The last Movie Night recap was in early January, so there have been a bunch of flicks since then, covering a moderately wide range of stuff.
John Wick Chapter 2 and John Wick: Parabellum:
We watched the original John Wick back at the start of January, which was a re-watch for SteelyKid and the first time for The Pip. He wanted to charge right on to the sequels, but SteelyKid was otherwise occupied for a couple of nights and wanted to see them, so it had to wait a bit. We knocked them both out on one weekend, though.
These are kind of ridiculous, taking the ultra-simple premise of the first one (man is wronged, seeks bloody revenge with single-minded intensity) and spins it out into this elaborately baroque world of improbably numerous and glamorous globe-trotting assassins. The fight scenes are so good, though, and you’ve got things like the running shoot-out between Keanu Reeves and Common in the second one, or the bug-eyed intensity Mark Dacoscos brings to Zero. Great fun.
Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:
We’ve been doing these long enough that The Pip (who is, after all, only 11) doesn’t entirely remember the first pass through some of the classic films. So when he asked for an Indiana Jones movie, it was perfectly sensible to just replay the two good ones. The first is an absolute classic for good reason; the third is just a touch below, but still excellent.
Deadpool and Deadpool 2:
The first of these was another case of a rewatch for SteelyKid but the first watch for The Pip; it’s rare enough to get SteelyKid to agree to watch with us that I was happy to take the chance. And the sequel was another chance to get both kids watching the same thing, so we jumped at it.
The kids got a big kick out of these being on Disney+, because they are such un-Disney flicks. They’re good fun for what they are, though: Fast-talking, super-referential, and bloody. Too much of this would wear thin; indeed, after banging them out in consecutive weekends, I could do with a bit of a Ryan Reynolds hiatus. But they’re good stupid entertainment.
Shotgun Wedding:
This is the one new movie on the list, an action rom-com with Josh Duhamel and Jennifer Lopez. I had heard Duhamel promoting this on the Ryen Russillo podcast (and seen endless ads for it on social media sites…), then it popped up at the top of the Amazon Prime home screen. The Pip said “So, it’s Die Hard at a wedding? We can watch that.”
It’s… fine. It really needed either more action or more jokes, or possibly both, but it’s got some decent bits of both. I might’ve been annoyed if I’d paid money to see it, but it was free, so, whatever.
Jurassic World:
The first of the Chris Pratt reboots of the Jurassic franchise. We watched the original several months ago, but haven’t watched any of the sequels. The most recent just hit Amazon, though, or at least they were promoting it heavily, so The Pip expressed an interest.
Afterwards, The Pip observed that “A lot of the people in that movie were very stupid.” And, in fact, that’s absolutely true. It’s true of the first one, too, but there’s a level of craft to the filmmaking there that carries it off a lot better than in this one. The visuals here aren’t bad, but it overuses CGI to the point where everything becomes kind of weightless and thus impact-less. I don’t feel particularly compelled to seek out any more of this version of the property, but we’ll see what The Pip wants down the road…
And that’s what I’ve been watching with the kids these last several weeks. Here’s the traditional button:
And if you want to suggest better things that still suit the attention span of an 11-year-old boy in 2023 (The Pip noticed The Godfather in the list of titles on offer from Prime, but I vetoed it because there’s no way he’d sit still) the comments will be open: