Peanuts

My husband and I went to see the Peanuts movie tonight. He has a lot of nostalgia about it, but I really don't. I watched one of the movies as a kid, but not the regular cartoon, and I wasn't really into it. The Peanuts movie had stuff for both of us, and was really good. 

For me, I saw a lot of myself in the Charlie Brown character - always trying to do good things and always having them turned on their heads. And no, I can't fly a kite. I found the movie touching and funny in about the right combinations. Lucy reminded me of many of the kids I grew up with, except that I was fortunate enough that by high school most of them had forgotten about me. She gives Charlie perfect advice, and then tells him he'll never be good enough to follow it, insulting him the whole time. 

My husband complained that the movie was a little too long. It came in at only 88 minutes, so I'm not sure how much shorter they could have made it and still called it a full length movie. I admit that it did feel like more than 88 minutes to me, too. I estimated 100 minutes after looking at my watch, but that must have included the time for the new Ice Age short at the beginning. 

Speaking of the Ice Age short, can I tell you how fed up I am with Ice Age shorts? How much attention can people give to a rat that wants an acorn? It's old and tired. I hated it the first time I saw it and nothing has changed that opinion. It also put me into a bad mood as the movie I actually wanted to see began and almost ruined the whole thing. Fortunately the first of many scenes that reminded me of my life (Charlie Brown knocking over a fence when everyone is trying to see the new girl) came quickly and I was able to refocus on the present movie. 

For a 50 year old cartoon, these characters really pinpoint childhood still. I guess the more things change the more they stay the same. Nothing seemed out of place either for life growing up or for the show. 

Overall I give it a B+

Avengers: Age of Ultron

I rewatched this movie tonight after having seen it opening night in the theaters. I think it got better for a second viewing. This movie started out with an action scene, and almost didn't let down for the rest of the movie. There were a few moments to catch your breath, but then you were almost immediately thrown into another action scene. It was exciting and exhilarating. It had just enough funny moments to keep you on your toes, and I cried when Quicksilver died.

If I had one complaint about this movie it is that the team didn't really work together as a team. They were still a group of individuals and you see them fighting each other more than anything else culminating in the scene where Thor ensures the creation of Vision. There's no communication there. No team. It's frankly amazing they get anything done. I'm hopeful that future incarnations of the Avengers will fix this problem by not having Tony and Thor as a part of the team, and also through the training they seem to have instituted at the end of this movie. However, Civil War is supposed to have a feeling of friend turning against friend, and I don't think we're going to get that because I don't get the feeling that these characters are friends. I get the feeling that they work together for necessity's sake. When Cap and Iron Man fight, I'm not going to take it as good friends fighting each other because they show no evidence of that friendship in this movie, starting from Cap's comment, "language" to Tony.

Another thing was that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were included and brought back to HQ and made a part of these discussions. They just finished torturing the team, and although vague mention is made of Hawkeye not trusting them, the rest of the team just continues on as though they were supposed to be there. And by the end of the movie Hawkeye is giving Scarlet Witch a lecture on how if she walks out the door to fight, she's an Avenger. In the end they leave her protecting the doomsday switch. That's a lot of trust for someone who was just engaged in torturing you and fighting for your enemies.

These did not really detract from the fact that Marvel has turned out another spectacular movie, and one which is in the running for my favorite film of the year. I give it an A.

Fantastic 4

Unlike many geeks, I've really enjoyed the X-Men movies, put out by Fox. Therefore, I wasn't expecting Fantastic 4 to be terrible. I wasn't going to see it opening night, but my husband really wanted to go, so we went. You guys, this was the first time I've ever seen an audience actively booing at the end of the movie. Now admittedly, the booing might have had more to do with the fact that there was no stinger at the end of a comic book movie, since we all waited through all of the credits for one. But still, if people had enjoyed the movie I don't think they'd boo it that soon afterwards.

Through most of the film I was bored. I mean, origin stories, right? It was just these kids building something, and there was no suspense because you knew the thing had to work for them to get their powers. Building this thing took up literally 1/2 of the movie. Then they build it, and an accident gives them powers, and they spend the next 1/3rd of the movie either running from the government or working for the government. Finally, the writers realized we might like to see the team fight and become a team, so that comes out of nowhere.

Now let me take a moment and be a geek on you, but, this is Dr Doom's costume:

This really doesn't do justice to how bad it was. I mean by the time he showed up it was torn to shreds and looked like it was barely sticking to him. For those who don't know, this is Dr Doom in the comic books:

Kind of bad-ass right? 

I don't understand why Fox decided to get rid of pretty much the one awesome thing about this franchise. Then, I guess because they needed some kind of drama, Ben (Jamie Bell) blames Reed (Miles Teller) for his having become ugly. This never happens in the comic books. Ben always accepts his own responsibility for what happened to him, even though Reed blames himself. It was mischaracterizations such as this that really angered my husband, and caused him to hate the movie. 

For myself, I was never a Fantastic 4 fan. I didn't read the comics. The movie did an adequate job of explaining who each of the characters was, even if that was because they were so dramatically changing the story line that they had to do so. But the thing is I wasn't really entertained by the movie. I was bored through most of it. Even the final battle wasn't very exciting. 

Overall I give it a D. 

Justice League: Doom

I watched this movie with my husband, who is determined to get me to like DC characters and stories. For some reason he seems determined that because I like Marvel comic books and comic book characters I should like DC comic book characters. However, I feel that DC overpowers their characters, and doesn't make them likable. I mean, come on, they have a character that the way to kill her is to make her think she's still in a fight she can't give up? It's stupid.

This movie is about a supervillain who collects a group of people who hate the Justice League and then pays them to follow Batman's plan to neutralize his friends. Although Batman made the plans to neutralize the Justice League, he also had plans to neutralize his own plans. Thus there really wasn't any stress to the movie. Once Batman managed to punch his way out of his parents' grave, he had the plan to fix everyone else's problem.

The movie expected you to already know who everyone was. The closest to an introduction you got to the bad guys was that they all wanted an individual Justice Leaguer dead. I guess it would have been too much for a short movie to explain, but it did seem like it required a little more explanation of who the characters were and what their super powers are.

Overall, I alternated between bored and confused. What was this chemical the Martian character was sweating out? Why did he or I care? Why are they all afraid of solar flares? Don't we get those every day and find them harmless? Yet the bad guy's plan is to cause them? Why did Green Lantern just put down his ring and cry?

I have to give it an F.

Ant Man

How do you do an origin story without doing an origin story? Marvel promised us no more origin stories, but this sure resembled one - without being the boring story you already know the ending of that so many origin stories are. Sure, it told us the origin of the current generation's Ant Man. It also gave us a yellow jacket and a wasp that are sure to make appearances in the next edition of this story.

The movie starts out on Scott Lang's (Paul Rudd) last day in prison for a burglary; we start out uncertain who exactly the good guy and who the bad guy is. It soon becomes clear in a scene where Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lily) and Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) are trying to invent a new shrinking suit using cute baby lambs as test subjects. She comments, "weren't we using mice?" and he asks, "what's the difference?" indicating that he has long since lost any qualities that were moral that he may have had in the beginning of their research.

We get plenty of action, starting from a prison fight and ending in a knock-down-drag-out brawl between Ant Man and Yellow Jacket, who clearly has the superior suit. Ant Man can get small, but he has no weapons other than super-strength, which makes him more relatable, and less like the monster that his daughter (Abby Ryder Fortson) assumes Yellow Jacket is. It also means he has to rely on his wits, not his suit, in my mind making him more enjoyable than Iron Man.

Although it is not a comedy, the movie is laugh-out-loud funny. I can't even begin to count the number of times the entire theater erupted into laughter. My favorite of these was when Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) pulls out his keychain tank and tells his daughter, "it's not a keychain," before riding a tank through the wall of the building.

The movie plays with our notions of good and evil. In the end, criminal Scott Lang is clearly the good guy, but what about Hank Pym? He was determined to keep the suit out of the hands of the highest bidder, in this case Hydra. This is certainly a good cause. But at the same time, when his wife died, he sent his daughter off to boarding school, and he abandoned his protege, both major failings as a person. In addition, he picked a thief and escaped convict to wear his suit, essentially picking someone society and he felt was expendable. If the mission went south, he wouldn't care about the person who he killed.

Also I was so excited for the second stinger, I think I literally squeed. Stay through the whole credits. It's worth it.

This movie is a contender for my favorite movie of the year. I give it an A+.

All-Star Superman

My husband wanted me to watch this movie because I have been really getting into Marvel comic book movies but haven't enjoyed DC as much. He thought this would be perfect because it makes fun of the exact aspect of Superman that I always hate, namely that he is so over powered it becomes laughable. This movie plays off of that by having every stupidly super powered thing that happens to him over a few years of comics happen all at once in about 2 hours. My husband also thought I needed a better appreciation for Lex Luthor in order to understand comic books.

This movie follows the last days of Superman as he dies following too much solar radiation. He gives Lois Lane super powers for 24 hours, and then Lex Luthor gets arrested, escapes from prison by taking the same serum that made Lois Lane into Super Woman, has an epiphany thanks to seeing the world as Superman does, and on death row, comes to terms with Superman. Superman, meanwhile, becomes converted into pure energy at exactly the same time as the sun is dying and needs to be relit, so he goes on to become the sun.

While I understand that the movie was kind of making fun of this phenomenon, all it really did was annoy me because all of the things that happened in this movie did happen in the comics at one time or another. It just highlighted how overpowered Superman is, and how much I don't like him.

Maybe you needed more background information to appreciate it. I know that the opening scene would have confused me completely if I hadn't seen the newest Superman movie in the theaters. It provided no information and just expected you to understand what they were talking about with vague scenes related to the death of Krypton. Then, he tells Lois Lane that he's Superman, and she doesn't believe him. I guess there's background here, because it's vaguely referenced, but it just seemed random.

This movie is really for the fans. It's not meant to bring anyone else into the Superman fandom. It expects you to know Superman. Since I don't know Superman, it left me frustrated, and feeling like it was just a movie about an overpowered super hero I couldn't relate to.

Overall, I give it a B-.