Category: Movies

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

Did Toothless get smaller?  Maybe Hiccup got bigger…I don’t know.

That was not the death I expected.

Oh hey, how about that?  Post #100!

How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

The story Eragon wishes it could be.

I kind of don’t want to see the “Oh no; the hero is dead!  Sob!  Boo-hoo!  Oh wait, he’s actually alive!  Hooray!” trope anymore.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Ricardo Montalban is the one true Khan.

I’m getting lots of what I’m going to call a “reverse yeah, I remember that” or “yup, that’s where it came from.”

There’s a scene where Kirk says, “damage report”, he and Spock then walk over to a monitor where Spock points at each of the glowing red dots one at a time before finally saying, “they knew exactly where to hit us”.  I’m thinking, “thank you Mr Spock, I never would have noticed those specks of light had you not pointed them out to me!”  He should have spoken and pointed at the same time.

Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)

Just even more of, “oh yeah, I remember that!”  Only now, instead of just being oh yeah I remember that from the series, it’s also, oh yeah I remember that from Wrath of Khan, and even, oh yeah, I remember that from Star Trek 2009.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

I haven’t read the book version of this.  I feel like I should, now.

TIME PASSES

I have now read the book; it is quite a bit different than the movie.  At least the movie is not alone; it comes from a long line of inaccurate Dahl adaptations.

Valiant (2005)

There are a lot of good names in this; but it’s like a soda that’s been left out overnight that’s gone completely flat.

Kung Fu Panda (2008)

Good use of Jack Black.  Be Kind Rewind was OK; but I don’t think it utilized him as well as it could have, and The NeverEnding Story III was an abomination even he couldn’t save.

I’m wondering if this movie was responsible for kicking the whole panda thing into high gear, or if it was only joining a preexisting bandwagon.  Pandas really started showing up all over the place around that time, like, super-saturation.

Uncle Buck (1989)

OK, so they don’t really have anything to do with each other; but as I watched this, the idea become more and more deeply seated in my mind that this was somehow a prequel, of sorts, where Macaulay Culkin’s time spent with uncle Buck is what enables him to be able to do the things that he does in Home Alone (1990).

Huh.  Well, apparently, “The concept for this movie (Home Alone) originated during the filming of a scene in Uncle Buck (1989), in which Macaulay Culkin plays a character who interrogates a would-be sitter through the letter opening in the front door.”  So there is a real connection, at least, even if my own personal head-canon isn’t firing with a full charge of powder.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

Jack Sparrow treads a very fine line between bad-ass…and Jack-ass.  He leans dangerously close to the latter at times.

Life would have been much simpler for Ariel if all she had to do to get legs was to get out of the water.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)

Well, they didn’t break another lamp off the wall; but that one pirate broke his frozen toe off, so I guess I’ll give that partial credit.

And Jack Sparrow continues his downward spiral; he still got some good moments though.

Ah, the sea turtle joke came back.

This would have been a very good place to end it; but I suppose there was more money to be made.