Last movie you watched......

With box office down, are we past "Peak-Superhero Era"? Considering how much these movies cost and the lead time required, this genre failing would be disastrous for the industry. People want to see something new. There seems to be a lack of new franchises with legs. Marvel, DC, Fast and Furious, Mission Impossible all seem about tapped out without much more story to tell. Star Wars will keep things afloat for a while, but after that?

 

Jackie with Natalie Portman. I liked the movie more than I thought. They really made Jack Valenti out to be a real twat

 

Finally Saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Eh.
Nowhere close to first one. I didn't expect Ego to be the central theme of the movie. Not sure what I expected but that wasn't it.
I enjoyed it, but it fell well short of my expectations.
I'm hopeful the new Spiderman and Thor Ragnarok movies will be much better.

 

Saw the Amy Schumer flick "Snatched" last night. Pretty bad, but it did have a few LOL moments.

 

Preview for the New Vince Vaughan movie. Big change of pace for him.
I'm skeptic, because I watched Bone Tomahawk and it was terrible.

 

I'm one of the few people who really liked 'Prometheus.'
I liked 'Covenant,' too, but I'm a little put off by the lack of appropriate context for David's motivation.

 

Maybe not. The Superhero movies do well overseas, especially in China, Japan, and South Korea. Your standard dramas, not as much.

 

The Glass Castle. Great cast with Brie Larson, Naomi Watts and Woody Harrelson. All in all a good take on the memoir, which I really enjoyed. Glossed over some of the more harrowing things that happened to the family and that the father did, and they gave it more of a feel good arc than was in the memoir. But it's hollywood, so not unexpected

 

I thought they explained it well in "Covenant" in that it's simply a case of "idle hands." David is by himself for years at a time and, as they noted with Walter, he was almost "too human," thus curiosity and ambition got the best of him. Simple boredom and curiosity led him to begin work creating hybrids. At the same time, he's not human and thus he lacked the empathy to see why killing humans in the name of creating a "perfect organism" would be problematic. They were no different to him than the insects or other creatures in his "zoo." I thought it was a brilliantly simple explanation of how the perfect organism came to be.

What I'm interested in seeing is how they follow through on the theme of the origins of species and "who made us." The Engineers made us - humans. David made the Aliens - he's their creator. The filmmakers are approaching really big themes and questions, and how Ridley Scott resolves those ideas in the third installment is really going to determine the trilogy's success or failure.

We know for a fact that no matter what happens at the end of the third film, the aliens will not be eliminated. So I'm hopeful the last film will have some sort of take on the very concept of creation, and that it doesn't devolve into a simple humans v. aliens battle.

 

I know some movies that stink up the joint over here (like The Mummy) do well enough overseas to justify a sequel. The mummy didn't earn back its budget in the US, and still did over 400 m globally.

 

We saw the Hitman's Bodyguard this afternoon. It was better than I expected. Nothing special and some of the action reached Fast and Furious levels of ridiculous, but it had some nice story beats and it was funny.

 

In need of a gem this weekend on iTunes, Hulu or Netflix. A guaranteed hold-my-attention winner.

Suggestions?