#2,389: Atomic Blonde

What Happened to Monday - ★☆☆☆☆
Netflix is taking the reins from the Sci-Fi (ahem, Syfy) channel for goofy, cheapo SF movies.

Noomi Rapace is, somehow, the discount Tatiana Maslani in this dystopic vision of the future brought about by a clumsy understanding of science that already exists and works in our world.

Death Note - ★★½☆☆
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy taught me that when you adapt something into a different medium, you don't have to make the same thing. It's an opportunity to make something new! Well, newish. So I can see how purists, or even casuals, might have a bone to pick with this version of Death Note by way of American YA. But it does seem like the movie they wanted to make, and clearly they're not taking themselves too seriously. Also, what high school has so many jars of stylish debris everywhere? And also also, what kind of deal does Netflix have with Willem Dafoe? Is he going to be in all of these?

Atomic Blonde - ★★½☆☆
Fan chatter on the internet called this movie "Joan Wick," and while Theron's character is legitimately badass in her own right, the movies differ wildly. A big part of what makes Wick work, aside from all of the Star Wars-style hints at a broader universe, is the dead simple plot. Atomic Blonde loves its plot. Loves it loves it. If I had to guess, this movie will be most remembered for its knock down, drag out brawl near the end.

#2,386: Wind River

The Mars Generation - ★★½☆☆
I like to do a joke where I say that I bet there was one week each year at Space Camp when every kid there was a Double Dare champion. Like, you'd want to keep those game show winners away from the serious space kids seen in this movie.

The problem, of course, is that for younger audiences nothing about that joke makes any sense. The smart thing to do would be to tell a different joke. But what I usually do is try to dig my way out of the hole by explaining it to them. Space Camp, I'll say, doesn't exist anymore, but it's a place where you used to be able to send fancy children so that they could pretend to be a part of the Space Program, which doesn't exist anymore, but used to be a scheme organized by the government to shoot United States citizens. At the moon. And it worked! Except that some people don't believe it, they think it was all a hoax put on by Stanley Kubrick, who is a filmmaker that doesn't exist anymore...

Somewhere around this time I realize that the college kids or whoever are just staring at me, having learned nothing because I started in on the wrong part of the sentence, and for some reason I start again. Double Dare, I'll say, is a game show that doesn't exist anymore, where the grand prize (so named for its size compared to the other prizes) was a trip to Space Camp. Of course, I'm talking about original, proper Double Dare, not Family Double Dare, Super Sloppy Double Dare, or Double Dare 2000, because as we all know, the grand prize of these latter-day Doubles Dare is a trip to Universal Studios Florida, also known as: the place where Double Dare was taped.

That's right! If you somehow got on to one of these shows, played your ten-year-old heart out and won? You got to go outside. To the theme park you already paid to enter, so that you could be on Double Dare.

What I'm trying to say is that I learned from this movie that Space Camp still exists. It looks like it's pretty fun if you're into that sort of thing.

20th Century Women - ★★★★½ 
Wow, Annette Benning is great in this. I hope she won a prize for it. I would have given her a prize. Wow.

Wind River - ★★★★☆
Hawkeye continues to mentor the Scarlet Witch (here using the winking pseudonym "Jane Banner"), this time in dealing with the casual horror regular humans are capable of perpetrating on one another. It's a little unclear whether this takes place before or after Civil War, although my money's on before if they're operating under the auspices of the federal government.

It's refreshing to have one of these smaller, quieter side stories without Robert Downey Jr. zooming in to save the day every few minutes. Sometimes a regular man with impeccable target shooting skills is enough.

#2,381: Spider-Man: Homecoming

Alien: Covenant - ★★★☆☆
This is a movie that draws a lot from its heritage. Even the disappointing stuff like killing off the non-returning cast off-screen is kind of in keeping with the traditions of the series.

I was on board for the chunk that's just a re-telling of Alien (and all of them, really). The part where we just throw away all of the ideas from Prometheus is a little bit of a drag though, and I'm not sure how it's all meant to connect to the other movies anymore. I know it's nerdery to worry about inter-film continuity, but I'd rather think that if someone's going to go to all this trouble that it's done with intention. If everything in the other movies is still true, it could be that David is just plain wrong, that he's not shaping the monsters, they're taking their inevitable form.

The movie itself ends up in a way that is not so much surprising as inevitable.

War for the Planet of the Apes  - ★★★★☆
I think I said this about the last one, but this doesn’t feel at all like a summer movie. I wanted to see it because I knew it would be good, but I also had a little bit of dread because I knew it wasn’t going to be fun.

Dunkirk - ★★★☆☆
The further away I get from this movie, the more I like it, I think. I understand why the layering the stories works better than telling the whole thing chronologically, but I still found some bits in the middle confusing. I think the trouble is that the stories don't cross one another at the same point in the movie. I bet there are good practical reasons for this, but I think that's what tripped me up. (Also, I don't understand why the pilots would rather land in untenable situations than bail out. Maybe jumping from those lower altitudes is super dangerous.)

Spider-Man: Homecoming - ★★★★★
This might not be a perfect movie, on a second viewing it leaves me excited for the future of the MCU. It's an odd thing to say, but I'm really excited about the possibilities that are in front of us for a sequel. We skipped the origin story, right? So this is already kind of like a "part two" movie, which of course, is the 'oops, lost my powers!' movie. BUT! We've already done that too! And we improve on the concept when Peter doesn't lose his powers, he loses that Stark suit, and uses his powers to the max. So we a) get around that boring trope and b) don't have to put off a potentially interesting story until the third movie, in which the cast is bored, expensive, and ready to move on. Bravo!

#2,378: Fate of the Furious

Prometheus - ★★★★☆
I think I liked this more than the average bear the first time around, and I'm sticking to that. Even though the plot of every Alien is more or less the same, it's the best looking of the bunch and broadening the scope makes for some fun and interesting ideas that it's a shame nobody is going to explore.

Tickling Giants - ★★☆☆☆
Bassam Youssef's story is fascinating, but this doc doesn't do it justice. I understand the story just kept on going, probably past the point the filmmakers thought they'd be done, and probably continues today, but as a movie it could have used more structure.

Spider-Man: Homecoming - ★★★★★
What a relief. I couldn't believe it when we reached a point in history where Hollywood was actually making new Spider-Man and Star Wars movies, and I didn't want them to. Now, it seems almost as unbelievable that we've come all the way around and they're good.

I can quibble with things– less Stark tech in the suit please– but this movie gets so much right. I thought it was great that it uses fans' extra knowledge against them, and I wonder if the moment that was a big surprise to me would have seemed more obvious to a movie fan who isn't also a spider-fan.

The Fate of the Furious - ★½☆☆☆
I thought this would be fun to watch, but I was wrong about that. About the fun, I mean. I found myself alternating between being impressed at how efficient the story telling was and dismayed at how laborious the storytelling was. I'm not even sure how this movie rates on the Dom-has-super-powers scale of the previous films. It just seems unmoored from reality.

#2,375: Cars 3

Alien: Resurrection - ★☆☆☆☆
Ah, now here's a lousy Alien movie! It's kind of fun to see a prototype of the Firefly crew. This whole movie feels like a bootleg copy of an unaired pilot, which is kind of cool to see because it wasn't intended or fully completed for public viewing, except apparently this was released to movie theaters.

Finding Dory - ★★½☆☆
Kind of a Pixar weekend for me. Finding Dory is basically fine (even if the moral seems kind of weird), but I wish some kind of curse, or maybe a hex, had been placed on, let's say John Lasseter, and for fear of being consumed by powerful magic, his company never produced any sequels to their films.

And really, what IS the message of this movie? Disabilities are just in your head? You can overcome them by wishing hard enough? 

Baby Driver - ★★★½☆
I don't know man, I liked it. I thought the beginning was kind of corny, and it's a shame the girl didn't have much to do except be the girl, but there's no doubt it's the movie it wants to be. It's an old movie made with new technology.

Cars 3 - ★★★☆☆
This is a much better, and maybe more human, story of empowerment and achievement for women than Wonder Woman.