Terminator 3 movie

I watched Terminator 3 on Netflix, which I had not seen since it came out in the theaters in 2003. The problem with this film is that the entire movie is almost one long chase scene. It is lacking in the interesting characters and emotions that the previous film had. Despite this, it manages to be moderately entertaining, but it hasn't aged well. For the 167 million dollar budget, it feels only slightly better than a made for TV movie. Rating: B-.

I liked the 4th film in the franchise, but not everyone did. No matter how many times they have tried, they can't seem to recapture the magic of the first two films.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles Remake Paramount; Will Smith Kevin Hart – Deadline

The most useless remake ever ...

https://deadline.com/2020/08/planes-trains-and-automobiles-remake-will-smith-kevin-hart-paramount-john-hughes-john-candy-steve-martin-1203015171/

Onward

A long time ago there was magic. Magic was used to help people and to make their lives better.  However, magic was difficult to master, and once people discovered technology which was easier, they forgot about magic.

This feels like a world that could have been much more explored, but the movie plays it safe by having all the characters be no different than modern boring humans.  However, that is part of the point, since this is a culture that has lost its heritage.  The movie holds a surprise for us, because what seems on the surface like a three-star film, delivers in a big way with a four-star ending.  This is by no means the best Pixar film, but Pixar can still work a magic of their own.

Our two main characters, both elves and both brothers, go on a quest to find something magical that will bring back their long-deceased father just for a day so that they meet him.  As a result, they discover more about themselves and help their culture regain some of what it lost.

Rating: B+.    I would love to see a sequel where they better explore this world.

P.S. There is much stuff in the trailer that didn't make it into the movie.  This happens sometimes when a movie undergoes many revisions before being released.

The Secret Life of Pets II

The Secret Life of Pets was way too dark for a kid's movie, with a psycho bunny who wants to kill humans. This movie is definitely not funny and has completely the wrong tone for an animated film. The bunny gets reformed at the end of the film, and in The Secret Life of Pets II becomes more of a nutty character who desperately wants to be a superhero. The best thing that I can say about the sequel is that it is not as dark as the first film, is somewhat funny, and has a brief sequence with Harrison Ford as an old farm dog who teaches the main character how to be brave. There is a second plot where the bunny rescues a tiger from a stereotypical abusive Russian circus master, and this part of the movie is still kind of dark, which bothered me a bit. Mostly the stereotyped cruel Russian circus master bothered me, and it still feels like the wrong tone for a kid's film. However, overall the movie is passable entertainment and parts of it are exciting.  Without Harrison Ford as the crusty old farm dog, the movie wouldn't be worth my time.


Rating: B. The Secret Life of Pets II is available on Netflix streaming.

Frozen II

The snow queen Elsa hears a voice calling her from the northern enchanted forest.  Elsa, along with her sister Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, and Sven travel north to uncover this mystery and a dark secret from their past.

I was pleasantly surprised that Frozen II is a musical, but I should have known this because the original Frozen surprised me in the same way.  At first, I was very impressed, but a couple of the later songs fall flat.  Overall the music is competent and does a good job of conveying the emotions of the characters, but none of the songs are particularly memorable, and none rise to the level of "Let It Go" or "Summer" from the first film.  I get the impression that the movie is trying very hard to reach the musical level of its predecessor, but falls short.

Visually this an amazing movie to look at.  The story is reasonably good, but it has the problem that it keeps promising a big payoff in the end because the characters are supposed to be journeying toward something wonderful, but the payoff is only just okay, which is what I suspected would happen.  The movie also throws in an environmental political message that seems a little out of place in a Disney film.  The story is also a bit convoluted because there are many storylines and characters to keep track of, so it wasn't clear to me if it all made sense.

Olaf, the snowman, is used for comic relief, and this works, but I found him more charming in the first movie.  Kristoff and Sven are also used as comic relief, but they feel underutilized because they had more important roles in the first film

Overall, Frozen 2 feels like a pretty good movie that is also visually very impressive, but it also feels like it didn't reach its full potential.

I think the problem with sequels is that it is hard to recapture the same magic.  Movies have release dates and production schedules that they have to meet, so the movies are only as good as they can make them in the time frame that they have.

Rating:  B+.

Frozen has a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Frozen II has a 77% score on Rotten Tomatoes.  

Sully

If you are looking for a movie to watch this weekend, then look no further.  Although Hell or High Water would be an excellent choice, my first choice would be Sully.  It is hard to image that Clint Eastwood could have made a better film about "The Miracle On the Hudson" or its pilot, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger.

On January 15th, 2009. US Airways Flight 1549 Airbus A320-214 took of from New York's LaGuardia airport.  Three minutes into the flight, the plane struck a flock of Canada geese and lost power in both engines.  Four minutes later Captain Sullenberger managed to safely land the plane in the Hudson River.  Fast response by nearby ships and local rescue forces helped save the passengers and crew.

The film focuses heavily on the investigations conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board, which initially tried to blame Captain Sullenberger for not returning the plane to the airport.  Meanwhile, the press and the general public were treating Sullenberger as a hero.  Tom Hanks does a marvelous job playing "Sully" as a man conflicted after the crash.

News stories that gain national attention like this one become part of our national identity.  As a result, we feel connected to these events.  Therefore it is easy to feel connected to the film, just like watching movies about 9-11.  These kinds of films are moving, and I am glad that Clint Eastwood did such a good job on this one.

Compared to Hell or High Water, which is so negative in its view of America, it is nice to get an uplifting film about an American hero who saved the lives of 155 people just by doing his job to the best of his ability.

Rating:  A-

Star Wars sequel trilogy

The three movies of the Disney made Star Wars sequel trilogy, episodes 7, 8 and 9, were entertaining enough, but they really feel like a huge opportunity lost to do something better. The movies could have been another Lord of the Rings, or another Game of Thrones, not that I'm a huge fan of either one of these things, but the new Star Wars trilogy had a chance to be epic, but instead, it was splintered into different creative visions that did not mesh well. I had high hopes that there was some master plan that would pull it all together in the end, but the final film pretty much proved that there was none.

The seventh film was largely a remake of the original Star Wars with new younger characters. Although it might have a few new ideas, it doesn't feel very original and its goal was to just evoke nostalgia. This is not how George Lucas made Star Wars movies because every one of his movies introduced new and sometimes controversial ideas and took us to new unfamiliar exotic locations.

J.J. Abrams, the writer and director of Episode 7, reportedly had a master plan in the beginning. Part of the plan involved Carrie Fisher being critically important to the 9nth film, but she died three years before the movie came out, and a year before it went into production. They did manage to use some old footage of Carrie Fisher in the movie. Colin Trevorrow was scheduled to write and direct Episode 9, and reportedly he had some really interesting ideas, but he was fired over creative differences that conflicted with Episode 8, so J.J. Abrams ended up also writing and directing the 9nth movie.

Part of the problem was that a mostly unproven director, Rian Johnson, was given free rein by Lucasfilm to do whatever he wanted in Episode 8, The Last Jedi. It appears that Rian Johnson ignored any plans that J.J. Abrams had, and made the movie that he wanted to make. Rian Johnson admitted that he had no concern for continuity or what came before, and that he was only interested in his own vision. Johnson introduced some news ideas that could have taken Star Wars in a slightly new direction, and I think that this had the potential to be interesting.

However, in Episode 9, The Rise of Skywalker, J.J. Abrams appears to have gone out of his way to disregard everything Rian Johnson did.

The problem is that Episode 8, The Last Jedi, split the fanbase. It was a little inconsistent with the Star Wars that fans were familiar with. Although I liked The Last Jedi a great deal and it is my favorite of the trilogy, at least half the fans hated it with an almost irrational passion. The was a major backlash to the film.

Because of the backlash to The Last Jedi, this created strife between Disney and Lucasfilm. There was an edict issued by Disney that Episode 9 had to please *all* the fans and not just half of them. George Lucas was brought back to act as a script consultant and introduced some of his ideas, but midway through filming Lucasfilm informed Disney that the new film might not please all the fans as they wanted. This caused the parent company, Disney, to put their foot down and demand rewrites and reshoots.

What we got with Episode 9 feels like it is too crammed full of crowd-pleasing moments. The story proceeds at such a frenetic pace that the audience doesn't have time to notice that much of the movie doesn't make logical sense. I think that the last act is way over the top. The problem is that movie is very entertaining just so long as you don't think about it too much. This might explain the critic score of only 52%.