Saw The Martian! Without even a blood oath. Good one.

Oh man, Crimson Peak. So gorgeous. It positively gloried in its gothic bloodline (NPI). Nothing really surprising, but deeply satisfying and enjoyable. And now I'm drooling over the BPAL scents.

I'm kind of bummed because I bought a few BPAL scents to try and I really love a couple of them but I suspect that one of the is triggering headaches for me, and another seems to trigger DH's allergies. Of course the potential allergy fest would be my favorite of all of them, right? Ugh. Will need to try again to confirm, and with luck DH won't sneeze when I wear it.

Ok, The Good Dinosaur was far better than expected, but way more of a Disney movie than a Pixar film. Some of the water animation is absolutely gorgeous. And it gets mad bonus points for all the national park action. I felt a little bit like I was reliving my recent trip to the Rocky Mountains and Black Hills.

I went to see Victor Frankenstein today. Mainly watchable for Daniel Radcliffe and the art direction. Max Landis is not the storyteller his father is. And I think James MacAvoy ran out of top for his performance to be over.

We re-watched Rocky last night, because my niece wants to see Creed but had never seen any of the originals. It holds up pretty well, although much less as a sports movie than as a character study of Rocky Balboa himself, who is a genial dope.

But I still loathe Pauly with the fire of a thousand suns.

Creed is getting great reviews, btw. I am not a boxing fan, but I feel obligated to see this one: Ryan Coogler is from Oakland, and Michael B. Jordan has been a favorite since his FNL days.

A Stallone movie that is often underrated is the first half of FIST. The problem is that the second half really adds nothing. Once you see the pinball machines being installed in stores whether the owners want them or not, the corruption of the Hoffa character is complete. Everything after that is repetition. Cutting the film that much would have made unsalable to main stream theaters - though maybe a short could have been bundled with it to fill out enough to time.

JJ Abrams came on Jimmy Fallon last night and dropped a bomb about how he got Lin Manuel Miranda to write some music for the new Star Wars movie: [link]

!!!

I have been crazy-obsessed with Hamilton going on a month and a half. It's too bad I'm at work because I feel like I need to go lie down a bit.

That is the best news I've heard all day.

(I got my kids into Hamilton once I realized it was available on Prime Music and now every day when I come home they're blaring the soundtrack through the Echo. It's AWESOME.)

So I did see Creed (with javachik, in fact!), and it was quite good, with great performances and strong editing. It felt very contemporary. Stallone was excellent. Big cheer from the crowd when the Rocky theme finally played.