Strange World

Good for you Disney, doing something different.

Needless to say the trailer for this pretty much sold me, a fantastical world with many strange, strange creatures. Let's go. So what did I think? It certainly deserves better than a 5/10 on IMDB, but I do have slight issues with it. So our story takes place on the town/continent/planet(?) of Avalonia where a group of farmers are recruited to travel to the center of the earth to seek out the quite literal root of their problem as their energy sources are depleting. Not super radical in terms of story but for Disney it is new ground. I like our main leads, you do feel the family dynamic and I'll admit the relationship between Searcher and Meridian was really dang sweet. Hell props to them for giving a quite cute blooming romance between two guys, if only for a brief moment. However! I have never seen a script so embroiled in a tug of war in my life. Because the plot focuses as much on generation gaps as much as this wonderful world, and at certain points I'm like, oh wow movie you're not going for some tropey cliches of bickering family members and them totally not opening up their emotions. We get some solid open hearted conversations that I feel are good discussions.....and then they ruin it. It's like every step the characters take forward which happens fairly often, every single time is pulled right the hell away and they regress ten steps back. So why should I believe anything they say and get invested when they turn their backs almost immediately on what they just said! It's so aggravating man. Now the character designs are fine, the environments are nothing short of fascinating and amazing to see, the creatures are so imaginative, and yeah the movie throws a curveball that I never suspected even though I was calling out elements of it early on unknowingly. So the visuals once again are the strongest point of the film, which is not good because they were soooo close to getting this dialogue and characterization down but just fumble it bad. And you spend the entire film with these people and their emotional problems to fix, so it hurts the score. Visuals, excellent crossing over into art at points. Story, basic but interesting. Characters, infuriating but have their good moments. Do I recommend it? Ah, it depends on the individual. This isn't new heights for Disney but it's decent and has a good message about environments and how planets themselves are lifeforms. So....I give it 2.5 stars, 7/10, and tomorrow we really diveboard into the bizarre and you'll be surprised what it is. Keeping you guessing for almost 8 years, I'm proud of that.

I, Robot

All things considered, this has aged well for me.

I watched I, Robot a long time ago, around the better part of a decade since I last watched it and for a movie that entertained and intrigued 10 year old me as well as 25 year old me, I'm impressed. Based off of Isaac Asimov's short stories, this film takes place in the far off future of 2035 where robots have been manufactured and populated to help human beings in any way possible, with the first model of robots being released in 2020 and to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if it came to pass, where we meet Detective Spoony I mean Spooner played by Will Smith who is called in to investigate the death of the mind behind the company who crafts the robots in every facet. Spooner suspects foul play with the electronic beings but as a safeguard all robots are built around three laws, 1. A robot cannot harm a human being under any circumstances, 2. A robot must obey all orders given, 3. A robot must protect itself without conflicting on the first and second laws. Which is what makes this such a fascinating mystery, it creates a logic puzzle for the audience to decipher as we follow our main character who is trying to figure out who killed this man and more importantly why. Now I'll confess I have not read Asimov's stories, though they are on my list with other classic sci-fi stories like Frank Herbert's Dune, and Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. And the movie has really good pacing and plot threads that keep your interest and keep you entertained. You'd expect this to be a sort of Blade Runner-esque world but truthfully it doesn't look super futuristic, hell the only major technological advances are the cars and robots so I'd almost say this is a great introduction to sci-fi movies for people who aren't big fans of the genre. The production is quite good, the cast takes it seriously and puts out good material, there's great shots now and then, the effects are executed well and because the robots aren't supposed to look realistic but more synthetic the CG hasn't aged poorly. I know some people gave a lot of good grief over the action scenes and how they wouldn't belong in a techno mystery, but this was essentially a summer movie and in recent years people have given the film more credit. From the brief research I did apparently the script had a huge rewrite, originally the film was going to be way more cerebral focusing on the detective's paranoia and more intricate complexities of the robot revolution, it honestly sounds so much like Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep the basis for Blade Runner, which is an excellent book by the way you should check that out, but not like in a derogative way but how the stroy progresses and more importantly what it focuses on. And it kinda breaks my heart because it sounds like an underrated sci-fi classic and could have been so much more than what we got, but again I do not hate this movie at all, it's just that the original script sounds so friggin' good. I think this is a totally fine movie, it gives us the mystery solving with a few action beats here and there, Will Smith and Alan Tudyk are the best performances in an already really good cast, the pacing is good, the effects are done well, and the story stays true to Asimov while still doing it's own thing. I give it 3 stars, 7.5/10, and easily my favorite scene is James Cromwell's brief monologue about the ghost in the machine which is a fascinating concept in and of itself and who knows how long that idea has been floating around for, but man do I love this man to the moon and back!

Rogue One

I'm not disappointed.

New Star Wars movie!!! How was it? They did a very good job with it, it was a well made, well put together movie that encapsulates what happened before A New Hope. I enjoyed it, the story I totally rolled with, it was very believable that this is how the Rebels got the Death Star plans. The cast was great, even though I'm not the biggest Felicity Jones fan but Mads Mikkelsen and Donnie Yen and James Earl Jones were fantastic, and I have to say we see some unexpected faces in this movie. I was stunned to see so many familiar faces from the series. Senator Bail Organa from Episode 3 made an appearance, Darth Vader obviously, those two hecklers in the cantina from Episode 4, mentions of Obi-Wan, but most shocking of all was Peter Cushing. I was wondering if they were going to put Tarkin in the movie but...there he was! Peter Cushing as I live and breathe! It looked just like him, it sounded like him, I was freaking out in my seat whenever I saw him! That was positively shocking, the effects in this movie were so outstanding that they brought an old friend back from years gone by. Speaking of which, the film looks amazing with plenty of space battles, and blaster fights throughout. I was wondering if they were almost going to do a straight up war movie, and while it did have it's moments it still felt like Star Wars. They didn't screw around with the continuity, in fact they got it down impeccably with the attention to detail in all you see and remember from the original Star Wars. I'd like to see someone whine about that exhaust port on the Death Star now. What was surprising most is, most of the footage in the trailers is NOT in the movie. A good 80% of all the trailers look drastically different from the finished film. Now other films were like this, like Suicide Squad, the movie looked ever so slightly different from the film (Don't worry I still need to look back at Suicide Squad, I haven't forgotten.) but with this movie you might as well have not seen the trailers. Great movie, definitely go see it, I know I probably will again! Thanks for reading, enjoy the movie, and I shall see you guys next week.