We were away last weekend, but that didn’t stop Movie Night. Not because we were able to watch movies while on vacation (I brought some DVD’s but while I would’ve sworn we gave her a player once, my grandmother’s house does not, in fact, have a set-up capable of playing them), but because there was a gap between camp and the start of school, so we squeezed a couple of flicks in on Sunday and Monday last week. (The same thing will happen this week, but I’m keeping the Movie Night post on Sunday so those will be part of next week’s roundup…)
Men in Black:
We drove by the World’s Fair site on the Grand Central Parkway, so I pointed out the towers to the kids. Which is when we discovered that SteelyKid had not, in fact, watched the original Men in Black with me and The Pip earlier in the pandemic. So we threw it on Sunday after our return to Niskayuna.
I only watched around half of it this time, because I had a Zoom call that night with a bunch of my college friends, but I heard gleeful cackling from the living room during the finale. This holds up really well— the Tommy Lee Jones/ Will Smith dynamic is still great; pity the sequels aren’t as good.
Inception:
This popped up as we were scrolling through thumbnails on Netflix, and SteelyKid got all fired up about it, having watched a bunch of YouTube commentary videos mentioning it for some reason. The Pip tapped out immediately, but SteelyKid enjoyed it greatly, and kept up a stream of chatter about the meaning of various scenes. I thought it held up reasonably well, with the caveat that if you don’t like Nolan’s other movies, you won’t like this, either.
Ready Player One:
SteelyKid specifically asked for “a dystopia,” citing this as one of the possibilities. This seemed like the one least likely to lose The Pip, so I went with it; as it is, he left during the brief sequence that’s set in The Shining, and never returned.
I read the book back when it first came out, and found it silly and fan-service-y. The movie adaptation is pretty much the same, but for slightly different fandoms, which I found mildly interesting. It’s a Spielberg movie, so there’s a kind of base level of competence to it that kept it more watchable that it should’ve with something like two-thirds of the action being centered on Uncanny Valley CGI avatars. The last battle scene kind of fell flat for me, but SteelyKid loved it, so I suspect that’s more on me for not being 13 than the filmmakers.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings:
Speaking of movies that fall apart into CGI silliness at the end…
The kids were fired up to see the new MCU movie, so it was back to the Malta Drive-In for us. As much as I’m down on the MCU generally, I was happy to take this, because I like martial-arts movies generally, and as an origin story, it seemed likely to minimize the CU parts that I find exhausting. Also, a college classmate of mine was one of the editors for this (Harry Yoon), which is pretty cool.
Again, the kids loved it, and I thought it was basically fine. The early fight sequences are really good (though not as good as Jackie Chan’s best stuff), Tony Leung has a ton of charisma, and the design work is spectacular. Simu Liu is terrific as the title character, and while I was less amused by Awkwafina’s character than my kids are, that’s mostly on me being old. The last half-hour was kind of rough, though— yet another mass battle scene against CGI creatures with the stakes and powers cranked up to 17, ending in a confusing explosion that wasn’t really set up as a thing that might happen.
The mid- and post-credits scenes were *heavy sigh* territory for me, because of the MCU of it all, but it was enjoyable enough. The drive-in (especially the snack bar) was way more crowded for this than for Free Guy a couple of weeks ago, so yay, box office?
And that’s it for our recent cultural consumption. We’ll probably get in a couple of bonus movie nights this week, giving priority to The Pip’s preferences since he’s been shut out of a couple of these. We’ll see what we see, though…
Here are the traditional buttons:
and the comments will be open if you feel so moved.
I didn't really like Awkwafina's style of humor either. IIRC it was the same during Raya and the Last Dragon.
I'm a big fan of the CU bit so it was nice seeing Ben Kingsley return (and imo he was better at the comic relief).
Tony Leung's fight scene with Fala Chen was obviously a wuxia reference, which was a nice touch. The Mandarin dialogue throughout the movie was good, though I think the subtitles I've glanced at miss some of the cultural… baggage? connotations? of what's being said. (E.g. "I've lived ten of your lifetimes" was actually "I've had more salt than you've had rice", which is a somewhat common saying by Chinese seniors.) I also thought the mythical creatures in the village were nice. And Morris was cute.