Tag: Family

To be gifted in academia, it can mean a lot of things. It does NOT, however, have to mean you are immediately great at math or science. You can be gifted at drawing, music, analytical thinking, synesthesia, you name it. It is a common misconception that gifted students have to be good at common school subjects.

When I was in NC, it was called AG then AIG, Academically Intellectually Gifted, but apparently in Texas it is just GT, for Gifted and Talented. The same key word is there, and it is supposed to give you a harder program to really test your limits and get more out of your education. For the most part, it is really just slightly harder material and doesn’t do a lot of training.

Being a gifted student and now teaching gifted students, I was very interested with what the hell the movie Gifted would be about. Would it be accurate? Would it show the appropriate struggles? Would the main character wear glasses?

Oh thank goodness, no glasses.

Our story is about Mary Adler (Mckenna Grace). She is 7 years old and about to enter the first grade. She doesn’t want to go, though, because she has been living with her Uncle Frank (Chris Evans) most of her life and she has been home schooled. Not fancy tutors, just good old fashioned books and practice. Sure they live in a small trailer, in a poor area, with Frank working as a boat repairman, but they are happy.

But she doesn’t want to go into a regular school. It will be too slow for her! And when she does advanced multiplication in her head to her new teacher, Ms. Stevenson (Jenny Slate), they know something is up.

Turns out she is the daughter of Pat Golding (Julie Ann Emery), a very famous young mathematician, who was close to solving the Navier–Stokes equations. It is part of the Millennium Prize Problems (Not Yu-Gi-Oh related), a series of problems that will help revolutionize math if anyone ever can prove them. And Pat killed herself when Mary was 6 months old, leaving her in Frank’s house.

But it turns out that Franks family is kind of crazy. Notably, his mom (Lindsay Duncan), who attempts to gain custody of Mary once she finds out how gifted she is. Frank doesn’t want to put her in a fancy academy school for high level training, he wants her to grow up normal, with friends her age. And thus, a nice legal battle is actually the main focus of the film. Woo, lawyers!

And Octavia Spencer is in here too, of course, as wise next door neighbor and friend.

Now picture the lady who starred in Obvious Child as an elementary school teacher. Yeah, I can’t either.

Gifted is okay, in almost every front. The acting, the story, the feels. I only cried once, which is surprising, given it being about a dad like figure with a young daughter. There was an incredibly cute scene where the girl was having a crisis, thinking that she was never wanted by anyone in her family and her mom, so Frank took her to a hospital to see baby announcements post births. To show happy families and to relate how it made them feel as well. It was touching and powerful.

But this film isn’t great at the same time.

We have handfuls of math problem montages, close ups of symbols and numbers that I guess most people won’t understand, close up of the girl’s face, and back and forth, with some nice chipper music. The worst was when she was doing an advanced math packet in her first grade class. Because that montage included Jenny Slate looking longingly at her while she sat at her desk.

And it still had some nice jokes though. Jokes about math teachers and beards. Jokes about how less civilized people will use the word irregardless. Those cracked me up, which made the movie a bit more bearable.

Gifted is a relatively simple film about an extraordinary, fictional character. Watching a first graded do differential equations isn’t exciting, because this is a movie and the actress could be doing anything. In real life, if this was a real story, it would be amazing. Oh well!

Max Steel is a movie I figured I saw before, or heard about, but everything I knew was wrong.

I was thinking it must have been some modern kids show, but I was wrong. Maybe a kids cartoon that I saw once a long time ago? Oh yeah kind of! I never saw the show at all, but existed a decade and a half ago, for about two years. And then apparently a lot of direct to DVD movies and toys.

So this is a franchise that some people, somewhere, care about? It just seems like a weird very niche thing to resurrect, literally hoping children who watched the show at the time will go and see the movie. The movie that had no advertising that came and went and is sneaking out to DVD like it probably should have done first.

Regardless of how it goes, this screen grab is unintentionally hilarious.

Don’t worry, the main character’s name isn’t Max Steel, it is Max McGrath (Ben Winchell)! And he is a high school student, living with his mother (Maria Bello), and for whatever reason they move around a lot. This is the 8th or 9th time they have moved, because of issues. They might have said more details, but my mind has blanked out big portions of the film.

He goes to school, flirts with Sofia Martinez (Ana Villafañe), they do some things, and then a mysterious man shows up at their door. This man is Dr. Miles Edwards (Andy Garcia), who knows the mom and has been sending presents occasionally. He knew Max’s dad, but his mom doesn’t talk about the dad a lot, nor how he dies.

Max’s Dad worked for some place called N-Tek, that does tech stuff and wants to protect to the world, and that is where Miles works as well. And this place is close to where they live now, oh man!

This is a lot of dumb set up. Max gets these weird powers to control electronics kind of. An alien named Steel (Josh Brener) shows up, talks a lot like an ADHD kid, and wants Max to help them stop bad things. They can even merge together to make a fighting suit thing. Ah, superhero time!

You know, like people cheating on their taxes. Take em down Max Steel!

About five minutes into the film, my brain checked out. Something about the movie just immediately turns me off. They are using nice cameras, and that somehow seems to add to the woes. Everything is so crisp like a commercial, but then we have moody cloud backgrounds. It is trying to show angst early on through visuals and it just looks gross.

The characters are not people to root for or care about. Winchell is not charismatic nor is he strong to carry the lead in a film like that.

Everything just feels drab and it becomes a surprise when they finally introduce Steel, who is way too upbeat and talkative given the tone for the rest of the film.

The plot may be confusing, it might not, I am not sure because it was just so hard to care about. The final fight with the bad guy, Garcia’s character, completely forgettable.

It is just Max Steel has absolutely nothing going for it. What is worse about it is that it had so little going for it, I don’t remember enough about it to even complain.

Hey, everyone love’s cats. Just go onto the internet. But the love for cats comes from being cute, or seeing them do derpy things. They don’t love all cats.

Which is why the concept for Nine Lives is so bizarre. The plot comes straight out of a film from the 1990’s (Or a Rob Schneider film from any decade). Guy goes into a cat. The only way it could be really worse is if the cat itself could talk in English and spoke to the cast, but alas, it just has to meow at them.

People don’t like those sorts of films anymore. Those are the films that get mocked and burned at a stake. And here it is, 2016, with Nine Lives coming out. Sure, yeah, I did think Keanu would be a movie about a talking cat, but ended up just being a regular cat and pretty decent.

I don’t think the same sort of change can occur here while watching.

He is going to stare a whole through that cats head.

Tom Brand (Kevin Spacey) is what his name suggests, a walking brand. He is all about his image and his companies success. As CEO, he wants to do fascinating things and leave a permanent mark on society. And he decided that permanent mark would be the tallest building in America. Now that it is almost completed, it turns out another building in Chicago being built will easily beat theirs in height, ruining his dreams.

One of his workers, Ian Cox (Mark Consuelos) was supposed to know about this sort of thing, but he didn’t care. He wanted to take over the company and sell it for money.

All of Brand’s success means his family had to suffer a little. His new wife (Jennifer Garner) and daughter (Malina Weissman) don’t see him a lot and he forgets things, like birthdays. And his daughter wants a cat, but he doesn’t want a cat in his house. But eventually he just gets the cat.

Buys it from a weird guy (Christopher Walken), and sure enough, an accident happens putting Cox in a coma and his spirit or mind or whatever in the cats body. Knowing that the last thing he did before the accident was to actually get a gift for the daughter was a good thing, they take the cat in while he recovers. This allows Brand to try and bond with the daughter and convince them that he is a man in a cat’s body.

Also starring Robbie Amell as the son who is trying to help Brand’s company while he is in a coma, Cheryl Hines as his ex-wife, and Talitha Bateman as his ex-wife’s new daughter.

Oh ho ho, the human is on all fours. What a role reversal!

Jennifer Garner almost had the worst year ever. She had three movies come out, and I have seen two of them. Nine Lives is beyond terrible and Mother’s Day (which I haven’t seen) was blasted by critics as well. She is down right lucky that Miracles From Heaven ended up being a relatively decent Christian film, and not a standard tacky/corny over the top Christian film. It would have been real close to being just a complete fail of a year.

There isn’t a whole lot to be said about Nine Lives that isn’t already out there on the internet. What the hell was everyone involved thinking?

There are very little surprises in this film. Spacey, Garner, everyone just phones it in. When things start feeling the bleakest, it was because they made the son character a passive, dumbass. He seemingly refused to fight and it didn’t make sense. So why did it happen? Oh, so the son could do a bigger distraction near the end of the film, in order to end on a bigger note. So yeah, temporarily changing how a character works, because the writers don’t know what the hell they are doing to get to the finale they want.

The cat looked terrible when it had to switch to CGI, which was whenever the cat had to do anything special. So a giant chunk of the movie.

Walken was in this movie, and he has been in mostly shit for years.

There is just nothing really positive to note. It has a weak script, weak plot, weak acting, and at under 90 minutes it still feels too long.

And this is where we stand. This is where all of the marbles fall. This is where the plot thickens. Finally, Moana is now out, and we can almost fully discuss the potential for Best Animated Film this year.

I was excited for Moana since it was first announced. Every announcement was met with excitement. Character actors. Lin-Manuel Miranda helping with the soundtrack. General plot lines. Just excitement and happiness.

And this has been a decent year for animated films in America. Zootopia, also a Disney film started off strong. Kubo and the Two Strings changed the game. And Moana is the final heavy hitter. (Pixar and Dreamworks faltered this year, with Finding Dory and Kung Fu Panda 3. The later decent, but the worst of the series). And sure, there was a lot of other filler, but no one expected a lot from them, just like I don’t expect anything from Sing or Storks.

Needless to say, the hype was there, and I was hoping it would deliver.

Starting off a film with potential baby drownings is a surefire way to hold my attention.

Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) isn’t a princess damn it. She is the daughter of a Chieftain. There is a difference, she has talents. She also feels drawn to the sea. They live on an island, but outside of their local reef, the sea is rough and scary, so her father (Temuera Morrison) forbids her to really go into the water, because she has more important duties to prepare for on the island.

But everyone knows there is a lot out there. Moana’s grandmother, Gramma Tala (Rachel House), makes sure they know the tales. The tale of the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson), who made the islands. He stole the heart of a goddess a thousand years previous, to give the power of creation to man. But his plan backfired, evil and decay started to lurk and grow, he lost his magical fish hook and was never seen again.

But that is all a story! No way that is real. Until, you know, the crops begin to fail on their island. The fish leave the reef. And their people are worried of being able to feed their families.

Moana isn’t just going to sit around and let her friends, family, and loved ones suffer. No, fuck that. She is going into the see. She is going to find Maui, demand he restore the heart, and fix this blight for good. Sounds like a nice afternoon adventure.

Also starring the voice work of Jemaine Clement as a crab monster, Nicole Scherzinger as Moana’s mom, and Alan Tudyk as a chicken.

There is a joke here about a tiny canoe and wood, but I can’t just quite put my hand on it.

Thankfully, there is a lot going on with Moana. So much that I really don’t even know where to begin! But hey, I will try.

Animation style, it is a gorgeous film. Just like Frozen, I initially sort of had a problem with the character animations compared to the background, but quickly grew into it. The ocean was beautiful, the island so full of background life, and I especially loved the lava demon. It must have taken ages to fully animate that creature and it paid off extremely well.

There weren’t too many annoying characters either. There were small pirate coconut things, they were more amusing than annoying and felt like a reference to Mad Max. For the most part, adults weren’t super dickish in the film, like in other similar adventure stories like How to Train Your Dragon. Our lead was fierce, independent, and stereotype breaking, while Maui was funny and interesting. We still had stereotypical older sage lady, but she at least danced a bit to give her something new.

Music! Music music! What a fantastic soundtrack. Miranda’s influence is super strong in this picture. The first few songs feel very similar to the style of Hamilton songs, including the use of extra chorus members and multiple tunes. Where You Are, How Far I’ll Go, We Know The Way, You’re Welcome, and all the various reprises (There are several) are just great. Only one disappointing song in Shiny, which is sad given it being sung by Clement in a strange Bowie-esque voice. It was hard to understand and his character was lack luster, which is a funny joke given the song title. But hey, Disney movies have to have at least one bad song I guess. Soundtrack was put on Spotify last Friday and I have listened to it a few times.

Finally, we reach the story, and yeah. It is a good one. Sure, cliches here and there, but it is about empowerment and following your dreams, a good message to rehash. I can honestly say I didn’t fully predict everywhere it would go, making it another nice breath of fresh air.

As for which is better, this or Kubo? Well, I don’t know yet. I should re-watch Kubo, but obviously Moana has it beat on actual story and music numbers, but Kubo’s animation and heart are very strong.

Honestly, Queen of Katwe came out kind of a surprise to me, which is mostly surprising as it is a Disney movie.

I mean, shit, the bombed film The Finest Hours which Disney barely cared to promote I was still able to see advertisements for. But queen of Katwe? I just assumed it was some random actual Queen of an African nation. I mean, I recognized actors on the poster and it seemed like it could be about royalty.

But no, this is one of those Disney true inspirational stories. And I completely missed the fact that the poster had a ton of chess pieces on it as silhouettes, just assuming it was a fence. Fuck. A Disney movie about Chess and Africa? What a brilliant idea to really bring two things not really thought about together to make a unique film.

Well, unique if it wasn’t a true story. Now I am babbling. Yay chess?

Yeah, there is some chess right there!

In Uganda, a large portion of the population does not play chess. In Katwe specifically, it is a mostly village town with a lot of people living in the slums, struggling to survive. Phiona Mutesi (Madina Nalwanga) is a young girl living in these slums! She doesn’t go to school as they cannot afford it. Instead she helps sell corn all day to people in cars so they can afford rent. She lives with her mother (Lupita Nyong’o), older sister Night (Taryn Kyaze), younger brother (Martin Kabanza), and a baby brother too. No dad anymore, he died a few years ago, thus the struggle to survive.

But there is some hope. There is a church group nearby that is helping keep the kids in good health and spirits, teaching them soccer mostly. But one man, a very smart man, Robert Katende (David Oyelowo) wants them to learn chess. A game that he learned as a kid to beat those “city folk” and really stick it to them. Phiona follows her brother to a meeting spot for this, instantly falls in love with the game and begins to play as well.

And she is super interested in chess. She makes a makeshift chess board out of bottle caps with her brother so they can play at home. And soon, SOON, she is the best player in Katwe of the kids who can’t afford school.

But that isn’t her end goal. No, she needs to go to bigger tournaments. In Uganda, in Africa, hell, in other continents around the world. Her drive and desire is pushing her forward and it might what can really save her family from poverty in their small village.

Also featuring Ronald Ssemaganda and Esther Tebandeke.

You might have your mothers features but you lack her sense of style.

For a movie that lacked a lot of advertisement, it sure does tell a good story.

This isn’t the greatest film by any means. It is average on the acting front, pretty normal camera work and scenes to keep you entertained. It won’t win any awards. But when it comes to telling an interesting and inspirational tale, it does a wonderful job.

Our big three leads do a good job of carrying the emotional/spiritual side of the story, Nyong’o, Oyelowo, and Nalwanga. You will like all the characters, through their faults and triumphs. We even get to see cute baby scenes, yay cute baby scenes! (And one scary one that almost freaked me the fuck out).

For her first ever film (and she had only seen one movie before in her life while filming this one, Jurassic World) Nalwanga plays her part with ease. Despite the bigger names, it is very clearly her film and a story about this chess prodigy and not the coach who found the diamond in the rough or anything like that.

And on that note, there aren’t a lot of movies really about chess. Sure we had Pawn Sacrifice a year or two ago, but that was about the most famous chess player of all time and nothing to special. Maybe it appealed to me more given that I am becoming a chess club coach in a week and excited at the timing of this film. It is a nice film about picking hard to reach goals and doing whatever it takes to achieve them.

Oh no, a remake!

Wait, this is a Disney movie being remade by Disney? Oh, those are fine. Carry on.

One might wonder why Pete’s Dragon needed a remake. Well, nothing needs a remake, the director just really wanted to do it, so Disney said yeah, sure, why not. Do I care about the original film? No, not at all, no one really does anymore. It makes since to reimagine it.

It should be noted that I have lapses in pop culture knowledge occasionally. Like when I recently realized that Pete’s Dragon and Puff the Magic Dragon were completely different entities and forms of media. Shit, I felt stupid.

Not as stupid as this family when they realize that a dragon will kill you, regardless of its Puff or Pete status.

Pete (Oakes Fegley) is a chipper five year old kid, going on an adventure with his parents in the middle of nowhere Pacific Northwest woods! And yeah, a car accident occurs, leaving Pete with some dead parents and himself completely alone, possibly for hundreds of miles! Well, not completely alone, there are some friendly hungry wolves nearby. Uh oh! Thankfully something big, green, furry and with wings shows up to help him out.

Now, six years later, Pete is still successfully living in the woods with this magical creature that can turn invisible, that he has named Elliot. But it has been long enough. Time to accidentally have Pete meet some other strangers.

Namely, a bunch of loggers have been in the area and are about to hit their turf. It is run by Jack (Wes Bentley) and his brother Gavin (Karl Urban). Jack is also married to or dating Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), a park ranger. Grace’s dad (Robert Redford) claims to have seen a dragon in his youth and the only one to have seen it in the area, despite the many stories. Together, Jack and Grace also have a child, Natalie (Oona Laurence). I can’t tell if it is from both of them though. I will conclude that it is Jack’s child and Grace is the step-mom or soon to be step-mom.

And that is all the important characters! Once Pete gets discovered, it is only a matter of time before they find Elliot as well. Greed and more put his life on danger. Oh hamburgers, why couldn’t they just leave the poor kid in the alone, without a family? Also starring Isiah Whitlock Jr. as the sheriff of the small town.

Part dog, part dragon, part cuddly heaven dream.

The movie began like a lot of films, with some sweet parental death. Always good to get sad really early on into a movie. Grace’s mom is also dead before this film, and if she isn’t actually the mother of Natalie, then shit, that might be four dead parents in a single movie. Disney films have always loved killing moms or dads in films, but rarely for so many individuals. (Except for The Lion King. Because you know when Mufasa died, he was the dad of every cub in that pack).

Overall, huge swaths of the film are pretty void of dialogue. Letting music and atmosphere fill the screen instead to really turn this film into an adventure. In one way, that raises the film up into an adventure for the audience as well. On the other hand, the beginning third of the film will begin to drag for the younger viewers. The older film had cutting edge animation for the dragon and songs to keep everyone happy. This one has a much more serious tone and anyone under 8 might find themselves getting distracted and bored.

When examining the plot, it is actually incredibly basic and nothing we haven’t seen before. It hits a lot of cliches that happen in wild child meets stable family films. And throughout the film, a few humans feel a bit too cartoony as well. Urban’s character is straight up 2-dimensional until his very last scene, but it comes off as too little too late. Howard’s character is trying to hard to give off this earnest caring individual that she almost feels so passive of a person throughout. I almost feel like she could have been missing completely and the movie would still make sense. Like her character exists purely as a link between the children and Redford’s character.

Laurence did a great job, continuing her successful streak from Southpaw, and I was equally impressed with Fegley. Both the young stars had so much imagination and wonder in their eyes, it is contagious.

Finally, the animation for the dragon was spectacular. He looked and felt believable. A little dog like, but that was intentional. He is a wonderful design made by a lot of spectacular people. Completely, fantastic, dragon.

Overall, Pete’s Dragon is only an okay movie because there isn’t really a lot going on plot wise. A basic story, with an obvious conclusion. But it is full of whimsy at points and a wonderful dragon design. It is worth a watch, but maybe not a day one buy.

Okay okay, I know I said this last time. But finally I am reviewing a Disney Channel Original movie that ISN’T a musical. I thought I had that covered when I was watching Descendants last year, but damn, that was a musical too. I had no idea.

But for real, this time, not a musical. Just a remake of an 80’s film. “Oh no!” The people scream. A remake!

Let’s be clear here. The original film, Adventures in Babysitting, was not a masterpiece movie. It literally came out almost 30 years and having a made for TV remake, to modernize it and change the plot completely, doesn’t change the nostalgic past of your memories.

So I chose to review another made for TV movie, Adventures in Babysitting, because it garnered enough negative reaction on the internet for silly reasons.

And despite not being a musical, I wait patiently just to see the song scene.

We don’t have one babysitter in this movie, we have TWO. Jenny Parker (Sabrina Carpenter) is your typical do-nothing-wrong high school student. She is perfect, smart, nice, going to college, and a great babysitter. She is also up for a prestigious photography internship, which would be sweet before she goes to college. That is where she bumps into Lola Perez (Sofia Carson), a radical person, college be damned, but the other runner up for the internship. And thanks to a silly misstep, their phones get switched.

Well, Lola suddenly gets a ticket for illegal parking from a hottie police officer (Max Lloyd-Jones), so she needs to come up with cash to pay for it. She answers Jenny’s phone, finds out that there is a parent desperate and willing to pay double, so she pretends to be Jenny and recommends herself. Sweet and easy, no crime done.

Lola has to watch to Anderson kids: AJ (Madison Horcher), who likes roller derby, Bobby (Jet Jurgensmeyer), who likes to cook, and Trey (Max Gecowets), who is older and has a crush on Jenny. Jenny has to watch the Cooper kids: Katy (Mallory James Mahoney), who is obsessed with dressing up and balls, and Emily (Nikki Hahn), who is now counter culture and scene and shit.

Of course, the two groups are brought together when Trey sneaks out to go to the CITY at NIGHT for a concert! And then bad thing after bad thing happens until the group can work together, everyone getting their unique moment to shine, and friendships can be bonded. We also have Kevin G. Quinn as a boy Jenny likes. He is important, I guess.

Oh girl, that hat, you are so OUT OF CONTROL!

Don’t hate Adventures in Babysitting because it is a remake of something you probably haven’t seen in 20 years. Hate it because it isn’t a great movie and is almost embarassing as a result.

A few years ago, we had to see The Sitter, a movie that was supposed to be a homage or something to Adventures in Babysitting, but instead it was just overly crude and not funny. This went the other way. It is too nice and safe and thus, boring.

Our two “against the grain” characters are still goody two-shoes. The dangers in the city are basically non-existent. Oh, they are chased by bad people? Yeah, because they took a photo they need to delete and they refuse to talk to the people to find out why they are mad. The kids have no idea why they are now being chased, but they run, all because they wouldn’t talk to them and all they wanted was a deleted picture. Ugh.

Of course there is another antagonist. Just time in general. They have to get the kids back, fix every single issue they cause just by being out, and of course clean up a house, before the parents get back.

The entire thing is just so safe. But what annoys me the most is the plotline about Jenny’s crush. Lola answers Jenny’s phone, talks to the crush, and turns down a concert invite from him and says concerts are stupid. So during the movie, Jenny eventually finds out, says she totally would have accepted the invite, meaning they have to break into the concert for her to meet him and get their eventual dating on.

Bitch, you have to babysit tonight and it is a big night that needs many babysitters. You were not going to last minute cancel on a friend and client for the concert and you know it. Stop lying.

Again, this film is safe and boring and I should probably stop reviewing Disney Original Channel movies. But a Descendants 2 is going to happen eventually, so that is probably when I will return to the fray.

Dory, Dory, where do we begin?

I am not the biggest fan of Finding Nemo. Now, I was a pretty nerdy student in high school, who obviously liked movies, but I hated watching movies in school. It felt lazy to me and I wanted to learn things! So I was annoyed having to watch Finding Nemo, for the first time, in my 10th Grade Biology class. And then also for my 10th grade Coastal Marine Biology class. I also was annoyed at it, because now when people say Nemo, they think of that movie and not the great classic Little Nemo!

So yeah, my reasons are bad. In time I have come to see how good the animation is and like the humor and story, but it never was my fondest Pixar movie.

And now we have Finding Dory. It unfortunately is the first of many Pixar sequels over the upcoming years, including the dreadfully approaching Cars 3, another strike against it.

Also a couple years ago, after Blackfish came out, a very biased documentary that kind of irked me, but gained praise everywhere else, they announced they would be making changes to the films plot. For reasons. As to what the movie was like before the changes, no one will really know. But if they went from showcasing sea parks from good to bad, then that is super kind of awkward.

Oh well, let’s just keep reviewing, just keep reviewing.

Oh shit, is that an Octopus? I love octopuses in film!

In this film, we get to find out about Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) when she was a cute little baby Dory (Sloane Murray), with big eyes and kid voice. This is where we meet her parents, Jenny (Diane Keaton) and Charlie (Eugene Levy), who have made it their goal to teach Dory about her short term memory loss, the dangers of the sea, and what to do if she ever gets lost. And I think you can tell what happens. A few minutes of some of the saddest shit I have ever seen in a Pixar movie, especially as a new parents.

Anyways, a long time later, she meets Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo (Hayden Rolence). The majority of the film takes place a year after Finding Nemo, where Dory is kind of a pain on Marlin and Nemo’s lives, but they love her anyways. Things happen and she remembers that she has parents, she lost them, and a rough name of where they live, off the coast of California!

Hells to the yeah! California with a couple of Clownfish, across the entire Pacific! And the journey isn’t the issue. What they find when they get there is that Dory used to live in a Sea Park! Not one that super exploits animals. But one that takes in sick animals, helps make them better, and eventually releases them back into the wild.

And inside, Dory meets Hank (Ed O’Neill), a septopus (because he is missing a leg) who doesn’t want to return to the ocean. And Destiny (Kaitlin Olson) an old friend and a nearsighted whale shark. Bailey (Ty Burrell), a beluga whale who has no echolocation. And and and Idris Elba and Dominic West voicing a couple of sick sea lions. And Sigourney Weaver as a mysterious role!

We also have Crush (Andrew Stanton, also the director) and Mr. Ray (Bob Peterson) returning, because why not.

Yep, this is the closest thing you will get to a The Wire reunion in a long time.

Oh, let me also mention Piper. It was the animated short. It had crazy amazing graphics, was very cute, about birds on a beach, but it had a problem with a shit ending. Mostly, that it didn’t know how to end.

As for Finding Dory, being a feature length film, the animation is not the same hyper realistic quality of Piper, but similar to Nemo in style (which makes sense). We aren’t given a lot of new cool environments like Nemo though. We have a small dark crash site, a kelp forest, and a lot of rooms and tanks in a Sea Park. So in terms of visual pleasantries, Finding Dory feels mostly darker and bleaker in terms of scenery.

Unfortunately, Dory also feels really repetitive. In Nemo, her memory for the most part was a big joke and led to a lot of laughs. But given the cry inducing intro (damn birthing hormones) and the constant problems, this joke was turned into a very sad issue. A crippling problem for Dory that prevented her from trying new things knowing she would get distracted before she finishes. It was a good thing to acknowledge her issue and ramp up its seriousness, but it takes away a lot of joy for a problem that just, well, keeps being a problem.

The ending also feels like a complete jumbled mess, with a no way at all realistic final few scenes that turn our once scientifically accurate fish series into a Looney Tunes cartoon. I hated the ending and it dragged as the issues were never solved in an easy manner, leading to more and more issues that made me indifferent to what would actually finally happen.

Ignore the controversy. This couple have 2 seconds of screen time and are not a reason to hate/support a movie.

Despite all of this, I didn’t hate the movie. I was just mostly disappointed, expecting a certain level of plot greatness from Pixar. I loved most of the new characters, mainly the septopus, the sea lions, and the Clam whose name they didn’t say and I can’t find in the IMDB credits. (They also didn’t say the sea lion names in the movie, quite annoying when you think about that). Beluga whale started out fine, but they made him real annoying by the end.

And you know what? The message of the film is a good one. Disabilities change your life. They can make life scary, they are serious, and they affect more than just a single person. But fish (/PEOPLE) with disabilities aren’t useless creatures. Practically every new character, along with Dory, has a problem and they are able to overcome their problem, or learn to live efficiently with it. Hell, there was even a weird plot about a frazzled bird and Marlin learning to trust her to do things correctly. It is about acceptance and friendship.

It is also just a film that has weird issues about sea parks, a lot less humor and not a lot of originality. On an unrelated note, I was also annoyed that despite taking place a year later, all of the fish kids are still fish kids. Come on Pixar, grow those bad boys up.

Let’s take a time machine back six years ago. The world was different, because not everything was in 3D. Only a few films tried out 3D, thanks to Avatar being the cash cow and visually stunning film that it was. This is when people still thought 3D was actually kind of cool if done right.

Then Alice in Wonderland came out, and it made a shit ton of money. Why did everyone rush to see it? Well, I guess Johnny Depp was a bigger deal six years ago, sure. But because it was released in 3D, so everyone went to see it thinking it would be as pretty as Avatar. It wasn’t.

And say what you will about the plot of Avatar, its story was miles better than the pile of refuse that they gave us with Alice in Wonderland. You would think making it into a bad story would be impossible, given the book. But no, instead they made a sequel to the original Alice in Wonderland, setting this one many years later, with Alice returning to Wonderland with a whole mess of new and awkwardly similar problems. It gave me problems, most of all calling the movie Alice in Wonderland, when it was a sequel to Alice in Wonderland. That is confusing.

But hey, Disney is on a live action kick. So they figured, let’s do a sequel. Alice Through The Looking Glass. This one will probably no be based on the book either, since it is a sequel to the surprise sequel. So who knows what they will fill it with hoping to be edgy. Let’s just say I am going in assuming the worst here, and that is based on a lot of precedent.

Clay? Rust? Red lava? Earthy minerals? Who cares, I am barely a geologist anyways.

The sequel takes place years after the original, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is now a free girl, roaming the seas the captain of her own sailing vessel like her dad. She is exploring the new world and making trade agreements! It is actually quite fun. Unfortunately, when she gets back she is in a pickle. Hamish (Leo Bill), the man she turned down now runs the company. Her mom (Lindsay Duncan) has traded away the bill of her house for money, and the only way to get it back is for Alice to give up her boat and take a respectable job for a woman.

So, in the chaos, she runs through a mirror, following Absolem the butterfly (Alan Rickman) and returns to Wonderland! But things have changed. The entire gang is still friends, but the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) is now the Sad Hatter. He believes his family, killed by the Jabberwocky a long time ago. It is obvious what Alice must do. If you thought look for his family, you were wrong. No, she clearly should go back in time, save them from the Jabberwocky, and bring them to the present to make him feel better. Yeah. That.

But time is a person (Sacha Baron Cohen). And grabbing the Chronosphere can cause a lot of issues. But she does it anyways, because friendship and sets off on a journey to the past to fuck shit up.

The Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and White Queen (Anne Hathaway) return, Leilah de Meza with and Amelia Crouch playing their past selves. Rhys Ifans plays the Mad Hatter’s dad and Ed Speleers are regular unimportant dude.

Also returning, the voices of Tweedledee / Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), Bayard (Timothy Spall), Thackery (Paul Whitehouse), Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), Mallymkun (Barbara Windsor), McTwisp (Michael Sheen), and introducing Wilkins (Matt Vogel), a robot.

Time is a lot of things, and you will hear every last time pun I do decree!

First of all, Eye in the Sky is Alan Rickman’s real last film. This one is just voice work, and I swear, he maybe had three lines and no close ups. This does not get to count as his final film, I won’t allow it.

As for the actual movie, if you missed it this one deals with TIME TRAVEL. Time Travel is a scary subject matter. It is powerful and can make or break a movie depending on how it is adapted. I am not going to argue one theory of time travel is better than any other, because that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that a film is consistent with their version of time travel. Alice Through The Looking Glass cares not at all, changing the rules on a whim, and makes an incredible hard to follow film without a satisfying reason for making it overly complicated.

This line might be a slight spoiler, because I just want to explain their time travel. Alice finds out that no matter what she does, she can not change the past, the events still occur. That is the time travel they have set up. Until later on in the film, a character is totally able to change the past. Fuck.

Alice goes back in time to three different locations. Why? Because the oceans of time are chaotic and once she learns information, she tries to go to a different time line to change different things. The plot is moved forward by consistently bad decisions from Alice, whom is supposed to be a strong smart female lead. Not only that, because Alice seems to make the same bad decisions, her actions feel repetitive and the films seems to drag when there are easy solutions everywhere.

The ending is an incredible mess. Wonderland is falling apart because of two separate events that somehow produce the same results. But it doesn’t make sense for them to do the same thing. I will try and explain it out without spoilers.

I hope you passed algebra.

For most of the film, Problem A is happening thanks to Alice and the world is slowly falling apart. Much later in the film, Problem B, a completely different problem occurs and actually sets about the end of the world. Problem A is seemingly forgotten about. However, once Problem A is “solved”, thanks to our protagonist remembering it, it somehow undoes all of the damage of Problem B. The issue with that is there is no justification whatsoever that it should work like that. There are no mentions earlier on that if Problem B happens, it can be fixed by X. On top of that, there was no reason for Problem A to even continue late in the film, except for the fact that Alice becomes incompetent.

Finally, Alice is seen as a strong, independent woman, which is mostly true in the real world scenes where she is chased by pirates, but they reduce her to a bumbling fool in Wonderland. All of her positive traits seemingly vanish just to move the plot forward. On its own, I guess it is okay for a character to be stupid, sure.

The real issue here is that her character does stupid things, but she is still being lauded as a smart and capable heroine the entire film. To me, that seems almost more dangerous than just having a weak lead. What we need in films are actual strong female characters, not weak ones that they tell us are strong with us supposed to them at their word.

This is a bad movie and one I cannot believe was green-light by Disney. The 3D is pointless, the visuals are only great in a few places, the acting is so-so. The plot is a mess, breaks its rules (which breaks story telling rules and shouldn’t be seen as a compliment to the Madness of Wonderland), and most of the events happen thanks to stupidity and not for good plot reasons. The only thing I enjoyed was the excessive time puns and Cohen as Time.

Live action remakes are of course all the rage nowadays, but Pan is not necessarily just another film in that trend. The Peter Pan story is older than Disney, so anyone can do anything they want with it. In fact, Disney plans on eventually doing their own live action Peter Pan movie within the next decade already, so you might as get used to it.

But Pan on its own can be something different. After all, we had Hook in the early 90’s, a very diverse film, both in its cast and how people took to it. A modern Peter Pan story, with a grown up Peter Pan! How dare they! I personally loved it and thought the film had a lot of heart.

So we have Pan, which has a similar naming scheme to Hook, going the opposite way and making a Peter Pan prequel. Peter when he was just a regular boy who couldn’t fly. People love Origin stories right?!

Especially if they have thousands of costumes and beards and make up.

Peter (Levi Miller), like every good Orphan, is left as a wee little baby on the steps of an orphanage by his mother Mary (Amanda Seyfried). And he never sees from her again. Now he is about…I dunno, 11. World War II is of course happening, so London occassionally gets bombed. Peter’s life is spent defying the nun (Kathy Burke) with his friend Nibs (Lewis MacDougall).

Next thing Peter knows, he is on board a flying pirate ship. The ship goes to Neverland of course! And the ship has been stealing Orphan boys around the world for ages. They are to be free and to live their lives as awesome people, as long as they can work for it. Namely, Captain Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman) wants them to mine for Pixie Dust for some secret reason.

Yadda yadda, Peter meets James Hook (Garrett Hedlund), with both hands, they find out her can fly, and eventually they escape with one Sam Smiegel (Adeel Akhtar) to get back home. However, Peter thinks his mom might be out here, so he wants to stay and look for her. This gets them to meet the natives. There they meet the Chief and Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) and a great warrior Kwahu (Tae-joo Na) and find out that Pan is supposed to be some Chosen One Jesus figure to lead a revolt against the pirates and free Neverland.

Yay fun! Peter just wants to find his mom though, so…

Also featuring Nonso Anozie as Blackbeard’s muscle and Cara Delevingne as a mermaid, apparently.

At some points this does feel like an Indian Jones clone though, so watch out for snakes.

I just remembered. Almost no one likes origin stories. That is the biggest complaint about modern super hero films. Every new person seems to need an origin story. Even if we have already seen it many times before in film. We get shit like Fantastic Four where over half the film they don’t have any powers.

Technically no one knows about the origins of Peter Pan, but that is because no one cares. Peter Pan before he was a pirate fighting flying bad ass, was what, none of those things? So we get a story about a regular boy? I am not saying that regular boy stories are boring, because there is a shit ton out there, but knowing he eventually becomes someone like Peter Pan kind of ruins it a bit.

Pan is a strange film that doesn’t seem to know what it is. It is all over the place in terms of story. Blackbeard as the main villain seems strange, but not as strange as Hook being Peter’s BFF older friend. Sure, you might be thinking a Peter Pan origin story means we get to see a Captain Cook origin as well. We get to see that crocodile bite his hand off, fear of clocks, all of that. That could be fun! Well we get about jack and shit of that. The movie ends with them taking some boys off to Neverland, all happy. They have a few references, but no, we don’t get any of it. They want to save that for some futuristic Pan 2 that now will never exist.

See, that would have been a good story. To see what happened to Hook to make him a bad guy. What ruined their friendship. But we get nothing from this story and it is a lot more wasted potential.

Speaking of none of that, there was a lot of hullabaloo about the song choices in Pan. For some reason, large crowds in Neverland (set in World War II) are singing Smell’s Like Teen Spirit and Blitzkrieg Bop. I didn’t mind how they sounded months ago, but the problem is they have NO CONTEXT at all in the movie. They don’t fit the events around them, the lyrics don’t match anything, they make absolutely no sense. They are terribly added to the film, so they should definitely be mocked endlessly.

Pan. Wasted potential. All spectacle. Not even Jackman was good in this one. I feel a bit bad for Mara. At least has Carol.