Got to be birds flying higher

Pulling from my watcher's notes...

I can't believe I'm writing that there's a movie Jason Momoa can't save, but it was definitely Conan.

I love Jason Momoa! He's a beautiful man inside and out, but I moved on after about half an hour.

Honestly, the movie lost me in the first few minutes when baby Conan is born during battle (get it???). His mother is a warrior and wants to see her son before she dies. Her husband takes her knife, does a 2-second C-section, and lifts baby Conan to her so she can name him, and then she dies. It is the most ridiculous thing! I can suspend my disbelief for a lot of things, but not that😄

The first part of the movie is brutally hard to watch (get it???), toned almost entirely blue and black where we see young Conan as the best of the best! He can finish his chores and have time to participate in a young warrior's marathon, where he single-handedly takes down a group of baddies that made his companions flee. Ugh.

After a battle where Conan is orphaned, it moves to the present day in full colour (get it???) where Conan and his companion free a group of slaves. Conan later spots someone who ransacked his village and gets arrested so he can get closer to the man. I gave up when Conan stuck his finger in the man's missing nose.

Although this movie is in no way related to the Arnold Schwarzenegger films and is a new interpretation of the books--and not having read the books, I don't know how faithful either adaptation is--the original Conan movie is so good because the characters have so much depth. The film is as disciplined as Arnold's workout routine and every time I watch it I enjoy the storytelling and cinematography so much. It's not easy to take pulp content and make it a action masterpiece.

This Conan movie is sadly kind of cheap and visually messy. A terrible movie can still be enjoyed if it has some redeeming qualities--but I knew after half an hour this movie was not one of them.

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I love Tubi! It has so many movies and old TV shows I never thought I would watch, including Westworld's sequel.

Honestly, this is not a great movie, nor better than Westworld. Even though it stars Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner, the pacing is slow, the acting is terrible, and the plot predictable, especially since the trailer gives away the whole movie!

However, it's still notable because...

• the language for science fiction films in 1976 wasn't quite there


• the moviemakers try hard to problem solve for technology that doesn't exist...


• ...and SFX that didn't exist either


• the idea of theme parks and leisure was still pretty new


• the plot is pretty standard, but with a 70s twist (and lots of fashions)


• it speaks to the 70s disaster movie genre plus the intrepid reporter trope

Futureworld doesn't feel super futuristic compared to say, Logan's Run, but 70s movies like this crawled so we could watch our favourite sci-fi movies in the 80s soar!

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Canada also observes Black History Month in February! I highly encourage anyone interested in Black history or Canadian history to watch this great documentary about a famous Alberta cowboy--John Ware. I love that someone did a deep dive into his life--Alberta has a lot of invisible Black history.

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I've been wanting to watch Sing for years and finally crossed it off my watchlist tonight. It was cute, but just didn't resonate as much with me as I thought it would. The stakes were really low in the plot and there were a lot of characters. YMMV!

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Not to sound like a broken record, but there's a whole swath of 90s movies missing from my personal catalogue because I was either too young or too broke to watch them. It's hard to spend $8 on a movie when you're only making $7.28 an hour part time!

I didn't know much about Se7en before I watched it on Tubi this afternoon except that it starred Brad Pitt and was about a serial killer working through the seven deadly sins. I didn't even know it starred Kevin Spacey or Morgan Freeman! Sometimes the less you know about something the more wonderful the surprise is.

Freeman and Pitt play a pair of mismatched detectives in this, suspenseful, neo-noir thriller. I really enjoyed the orchestral soundtrack and colour grading as well as the pacing. I find too many movies these days are a blur as they hop from scene to scene, so the story's slow unfolding was very enjoyable as well.

Now, this is a very squishy and dark movie and I feel it dances slightly into horror territory. It's such a visual feast though with the constant rain, grittiness and practical effects. Definitely one I would watch again since it contained so much detail.

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All caught up on Jurassic Park movies! I really enjoyed this movie most out of the three Jurassic World movies. It felt closer to the original Jurassic Park movie, even if the original cast members didn't return. Movies in a series can always be tricky, because usually the first movie is good, the second one is painfully in the middle and setting up for the next movie, which is what I think happened here as well. There were a lot of fun low-key thrills and jump scares, so it was the right blend of action, adventure, suspense and scary moments :-)

I only have two complaints about it--everything else was awesome. One, sometimes the action scenes felt over choreographed and too perfect, but Colin Trevorrow did a good job of emulating Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas' styles. Second, Dr. Sattler rips into Henry Wu for creating an ecological disaster, when, ahem, it was Maisie who let the dinosaurs loose in the previous movie. Like seriously, she created a bigger ecological disaster than Dr. Wu.

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Apparently we've been behind on a lot of Godzilla movies :-D

The documentary style of Shin Godzilla was neat and Godzilla had way more screen time than Godzilla Minus One. It was really enjoyable, but could have easily been a half hour shorter. In trying to show all the departments responsible for an emergency response, the movie felt too spread thin and without any focus. There was also a lack of urgency and the scoring was inconsistent, but it was neat to see how it wasn't a typical Hollywood disaster movie either. A Hollywood movie would have a handsome action man and at least once romance ;-D

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There's a big gap in my animation watch list and it's embarrassing to say I've never watched a Studio Ghibli movie from start to finish until recently, except for Pom Poko. Fortunately in today's world, that's easy to fix.

The main thing I noticed about both films, and I'm sure I'll continue to notice, is how unique the character designs and storytelling are. One would be hard pressed to find a squirmy, worm infested boar in a Disney or Pixar film. There's a layer of authenticity and creativity which is so refreshing for me as a viewer. The movies are definitely for older children and up--both of these would have scared me as five year old.

There's also a sense of characters "just as they are". For example, in Princess Monoke, there are many groups and individuals all with different goals and sometimes good intentions. I was sure Lady Eboshi was the villain, until I discovered that she rescued women from brothels and was kind to lepers. I'm so used to the good/evil binary that I found myself thinking deeply about struggles the characters faced in the movie.

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Spirited Away, as a newer movie, had more polished animation and again, I fell in love with the different character designs of the monsters and spirits young protagonist Chihiro encounters. Simply being spirits does not make them "bad", although they are kind of jerks to Chihiro. Most child characters in movies have something going for them like smarts or charisma, but Chihiro has neither. She's just a ten year old girl doing what ten year olds will do. She makes mistakes and learns from them. Her capacity to care for others and determination to help those she loves carries her throughout her journey.

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We watched the original Dune this past week and after 2 hours, we had no idea what we had just watched :-D.

It was the first time watching it for both of us--and neither of us have read the books. The movie was released when we were far too young to watch it, and now I wonder how many people did see it as children because their parents thought it would be like Star Wars. Star Wars it's not!

In hindsight, it's a testament to George Lucas how easily read Star Wars is compared to Dune. One might think Hollywood just didn't have the visual language for science fiction films, but that's not true, considering how many memorable sci-fi films were also released in 1984. There were times when the movie, with it's lush sets and fantastic wardrobe design, wanted to be an epic, but the severe editing and voiceovers were too apparent and jarring. The whispered thoughts sounded harsh and I thought Patrick Stewart would have a larger role.

One odd thing I particularly appreciated was the pug that appeared throughout the movie showed up at end. Thank goodness someone had the foresight to show a child holding the pug or I would have been forever wondering if the pug made it :-D

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I'm unsure how we missed The Equalizer in theatres or didn't know it had a couple of sequels, but we really enjoyed this action-packed thriller starring Denzel Washington as Robert McCall, a man who embodies "be the change" even if it means taking down Russian gangsters in your neighbourhood.

I used to watch the original TV show starring Edward Woodward back in the 80s and I always hoped it would make a comeback--fortunately it works really well on the big screen!

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