Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets

I wasn't quite able to shut off my brain enough to enjoy The Fifth Element to the fullest extent, but I'll be there for this anyway.

Fantastic Beasts was a huge disappointment. There's a really good movie hiding in there somewhere, but it didn't make it onto the screen.

I get the feeling that Warner Bros wanted a Jazz Age Fantastic Beasts movie and JKR wanted a Depression-era political drama, and instead of collaborating they just kind of made two movies and intercut them.

I saw Moonlight yesterday, and it is really beautiful. Just so different from most stories that get told about young black men in the ghetto. Definitely go see it, although it's not a total upper.

People should go see Arrival because I need to talk about it!

It liked it a lot, but I would have enjoyed it even more if it were less hand-wavey. It was really hand-wavey.

I liked it a lot. I guess I didn't mind the handwavey-ness so much because the over all messages was so optimistic.

But yeah, there was a lot of "don't sweat the details" going on in that movie. Starting from, did they honestly fly all the way from Seattle to Montana in the one helicopter? Because IME, helicopters don't have that kind of range...

I didn't mind the handwavey science because the actual question of the movie isn't how do we teach aliens English but what does it mean to make choices when we already know the outcome. Which is putting it tritely, but you know what I mean. The aliens are just the conduit.

I saw Dr. Strange last night. It was way better than I expected. I didn't have any negative expectations; I knew nothing about it. But it was gorgeous and funny and I want to see it again.

But yeah, there was a lot of "don't sweat the details" going on in that movie.

I feel like that describes every Villeneuve movie I've seen, but I love the questions he explores and how his movies just seem to seep into you.

In short, Arrival was exactly the movie I needed to see this week.

Though I highly encourage people to catch The Love Witch if they can. It is basically a Technicolor version of Charmed that channels both Jacques Demy and late Hitchcock.

More Arrival. I love that Amy Adams is a female scientist protagonist, and that her being a scientist matters. I love Jeremy Renner as the eye candy Smartest Scientist In Some Other Field Which Will Never Again Be Needed To Move The Plot Forward.

I love all of that in spite of yet again, a movie about a female scientist which turns out really to be mostly about the fact that she is/was a mother.

I did not love whatever accent Forest Whitaker was doing. The fact that he was only doing it half the time only made it more irritating.

I would love to know how the Heptopod society works, if everyone is experiencing time nonlinearly. How does anyone keep track of causality in a world like that? Are there no arguments because everyone already knows the outcome, or are there constant arguments over misunderstandings stemming from temporal misalignment?

I loved that the climax of the film was the scientist getting published.