#2,151: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Spin - ★★★☆☆
I wonder if a movie like this is technically achievable today - if the pre-air feeds are still available in our digital era. I suppose they still exist in some form; I recall watching the first airstrikes of the Iraq war on CNN's syndicate feed.

Anyhow, it was kind of fun to see all of these politicians playing the same games we play today, but with players we haven't seen in a while. I'm sure that's not the right take-away here.

The Exterminating Angel - ★★★☆☆
I wish I knew a little bit more about the time and politics in which this was made; I get the sense that darts were being thrown at targets I can't see. I was super on-board with the first half of the movie and surprised, almost disappointed, to see how few loose ends were left behind, which is an unusual feeling.

Lifeboat - ★★★★☆
I bought this DVD at least 10 years ago. More, probably. I carried it around with me everywhere for a time, ready to watch at a moment's notice. It was a real treat to finally open the plastic on this one... and then a real hassle to deal with all of the security stickers.

As much as it was a relief to finally see the movie, it was a greater relief that the movie itself was a good one. I'll sort this one into the upper half of my Hitchcock collection.

Avengers: Age of Ultron - ★★★★★
I have my suspicions that Age of Ultron is like a Harry Potter movie, which is to say that although it might not be very good as a piece of cinema, it's very effective at playing to its established fan base, which is one of the largest in the world at the moment. And as a target audience member, it worked on me just fine. 

#2,147: Ex Machina

World of Tomorrow - ★★★★★
Mm, so many ideas. Modern weird fiction. Existential horror wrapped up in laughs and wonder. "Discount time travel" is a beautiful phrase that will haunt me for a while. In a fun way.

Woman in Gold - ★★★☆☆
This was fine. Just fine. Everyone did a reasonable job, and I bet it was turned in on time and on budget. It's a single in movie baseball. Even the rave reviews of it I've read are just 3 stars.

I understand why we had so many scenes with nazis and glossed over a lot of the boring present-day courtroom stuff, but the present day bantering is a lot more fun than the flashbacks of oppressing jews. I mean, they know that. That's why the trailer is all investigating and adventuring, not weeping and losing property.

Age of Adaline - ★★★★☆
We go to the movies to learn about the world and ourselves. One thing I've learned is that nobody makes a good trailer anymore. I'd've never gone to see this based on the advertising, and that'd be a shame, because I thought this turned out great. I'm surprised that so many reviewers here are brushing it off as 'okay, for a chick flick,' but then, I think that every movie is really a horror movie. This one included.

Tiny complaints for an ending more inevitable than surprising, and a weird father and son thing that is important to the plot but would probably be kind of unsettling.

Also, I like to think that she's been naming her dogs alphabetically.

Ex Machina - ★★★★☆
I thought it might be like a sequel to Chappie, but it's more like a prequel to Under the Skin. Except thoughtful and reasonable. I appreciated the appropriate lack of sentimentality.

Keeping with today's theme, I'm so glad this movie is not the thing glimpsed in its misleading and half-hearted ad campaigns (although I guess it probably would have been better for the film if the marketers had understood what they were selling...)

Bound for Bridgetown!

This week I wrap up what we might call my first nation-wide comedy tour. Representing the west coast is the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, where I'll be performing at least once a day this Thursday through Saturday. 

In North Carolina, I was pretty much on the same show every night in different rooms, so I did mixed up my setlist just for fun.  This week, I'm on several different kinds of shows, so I expect I'll be varying the material for more practical reasons. Not least of which is that Portland doesn't actually have a Serpentarium, as far as I know...  At least, I hope they don't.

So fast, So Furious

Fast & Furious - ★★★★☆
So far, this is my favorite of the series. I like when someone decides to make a sequel in a different genre from the original movie. Like, I don't want to see that Jump Street / Men in Black crossover movie, but I'd be happy for them if they made it.

Dom's superpowers begin to manifest in this movie.

Fast Five - ★★★☆☆
Another sequel, another genre. I like the inventiveness keeping the series cranking along. Cheers to the writer who decided that we can now, 5 movies in, simply assume that our heroes always win all street races.

Dom's superpowers are more openly on display now. Notice metal bars clang off of his bare arms, among other weird and inhuman behaviors.

The Rock's superpowers are that it's always raining on only him in this movie, and that he's terrible at acting in it.

Fast & Furious Six - ★★☆☆☆
The hallmark of this series is spending the downtime between action set pieces reminiscing about previous installments and what good, down-to-earth friends everyone is (they're such pals that even the guys who only met Dom once come running when he calls). But planting the movie's feet so firmly on the ground makes it really, bizarrely jarring and dissonant when the characters start doing arbitrarily impossible things.

I mean, sure, they do impossible things all the time, but early on in the series we can pretend that they're actually just incredibly skilled mechanics and drivers. Just about any car stunt they want to pull off, we'll buy it. But this doesn't seem like the right movie to make you believe a man can fly.

What this entry does have is a whole lot of punching. Substantially more hitting than seen previously. On the Dom super powers front, he seems slightly more vulnerable to harm than in the last movie, but new powers make up for it.

(Also, why doesn't anyone go and look for Gisele? Everyone else survives falling off of that plane. She probably just needed a medic. Nobody even checked on her.)

Furious 7 - ★★½☆☆
This one's just a cartoon. The first movie in the series to not lead off the credits with a disclaimer reminding you not to attempt the stunts you've just seen, because, of course not. Nothing in this movie would work in any way; the veneer of realism from the earlier ones has completely washed away. Which is fine, but it leaves me hoping that maybe part 8 will be about street racing somehow. Otherwise I think they've got to go to space.

The God's Eye ranges from superfluous to ridiculous, the marriage is a retcon too far, but I'm going to subscribe to the idea that it's Dom that died in this movie. He's the one that "left without saying goodbye." All that stuff on the beach and whatnot, that's his bridge at Owl Creek. His super powers are probably at an all-time high here, but they weren't enough. He's a ghost!

Comin' to Cape Fear!

This week I begin what we may as well call my first nation-wide comedy tour. Representing the east coast we have the Cape Fear Comedy Festival, where I'll be performing at least once a day Wednesday through Saturday, show details over on the standup page.