Just when I thought my movie viewing couldn’t get a bit weaker with all that’s going on, I end up doing some deep diving on Spotify taking me back to my youth as well as getting sucked into a new game mode on Star Wars: Battlefront II. That in turn has me watching a bit less but still finding time to get a few things in. I actually rewatched something I had just seen at that with Anna and the Apocalypse as I wanted to share that with my daughter, who hates zombies movies but loves musicals and loves Christmas. Suffice to say, that was quite the fun experience the second time around and now I want the soundtrack. Dang it!
On the new side, it’s old but new to me was The Meg. My other daughter has a love for these kinds of movies with giant monsters that shouldn’t exist but neither of us like doing that in the theater. I had actually picked this up several months ago but timing is key. I really had a blast with this one through and through because it had the right kind of energy and fun about it in order to tell its tale. It didn’t get bogged down in details, didn’t try to over-explain its science and the like, and just went in on the action and kept some of the stupid moments a bit slimmer than some other films. Of course, any time Rain Wilson’s character is there it feels like he would have been a lot smarter than to actually be there, but the more we see billionaires in reality the more it becomes obvious just how movie-stupid a lot of them seem.
Backlist movies are still a thing, thankfully, and I took a wonderful turn into 1998 with the original Wild Things. This movie is pure trash on every level but it’s just so much fun in how it plays with everything, manipulates it all, and doublecrosses multiple times that I can’t help but to love it. Yeah, I’m there for Richards and Campbell too, but the whole thing is just pure gutter trash story material done wonderfully right.
This week also had me revisiting Men in Black II as I get more excited for the new International film later this year and I had fun with this even if it just felt a little too forced in a lot of ways. Still better than the third film. I dipped back into the 80’s for a bit with The Breakfast Club simply because it had been forever and it’s always interesting to revisit the “politics of the day” through a modern lens to see how you re-view things. The same can be said for the other film that I got caught up in with Sleepless in Seattle. Like a lot of people from then, Hanks and Ryan are just dreamlike in a way and it does deal with some decently complicated aspects to things that when viewed now can be either too superficial or just not given the right weight. But there’s that real charm in finding someone that you’re just feeling “right” with and I’ll always enjoy a movie like that if it’s done well.
