Tag: movies

Review: Avengers: Infinity War

Laura Highcove

My Review of Avengers: Infinity War

My summary: Thanos is here. Yeah, we’re f&%$ed.

Why I watched this movie: I love the MCU.

What I knew going in: The rest of the MCU.

My response: Well part of me is ashamed of myself because I didn’t write this review back when I first saw the movie, and thus had the strongest opinions about what I saw. Now we’re left with what I remember the best, which perhaps are the things that hit me the hardest. First off, the opening scene basically kicked me in the face, not just because Loki died, but because of how well it set up the tone for the entire movie. As soon as that first scene ended, I looked at my hubby and said, “Well, holy crap.” I liked what they did with Thanos and making him somewhat human feeling. And yes, I read articles on the dangerous precedence it sets to claim Thanos really loved Gamora, who he abused for years. But I don’t think there’s any question that Thanos is a bad guy, but even bad guys are still human on some level.

The fights were all pretty cool, and they did a great job putting all the characters in even though they each got so little screen time. I was surprised by a few of the people who got ashed, but I don’t remember why specifically now since I’ve been sitting with who went and who didn’t for months now. And I was fine with them getting ashed, because, well they’re superheroes and that’s just what happens. What hit me hard, like I cried in the movie theater, was the after credit sequence where you’re in a city and half the population gets ashed. Seeing that made it far more real than ‘oh, the superheroes in the movie disappeared’. People were just gone, leaving behind friends and family who have absolutely no clue what happened, who were in no way involved. Is the rest of the world even going to be told what really happened? And while we *know* it’s all going to get fixed somehow, we have no idea how quickly, and if anyone will remember what happened or not.

Do I recommend this movie?: Yes.

Review: Black Panther

Laura Highcove

My Review of Black Panther

My summary: Latest and greatest Marvel superhero gets his own movie. Right, plot? Time for T’Challa to succeed his father as King of Wakanda, only he runs into some poignant questions about why they’ve been in hiding for so long, and what it has wrought.

Why I watched this movie: Cause it’s MCU.

What I knew going in: I knew the cast was mostly black, and that Wakanda is super awesome cause they made the Quinjets, and the CG looked sick. What? I didn’t really know much about Black Panther.

My response: Super amazing movie. It hit the points it needed to hit, it supported it’s theme like a beast, and it was full of amazing acting, lovable characters, and amazing CG. The plot wasn’t super twisty, but then most marvel movies aren’t.

Do I recommend this movie?: That would be a yes.

Review: Blade Runner 2049

Laura Highcove

My Review of Blade Runner 2049

My summary: A dystopian future where replicants (built humans) are retired by Blade Runners in order to keep the population under control.

Why I watched this movie: It was new and rather shiny. I liked the idea of it.

What I knew going in: Andriods being hunted down an killed.

My response: I actually watched the first Blade Runner first. It was pretty terrible. Pacing was rather horrible and I spent much of the movie wondering what what happening and having to put together some sort of idea on my own. Blade Runner 2049 was much better, while the pacing did still drag in places, the plot was actually cohesive, understandable, and actually quite enjoyable.

Do I recommend this movie?: Yes, and you don’t necessarily have to see the original Blade Runner in order to understand what’s going on. You’ll probably miss a few subtle things, (some location shots for sure) but they sufficiently explain what you need to know from ‘before’.

Review: The Last Jedi

Laura Highcove

This review has spoilers. It’s been a month since I saw the movie, but I never got around to putting up this review, so we’re probably outside the time when I need to warn about spoilers, but here it is all the same.

I loved this movie. I thought it was entertaining and well-written. Did it have problems? Sure, but I walked out of the theater excited about what I had seen. The resistance is on the run from the First Order. I was not expecting that to be the plot of the entire movie like it was, but it ended up working out.

Rae is off doing her own thing, trying to get Luke on board, learning about the force, and in general having a surprising (but not that surprising) amount of skill considering her lack of training. In fact, I was really happy with how they had her basically get completely duped by prune head (I am bad with names.), due to her lack of training.

And Rae’s brush with the ‘dark side’ on the island really lead me to believe that maybe we would get off this stupid ‘light side’ ‘dark side’ crap and realize that the force should be balanced in a single person as opposed to there having to be a good person and a bad person to balance them out. I bet that would piss off the die-hard star wars fans though.

Finn gallivanted off with our new character, Rose, sewing the seeds of hope back into the minds of tiny children. This ended up being the only thing the two of them accomplished considering everything else they did turned out to not matter.

Poe got a character arc. Which is good, because he seemed rather ancillary for the first movie. I’m happy with the lessons he learned, even though they basically came out of Purple-hair straight up not telling Poe what the plan was. There could be the argument that she was trying to teach him a lesson after Leia demoted him for being reckless, and not just that if she had told him, everyone would’ve sat around on their hands waiting for the plan (ie, not telling him was just a plot device).

Someone who had seen the movie before-hand told me there was some humor in it that was completely unexpected for a Star Wars movie. It certainly caught me by surprise, but by half-way through the movie I realized that all of the comedy was completely necessary or else the movie would’ve been crushed by it’s own weight. This is Star Wars, the emotions and expectations for it are high. I feel if they’d tried to play it straight, it would’ve become a parody of itself.

And I like how well this movie played with expectations. From expecting Finn, Rose, and Poe to be successful, to the Codebreaker betrayer, as well as the connection between Rae and Kylo. And every time another bad thing happened, whatever popped up to save them had been foreshadowed well beforehand.

And oh man, taking a ship to warp speed through a fleet. Even the anime-style-see-this-shot-from-three-angles did not ruin the majesty of that.

Overall score: 5/5 because not only did I enjoy it, it blew my mind and inspired my own writing.

What I Do Besides Writing

Laura Highcove

I have a number of other hobbies outside of writing. I work at a horse barn part time and I currently own two horses and ride somewhat regularly.



I am rather creative outside of writing as well, and I like crafts of various kinds including painting miniatures for my table top gaming (another hobby), crochet, and newbie attempts at creating gourd lamps.



I also play video games (though far fewer than I used to), watch/read the occasional anime/manga, and I love well-written TV and flashy movies.

Review: Moana

Laura Highcove

I went to see Moana a few weeks after it came out. Disney’s been doing a good job with movies recently, but with the complete glut of movies, it’s hard to find time to get out to see them all.

Anyway, Moana is a story about a young girl who is next in line to be the chief of a tribe on a Hawaiian island. The tribe has everything they need, but Moana really want to be a sailor, only her father, the current chief, is super against it.

Moana’s grandmother encourages her by showing her that their tribe did once travel the waves, moving from island to island. Cue Moana heading out on her own to find a demi-god who needs to replace a magical stone.

Overall, a wonderful movie. I loved the whole thing (except for the crab) and the ending was spot on.

Meta talk: Hero’s Journey straight up. Also, really? Could you have been any more obvious that the pig is only there to sell stuffed animals?

Also, there is no love interest. That’s right, ladies and gentleman: this story has no love interest. Just a girl out there being awesome.

I was also pretty happy with how realistic the body types were (ignoring Maui, who is a demi-god). No unreasonably skinny waists in this movie. And yet you can’t argue that Moana isn’t attractive. I’m really hoping this trend will be continued.

Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Laura Highcove

So I went to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them over my Thanksgiving break. I could only give it 2/5 stars. (Warning: Spoilers Below)

I loved the actor who played Newt, but the character himself was horribly written. The only time he really shone as a character was when he was in his briefcase taking care of his animals.

I really enjoyed Jacob. While Newt ran around for the first part of the movie with no characterization or motivation, we saw Jacob’s personality and dreams.

I also loved seeing the inside of the briefcase and all of the mythological animals that were there. It wasn’t enough to carry the movie to the end, but it was entertaining.

Most of the rest of the movie was terrible.

First off, If owls just magically give school letters to kids from muggle households, then how do any wizarding children get passed over? Even if they can’t go to school because of stupid parents, the wizarding world should know about them.

Tina is nothing but incompetent and ineffectual. Even when I thought she might matter because Credence had met her before, (ignoring how that flashback was shoehorned in) it ended up not mattering at all.

Also, let’s not pretend that people didn’t die during the climax, you know, with the buildings collapsing all over the city. Then they all got a memory-wipe, which basically means people wouldn’t even remember their loved ones existed. (Hermione did it to her parents, remember?) This movie made me suddenly realize the discrepancy between wizards and muggles and the horror comes from the fact that this is the way the wizarding world is supposed to work. Magical mishaps happen. Maybe if you want to keep magic a secret, you shouldn’t be building your Ministries of Magic in the most populated cities in the world.

Overall, pretty disappointed. It had enough charming bits of the wizarding world I love so much sprinkled throughout, but I would probably not watch it again. I’m hoping that they’ll do a better job with the second movie, but I’m not holding out hope. If you’re a hardcore Harry Potter then go see it, otherwise, please don’t use this as your introduction to the wizarding world.

Analyzing The Prince of Persia

Laura Highcove


I love a movie with a good title screen.

The Prince of Persia movie is one of the few video game movies that is considered good. It is in my own list of favorite movies, though not because it is a video game movie. This movie does a lot of things well and is overall an enjoyable experience, even if you’ve never played the game.

Here are a few of the things I think this movie does very well from a storytelling perspective:

Characterizing the three brothers


Dustan: “Garsiv, your hand is on your sword again.”
Garsiv: “Where it should be!”
Tus: “Oh, my brothers!”

From this first scene where the three of them interact while talking about whether to attack Alamut, they perfectly portray their personalities as well as their opinions of each other.

When Dustan is later framed for killing his father, the brothers act to type in that Tus is conflicted about what to do and Garsiv just wants to cut Dustan open.

It makes it all the sweeter when Dastan is able to convince both of them that he is telling the truth which leads to the feel-good moment when they come together at the end. I love that the trust between the three brothers is such an important part of the story.

Dustan and Tamina

The relationship between Dustan and Tamina is basically a perfect example of the kind of relationship development I love, down to them calling each other ‘prince’ and ‘princess’ sarcastically at first, which later turn into terms of endearment.

They have no reason to trust each other, each using the other to get what they want, but over time they begin to trust each other, and that leads to respect, and then love. It’s such a natural progression that you have no doubt that they will come to love each other again even after time is rewound.


Tamina: “Please don’t mock me, Prince.”
Dustan: “Oh, I hardly think we know each other well enough for that, Princess.
But I look forward to the day that we do.”

Parkour

The choreography for this movie is top notch and that includes all the parkour elements. Since it’s one of the selling points of the game, of course it’s important in the movie too. Unfortunately it is not easily displayed by screenshots.


I’ll just leave this here.

What I Didn’t Like

This movie is not perfect, and it has a few things in it that I don’t like, and it took a while before I stopped and looked at those pieces closely enough to determine why I don’t like them.

This scene always bothered me, because basically, the Sheikh and all his guys followed our heroes from the desert into the mountains before asking what the heck happened with the snakes the night before, and are about to leave before Tamina bribes them with gold. It’s a rather obvious example of leaving a discussion until a later scene in order to improve pacing, and it’s always bothered me since I’m not sure it would’ve been any worse for them to have that discussion when they were still in the desert.

Dustan makes a lot of leaps of logic. While this basically keeps the plot from being too slow, the boy really does piece together plot elements very accurately from very little information. He is characterized as thinking well on his feet, so maybe that’s where you’re supposed to get it from. Luckily he does draw a few of the wrong hasty conclusions as well.

The Sands of Time just …go away when Dustan and Nazam go back in time. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to assume that Tamina was just wrong about the Sands of Time wiping out the earth, or what, but it’s played up as a huge problem, and then it isn’t one.

Despite the flaws, I have watched this movie over and over again. Generally the only scene I skip is the race to the sandglass, which is pretty good for a movie I’ve seen so many times.

Analyzing Howl’s Moving Castle (And Why I Liked the Book Better than the Movie)

Laura Highcove

Next in my series of analyzing my favorite media is Howl’s Moving Castle. I saw the movie before I read the book, mostly because I watch all of Hayao Miyazaki’s films. I loved the movie and so I went out to buy the book. I also loved the book.

Over time, when I would pull the movie out to watch, I found myself instead watching a few minutes of the movie and then going and getting the book to read instead. Howl’s Moving Castle is only 329 pages, so it’s a quick read.

Reasons I Like the Book

1) Character:
I love Sophie and Howl’s relationship and how it develops so naturally between them as they snipe back and forth. Especially! the tiny bits of care Howl displays between his irresponsibility and arrogance that gradually grow more frequent. In fact, I love this so much about the book, that it’s the biggest the reason I don’t watch the movie anymore, because it is practically non-existent there.

Howl said. “I think we ought to live happily ever after,” and she thought he meant it. Sophie knew that living happily ever after with Howl would be a good deal more eventful than any story made it sound, though she was determined to try. “It should be hair raising,” added Howl.
“And you’ll exploit me,” Sophie said.
“And then you’ll cut up all my suits to teach me,” Howl said.

2) Voice/Plot:
Both of these have to do with the book being well written. The narrator is so delightfully playful and the dialogue is witty and appropriate.

“Go to bed, you fool,” Calcifer said sleepily. “You’re drunk.”
“Who, me?” said Howl. “I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober.” He got up and stalked upstairs, feeling for the wall as if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with it. His bedroom door did escape him. “What a lie that was.” Howl remarked as he walked into the wall. “My shining dishonesty will be the salvation of me.” He walked into the wall several times more, in several different places, before he discovered his bedroom door and crashed his way through it. Sophie could hear him falling about, saying his bed was dodging.

I also appreciate how well the plot is explained to Sophie in the end. Howl does a lot behind her pov and the Witch of the Waste’s plot is rather complicated, but at the same time I never remember feeling confused about what was happening and why.

Reasons I liked the Movie

1) Bishounen:
Bishounen is a Japanese word that literally means ‘pretty boy’. I grew up watching a lot of anime and this is a trope that is quite prevalent in anime. I love men who are classified as pretty over handsome. Howl is a bishounen.

2) Sense of Wonder:
Hayao Miyazaki knows how to add wonder to his movies by just showing the beauty of nature. It’s probably why I like most of his movies.

Why I Like the Book Over the Movie

1) The movie plays Howl up as noble, with his ‘saving’ Sophie from the soldiers at the beginning and his rampant disapproval of the war. This overshadows his being an irresponsible, arrogant womanizer. I can see why I liked the movie so much at first, because who doesn’t love a beautiful, noble character? Then I fell in love with the flawed Howl. I read the book to watch Howl become a better person through his interaction with Sophie.

2) Sophie does not have any magic. At least not that’s obvious. The one bit of ‘overt’ magic that she does do, in returning Howl’s heart, is in no way foreshadowed, so it’s easy to say Sophie can do it because she loves Howl. I suppose this is rather petty, but I feel like the magic was so naturally a part of who Sophie was that its absence gives her a different feel.

3) The whole war, which was there to create conflict instead of the Witch of the Waste …perhaps because her plot was too complicated? In the end the war didn’t mean anything except there were bombs dropped during the climax. (That and it reveals that Suliman was apparently covertly creepy/evil what with her mini-Howls and the implication that the war was just an excuse for her to gather and strip the powers of witches and wizards.)

4) The Witch of the Waste being horribly ineffective. She curses Sophie, admits she can’t undo the curse, can hardly walk up stairs, gets her magic taken away, and then turns into a senile invalid.

Now I’m sure a lot of parts of the movie suffered because, well, it was a movie and not a book. Books just have more time for detail and character arcs. What I can’t forgive is just how different the Howl from the book felt than the Howl from the movie. I could have been fine with the war subplot if Howl could have just been himself. But since one of the things I enjoy the most in my media are the characters and their relationships, I’ll just continue reading the book and using the movie for character designs.

Analyzing Speed Racer

Laura Highcove

So I said in a previous post that I wanted to look at my favorite media and analyze what about my favorite movies, books, TV shows, etc is so appealing to me. I decided to start off with what is arguably my favorite movie of all time: Speed Racer.

1) Stylistic Graphics

I am a huge fan of the graphics. I tend to like the aesthetic choices of the Wachowskis. Most of their movies are not great, truthfully, but their style, mixed with the feel of the anime I grew up with, made this world, and thus the movie, feel so beautiful to me. I understand this particular look is not something that a lot of people like (I think it may have been one of the reasons this movie did so horribly, but that might have also been the anime style that not many Americans appreciate), but reality that looks like a brighter, somewhat cartoonish version of reality tends to grab my attention right away. I also especially enjoyed the separation of the characters from the background, which allowed the background to move, blur, or even have different filters to change scenes or add emotion.

2) Fight Scenes

I really enjoy good fight choreography, and the races basically were fight scenes. In the Casa Cristo Speed and Racer X team up to fight off all the other cars in the dust cloud and it’s pretty amazing. Also when Speed gets Snake Oiler guy on the rail, bearing down on him with his tire. Or especially when Speed fights Jack ‘Cannonball’ Taylor and then leaves him behind.

3) Trust

I like the strong relationship between Speed and his family (which includes Trixie and Sparky). I like stories where there is a sense of trust between characters. Pops was willing to do business with Royalton if Speed wanted to, even though he knew big companies were not to be trusted. Trixie was willing to help Speed sneak away from home to go to the Casa Cristo because it was important to him. Mom kept everyone together when they tried to fall apart when they found out about Casa Cristo. And how Pops was willing to let Speed go when everything seemed to be spiraling out of control, but made sure to tell Speed how much he loves him.

4) Bromance

I like the brotherly love between Speed and Rex/Racer X. Rex means everything to Speed and Speed is likewise crushed when his big brother turns ‘dirty’. When Speed tells Racer X they made a great team while driving in the Casa Cristo and how much Racer X probably wanted to tell him the truth. Then Speed accuses Racer X of being his brother, and how disappointed he is when he’s ‘wrong’, but how Racer X encourages him like only a big brother would be able to.

There is even romance and a world that feels huge with all the details and backstory they bring up (Which I appreciate as a fantasy author). I go back to this movie again and again, and there are really no scenes that I regularly skip over. Even the scenes with the monkey (I hate monkeys) are not long or drawn out enough to be an annoyance. This movie just hits a lot of sweet spots when it comes to what I enjoy.