Ticket to Paradise (2022)

The only reason I had any interest in this film is it is set in Bali. This, as I expected, turned out to be a huge disappointment. The only scene in the whole film that may have been flimed in Bali, was when they went to Tanah Lot. Other than that, the film appears to be shot entirely in Australia. This is a hollywood ideal of Bali / a tropical island, with nothing but nature, no infrastrcuture. Once again, Hollywood has created an idealize view of a tropical paradise, and picked and choosed parts of the culutre, which is extremely sparse in this film. While the subtitles listed the characters as speaking in Balinese, I highly doubt they were speaking in Balinese, but were more likely speaking in Indonesian, as I recognized a few words, when they were speaking. Scenes of the landscape and temples were basically nonexistant, along with the culture, as the didn't show any Balinese dance nor any gamelan music, and only a slight bit of the trasitional clothing. While they did show the groom getting his teeth filed down, and this is a cultural practice, I thought this was done when Balinese people were much younger, an not releated to getting married in anyway. Also, while they had a great opportunity for the white bride to dress up in traditional Balinese wedding attire, they choose instead to have her wear a western wedding dress, which while appropreate for a wedding in Hawaii, would be consider highly inapprorate for a Balinese wedding. And while the main actor who played the Balinese groom, was actually half Indonesian, and a few other actors were actually Indonesian, the majority of the actors were of other Asian races. And it appears that none of the actors were actually Balinese. Nearly all of those actors spoke perfect English, without any Indonesaian, or Balinese accent, once again sanitizing a potential internatioanl experience for American audiences. After watching the film, I was suprised that Billy Lourd was in the film. I didn't recognize her, but I am not that familar with her, and she did appear like that she was in her 30s in the film, and perhaps a little bit too old for this role. Actually, I wasn't really aware of her when she appeared in the Star Wars sequels, thought I do hope the daughter of Carrie Fisher has a prosperous career. This film is merely a vehilce for George Clooney and Julia Roberts, with all the other characters being minor background characters, including Bali itself. Julia Roberts is past her prime, and I don't know of any film she has made since Pretty Woman that I would even consider worth watching. I think she has just been riding out the sucess of that film, to keep her career going, and I don't know of anyone who is a big fan of her work, especailly anyone who is male. You would do much better watching the Road to Bali (1952), if you want even the smallest taste of the real beauty and culture of Bali.

Cats Don't Dance (1997)

This is one I have wanted to watch for a while. It came out just after Toy Story, which I think signaled a new age of animation, as it was made with computer graphics, and led the way for a large number of computer animated films to follow and even some of which still used the look of handdrawn films. Prior to that, and with hand drawn animated films becoming a ratity, due to the amount labor needed to produce them and of course cost, there were much fewer animated films being released. That being said, I think this film was created with the help of computer animation, but I am not sure. So, I really an interested an any animated film made before the realese of Toy Story, and while this was realease just after, it still was unknown to me, and it took a while to track it down, as I don't think it is well known, nor has it been given a lot of publicity. The film has quite a notble cast, at least to me, due to my being aware of them from other shows, such as Scott Bakula and René Auberjonois both of whom I know of from Star Trek (and Scott from Quantum Leap) and as far as I know have never voiced characters in an animated film before. I was impressed that Scott Bakula did his own singing parts, as most of the other voice actors in this film did not, and I don't ever recall hearing of Scott Bakula signing in any other film. Don Knotts also lends his voice to character, though I would have nearly not noticed, if I hadn't seen his name assocated with the film before watching it. John Rhys-Davies also voices a character. I know him from playing Sala in the first and third Indiana Jones film, and from Flash Gordon, but I haven't seen him in anything else I can recall. The film was directed by Mark Dindal, who worked on a number of Disney asnimate featurs, before going on to direct The Emperor's New Groove and Chicken Little. The film was okay, but the story didn't really stand out, nor were any of the songs all that remarkable. It was interesting, as it was set in the 1930's and featured a large number of cameos of actors from that era, much like the old Looney Tunes also did, though those actors were current at the time those were created.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Unfortunately, this is just a nostaligic trip. It has all the elements from the original film, mixed in in ways that usually don't make any sense. The film cannot stand on it's own, and I find it hard to beleive that anyone who has never seen the original film nor is familairy to the franchise would get anything out of this film. As has happneed with may other sequel/reboot films, the creators of the new film seem to have seen all the elements of the original film, and included them in this film, but it's just a pale imation of the original. Didn't they even know the original film was a comedy? Always good to see Paul Rudd in any film, even so, this film didn't stand a ghost of a chance. My questions is, how do they expect to continue the franchise? How are these kids supposed to run a business busting ghosts? Their age alone makes this completely ridiculous, and not in a good way.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

The plot of this film doesn't make a hole lot of sense, and it is quite contrived, but I can accept that, as they wanted to have a (flimsy) excuse to get all three of the actors together who played in the previous Spiderman films. It was merely a nostagic trip, bringing back six or so of the villians from the previous films. But the whole plot didn't make a lot of sense, and it made Dr Starnge look grossly incompetant and careless. The problem with the film is that it has no rewatchability. There weren't any great scenes that you would want to go back to and reawatch. This is the way with all films for at least the last decade (I am talking to you Star Wars sequels), in that they don't have great scenes, where as in older films, they would have multiple scenes that you wanted to watch over and over again. While that, and bring back most of the villans (What, no James Franco or Topher Grace - well Venom was completely wasted in that film...) Was this just a lame attempt to justify bringing back the villinas they killed off in the previous films? Take a lesson from the original Superman films (but not too much of a note), but not the Batman films (you don't have to kill off your villians at the end of each film). And as for Superman, you didn't really need to have Lex Luthor in 3 of the four films, as Gene Hackman plays a lousy Lex Luthor, but still the films he appeared in were better than the third film, even though the villian in that film wasn't too bad, and the evil computer did give a lot of kids nightmares. I still cannot understand why Zendaya is gettign roels in movies. She was slightly better in theilf film that the previous Spider-man film. But she shows nearly no reaction or emoiton. Okay, I get it. She wasin Shake in UP (TV) on Disney, and I know that many kids loved that show, mosstly for Bella Thore, who doesn't seem to be doing much these days, except screwing (not litterally) followers on OnlyFans.

The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)

I read somewhere that this was one of the mostly highly watched films on Netflix, and had a rating of 97%. I has seen a box for this video in the store, so I thought it was time I should check it out. It was a pretty good film, but I think not as great as the rating would suggest. One problem I had with the film was I couldn't relate to the daughter at all. Her constant need to add filters to her picuters, other add on special effects has never made sense to me. It doesn't any adding thing to the story of the video she (or anyone else) is adding it to. I guess I am getting to the point where I related more to the fathers in movies than the children. I did, however, appreciated that the father had a pretty big gut, but wasn't made out to be a clown or foolish. It's great to see when heavy people are accepted as they are, and are relevent characters, rather than being a source of comedy.

Ron's Gone Wrong (2021)

I intended to see this one in the theater, but either I missed it, or I don't know what happened, but I ended up wathicng in streaming. I thought this is one of the best movies I have seen in a long time, they way it deals with the concepts of not fitting in, bullying, friendship and technology. The whole concpet of the B-bot was incredible, partially from a techonological stand point, and how useful it could be, and partially from they way it demonstarted that social media is taking over people (espeically kid's) lives. I think that if anyone could make a real world B-Bot, they would pretty much take over the world, over night.

'71 (2014)

I've been reading the biography of Gerry Adams, which I acquired quite a long time ago, but just got aroudn to reading now, and I stumbled upon this film two days ago, which covered the same topic as the portion of Gerry Adams biography. So I knew I had to watch it immeidately, and I was able to find it for free on Hulu. Very convenient. The film does a great job of portraying the turmoil that was taking place in Northern Ireland during this time period. Also, it really captured the feel of the 70s, which I was quite surprised by. I would have though the film was actually made in the 70s, except for how clear the picture was. The look of the houses, especially their interiors, furniture and even wallpaper and the clothes the people wore all seemed to be right out of the 70s. One thing that I did wonder about was that the accents didn't sound very Irish to me. Of course I am no expert on Irish accents, and perhaps they are played up a bit in other films, but again they didn't stand out as sounding very Irish, but then again, the also didn't sound like the fake accents you often hear in American films. Wild Mountain Thyme, I'm talking to you. Also, I wondered about the title of the film, '71, which is so vague that no one would know what the film was about, from the title alone. I would think it might have been connected the the Ballymurphy Massacre, thought that event was not pictured, nor alluded to in the film. Or perhaps it is supposed to have taken place before the Ballymurphy Massacre, as it seems to depict the conditions in Northern Ireland just as they have taken a turn for the worst.