Blackmoor Vituperative

We saw “Captain Marvel” last night. It was okay. It reminded me of “Doctor Strange” — lots of backstory and special effects, and then the main character can suddenly do anything and automatically wins.

I think I would have liked it better if they had cast a better actor as Captain Marvel. Brie Larson does “impassive” and “serious” well, but most of the time when her character laughed or smiled, it came across as forced and fake (John Agar had the same problem). I think her most believable scenes are opposite Akira Akbar as a very young Monica Rambeau — in those, she comes across as genuine. But personally, I think Samara Weaving would have been better in the part. Ah, well.

I really liked Ben Mendelsohn as Talos, and Gemma Chan as Minn-Erva. I thought they were more interesting than Carl Danvers and Nick Fury (although Sam Jackson is always interesting).

Tonight’s entertainment was “The Foreigner” (2017), with Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan. We both enjoyed it, although we had some trouble telling the doughy British and/or Irish people apart. It reminded me of another film I rather like, “The Limey” (1999), with Terence Stamp.

Tonight’s entertainment was “Star Wars 10: Solo, A Star Wars Story” (2018). It has some dumb bits (e.g., why his name is “Solo”, why he calls Chewbacca “Chewie”), but we liked it. It was a fun movie, and had a happy ending despite a lot of sympathetic characters dying.

Alden Ehrenreich (who played Han) and Donald Glover (who played Lando) did a really good job of adopting the accents of the original actors for those parts. I was impressed. I also liked the new Chewbacca, and that he got to flex his muscles, so to speak. I was also pleased to see Emilia Clarke, who played Sarah Connor in the ill-fated “Terminator: Genisys” (2015). It was not a good movie, but I really liked her turn as Sarah Connor, and I am glad to see her getting work.

I am not a fan of Deadpool, the comicbook character. I think he makes any comic worse with his appearance. However, I have enjoyed the two Deadpool movies more than the last several non-Deadpool Marvel and DC (and Star Wars) movies.

Does that seem right to you?

Tonight’s entertainment was “Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut” (2009), which is basically the Director’s Cut spliced with a bunch of cartoons. I have two thoughts about this. First, it’s a good movie, and as far as I know, it’s the only good movie Zach Snyder has ever directed. Second, the cartoons added nothing, so if you have a choice between this and the Director’s Cut, choose the Director’s Cut.

Just finished watching the “Avengers Infinity Glove” (2018). Wow. That was the dumbest superhero movie I’ve seen in a very long time. Even dumber than the Justice League movie (although it’s basically the same movie). What the villain does is dumb. Why he’s doing it is dumb. What the heroes do is dumb. It’s just two solid hours of dumb.

I guess Disney/Marvel is in a slump. They’ve gone from great movies like “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and “The Force Awakens” to crap like “The Lost Jedi” and this. I think it’s time to give these franchises a decade to cool off, and then start over from scratch.

And wow do Don Cheadle and Robert Downey Jr. look old, or what.

Observation: post-apocalypse movies are all adaptations of the 1972 novel “Watership Down” by Richard Adams.

From the files of… IT’S THE SAME GUY! We bring you the case of Stewart Moss and Bradford Dillman. We saw ONE of these men playing a Kelvan on the original Star Trek. Which of them was it? YOU make the call!

If you get the chance to see a movie called “Killing Of A Sacred Deer” (2017), don’t. It’s one of the worst movies I have seen in a long time, and certainly the worst movie I have watched all the way to the end in a very long time. I’ll tell you a summary, but it’s not a spoiler, for reasons I will explain afterward.

A teenage sociopath blames a surgeon for his father’s death, and poisons the doctor’s children (I think it was probably thallium, but the actual poison was never revealed). He then demands that the doctor kill one of his poisoned children or his wife. The doctor and his wife then do what no person in the world would do — they wonder if they should kill one of their kids. They don’t contact the police, or try to figure out how he poisoned them, or anything sensible. No one acts like a normal human being, including the poisoned kids.

It takes the movie about a half hour to reveal this, which is another problem. Literally nothing happens in the first half-hour. There is no character development. There are no clues as to what is coming. Nothing happens, then a kid gets sick, and then the plot is revealed (that’s why this is not a spoiler — there is nothing to spoil). And then the doctor and the family all act like idiots until the movie ends, with each character’s idiocy getting more and more ridiculous right up to the end.

I’m not even going to link to the movie on Amazon, because I would hate for anyone to buy this movie. It’s just a terrible movie. Instead, I’ll link to an article on thallium poisoning.

30 minutes into the RiffTrax of “The Last Jedi”. This is the second time I’ve seen the movie. It is even worse than I remember. It’s like a badly written satire of a Star Wars movie (and by that I mean the movie, not the RiffTrax commentary).

How could this have happened? “The Force Awakens” was SO GOOD. So they KNOW how to make a good Star Wars movie, yet they deliberately chose NOT to.

Ye gods. So very bad. And it just. Keeps. Getting. Worse. Holy crap.

Two hours in. Wow. It’s like they went into this saying, “Let’s make a movie that mocks everything Star Wars fans love.” And then someone else said, “Yes, good. But let’s do it so ineptly that people will be making fun of this movie’s obvious flaws long after we are all dead.” And the first person says, “Right, right. Not just bad writing, but the kind of overtly, impossibly bad writing that even high school students will be wondering what kind of idiots we are.” And the second person says, “Brilliant! But we need to make sure we piss on everything that makes Star Wars fun. We need to ruin it utterly. This will be a movie that only people who hate Star Wars will like, and then only in that hateful, ‘My ex-boyfriend lost his job’ kind of way.” And the first person was all laughing and saying, “Perfect!”

And then a third person comes in, overhears that, and says, “OMG, that is HILARIOUS. And I have an idea. Some time toward the end, we should have the Slowest Starship Chase In The Universe ®.” And then an old white guy in an expensive suit comes out of his office, and says, “I heard all of that, and I have only one thing to say…” And the three writers are all afraid they are going to be fired. But then the suit says, “The Slowest Starship Chase In The Universe ® … is the ENTIRE MOVIE.” And they all crack up laughing, because they all hate Star Wars SO MUCH.

P.S.

I just watched “How Star Wars The Last Jedi Should Have Ended” again, after recently seeing Last Jedi again (which is still just awful). The folks at How It Should Have Ended GET IT. They understand what was wrong with this movie, and how it could have been a worthy follow-up to “Force Awakens” (which was fantastic). It vexes me that the bigots and misogynists get all the attention for criticizing “Last Jedi”, because their reasons for hating it are STUPID. Rey is AWESOME. Finn is AWESOME. But “Last Jedi” wasted both characters, and it dumped hot wet garbage all over what makes Star Wars wonderful. If only the people who made “Last Jedi” loved Star Wars and understood what makes a movie great, the way the folks at How It Should Have Ended clearly do.