#2,326: Passengers

The Handmaiden - ★★★★☆
I saw this under perfect conditions– in a nice theater, and with no idea of what the movie was about. It's interesting, it's twisty, it goes on and on... and on... Maybe a little bit too far, in fact.

I'm torn between watching the BBC version to get more and never watching the BBC version so that I don't ruin something nice.

Hidden Figures - ★★★½☆
"What was that Kevin Costner movie with Octavia Spencer?"
"Hidden Figures?"
"No. Well... yes. But..."
"Oh, no no, Hidden Figures was the Octavia Spencer movie with Kevin Costner."
"Right."

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - ★★½☆☆
I've seen this twice and I still didn't catch the names of all of the main characters. That doesn't feel very Star Wars to me. With Episode 7, it was exciting to know that there are new people and new places and new things and we don't know what they all are yet, but we know who the main characters are. The audience around me seemed to care a lot more about the droid than any of the people. I think I'm less angry about it than I sound, but it still seems like such a wasted opportunity to go back to prequeling.

On a second watch, I did feel that mid-movie slow down. I like the ending though! (The ending, particularly, and distinctly from the epilogue.) Even if it takes all movie to get there, it does feel good to have the movie finally make a bold choice.

Also on the rewatch, everything involving Saw Guerrera is completely frustrating. None of it makes a lick of sense. So much of his sequence could be lifted out and nothing would be any different. He doesn't do anything that helps anyone, and then he dies because what? He's bored? He's like the Into The Wild of Star Wars.

Passengers - ★★★★★
I liked this one very much. I felt like the vision of the future resembled the cheerfully unhelpful future I like writing about. I hope this gets the production design Oscar™.

All of the think pieces getting written about Chris Pratt's 'problematic' behavior are like the open mic comic doing his bit about how weird it is that Garfield hates Mondays. Yes. That's not your joke, that's Jim Davis' joke. Also, that behavior is the point of this movie. It's the interesting thing! You were hoping for a movie where two beautiful people randomly pair off and just relax in luxury until they die of old age?

I don't want to see the first half re-edited into a rom-com, but I would like to see a more thoughtful third act that forces them to really get a grip on the situation.

Escape Room Reviews: The Villain's Lair

Company: Exit Game
Room: The Villain’s Lair
Date Played: 2/4/17
Player Count: 2, more would have been better
Success:  Failure! Even with a bit of extra time!

Premise: You're in jail in North Korea, and it only gets worse from there!

Immersion: The jail is the most jail-like jail I've been pretend jailed in, and I guess I don't know that the rest of it is not what it's like in North Korea. The video introduction is... let's say a little broad.

Highlights: The set decoration and production design is quite nice. The glowy hall shown in promo photos on their website was fun to work through. There are several elaborate puzzles that would be fun for a larger group to work through.

Lowlights: We were unattended and/or forgotten during our game. Early on, something got stuck and after no response to our call for hints I straight up cheated to fix it with something I was carrying. At the end, time expired and nobody came to let us out. We weren't discovered until a host came in to start the next group. (Granted, we probably should have used those extra minutes more effectively to finish the escape, but it was kind of a confusing situation, and unclear whether the game was still functional.) 

Exit Game always checks players with a metal detector before letting them play. The first time we encountered this, I thought it was fake. This time it wasn't, but I don't know what the point of it really is. I feel pretty strongly that I would prefer to be treated like an adult at any company I visit, and trusted not to take videos or whatever. 

And Finally:  We sort of played this game out of desperation, trying to find an opening somewhere at the last minute. We were fixed on Exit Game because we liked visiting them in the pass, and we had been given a free ticket. Based on their website, this would have been the last game on their list we would have picked, and at least that intuition was correct - it wasn't a great time for us. I don't personally recommend this room, but I have and still do recommend Exit Game to others, and I look forward to trying some of their other rooms in the future. Out of 18 rooms played, I'm ranking this one #16.

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.theexitgame.com/m4---the-villians-lair
(We were given one free ticket at a SoCal Escape Room Enthusiast meet up event.)

#2,323: Rogue One

The Edge of Seventeen - ★★★★☆
Although I might not relate to the direct experiences of the characters, this movie seems more true to what high school feels like than other, more buzzed about high school films.

De Palma - ★★★★☆
So much fun. Makes me want to go watch every De Palma movie. 

Manchester by the Sea - ★★☆☆☆
Whatever. Take all the acting prizes you can carry. I didn't fall asleep, but that doesn't mean I wasn't bored.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - ★★★☆☆
I guess this is my favorite Gareth Edwards movie? I guess I get the pick now; all of his movies are about characters at the periphery of some actual story that we only glimpse in passing. The 8th grader Star Wars geek in me finds a lot of the little details interesting and nods along at the references, but the modern-day movie going part of me is still kind of suspicious. Star Wars seems like this big open space, and if you're going to commit to doing a series of in-universe movies that are outside of the Skywalkers-and-company, how do you end up picking such safe (re: boring) subjects? Why are you making more prequels? I don't want to see each sentence of the opening crawl blown out to 2 hours. I really, really don't want to see Han Solo pranking the dean. For one thing, you're Star Wars, every extra has a name and back story, and fans will lap up anything you put in front of them. For another, you're produced by the studio that brought us Guardians of the Galaxy. Even though it's the worst MCU movie, at least it's bold!

And this huge media push to tell us this is the 'first stand alone Star Wars movie'? You are full of jokes.

Escape Room Reviews: The Zen Room

Company: 60 Out
Room: Zen Room
Date Played: 1/22/17
Player Count: 4
Success:  Success!

Premise: You are in your happy zen place, assuming you're someone who likes escape games. Now to put everything right and get back to the world. Or something. The real premise is 'what if everything in the room was white?'

Immersion: Well, everything in the room WAS white. Or as white as can be after X amount of grubby handed players have come through. 9/10 on that front. 

Highlights: Some of the interactions in this room are very satisfying. Several required good teamwork, even though we spent probably half the game split up and working on separate problems. As always, 60 Out makes the best magical objects.

Lowlights: This room falls prey to what might be 60 Out's biggest weakness: room design that amounts to just lining the walls with gadget stations. I mean, you get to check out a bunch of gadgets, so that's good, but it doesn't look like anything. It's less of a simulation and more like a midway. Best case, some stations serve multiple purposes. One of them, I have no idea how it helped us, if it did. 

And Finally:  This is as close as I've seen to an Escape Room-themed escape room. (Which, btw, I totally want to play. Open the second room and... it's the first room again!) and tries to bring to life an idea that fascinated me in middle school, if you could paint everything in a room in subtle shades so that when you walked in and turned on the light, you saw nothing.  Anyway, out of 17 games played, I'm going to try slotting this one in at #5.

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.60out.com/rooms/zen-room 
(Visit within 3 days of a player's birthday for a free ticket!)

#2,319: Moana

As sometimes happens, increased work loads have resulted in lower quality reviews for you, the concerned moviegoer. Management regrets the inconvenience.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - ★★½☆☆
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - ★★★☆☆ 
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - ★★½☆☆

On the whole, these weren't as bad as people make them sound, which is pretty good for 9 hours of prequels. We somehow spent days and days watching these, and I don't really recall where one stops and another one starts. I think I liked the sort of political intrigue side plot Gandalf was working more than the story about The Hobbit though. 

Some time passed between viewing and catching up to these in my quick reviews, so saying anything more about them would probably just be guessing. I recall being delighted at remembering a couple of things from reading the book in grade school, a lot of fan servicey cameos and guest stars turning up, one scene with the dragon being pretty good, Stephen Fry being quite distracting, and that even while watching the movie I was unable to definitively list all five of the Five Armies. 

Moana - ★★★½☆
The best parts of this movie are the parts with Moana. The middle chunk with Maui is a little boring.

(It's kind of interesting how the zeitgeist works - I think I could have told you that Lin-Manuel Miranda was behind these lyrics without seeing the credits or anything - they sound like him, as far as I'm concerned, even though I haven't seen any Hamilton and don't really have any basis to know that about him. Maybe he re-used some rhymes from The Force Awakens...)