#2,185: The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Angela’s Ashes - ★★★☆☆
I guess this is a tale of almost unrelenting tragedy, but somehow it was less depressing than I'd prepared myself for. We found humor in unexpected places in this movie, and somehow that seems appropriate to Frank's outlook.

I bet the book's a fair sight better than the movie though. For instance, I think this movie is called Angela's Ashes because the book is called Angela's Ashes, but I bet the book is called Angela's Ashes for reasons that are apparent to the reader. So that's one leg up on the movie.

The Snapper - ★★☆☆☆
I liked how the family dog, Famine, liked watching television, and how he's the only character that the father talked to like a regular person at the beginning of the movie. Other than that, I didn't really care about anyone in this movie.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation - ★★★★☆
I like spy movies. This is maybe the James Bondiest Mission:Impossible yet, even though it's also both a return to and subversion of the classic M:I format, which has been absent from the franchise for ten years or so. I suspect Ghost Protocol might still be my favorite of the bunch, but Rogue Nation's got a lot going for it - for one, it's new. For another, the Jeremy Renner is a lot better this time, even if I did mostly just pretend he was still playing Hawkeye. I also think it's great that all the stuff in the ads was from the mostly-unrelated-to-the-plot opening adventure.

Ethan's getting to be an old pro at recovering from field defibrillations. Another couple movies and he'll have died on the job more often than Jack Bauer.

Mission: Impossible - ★★★☆☆
As when watching Terminators 5 and 1, watching this first Impossible Mission surprised me with how many details from the first found their way into the newest entry. This movie wasn't an origin story in its day, but it reads as a pretty weird origin tale for the Ethan of 20 years hence.

Also, Jon Voight is just 4 years older in this movie than Tom Cruise is in part 5.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - ★★★★☆
I liked this so much that I don't understand why it's not being advertised. It seems to be a rule that the more heavily advertised a movie is in LA (ahem, Rikki and the Flash, Fant4stic,) the more horrible it's going to be, but it's just weird when a big-looking movie gets so little support from the studio that they don't even try to bolster your interest through brute force.

Guy Ritchie could use a new franchise to replace Sherlock Holmes, and I'm all for it being this, although this doesn't seem like quite as refillable a concept - the agents can't spend all next movie bristling at being forced to work together again. Henry Cavill was great in ways I had no idea were even an option. He was stylish, period cool, and funny, as was the whole movie.

Although I have to ask, who flashes back to two minutes ago?

#2,180: Ant-Man

Misery Loves Comedy - ★★½☆☆
Probably not a very good movie, but fun to put on in the background and listen to comics chat.

FWIW, I'd probably vote that the terrible childhood thing is a predictor, but not a direct precursor. I always think that I'm an exception to the rule, but then I realize that's just because I'm not miserable now.

Mr. Holmes - ★★★★☆
Fun, lovely, sad, faked me out once or twice by not going for an insane twist reveal thing. Uses the time that could have been spent on insane twists instead on earned payoffs. It has that classic novel-ish, multiple time period structure. Also has BEES!

Paper Towns - ★★★☆☆
Another solid high school movie of 2015. I recall really liking the music as it's used, but the soundtrack album sounds like one boring, samey blob.

This is a much less subtle movie than It Follows, and I delight in reading each review that misses the point. Of course, I would do well to imagine these reviewers complexly - not as idiots, but as people. Perhaps as idiotic people!

I dug the adventure gameness of the third act (of five), but Me And Earl And The Dying Girl is probably the better movie here, and carries a very similar message with more charisma.

Ant-Man - ★★★☆☆
I bet this would have been a good Edgar Wright movie. It'd be interesting to see the script he left behind. The one they shot has some pretty cliché lines in it, but I like to imagine that they were written deliberately, a counterpoint to the intended stylish visuals. Instead, we got Paul Rudd standing still in the middle of a frame saying something bland. It feels like the difference between Airplane! and Zero Hour!, except in this case the deadpan dry dialogue actually was written to be done as a comedy... and nobody noticed.

From the first announcement, I agreed with the popular wisdom that Marvel would never make a movie starring Hank Pym, but now I kinda wish they had.

#2,175: Burden of Dreams

World 1-1 - ★★★☆☆
The part with the history of Activision was new to me.

Deep Web - ★★☆☆☆
A summary of the Silk Road case. Less in-depth than some NPR coverage you can listen to out there.

Fitzcarraldo - ★★★½☆
The story of a man with a superhuman ability to reframe his situation. There is no calamity, no defeat that cannot also be a victory! A long movie, but not a wasteful one.

On a side note, it appears to have been shot in English, but also badly dubbed into English? Weird. The sync sound in Burden of Dreams was fine and normal.

Burden of Dreams - ★★★☆☆
Documentaries about the making of movies are usually interesting to me, even though clever documentarians might be responsible for the cliché that movies are always about their own making.

Documentaries about movies that do NOT get made are something I don't think we need so much of, but I guess I want to complete the trilogy of movies about Jason Robards getting sick and quitting movies.

#2,171: Inside Out

Mad Max: Fury Road - ★★★★☆
Still fun, easy to imagine how you'd end up watching this in years to come or as a frenetic background of some kind, but for this summer I'm maybe wearing down on it a little.

Terminator Genisys - ★★★☆☆
You think the first trailer gives away the big twist. Then you see the second trailer, which does give away the big twist. Then you start to think that's too big of a reveal, so it must be a fake-out. But it's not. Anyway, this is, I guess, my favorite non-canonical Terminator movie, and it wipes the slate clean for a whole new series of big budget Terminator fanfic.

The Terminator - ★★★★☆
When I was a kid I'd decided to tell people that they were going to make a sequel that was all about the future war. There was nothing to back up my story, and nobody in particular to tell it to, but the future segments just seemed so amazing. Of course, that's because all we get are glimpses, which are the correct amount. The movies about the future war are each a disaster.

I didn't realize, while watching T5, just how much of T1 they lifted. T1's still the better movie, of course. I love the look of movie lasers from the 80s.

Inside Out - ★★★★☆
I remember books that I read as a kid that were obviously, unambiguously fiction, and yet some explanation or concept from them stuck with me and became how I thought of or visualized a part of the real world. I don't know if this will become the most beloved of Pixar movies, but I do think this representation of the psyche is going to really stick with a lot of people. And I'm so happy that Pete Docter got to make another new movie. In 2016 we batten down the hatches and ride out wave after wave of sequels. (Okay, everybody loves the sequels, but I don't want them.)

#2,169: Jurassic World

Spy - ★★★☆☆
Better than I thought it'd be. It's like a good Mortdecai. I liked how the movie kind of pokes at the idea of how we typecast Melissa McCarthy by making all her disguises the kind of roles you'd expect her to be cast in instead of cool action spy, but then the movie still puts her in situations that seem like we're meant to laugh at her, not with her, so I'm not sure whether we've made any progress or not. I guess we're good for another three months until the next not-so-great spy comedy comes out.

The Wizard - ★★★☆☆
I don't think I'd ever seen this all the way through before, or realized that some of the internet jokes based on it were from this movie and not commercials. (A fine line, perhaps.)

Kind of fun to spot that it's shot by the guy who shot recent watches Spy and Love & Mercy, and stars Jenny Lewis whose name keeps popping up in movie theaters at the end of the ubiquitous Rikki and the Flash trailers. I mean, not very fun, but kind of.

Avengers: Age of Ultron - ★★★½☆
My original 5 stars was based on fan-wow, more or less the Harry Potter problem I described earlier. I did, and still do, want to see more of all of these heroes on the screen, but this is pretty cluttered.

Jurassic World - ★★☆☆☆
This reminds me of, like, Airport '77. It's a 70s disaster movie where we just cut away to the control tower to see people react to more bad news to help us understand that the news is bad. And we do that here because there's no character we care about. Nobody learns or grows or changes.

JP4 also makes me think of Birdman, because of the open contempt it has for audiences, who apparently love it.