Just Mercy
7/10. I’d put it good. Not great. It doesn’t go for maudy emotionalism. There’s emotionalism there but subdued. It’s a good story. I’d recommend it for a hangover movie.
Tomb Raider
8/10
Works extremely well in the game movie genre, Alicia Vikander as beautiful as you’d imagine and a bit more fit than you’d think. The adventure seems well executed, too bad they didn’t make them into a series.
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The only semi-recent movie I didn’t really like him in was Valkyrie and he wasn’t really bad in it; it was just that everyone else was British so I thought he didn’t fit very well with the rest of the cast.
The King of Staten Island looks…decent? I gotta say I’m really surprised it’s getting made though, if you listed for me all the current SNL cast and told me to rank them in order of most to least likely to be the next lead in a feature film Pete Davidson would have been at or near the bottom, but the previews make it look like it might work. Steve Buschemi might have to carry a lot of the load. Interesting that Bill Burr also features prominently in the previews I’ve seen but I have not yet heard him speak.
This one hurt so much. District 9 was amazing. How could Blomkamp’s followup be so underwhelming??? Then we got Chappie. Eek. I was really looking forward to his Alien or Robocop re-quels just because he always has such interesting ideas that even if he totally whiffed it, the movies would have been fun novelties.
I was just starting to wonder if perhaps Neil was a one-hit wonder, but then he founded Oats Studios and has produced a healthy list of short films all available on YouTube.
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Of all the sequels never made this one pains me the most. Not getting to see them come back for him is sadder than watching David Banner walk down the side of a road.
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I didn’t hate Elysium. Not saying it was good, because it wasn’t. But I didn’t hate it.
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Chappie is a technological marvel (like cutting edge CGI at the time) and pretty fun. It’s in the Crank 2 vein.
Hot take: Bride of Frankenstein is way better than the original Frankenstein.
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Just started watching Twilight randomly on Prime. Not the vampire one — a 1998 detective movie starring Paul Newman. Not to be crass, but in the first 10 minutes it has both Reese Witherspoon and Susan Sarandon topless, so I’d say so far so good.
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My wife is all about trying to get our 11 and 13-year-olds to hang out for movie night once a week. Naturally, it’s not easy to find something that everyone can like and is age appropriate. We’ve seen all the Marvel, Star Wars, and obvious choices. Also preferred something on a service we were already paying for.
I came up with maybe the perfect family movie: School of Rock.
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Yeah SoR is good. I’d go through all of the kid sports movies. Sandlot, Rookie of the Year, Angels in the Outfield if they’re mature, The Big Green is a little more childish, Bend it Like Beckham especially for girls.
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Some I did with mine about that age included the Indiana Jones series (a lot of Spielberg’s stuff is really good for this age group), and good stuff with kids about their age in them like The Whale Rider, Billy Elliott and Bend it Like Beckham. More recent options are Blinded By the Light and Yesterday. They’re both basically musicals and with Springsteen and the Beetles, it’s hard not to be captivated.
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For kids I can think of a few more non-patronising or cutesy live action family movies to add to the list.
The Princess Bride (obv)
Hugo
Night at the Museum
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Jumanji
Big
The Mask
Hook
Ghostbusters (both)
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WarGames has held up surprisingly well also.
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The new Sonic movie is shockingly good. Very funny for all ages. Lots of jokes that work on age-appropriate levels, so you’ll laugh when the kids laugh because it’s funny on one level for them, but you know they won’t get the reference until they’re your age.
Yeah sonic was great.
I guess it really depends on your parenting style. I would never show my kids Big or The Mask because (in hindsight) they both have really creepy sexual moments imo. I thought Ladybugs was funny as a kid but I’m fine if nobody ever sees that movie again.
Ladybugs lolllllllllllllll
Fair point about Big and The Mask, though at that age the sexual stuff went way over my head (as it still does 
).
“OK, but I get to be on top” imagine watching that with your kids 
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