Pokémon Detective Pikachu

This is a kid’s movie. You know: for kids. It takes the Who Framed Roger Rabbit conceit and just transfers it over into the Pokémon world. There are some funny creatures. Some bad creatures. There’s a mystery. They’ll probably sell some toys. Pikachu sounds like Deadpool. That’s surreal. But then, so is the whole enterprise. I don’t know what else to say. It is what it is? It isn’t what it isn’t?

John Wick: Chapter 3

“Let’s get high and think of funny places to have action scenes.”

The filmmakers love their sequences and their set-pieces. Each new location John Wick sprints to has its own unique set of weapons, animals, and vehicles, all of which John Wick uses to kill people in the most imaginative ways possible. The story and the plot, mostly revolving around the Continental Hotel and the worldwide consortium of assassins and their coins, is starting to make less sense. Potential for this world-building in the first movie was HUGE, but we’d be fooling ourselves if we thought that this could be anything other than a light-framework on which to hang the many, many murders with machine guns, knives, and dogs. Keanu is better at the gun than the fu, and he’s not quite as quick as some of the others on the stunt team. Future movies might benefit from being more gun-based. These movies are always a thrill. There should be Oscars for stunt teams.

Avengers: Endgame

** SPOILERS!! ** ** SPOILERS!! ** ** SPOILERS!! ** ** SPOILERS!! **

Marvel managed to tie-up a massive, 22-film serialized thing that’s probably more like a comic book than anything that’s ever been made. It’s a major achievement. Some of the cast have been in 7 or 8 of these movies, which is an impressive commitment. DC can barely hang on to the same Batman from film to film. This chapter wraps up a lot of the little subplots and movies in a way that (spoiler alert!) had to have been REALLY expensive. It’s truly a feat.

As for the movie itself, it’s three hours long but it never FELT long. It maintained its otherworldly urgency and stayed interesting. That being said, Thanos sits down a lot to brood and mope, which doesn’t make him very threatening, and you begin to wonder what his plan was this whole time. Someone told me he was in love with Hela and he was trying to impress her by killing everybody. No wonder he seems so tired. But I couldn’t really follow that. I was too busy watching all of the super-hero gladiator kung-fu. Superheroes seem to know a lot of kung-fu, which is weird because, if they’re GODS, maybe they could use their God–like powers to defeat Thanos instead of all of that Earthly kung-fu. It turns out, killing Thanos requires more than karate. But they keep trying the karate. At some point, somebody in the battle needed to shout: “Guys, karate isn’t working. We should try something else.”

And now some random observations:

So, was Steve hiding in Peggy’s house the entire time when she founded SHIELD? (This is a very “Bill and Ted’s” kind of question.)

Where did Hulk go? Hulk not smash.

How the hell could Peter go back to the doldrums of high school after all of that?

Wanda could stand to make herself a little more useful. Maybe she should learn some karate.

The most applause during my screening was when Steve picked up the hammer. Pretty cool.

Of all the people to get the big, sad crying scene at the end – it’s Goop lady?? Not really fair. She didn’t really earn it.

So, it turns out Nebula is pretty important.  I feel like I need to rewatch all the Nebula scenes to see what the deal was with her.

Who was the mystery kid looking all sad at the funeral? (I looked this one up and I know it now. It’s the kid from Iron Man 3.)

Where was Agent Colson?

Why are Nick and Carol acting like they don’t know each other at the end? What happened?

And where the hell was Carol during that big battle scene? Kind of a late arrival.