Pause: Rewatch: Pause

Sitting in front of the TV is more a chore during These Days then it ever was before. If I was lacking an attention span before The Pause began, its only exacerbated now. Stress affects concentration and stress asks for comfort food. Thus, I find myself re-watching somethings I was not expecting to ReWatch. Chore? Chore?!?! My point is that doing The Right Thing, as in watching new movies or cleaning out things from My List from years past or even completing shows I actually know I will enjoy is just not happening. Thus, old familiar comfort blankets or things that give me a light chuckle float to the top. Also, viewing habits have changed as I now eat my workweek lunch in front of the TV.

I quickly found myself not interested in watching The News when I sat in front of the TV for work-day lunches. So, for small chunks of time, that I don't mind stopping and re-starting when times allows, I like fluffy stuff, usually with lots of explosions. Even BaySplosions.  I wrote about The Island before, which was a ReWatch at the time, and it still pretty much matches my point of view from then. Silly scifi and a very pretty ScarJo.

The best thing about watching this movie right now, is that it takes place in 2019. So, Michael Bay was trying to be prescient by putting it only 15 years into the future, but he didn't get very much correct -- there are no personal rocket bikes, we are not able to produce perfectly adult clones and MSN did not end up as the primary Search Engine, even providing booths on every street corner. Back in 2005, the Power of the Internet was still integrating itself into general society, and the iPhone was still two years away. Dr. Merrick uses a touch screen interface desk, but the MS Surface was also still two years away, but alas, even now 15 years later, we don't have ubiquitous touch screen tables... yet. Technology Futurism is always a fun thing to observe in hindsight.

To me, Marvel movies are now relegated as the perfect comfort food, having seen most of them at least three times previous. While my initial interest in Captain America was not high (I wanted more Act Two), over the years, it has become one of my favourites. That said, I am rather mystified I don't have a post about it, despite it coming out in the year this blog was launched. Kent did, so where is mine?

I like my heroes heroic, and a heroic hero is what These Times need. Most leaders are stepping up, but so so so much of the nation this hero represents are the opposite of his ideals. Can you imagine how he would react to all this we are going through? How he would think of the current president? Steve Rogers is a Good Man in these movies and the crux of everything presented to us is that he would have done all those heroic deeds whether he was nigh invulnerable or not. Peggy sees it right away, well, after she stops staring at those pecs. P.S. Peggy Carter; swoon.

Part of the fun in watching these movies again is recognizing some of the insert actors. Hey, look its Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) as Bucky's date. He look it's Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer) as the soldier that makes Peggy jealous. Hey look it's Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) as the Hydra Spy. While it's not a matter of seeing where people got started (as all were active in film before and long after Marvel) it's fun seeing casting choices based on familiar faces.

I saw Ocean's Eight once before, but barely paid attention, sitting on the sofa playing games on my phone and checking Instagram every 11.5 minutes. It was also during The Dark Period of 2018 where few posts were made. Caper movies are perfect escape choices when you want something whimsical yet al dente.

It begins with Billy Danny Ocean's sister Debbie getting out of prison, much like the original Ocean's Eleven began all those years ago. And like her brother, she's not going straight anytime soon, so she gathers a crew of like minded experts to pull off a score -- stealing the Toussaint, a $150 million Cartier necklace during its unveiling at the Met Gala. Also, Danny's dead?!?  Not likely.

This movie only has a passing nod to the predecessors, but for tone and style, which is good. If they are going to do a female centric version of the movies, we don't need to draw upon the other characters, if but for a bit of world building.

Its a fine and dandy movie all in all, but I only like a few of the characters, mainly the suggestive relationship between Ocean (Sandra Bullock) and Lou (Cate Blanchett) and the over the top starlett Daphne (Anne Hathaway). Its a decent enough movie, fun and light, but with nothing to make it stand out.

Why did I watch Evolution again? I don't have any better a reason for doing that than for why it appeared on the streaming services -- both Amazon and Netflix. It was such a dud movie when it came out, not quite a flop (it made its money back) but it wasn't the New Ghostbusters that Reitman had worked it to be. Mainly, I was curious as to why I had actually seen the movie in the theatre had so little memory with me.

So, elevator pitch -- think Ghostbusters but replace ghosts with aliens. A meteor crashes to earth (of course it does) containing a lifeform with a fantastically fast evolution rate. From goo to worms to bugs, it all happens over a few days much to the delight of community college professors David Duchovny and Orlando Bloom. Once things start getting out of hand, like they have to in order to have a movie, the military comes in and messes things up for them. Until they save the day.

For almost twenty years ago, the effects were passable and rather enjoyable. The humour is 14 year old boy eye-rolling, but there is absolutely no chemistry between any of the leads, which is how the silliness of Ghostbusters was sold to us. Can you believe Venkman was a scientist? No, but who cares, as it was Bill Murray doing his usual weird quipping. That ain't in this movie.

Meanwhile, it doesn't matter how many times I watch Willow or how much it has aged, but I love it. Hoping to be George Lucas's Next Big Thing, it never really took off. Its a generic fantasy when generic fantasy was not really a thing, not even in the hands of Disney. You have "hobbit" type creatures, dashing rogues with swords, an evil sorceress, trolls, magic spells and a land to be taken back from a nefarious conqueror -- all epic fantasy, and yet the movies is rather small and light. I love it.

Oh, its hokey and uneven, but its also a lot of fun. Its classic fantasy story telling, in that every major location is always 1 to 3 days walk from each other -- fantasy worlds are always so small. And, I have to admit that Sorsha still does it for me, with all that red hair and Cool Bad Guy armour & weapons. My favourite scene continues to be the visit to the Inn/Tavern as it gave a visual to a very very common aspect of every D&D game I have ever been part of. If there is anything I don't like about the movie, its the use of the classic car/wagon chase scene. I get these are classic elements of adventure movies, but they rarely do it for me. And I find so many many lines still quotable.

"Ignore the bird, follow the river!"

"Vohnkar!"

And of course, after not really being all that eager to re-watch The Rise of Skywalker in the cinema (who was I kidding, I barely get out to the cinema as it is) I didn't really have anything against it NOR did I actually really enjoy it like I did The Last Jedi. But as soon as the downloads appeared (and not on Disney+ as that waited until May the 4th) I had a copy. I waited until I had some quiet afternoons and some housework to do. That pretty much said it all; that I was willing and likely to be distracted from watching it in one go.

As already mentioned, by Kent and me, there is a lot going on in this movie, thus suitable for multiple sittings. There is the opening space chase, the oceans of the moon of Endor, there is the visit to Kijimi where they do something horrid to C3P0 (I have always been in the Droids Are Sentient camp), there is the fight on Pasaana where Rey reveals just how connected she is to her grandfather, there is a rescue on a star destroyer, there is a fight on the back of a star destroyer, and there is a massive scale fight scene on Palpatine's hidey hold planet, where once again I wonder how he hid the construction of thousands of star destroyers? And of course, while this goes on, we have confrontation with Zombie Palpatine and the audience of Sith.

As expected, I didn't get any revelations ReWatching the movie. I was as apathetic about it as I was in the cinema. There are some things I like about it, not many things I dislike about it, but for the most part I am just ... meh.

I must have watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice during one of the hiatuses. Why did I watch it? I don't remember but Nick Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina and Teresa Palmer were in it, and I was hoping for light adventure in the theme of Disney's National Treasure but with magic. And, well, that is exactly what I got.

Yes, this is a set-in-modern-day feature film based on the Disney short where Mickey Mouse casts some spells to help him clean up, and ends up making a magical mess of it all. And to be frank, they did a great bit of world building to round out a story around this scene, which they do end up recreating. Back in Ages Olde, Merlin and his apprentices are fighting the good fight against Morgana le Fey, when one of them (Molina) betrays the others (Cage & Monica Belluci); when the battle ends, Horvath (Molina) and Morgana (Alice Krige) are captured and only Balthazar (Cage) is left to pickup the pieces. Merlin's dying words direct Balthy to find The Prime Merlinian (which I kept on hearing as The Prime Millennial), which will pick up where Merlin left off. And immortal Balthy begins his search.

Of course, its Dave (Baruchel).

This is Disney trying to get their own Harry Potter on, at least in look and feel. Its a bombastic movie, wild and fun, with a great sense of adventure. Baruchel pulls off the inexperienced by destined wizard quite well, especially when he adds in his own bit of science, mixing Tesla coils into the casting of spells. All in all its just a lot of fun, if you can get past the Cage looking like he stepped off the cover of a novel in the The Dresden Files modern fantasy novel series.

When Odd Thomas showed up on Amazon, I immediately added it to my expected list of ReWatches, with a certain amount of anticipation. Funny thing, if you look back at my original writing, I was rather blasé (in writing) about it, when I should have been more exuberant. You see, this movie carries a surprisingly amount of emotional weight for a bit of fluff supernatural fiction.

The centre of the movie is that Odd (Anton Yelchin, Star Trek; still sorry he's gone) repeatedly states that he and Stormy (Addison Timlin, Californication) are destined to be together forever. And being a guy who can see the dead, as well as ethereal monsters who are harbingers of great evil, you feel you can trust him when he says that.

So, when the movie swings around to Odd foiling the Great Tragedy he has been expecting the entire movie, but with the unintended sacrifice of Stormy, I was left crying my eyes out. I knew it was going to happen, I knew it was a very sad scene, but weeks and weeks of all this ambient stress and anxiety just came to the surface. The movie ends on a touching scene, where Odd and Stormy spend weeks and weeks together, barricaded inside his apartment. Odd can see, and touch, the dead but they cannot talk to him. So while it is heavily hinted at, when police Chief Porter (Willem Dafoe) and Odd's closest friend comes knocking on their closed door telling Odd, it has to end, he has to come out, he has to let her go, only then does Porter and the others realize Stormy has been there all this time with him. But now its time for Odd to face what has happened, rejoin the world town he saved, and let Stormy move onto the Afterlife. Oh migawd, the tears flowed. It was a great release of pent up anguish.

Alas, we will never get a sequel.