential Spielberg youthful adventure, and screenwriter Melissa Mathison (she also wrote E.T.) chose lighten up Dahl’s book, so the movie is more fun than scary.  Which is probably for the best, since Dahl’s dark take on the world doesn’t always transition well from page to screen, or at least without terrifying younger viewers.  With Mathison’s version, my three year old got a little nervous in a few parts, but for most part enjoyed everything she was witnessing, as did her parents.

This movie is pretty much about two main characters, Sophie and The BFG, and Barnhill and Rylance do a wonderful job.  Their chemistry is great.  Which is pretty amazing considering Barnhill is having to interact with a large CGI giant.  They must have had Rylance up on stilts or something so that Barnhill could interact with him properly.  Regardless of how it was done, kudos to a young actor for pulling off something so difficult.

Now to the one shortfall of this film.  The CGI.  While sometimes it is impressive, for the most part it just looks cartoony and falls hard in to the uncanny valley.  I am sure the trailers of the iffy CGI giant is one of the major reasons audiences didn’t show up for this film.  Which is a shame.  So few true family films come out, so it would have been nice for this film to succeed and encourage more movies like The BFG to be made.

The BFG is now on Netflix, and it is well worth watching on family movie night, or if you are standing in front of a Redbox wondering what to watch.  If there is one thing Spielberg knows how to do, it is direct a family adventure movie, and he doesn’t disappoint here.  It is not a hard hitting drama, or a massive spectacle, but it is sweet and fun, and for most families, that should be more than enough reason to watch The BFG.

Thanks to Comcast feeling like they needed to lock me in to a one year contract, I now have access to HBO again.  Which means I got to watch Get Out for free just before the Oscars last night.  Sadly that means I didn’t get to post this review until after it already won its Oscar for Best Screenplay.  An Oscar Jordan Peele deservedly won.

Get Out is about an African American man, Andre Hayworth (Daniel Kaluuya), who is visiting his white girlfriend’s rich parents for the weekend.  Things are as awkward as you would expect, but then after a while things go from everyday racist to something more sinister, and Hayworth needs to figure it out before it is too late.  Actually he should just listen to his buddy and GET OUT!

Get Out is brilliantly written.  It uses horror movie tropes to shine a light on the little racist things people who say they aren’t racist do all the time.  From asking dumb questions about stereotypes to touching without asking.  Not to mention just saying all the things that make them not a racist to make themselves feel better.  Honestly, all of that was more horrifying than the horror parts of this movie.  Which are still pretty good.

Daniel Kaluuya gives a wonderful performance as Hayworth.  They way he understandably misunderstands what is going on as the normal crap he has to deal with everyday is completely believable.  Though my favorite character is Rod Williams played by Lil Rel Howery.  He is Hayworth’s best friend, and probably the best TSA agent out there.  He adds some great comedic moments, and is a prefect stand in for the audience.

Jordan Peele made something special with Get Out, and I am glad the Oscars rewarded him for it.  Peele showed that he had a lot of potential with Key & Peele, and it is great to see him living up to it.  If you haven’t seen Get Out yet, get out and watch it.

It was only a matter of time before the hit reboot of My Little Pony got a movie of its own.  Sadly, the writers were not able to come up with a story worthy of the big screen.  It feels like a multi-episode special, but not one of their better ones.  If you have kids that love the show, they will still probably like this movie, but My Little Pony: The Movie will not win over any new fans.

Princess Twilight Sparkle (Tara Strong) is having a hard time shouldering the load of being a new princess.  She feels like it is all up to her to make sure everyone is having fun and making friends.  To make matters worse during her inaugural Friendship Festival a new villain called the Storm King decides to invade Equestria.  His forces are being led by the broken horned unicorn Tempest Shadow (Emily Blunt).  Twilight feels like she is the only one who can save her home and friends.

This is a fine enough setup, but a story about how Twilight feels like it is all up to her when she should be leaning on her friends is well trod territory for the show, so fans will no doubt see how this movie plays out from its opening frames.  Also, it seems like the producers knew the plot was a little thin, so they just amped up the cast with a lot of well known people as random characters for marketing purposes.  Tempest Shadow is kind of an interesting character, but the rest of the new additions to Pony Canon are pretty much throwaways.

The animation at least got a good bump in quality.  The Mane 6 have never looked so good.  The flat basic color style is preserved, but there is a lot of extra little detail, and it is much smoother.  For My Little Pony fans it is probably worth watching just to see the best representation of their favorite Pony Pals.

My Little Pony: The Movie feels like a lost opportunity to tell a good story and win over some new fans.  Right now I can only recommend it to existing fans, or families with young kids.  There have been far worse movies made out of kids shows, but considering how good My Little Pony is, My Little Pony: The Movie feels a bit like a let down.

Netflix pulled off quite the trick when it announced and launched The Cloverfield Paradox during the Super Bowl.  Which is now the third entry in the Cloverfield franchise.  Much like 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Cloverfield Paradox started life as a stand alone movie and then was edited to be part of the Cloverfield universe.  Sadly, it was not as successful as 10 Cloverfield Lane, but it does add some interesting things to the universe.

In the near future the human race is almost without power, so a team of scientists have headed to space to try and find a way to generate limitless power with a particle accelerator aboard the Cloverfield space station.  Since this is a Cloverfield movie, you can guess things go poorly.

Even though the trailers give away some of what happens, I will do my best not to spoil anything because this movie is at its best when it surprises you.  Which unfortunately is not that often.  It is the standard haunted house in space setup with some Cloverfield stuff edited in, and the Cloverfield stuff hurts the pacing of an already iffy movie, but it did add some curious pieces to the Cloverfield puzzle.  Even if those pieces don’t entirely fit, but the premis for the movie almost means that they don’t have to, which I enjoy thinking about.

While the cast is fine (it has Chris O’Dowd from The IT Crowd!), there is no John Goodman here to carry the weaker parts of this film, so whenever the action stops the entire movie almost grinds to a halt.  No one is elevating the material, and it could have used a little elevation.

While I have been pretty hard on The Cloverfield Paradox, I will say I find the implications this movie has on the rest of the Cloverfield franchise intriguing, and I have been thinking about where they go from here, so I don’t regret the hour and fortyish minutes I spent with it.  It didn’t squash my excitement for the franchise, which I guess they just bought and are re-editing another one now, so for Sci-Fi fans it is probably worth watching just to be up to speed for the next one.