It has been quite a while since I last wrote a movie review for the Geeky Guide given my decision to focus on other things, but after watching several movies that clearly tried to play on nostalgia, I figured some sort of a thematic discussion was in order. And I do miss writing these things, I really do.
Sequels and reboots tend to have a bad rap as we naturally expect them to be less entertaining than previous material save for certain exceptions. And for the most part, these movies were starting to feel that way to me at one point in time or another during our watching. Tobie and managed to survive the experience - but at what cost?
From first playing Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty, which pretty much kicked off the real-time strategy genre with a bang to eventually reading all of Frank Herbert's books and actually enjoying the 1984 David Lynch movie adaptation, this franchise has been such a big part of my life.
I've tried to keep some degree of emotional distance from the movie because (1) I really want it to turn out well but (2) I'm also afraid that it won't and so (3) I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much in the interim. And it's difficult to get a truly good sense for a movie based on pre-release movie stills and teaser trailers. In the end, we're going to have to watch the actual movie to determine if it's worth its weight in water.
Tobie and I did a live reaction video when the first full trailer for the new movie came out as a Baduy Pride vlog and a lot of my raw thoughts are there. But I figured it might be fun (and helpful to my sanity) to create a spoiler notes post about it. I'm going to rattle off what I know from the trailer and what I'm feeling so expect book spoilers and book-related speculations and you know the whole drill.
We had actually watched the local staging of Waitress during its opening weekend thanks to an ARC promo but I guess things got way busier than expected since I somehow forgot to write about the experience. And given recent plans to cut down on my Geeky Guide blogging time I guess it's a good thing that I've been able to squeeze this review in.
It's interesting how this musical has gained such a strong following since its release given it's based on a movie that may not be all that well-known even for a movie junkie like me. But stranger things have happened - just look at the likes of Hairspray, which was also based on a rather obscure cult classic film and yet became a Broadway success.
This local production was definitely a lot of fun to watch and made for a lovely evening for me and Tobie. By the time this review comes out the show will be on its closing weekend and I can only hope that enough people got to enjoy the show when they had the chance.
Tobie watches a bunch of movies without me and from time to time he recommends some of them for me in turn. Sicario was one of those movies but the title just seemed so alien to me and thus I never got around to it. To be fair, it wasn't a high priority thing to watch either - just something that he felt was worth watching should I find the time for it.
And so it was on another flight between home and Singapore that I was fortunate enough to encounter it in the plane's in-flight movie library along with the sequel that this movie had apparently merited. I needed to kill time with something and I wasn't too keen on watching a newer movie without Tobie around so this is the route I took.
The movie was surprisingly intense and the main limitation for me was how clear my airplane monitor was as it certainly blurred out some of the finer details of some of the scenes. Still, the movie made for an interesting narrative to get lost in for this particular journey.
It feels like there's been a distinct shift in tone between the first trailer for DC's Aquaman movie and its most recent one released over the weekend. The first one had already been pretty promising but on the whole it felt largely in tune with the Justice League movie in terms of tone and even overall (literal) color.
Aquaman - Official Trailer 1
The latest trailer is so much brighter and feels more like how Thor Ragnarok felt when it came out given it's modern adaptation of the classic Kirby style that had defined that comic book back in the day. They even included the often ridiculed orange Aquaman costume, albeit with a modern update to make it feel more awesome.
AQUAMAN - Final Trailer - in theaters December 21
Sure, part of the differences probably involve how more post production work has been completed and thus some of the more visually impressive scenes are now included as part of the trailer. Beyond that, it certainly feels that DC is really trying to pivot how their movies are represented and may just shake off the dark and gloomy tone that Zack Snyder had imposed on the earlier movies, much to their detriment.
Basically I'm saying that the trailers look great and very un-DC movie-like and that may be a great thing when the movie finally hits theaters in December. Of course for us in the Philippines it means that we'll probably see it in January given the theater lockdown that is the Metro Manila Film Festival.
My recent flights to Singapore helped me watch Ocean's 8, but of course that just reminded me that I had never watched the movie they kicked off this particular movie franchise. But we can't cover everything all at once and so I accepted watching the newer movie out of sequence and promised to double back when I had the chance.
So funnily it was during a subsequent flight that allowed me to finally watch the 2001 Ocean's Eleven to scratch that itch and to help me to better underhand all the references that the spinoff movie had been trying to hit. And man it's quite a list when you get down to it.
It was rather impressive how well the movie holds up despite the years as the heist itself was pretty solid. And they really did gather quite the interesting team to bring this movie to life and still juggled all these big name stars sufficiently well in order to still tell a good story.
Netflix's content curation efforts does result in some odd movies showing up in the library. I've noticed an uptick of interesting award-winning features from a while back now being available for viewing. And so I find myself finally getting around to movies that I've been intending to see but have not made much effort into seeing for one reason or another.
Enter Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie that has a lot of good reviews but one that I've never really been all that eager to queue up for watching because I have very mixed feelings about the works of Jim Carrey. He's not a bad actor but he does end up in very odd projects (mainly his earlier comedic work) so that has dissuaded me from jumping at the bit to see any movie featuring him.
But this turned out to be a more interesting effort even if it wasn't quite something I'd say that I totally loved or overly enjoyed. But I am happy to have finally seen it.
My initial Audible focus on biographies has slowly shifted over their works of fiction with mixed results. But I will admit that I do enjoy the most are the Audible Originals that involve full cast productions that really take a story to the next level.
Alien: Out of the Shadows turned out to be a book that I had previously purchased as a Kindle title but had yet to get around to reading given my significant reading queue. But I'm still glad that I got this Audible title since it was quite the fun ride.
For the most part I had accepted that great audio dramas were the domain of Big Finish Production, whose works seem to costs an arm and a leg. But Audible is not only getting access to some of their titles but they've also been securing exclusive deals for their own original content with diverse talent.
Biographical movies tend to be quite a mixed bag as there will always be a lot that can go wrong with such ventures. People will expect the movie to be accurate to history in many aspects and everyone will expect this or that part of the subject's life to get into the film, but you'll never make everyone happy. And there will always be more controversial parts to anyone's story that may or may not get "sufficient" coverage, whatever that may mean.
So Bohemian Rhapsody worried me given Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury is definitely a candidate for a celebrity who has been both celebrated and vilified by different people. And to have him as the subject of a movie was certainly inviting controversy and criticism.
Early press and initial reviews stressed that this is movie is about Queen as a band and not just Freddie Mercury. And in many ways, this made sense was totally a good way to go in telling this story. Sure a lot of Queen's story is inevitably Freddie's story, but as the movie stresses there's a lot more to their music than just one man.
When you rely more on streaming services like Netflix for casual entertainment, that often means watching movies several years after their initial release. It's even slower than had we had access to the likes of HBO and other cable television providers who have better content deals for their creations.
But I got lucky with in-flight movie service lately since they also seem to have highly competitive movie deals given their very recent content library. But that also means ending up watching things that I wouldn't normally try to watch if only because it was there and what else is there to do on a regional flight, right?
And so we have Ocean's 8, the all-female cast sequel / soft reboot movie for a franchise I haven't really bothered to watch. But hey I was curious and I wanted to see what they would do with things. Plus isn't what these efforts supposed to be for? They're a way to get new viewers curious enough to look into the franchise as well.
Home entertainment services like HBO and Netflix were tailor-made for giving lackluster movies new life. You know the type -the ones that you never bother to see in the theaters but you may consider watching should it randomly come up while you're flipping through channels.
In our case it was while browsing through the Netflix library.
The Legend of Tarzan is the Tarzan sorta reboot movie we didn't quite ask for or expect nor did we actually need. But hey we have it and it had some interesting casting choices and it may have been largely inspired by movies like Hook?
And that's because the movie is a sort of sequel to the original Tarzan adventures. Tarzan has left the wild and has been living in civilization but eventually has to go back becauses reasons. It's all a weird premise with some dramatic action shots but on the whole it ends up feeling a little dull and hollow even.
These days it almost feels obligatory that one watch any new Pixar movie that comes out. And thus it can feel genuinely surprising when you realize that you may have missed a movie or to along the way despite your best efforts.
Enter The Good Dinosaur, a Pixar movie that I never properly watched from start to finish. I remember that we had tried to watch a downloaded copy some time back but we were clearly distracted and did not give the movie the attention it deserved in order to fully appreciate the story. I can't really remember why things were that way, but that's just how it played out.
While I do regret having not seen this particular Pixar movie sooner, I'll admit it's not exactly right up there with the best of them, if you get my drift. It's still pretty good and better than your average release but it also didn't quite shine as brightly as some of their other movies have. It's a little hard to explain but I'll try to capture my feelings about this movie in words.
The writings of Neil Gaiman are much beloved by fans around the world and in recent years it feels like more and more television and movie executives are greenlighting projects based on those works. But beyond his full-length novels, even his short stories can be used to inspire feature-length movies.
How to Talk to Girls at Parties is one such adaptation with a somewhat unexpected creative team behind it. The movie aimed to add on other themes on top of the original story to create an entertainment piece that is a distinct, evolved version of that first story.
I recognize that the structure of this movie is not an easy one to understand right off the bat and the narrative style is quirky, sometimes a bit too quiet and also understated. But I still enjoyed it despite those quirks and found some resonance in the story it wanted to tell. It was both a celebration of Neil Gaiman's original story and something else entirely - perhaps something just a little alien in nature.
Netflix continues to churn out more and more original content in order to provide more original value versus other streaming services. And that apparently includes new animated ventures that will try to go head-to-head with streaming content from studios like Disney-Pixar and Dreamworks.
Next Gen is one of those tentpole efforts for original animated content as it certainly had the feel of a big budget animated feature. The movie certainly has a lot of familiar elements involved that you may or may not remember from other animated features that makes it almost feel like a marketing-driven story in terms of behind-the-scenes decision-making.
The movie was quirky and had its own share of fun to be had, certainly. But it also didn't quite hit the right notes perfectly and left me with mixed feelings. I keep saying this about Netflix original ventures but it again didn't feel terrible nor did it seem exceptional and so it was very middle of the road to me.
There's a certain stigma around video game movies as they rarely seem to translate well to the big screen. There are two extremes when it comes to the more problematic side of these movies - good games that are twisted into bad movies or games with very thin plots that become odd movies. This is definitely one of the latter ones.
Rampage is based on a now obscure game that really didn't have much of a plot - if anything it barely had a premise. But somehow we ended up with a big budget movie that hopes to capitalize on nostalgia somehow but really the average movie-goer is too young to even remember the game existed.
To top it all off we have Dwayne Johnson in the movie. He's not a bad actor and in fact he can be quite funny. But his main challenge is that he doesn't always pick the most fulfilling roles for himself. At the very least he seems to have fun with all of his movie projects though.
There are those movies whose trailers feel like they're tailor-made to appeal to a wider audience but also feel "too good" such that you can't help but suspect that the trailer features all the best bits of the movie. This feels especially true when it comes to animated features that primarily target kids but feel obligated to throw in as much fun stuff for adults that it can when it comes to the promotional materials for the movie.
The Secret Life of Pets really feels like one of those movies. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad movie right off the bat, but it isn't quite as amazing as you'd like for it to be. The stuff that made the trailer so funny didn't necessarily define the greater narrative of the movie.
The actual story felt very different from the scenario of the trailer as this was less about what pets do at home while their owners are off at work but instead a whole separate adventure that just happens to take place while the pet owners are away. It sounds very similar but seriously, it's a different story.
I wandered into Cherry Pop primarily because we follow RuPaul's Drag Race and because I do appreciate Bob the Drag Queen as an entertainer. I had no idea what to expect from this movie but I figured it was worth checking when it appeared in my Netflix recommendations.
Cherry Pop definitely has the feel of a somewhat older LGBT movie, like during that glut of such direct to video entertainment during the early 2000's or something. In other words, it has some semblance of a story and has a lot of jokes that don't quite seem to land.
But at least you have a lot of drag queen cameos that help liven the mood of things, if that's a thing that you look for. But of course it's largely limited to a lot of make-up room sassiness and another opportunities for quipping and all that jazz.
Part of the recent wave of new Netflix original content was LEGO House: Home of the Brick, which is a rather niche documentary about the creation of LEGO's now iconic LEGO House in Denmark. This is not a LEGO origin story - Netflix has The Toys That Made Us to help address that line of curiosity. But does touch on those origins to some degree in order to explain the LEGO House as a whole.
This is a rather focused documentary that has a fairly narrow subject - how to make the house. And it's a story that doesn't exactly have a lot of controversy involved or some great struggle either. They started a plan to create this thing and then they do it in the end. That's how the documentary goes. But for diehard brick fans, this is still quite the captivating movie.
Dwayne Johnson's movie career is quite the colorful one filled with a good number of action roles and genre movie credits as well. He's pretty flexible as an actor that way although it's easy to dismiss his movies as being a little middle of the road.
I wasn't too keen on seeing Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle as it was both a Dwayne Johnson movie and an unexpected sequel to the original Jumanji that felt like some studio executive's idea that had come out of nowhere.
But the friends who did get to see the movie before we did actually recommended it and cited how enjoyable it was. So that sort of deal admittedly got us curious enough to get around to seeing it just to find out what the fuss was about.
And surprisingly, the movie was a lot more fun than some of the reviews had made it seem, at least for us. It's not a perfect movie nor one that would win awards but it was great entertainment.
The Netflix original movie empire continues to grow and more and more it feels like they're doubling down on tickling the fancies of "millennials" (regardless of how you choose to define that term) and thus we get more content like this. Whew.
I decided to give To All The Boys I've Loved Before a bit of a chance since (1) Tobie tends to like romantic comedies and (2) too many people in my Twitter circles were either talking about the movie or quoting the movie. That can get pretty annoying and so I wanted to stop that sort of spoilery behavior even for a movie I had no original interesting in watching.
To be fair, this is a movie based on an already popular (?) book and that helps make it a safer investment than some of Netflix's other original ventures. And if the social media chatter is any measure, it seems they were successful in reaching their target demographic.
