Irrelevant But Awesome

Alexa:  I remember loving the book “The BFG” when I was little, and so much about the film adaptation works well. Spielberg and Co. bring Roald Dahl’s fantastical world to life beautifully. It’s a visual treat from start to finish. The BFG’s home and Dream Country are stunning. Even the London locations outside Giant Country have a sort of magical glint to them. And the motion capture work is pretty spectacular. Mark Rylance delivers a lovely performance as the titular character, and the CGI only enhances his presence rather than detracting from it. His sweet friendship with Sophie anchors the film. This could have been a delightful 90-minute kids’ movie, but its major flaw is its pacing. “The BFG” is a charming fairy tale but the story isn’t particularly robust. Yet the filmmakers somehow felt compelled to stretch it into a full two hours unnecessarily. The padded runtime adds nothing to the story. Some scenes drag on for twice as long as they should, and it weighs the movie ...

Alexa:  I’ll be honest - I fell asleep during this movie, so I can only judge about the first two-thirds of it. But needless to say, it did not hold my interest. Anime is not my cup of tea, nor have I seen many Godzilla movies, so this movie was not made for me. If you do love one or both of those things, then I hope there is something for you here. But if you don’t, then this movie is probably not the thing that’s going to convert you into a fan. When I did fall asleep around an hour into this 90-minute movie, I had only seen Godzilla maybe once, which is very little Godzilla for a movie that’s supposedly about Godzilla. Maybe there was some action in those last 30 minutes that I missed, but I expected more throughout the rest of the movie. The lack of action wouldn’t bother me so much if the characters were interesting, but I found them underdeveloped and flat. It was just so. Dang. Slow. The animation was beautiful, and it was an intriguing enough concept for a reboot, but ...

Alexa:  I had actually never heard of “The Amazing Randi” before watching “An Honest Liar,” but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the film at all. Whether you’re an avid magic fan or just like interesting character stories, there is something for you here. You don’t have to know anything about James Randi or his craft to become invested in his story. He’s a pretty fascinating guy, and the filmmakers lean on his engaging persona and rely on him to convey his own story. We get a little bit of interesting background about his childhood and early career, but much of the movie is dedicated to his crusade against so-called psychics, mystics, faith healers and the like. His whole thesis is that magicians are “honest liars” - they tell you they’re tricking you for your own entertainment. But others pretend they really have supernatural gifts to make money and take advantage of people who need to believe in something, including people who are sick or have lost loved ones. Randi...

Joel:  Later this month, we will see the release of Tomb Raider, a movie that’s aims to reboot the Tomb Raider franchise, loosely based on the video game that rebooted the Tomb Raider franchise back in 2013. This is the latest attempt by Hollywood to make the first good video game movie. Now, you personally might have enjoyed one of the movies based on video games that have come out in the past, I personally have enjoyed quite a few of them, but most people will agree that most of the movies based on video games have been bad. And so far there hasn’t been a single one that has been universally acclaimed. Super Mario Bros., the first movie based on a video game, came out in 1993. Since then there have been over thirty theatrically released movies based on video games with none of them scoring higher than a 36% on Rotten Tomatoes. But still Hollywood pushes forward, with two more scheduled to come out this year. (The aforementioned Tomb Raider and Rampage) So it’s time to take ...

George Lucas Sequel Trilogy  No matter how you look at it, this will always be the biggest “What if…” that looms over the entire Star Wars franchise. While stories about the original plans for Star Wars have varied over the years, it’s clear that there was at some point a plan for George Lucas to helm a sequel trilogy featuring an older Luke Skywalker and a new generation of heroes. Mark Hamill has stated in the past that Lucas spoke to him about returning to the role years later during production on some of the original trilogy movies. Alas, we’ll never get to see what Lucas had envisioned for Episodes VII-IX. While George Lucas offered an outline of the sequel trilogy to Disney when it was announced that they had bought Lucasfilm and were going forward with the Star Wars franchise, his ideas were discarded in favor of the movies we have now. While there are a lot of things to love about the new Disney era Star Wars movies, it’s still a shame that we’ll never get to see the ...