The Jungle Book
- Highlights:
- beautiful CGI animals
- unique interpretations of old characters
- Weak points:
- child acting
- lackluster plot
- heavy use of CGI
- One Line Review:
- A so-so movie, but a great adaptation.
- Highlights:
- cool action choreography and camera work
- some funny bits
- Chris Evans
- Weak points:
- pretended not to be an Avengers movie, but was a much better Avengers movie than either Avengers movie
- Too much Iron Man
- Not enough endings (topped out at 0)
- Wasn't directed by Ken Burns
- One Line Review
- Was the most fun I've had in a Marvel movie since Ant-Man and simultaneously
Ant-Man
- Highlights:
- funny lines
- great performance from Paul Rudd
- Well shot/choreographed action sequences
- Weak points:
- Villains in Marvel movies have to be simple, black & white bad guys, huh? Can't be any more complex than "this man is evil, because he is?" And, speaking of "man," have any of the Marvel films had a female for their main villain? I guess Marvel's saving that for when a woman hero gets her own film; keep the girls together.
- Sorry, Ant-Man, you don't deserve the brunt of that equality rant.
- One Line Review: Actually better than most Marvel films, and also pretty good.
- Makes my top five MCU films list:
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier
- Iron Man
- Ant-Man
- Captain America: Civil War
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- Highlights:
- DAMN, Ridley Scott knows how to shoot a f#@king movie!
- funny dialogue
- cool science
- Sean Bean
- Weak points:
- I personally don't care for survival stories. I don't care for films without an antagonist.
- Sean Bean didn't die in this movie.
- One Line Review: I enjoyed it more than I expected, but not as much as everyone else did.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
- Highlights:
- Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer's performances
- Some fun action sequences and witty dialogue
- Weak points:
- Maybe it's because I was also playing Minecraft at the time and didn't give the movie my full attention, but I found a lot of the film forgettable.
- One Line Review: Fun, but forgettable.
- Highlights:
- Lead actors nail their comic timing
- I LOVE INDEPENDENT SCI-FI! This feels like a cute, contained, indie sci-fi movie, though it did have HBO and the BBC producing it so. . .
- Funny dialogue and situations
- Great exploration of time travel through a comedic lens
- Weak points:
- I was underwhelmed by the third act, but, in the movie's defense, I did get distracted by the launch of the Pokémon Go beta, so. . .
- It wasn't as indie as I'd hoped, having a little more CGI (and better CGI) than I'd expected. Weird to hold "having too much money" against a movie, but I kind of do.
- One Line Review:
- Probably the 2nd best small-scale time travel movie I've seen since Primer. Have you seen Primer? It's on Netflix; go watch that s#*t now!
- Highlights:
- I LOVE INDEPENDENT SCI-FI!
- Great performances all around
- Very contained story and characters and setting, all of which make for great indie sci-fi (like Primer and Moon)
- great sci-fi commentary/discussions on robotics
- great social commentary, discussing the future of human technology and looking at human nature
- beautiful production design
- very, very, very good special effects
- beautiful camera work, but. . .
- Weak points:
- I got a little tired of the heavy backlights with lens flares that fog the frame. I want to see actors' faces, damn it!
- Ending was a little predictable; one of those films where I kept waiting for the twist that never happened. (Technically there's a twist, but I've experienced enough sci-fi stories to accurately predict the twist. So I was waiting for a different twist that never happened.)
- Because I predicted the twist, I felt the ending went on a little too long; I felt a little Return of the King syndrome.
- One Line Review: Probably the best sci-fi movie since Moon.
