Absolutely fantastic. I am not a Trekkie or whatever they are called and I did not feel excluded. Special effects were great. Great acting from all involved. Zachary Quinto and Benedict Cumberpatch nailed it. Alice Eve is now on my radar. The Khan’s blood/tribble revival thing was a pretty heavy-handed Chekov’s Gun. That’s my only complaint. I won’t say any more about that but you’ll know when you see it.
Blood! So much blood! Sharp things, scary things, ultra-creepy things with yellow eyes! Evil Dead! Did I mention the blood?
Iron Man is my favorite superhero because his superpower is that he’s smart. That’s it. He’s really really smart. I saw this movie in 3D and it was great. I think they could have done more with the 3D stuff like maybe more POV camera angles when he’s flying.
I haven’t read the comics and I don’t really care how the movies stack up against them. The Iron Man movies are internally consistent with the rules the studio has established, with one exception. In the first movie, Tony Stark invents a power source that powers his suit. In the third movie, he keeps having to charge his suit like it’s a smart phone that he keeps draining by playing Angry Birds. This doesn’t make sense to me. Did I miss something?
I laughed out loud several times during this movie. Very light-hearted and fun. I liked it a lot.
*edit*
Trent Sellers also wrote up a short thing about this movie:
I went into this movie expecting to only mildly enjoy it and I left this movie feeling very sad. The reason: I don’t think I will watch another movie this year that I will enjoy this much. It’s going to take another viewing to be sure but I feel like I just watched a perfect movie.
I like the idea and the story. Dialogue was a bit off. The movie begins with the capture and arrest of a former member of an activist group that was active in the late 70s and was responsible for a bank robbery that went awry and resulted in the death of a security guard. Robert Redford plays a man with ties to this group who ends up on the run from the law. Shia LaBeouf is the quintessential intrepid journalist who seeks the truth. I had a hard time buying Anna Kendrick as an FBI agent but mostly because historically she tends to play adorable characters and I was viewing her through that lens.
I saw this movie on a date and she pointed out that this screenplay feels like it should have come out 10 years ago. I think I agree. The movie painted a picture of 1980 as a year of turmoil, picketing, and protests. Perhaps the book upon which this screenplay was based dialed all the events back ten years so that the Weather Underground (the activist group in the movie) was actually active in 1969-1970. Plot points in the movie dictated that “present time” be 30 years post the dissolution of the Weather Underground so Redford made the call to adjust the timeline.
Other notable performances: Nick Nolte, Susan Sarandon, Terrence Howard, Sam Elliott.
Yesterday I saw Life of Pi. It was a movie about a boy whose family died and he got abandoned on a life boat with a tiger. My favorite part was when he found an island and at day the lake as crystal clear and at night it was poisonous. I liked the movie. The End.
By Milo, age 8
I dreamed I had a huge ham and was carrying it around and eating it. It was a really big ham. I tried to take a picture of myself with the ham so I could Instagram it but the ham was too big – I needed both arms to hold it. I was walking around trying to find people who could take my picture with the huge ham. I ended up finding my uncle Paul who took the picture for me.
My like and dislike switch was continuously being flipped during this one. Oblivion has good acting and really neat special effects. I’m also a sucker for the Kubrick-esque set designing. Despite the super pretentious, expository opening monologue by the Cruise missile, I was still really interested in finding out what exactly is going on in this movie. I was on the edge of my seat until they lost the only thing they had going for them. Once the jig was up I realized that I’ve seen this movie before and it’s called Moon. This basically made the 2nd and 3rd act completely predictable and lacking in suspense or intrigue. While I don’t feel my money was wasted at the theatre I probably won’t be buying the Blu-Ray.
Guest Review by Trent Sellers
I dreamed they rearranged the cubicles at my job and lowered the cubicle walls so everyone could see everyone else when they were sitting down. It was really distracting cause the cubicles were smaller also so we were all in each others’ personal spaces. My cubicle was off a main thoroughfare and people kept bumping my elbow every time they walked past.
There was some other stuff in the dream but I don’t really remember it.
I was reading the latest issue of Comedian’s Quarterly, a magazine for comedians that has industry news. This magazine doesn’t exist in real life. I read a blurb about a comedian who had recently passed and they quoted a friend of mine. It occurred to me that the quotes attributed to my friend were actually things I had said to that friend in a phone call. This friend of mine was using my words and not attributing them to me.
The next article was a longer piece about a new up and coming comedian. Halfway through the article, they stopped calling him his own name and started calling him Nate Van Deusen, which was my name in the dream. For some reason I decided to change my last name to my brother’s wife’s last name. I don’t know why. Anyway, the article was still about this other guy but they kept calling him Nate Van Deusen, which was me.
I was going to show my friends this article but I couldn’t find where I had set down the magazine. I was babysitting my niece Astrid at the time and she had pulled down all my books and magazines off the shelves and I couldn’t find anything. Also, she had colored all over my books.
