I wondered if this was any good.

I went in without much expectation and was pleasantly surprised! It moves swiftly, and Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams as the lead couple have nice chemistry together. Nothing earth-shattering, but a very pleasant way to spend an hour and a half.

This was exactly me. Though in my case it also made me want to set up a game night with msbelle and her brother along with Noise Design and Pix just to see who would come out alive.

I will sheepishly confess that I enjoyed Love, Simon much, much more than Call Me by Your Name, and found it considerably more moving, even if the acting wasn't up to the same standard. I wish there had been movies like this when I was a teenager.

When did they repeal the law that required Molly Ringwald to play the protagonist of every poignant teen romance, anyway?

Statute of limitations.

Just got back from A Wrinkle in Time. I loved the books as a kid and reread them at some point as an adult, but that was at least a decade ago, so I wasn't going into it with a lot of memories about specific details or plot points.

I liked it a lot. The casting was great, every scene was gorgeous, and some emotional moments really got me. (The scene where Meg finally finds her dad on Camazotz? Don't mind me, I'll just be over here in the corner with tears rolling down my face, heaving silent sobs. Both Chris Pine and Storm Reid won my heart completely in that moment. So good.) I found some of the dialogue and acting kind of stilted, but not enough to wreck the movie's spell. I do think the book is more truly weird and magical, at least as far as I can recall (and now I want to reread it again), which probably has to do with the relative merits of using CGI vs. one's own imagination for visuals.

Also, did anyone else catch the very brief mention of Aunt Beast? There's a part where Meg is seeing what happened to her dad when he disappeared, and following the path he took, and it briefly flashes on a planet with woolly mammoth-esque creatures walking across a plain, and someone says something like, "Look, it's Aunt Beast!" Then it's gone. I can't remember who's talking -- probably one of the Mrs. (Mrs.s?) -- but I did at least cheer to see her on screen, if only for a second.

I believe it was the Happy Medium who said her name. I caught that moment, but it kind of pissed me off that they were cutting out the actual scenes with her from the book.

Kate, I noticed that, too.

I saw Pacific Rim 2 last night. I don't think it was as good as the first one, and I think that was pretty much down to direction and, perhaps, writing. John Boyega and the rest of the cast were fine. But the pacing was off. The color palette and soundtrack weren't as effective as in the first one. The way I felt like the first one used camera angles and timing to give us more layers with the character interactions was missing this time around. It was a perfectly acceptable giant robots fighting giant, alien monsters movie. But it didn't transcend the genre. But, honestly, I'm generally there for robots vs alien monsters, so I didn't regret my choices.

So, Pacific Rim: Uprising. Slight but with things to enjoy, especially once Jaeger vs Kaiju action got going. John Boyega is always fun to watch, even when he has to bounce off an Actual Block of Wood that is Scott Eastwood. But as someone who unabashedly adored the first movie, this one was missing a lot of things that made that one so indelible.

The look of the film was missing that gloriously lurid neon dazzle of the first one -- that extra visual flair del Toro brings to his films. This one looked kinda Transformer-y. It didn't also hit me emotionally where I live like the first movie, but ah well. I am a bit unreasonable when it comes to Mako, and Mako and Stacker, and Mako and Raleigh. Boyega's character has a nice rapport with Amara, the young teenaged tech whiz he's paired with, but that relationship didn't quite reach the ridiculous sentimental high of baby Mako looking up at Stacker in his Jaeger 30 stories-high, backlit into heroic relief by the afternoon sun. But what relationship can, really.

I did like what they did with Hermann and Newt. My main beef is the fact that they brought back Mako only to kill her off unceremoniously. UGH, I am actually super cranky about it, and kinda wish they didn't bother bringing her back in the first place. Maaaaan.

That whitefonted bit hacked me off as well, Connie.

So I also just got back from Evangelion vs Godzilla II: Eva Harder

(I'm not even kidding, by the way, there were at least three major plot elements from the anime in there.)

I went in figuring it would be good if it had some cool action and a minimum of stuff that made me cringe, and I got that. DeKnight isn't as stylish a director as del Toro, but he got the job done and managed to keep the action reasonably clear. Plus Jake's Daddy issues didn't show up nearly as much as they made it sound.

So mostly positive from me, although I agree with Connie about what she whitefonted.