Technically, this delayed recap ought to stretch back three weekends, but the last thing there was The Return of the King (Fellowship and Two Towers were in the previous recap) and I’ll put that in with a general Lord of the Rings post. So this is just the last two weekends, one shortened by our Broadway trip, the other lengthened by the end of summer.
Top Gun: Maverick:
Way back in mid-July, The Pip and I watched the original Top Gun, which was much less action-y than I remembered it being. The sequel is the hit movie of 2022 to this point, so when it finally came available on streaming, of course we had to watch it.
This is a better movie than the original, in the sense of having a relatively coherent plot that advances in a reasonably linear manner. That’s not to say that it makes any sense at all— the mission is so weird that it makes the reading where Maverick died doing the test-pilot thing and the rest of it is his dying hallucination seem attractive—but unlike the original it doesn’t really give you time to think about any of the ridiculous aspects of it. Miles Teller does a great job of seeming like Anthony Edwards’s kid, and it was sad but kind of good to see Val Kilmer make a cameo, and the fighter-jet sequences are all awesome spectacle.
Stranger Things 4:
SteelyKid watched the first season of Stranger Things a few years ago, and then dropped out, but for whatever reason embarked on a big binge-watch of the whole series over the last couple of weeks. The Pip picked this up somewhere toward the end of season 3, and both kids together insisted that we blow two Movie Nights on watching the end of season 4. Technically a re-watch for me and SteelyKid, who watched only the final episode back in July, because kids are weird.
I pretty much stand by what I said back in July. The show really doesn’t stand up to any kind of close scrutiny, let alone close rewatching. But it does have a very charistmatic cast, and largely skates on that; it was a pleasant enough way to pass a couple of evenings with beer and popcorn, and the kids enjoyed themselves.
Sherlock Holmes (2009):
SteelyKid and I watched this together a year or two ago, at a point when The Pip wasn’t doing Movie Night. SteelyKid had to finish up some summer reading ahead of the start of school, so it seemed like a good time to fire this up with The Pip. The banter between Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law is good fun, the action setpieces are well-done, and Mark Strong’s villain is enjoyably creepy. Not great cinema by any stretch, but an enjoyable (re)watch.
And that’s what we’ve been up to, media-wise, in Chateau Steelypips. As noted above, I will most likely do a Lord of the Rings post; I’m debating whether to give the Amazon Prime show a shot as part of that, or just stick to the original trilogy. If you want to read that, here’s a button:
And if you’ve got thoughts on any of the fine properties mentioned above, the comments will be open: