Movie Diary
a) Detective Pikachu
I was curious to see whether this would be actually good or just novel enough to be more enjoyable than the average movie I take my 9-year-old to see, and I have to say, I really dug it. The whole concept and the plot twists were unspooled really well, the whole ridiculous Pikachu with the voice of Deadpool thing worked and I just loved how they imagined a 'real world' of Pokemons, both the premise and the visual design, it was really cute and funny.
b) Crazy Rich Asians
Definitely one of the best rom coms of the last few years, I always loved Constance Wu on "Fresh Off The Boat" but it was fun to see her in a different kind of role, I kind of get her wanting to focus more on movies.
c) Wine Country
I think the buzz on this movie was so unenthusiastic that I set my expectations low, but it was cool, pretty much on par with past Poehler/Fey/etc. SNL girl gang movies, Maya Rudolph and Paula Pell were consistently really entertaining, and the wine tasting bit with Amy Poehler and Rachel Dratch was really funny, the movie could've used more of the ostensible premise of the movie. But definitely fell into a bit of that post-Apatow hole of all the tensions coming to a head and all the characters yelling at each other.
d) Book Club
I hoped maybe Jane Fonda would lead this movie to genial geriatric hilarity on the level of "Grace And Frankie," it wasn't quite that, but it was nice, if a bit generic, kind of felt like you could swap out the Fifty Shades of Grey plot point and this movie could've been made at any point in the last 25 years.
e) Ocean's 8
I might have liked the Ocean's 11 movies more than I realized because some of the most fun I've had watching movies in the last couple years has been Ocean's 8 and Logan Lucky, it's just so entertaining to watch these cleverly assembled heist movies. Everyone was pretty great, but it was fun to see Cate Blanchett do something light, and Anne Hathaway was fantastic kind of playing a fictional movie star and poking fun at her own image, she really stole a lot of scenes.
f) Searching
I didn't realize until I started this movie that the entire thing took place on a computer screen, while a father goes through chat archives and searches to find information about his missing daughter. At first I was skeptical, because I enjoyed Unfriended but didn't like the idea of seeing a lot of movies with this format. Searching is good, though, having a familiar and really compelling actor like John Cho kind of helped give it a little of the heft and feel of a more traditional thriller, and the way the mystery unfolded was not brilliant but satisfying enough.
g) A Dog's Purpose
My wife worked from home one day and put this on, it's kind of sweet that transparently emotionally manipulative way that tearjerking movies often are. It was interesting to see the movie try to pull of the whole dog reincarnation thing and at the end have one of the humans catch on that maybe their new dog was somehow a new version of a dog they had years earlier, like I just imagined the story could end with Dennis Quaid going insane trying to convince people about his reincarnated dog.
h) Elka
My kid has a couple of polar bear stuffed animals and was one day very insistent that we watch a movie about polar bears, so I found this weird Russian animated feature from 2007 that was on Amazon under the title Polar Adventures. It wasn't very good and the English dub was poorly done, but I really found the animation style kind of different and interesting to look at, had a different texture than the big big budget computer animated movies I'm used to seeing.
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