Go see this movie if you have any interest in history, in untold stories of black women who nearly got lost by systemic erasure, in the space program, in early computing, or just in some fine acting where there's a white guy finely portrayed by Kevin Costner and he is not the most important thing on screen. 5/5 stars ( Read more... )

Normally I write up the movies I see within a few days. Sometimes I wait to read others' commentaries (which I usually avoid beforehand because spoilers) afterward in order to help coalesce my thinking. This time it was more of a "hey, I could do this other thing."

I think part of it was that I went in with relatively high expectations - The Force ( Read more... )

There are lots of movies that come out labeled as SF and most of them are action-adventure and a lot of them are horror with blinky lights. But the central tenet of science fiction is that you are telling a story that could not be told without at least one scientific element ( Read more... )

It's something of a measure of how well Marvel has done with the superhero movie genre that this ranks as one of the bottom offerings. It's so much better than we were used to, say, a couple decades back, but when you're up against some of the recent entries in the genre you have to do better than this one does. I tried explaining the problems to mizarchivist ( Read more... )

A bit of preamble first... I've only seen Tricky one other time, with Massive Attack at the Orpheum way the hell long ago (I want to say 1994). Haven't seen him since he went solo. I liked his first couple solo albums, was meh on the rest but this one (with Skilled Mechanics) sounded good and he finally got his visa issues sorted out so there was a ( Read more... )

Over Labor Day weekend I went to visit the girlfriend and see her new place. One morning's plans got torpedo'ed because she wasn't feeling well so we stayed in and watched a movie. We sort of picked "Woman in Gold" because it was something I'd wanted to see and missed in theaters and she's lived in Germany and knows a lot about history so we ( Read more... )

I'm talking here about Snow White and the Huntsman and The Huntsman: Winter's War. (3/5 stars because I really didn't expect much ( Read more... )

This movie was the hardest to review of the set I've seen recently. I really wanted to like it, and there were a couple of really good performances. But the script is an utter mess - incoherent, spineless, and nearly pointless in places. If Warner/DC can't get it together soon they should just pick up their marbles and go home. 2/5 stars because ( Read more... )

(I've seen a remarkable number of movies for me lately; I'll try to keep the reviews short so I can get through all of them ( Read more... )

I've searched my LJ and cannot find any review of the first time we saw Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic at House of Blues. I remember it well because it was an excellent show and it cemented HoB as my favorite place to see music. The sound at HoB is usually quite good, always better than the abominable Paradise, I can get seats with a good view ( ( Read more... )