#2,420: The Shape of Water

The New 8-bit Heroes - ★½☆☆☆
I stumbled a kickstarter campaign for a software toolkit for creating NES games. The creators said they came up with it in the making of their own game, and this movie is the story of how that went. Like most video game documentaries, it's deeply unsatisfying.

I think this movie is badly written, too long, and jammed too far up the director/producer/writer/star’s dream of being a reality tv star to focus on the interesting parts of his own story, but by the end of it I guess I can kind of admire his grit.

I, Tonya - ★★☆☆☆
I can respect the craftsmanship on display in this movie, but it is simply not for me. Give Allison Janney her prize, keep working on the computers to do that creepy face swap thing, throw in all of the cues to being a piece of scrappy, down-in-the-dirt filmmaking (with huge name actors and award season aspirations) you want.

I'm not saying you shouldn't see this, I'm saying I shouldn't.

The Shape of Water - ★★★★★
Do you want deep one hybrids? Because this is how you get deep one hybrids.

The Shape of Water is this year’s La La Land insomuch as all of the hype made going to see it feel like homework. Even more so because I don’t think of myself as being a fan of Guillermo Del Toro (or any movie Sally Hawkins has ever made), but he deserves that Golden Globe for directing and any other prize he can win. I liked The Post just fine, mostly because it looks like a Spielberg movie, but the shape of water looks like cinema. It’s a beautifully done adventure. And it had more in common with La La Land than I was expecting!

Octavia Spencer is getting to be as typecast as Jessica Chastain or Matthew Goode, but maybe not in as fun of a role. I guess if you have the opportunity to be in a good movie you take it, even if you have already played that character a few times. In fact, maybe she’s exactly the same character she is in Hidden Figures, just 10 years earlier. If that’s the case then it’s great to know everything works out for her. Maybe she receives a nice settlement so she doesn't tell everyone about her creepy boss and it puts her on the career path to middle management.

Escape Room Reviews: Alice in Wonderland

Company: 60Out
Room: Alice in Wonderland
Date Played: 1/21/18
Player Count: 6, which was too many.
Success:  Success!

Premise: It’s a room escape with a bunch of Alice in Wonderland stuff! Alice has been accused of a crime, and if you can’t clear her name, well… then it’s off with her head!™

Immersion: I mean, I didn’t feel like I was in Wonderland. The production design of this game was of the typically good quality of 60Out, and falls pretty solidly into the ‘game show’ style. There are a couple of locks uncharacteristic of 60Out and unlikely to exist in Wonderland.

Highlights: The first section has the best interactions. Everyone in our group seemed pretty pleased with the process of making a cup of tea.

Lowlights: Our game had a show-stopping bug. We stood around through multiple reboots and ultimately had to end the game. Aside from that, there’s a section that seems to involve a surprising amount of random guessing and a lot of unsolicited advice from the GM. The flow of story events seems kind of clunky - I wonder if there were last-minute changes made after the game was built. 

And Finally:  Our group is lucky enough to have gained a couple of members recently, but this was not the right room to bring the whole family. It doesn’t have enough space or things to do to keep 6 people happy. Even without the room breaking down, I don’t think this would have ranked very highly for me among the 60 Out canon. Out of 43 games played, I’m ranking it at #34

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.60out.com/los-angeles/rooms/alice-in-wonderland

#2,417: All the Money in the World

The Post - ★★★☆☆
You know how in between Avengers movies, Joss Whedon ran off and made a little movie in his backyard? He got his friends together and they shot a Shakespeare play? This is that movie for Steven Spielberg. It’s timely, and interesting, and still looks for all the world like a Steven Spielberg movie, but it’s one he bashed out with his friends in between their day jobs of making huge blockbusters. You know, to relax.

All the President's Men - ★★★☆☆
The Post is like the Rogue One of Washington Post movies. So naturally we had to go home and put this on. Ed Bradlee really aged in those couple of years.

All the Money in the World - ★★★☆☆
I am wrong all the time about what movies awards show voters like, but I think I’d give this a nomination for cinematography in addition to the spite-noms for Christopher Plummer.

It would be so interesting for the original version of the movie to leak one day and do some comparisons.

Also, the movie sells itself short with that weird last chunk pasted in from a Taken movie.

Escape Room Reviews: Labyrinth

Company: Trapped! Escape Room (Cleveland)
Room: The Labyrinth
Date Played: 12/27/17
Player Count: 3
Success:  Success! Sort of.

Premise: Stuck in a labyrinth! Nobody gets out of those. Most get eaten by the minotaur!* *There is no minotaur

Immersion: This room is built on the strength of quite a bit of custom woodworking, probably just like the labyrinth of myth. Unlike that labyrinth however, this one is not a maze of twisty passages. It has a little bit of a rec room feel, perhaps due to the lighting. 

Highlights: This company really roots for the players. Our GM loaded us up with some big hints on the way in, and towards the end there are multiple warnings about a puzzle that can only be attempted once. When something between my flu-addled brain and the sheer, call of the void curiosity led me to touch something I should not have, another GM came in and reset the game so we could try again. And again. And again.  

Lowlights: A lot of the custom props and sets have taken a beating over the months or years of customers playing with them. I don’t have a term for it, but we definitely passed at least one puzzle based on one of two choices looking much more worn down. Unsolicited hints and a couple of cliché elements are minor nitpicks.

And Finally:  It might be the cold talking, but I felt less like I was solving this game than just putting my head down and lumbering through. Wooden pieces that needed to be jiggled and coaxed into place felt like fudging the combinations instead of clean and correct answers. And that ending. I appreciate them taking care of us because it would be unsatisfying to get to the end of the game and do the wrong thing, lose, and have to leave. But since all that happens when you get it right is the GM comes in and you have to leave, the choice doesn’t have much weight. Out of 42 games played, I'm ranking this one at #29.

 How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.trappedcle.com/room/the-labyrinth/

#2,415: Downsizing

Downsizing - ★★½☆☆
Boy, Matt Damon’s having a hard time lately. As soon as Suburbicon came down from that billboard by LACMA that movies only get when they know they’re in trouble, Downsizing went up in its place. And the sheer volume of trailer plays this thing got. Yeesh. I was willing to go see it from the beginning, and then it felt like the studio spent two months trying to talk me out of it with all their terrible ads.

Speaking of, I think this is the big trend in movie trailers this season: making a selling point out of a moment that the script totally thought was going to be a big reveal. It’s like if the trailer for Psycho wasn’t tracking well and then the whole marketing campaign shifted to be focused on the shower scene. Thor: Ragnarok doesn’t lay any hints that the Hulk is coming, because they thought you were going to be so pumped to see him, and Downsizing was planning on surprising you with the fact that Kristin Wiig isn’t going to be in this movie, which is in fact a shaggy dog story about Matt Damon learning that he needed to step away from his old life of taking care of his loved ones and struggling to make ends meet in his career where he improves his clients’ quality of life, so that he can, um, worry about money and help people, but in a way that requires less specialized knowledge? I don’t know. I had fun in the last act of the movie trying to imagine what the actual scale of everything we were seeing would have been.

Molly's Game - ★★★★☆
I was on board just to go see a couple hours of Sorkin dialogue, and of course Jessica Chastain as The Competent Woman. I think it's neat that the movie is in some ways a sequel to the book. I hope they get an Oscar nod for editing, as well as the inevitable screenplay nomination.

As soon as I heard there would be a movie I was wondering how they were going to depict Tobey Macguire.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi - ★★★★☆
Well, first things first, having seen this twice in very different theaters, I’ve come to a conclusion: I think the first reel is out of sync. Like the whole scene with Hux on the bridge / space battle thing. Just a frame or two or three.

Other stuff: (Caution: extensive nerdery ensues)

- I’m surprised at all the ire. It’s a fun cynical thing to say that of course the internet hates things, but I don’t really understand it. It’s everything everyone said they wished The Force Awakens had been.
- I’m so happy about Rey. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become a weird kind of Star Wars elitist about what was intended in the original movie and so I like the Force being for everyone. I’ve read posts from goofs about how Luke already represented the random anykid using the force, which is true, but that was before 30 years of waxy lore buildup.
- You can draw a parallel between the practical necessity of scrubbing the EU and the line about burning down the past, sure, but that’s not what Ren is talking about. Your Star Wars isn’t gone. You’re not actually meant to destroy the past. Why? Well, there’s this little trick that people who have seen a movie before might be able to pass on, which is that the villain is often wrong. Sometimes art is used to explore a wrongheaded idea or philosophy by putting it in the mouth of antagonistic characters.
- I should probably emphasize that this is mainly in reference to ideas, and not like, every word out of the villain’s mouth. (Although, Iago.) There’s a thing about Empire where supposedly younger children were more likely to think Vader was lying to Luke. I know I was in that camp myself. I’m not sure what it says that it’s apparently such a popular opinion that Rey and Ren were lying about her parents. (That said, if any writer was going ever going to try to pull a reversal here, it would be JJ.)
- Canto Bight. Sure, with the hindsight that the plan didn’t work, you can say they might as well not have tried, but the rebellion is all about making these million-to-one shots. They can’t all pay off. Besides which, embodying the theme of the movie is a worthwhile thing to do in a movie. Do people not like Finn? Isn’t ‘seeing what adventures the characters are having’ another part of what folks want from Star Wars stories?
- On the other hand, the ‘how did Finn learn to fly since yesterday’ criticism is probably a valid one. We’re used to a gap of years between movies, but I think we’re only getting days this time.
- If I were snipping a plot thread out of this movie, it would be Captain Phasma. Is she a popular character? It feels like the Disneyiest, merch departmentiest fingerprint on these movies.
- Luke’s apparition. I wanted to say that it was how Luke thinks of himself, but I think the lightsaber is how we know it was meant to freak out Ben. The only reason I can think of for using the blue saber (besides giving the audience a clue) is that Luke is showing he’s met with Rey. The implication that Threepio can see the projection is really something. That means Luke is doing something to (at least) light on another planet, not just influencing the minds of the people there.
- Force ghost Luke! Luke’s hand should have clattered to the ground. Will the ghost have a robot hand? Real hand? No hand? Why isn’t anyone talking about the real issues?
- I would say that Luke did give Rey the most important training he could have. It’s not like he’s going to be drilling her on EU lightsaber forms. He probably doesn’t even know that kind of Republic era Jedi Academy stuff. Like Luke in Empire, what Rey learns in that dark side cave directly informs her approach to the force and evil and the rest of the movie.
- I wonder if audiences would gasp at Leia getting spaced if Carrie Fisher were alive. Maybe since they know the actress is gone, they’re just waiting for Leia to go somehow. I definitely thought it was possible her shuttle would be shot down until Poe boarded the same one.
- You just know they’re going to jam those dice into SOLO.
- I still like this movie. I liked it more this time.