Reboot/Remake/Sequel/Series

Indepence Day: Resurgence

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Three stars

I liked the elderly boat mensch adopts alotta orphans subplot. I thought Brent Spiner’s husband was Mandy Patinkin the whole movie and was really excited about that. I dug all the cgi destruction and definitely did a couple gettin-pumped, tense, inhalations of breath while I held my fist against my teeth and chin. Saw it in a full theatre. Somebody’s grandpa was sitting next to me and every time the aliens gained ground he said, “That’s not good,” out loud to his wife. It was really fun. Missed Will Smith.

D by: Roland Emmerich; W by: Nicolas Wright, James A. Woods, Dean Devlin & James Vanderbilt; P by: Markus Förderer; E by: Adam Wolfe; M by: Harald Kloser & Thomas Wanker; A by: Derrick Ballard, Jonathan Burdeshaw, Pyrokinesis, Alex Auriol, etc…w/Jeff Goldblum, Brent Spiner, Bill Pullman, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Judd Hirsch, Deobia Oparei, Robert Loggia, Vivica A. Fox, etc..120min, USA, 2016
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Weiner-Dog

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Two stars

Sometimes the loneliness catches up, the void inside.  Your own stupid voice.  You lie down in your fat and blood and wait for the call.  American brand names enter and exit your windshield.  The old lady up the block calls for Cancer.  There are other, funnier Solondz pictures.

D & W by: Todd Solondz, P by: Edward Lachman, E by: Kevin Messman, M by: James Lavino, w/Greta Gerwig, Ellen Burstyn, Danny DeVito, Julie Delpy, Zosia Mamet, Tracy Letts, Kieran Culkin, etc…88 min, USA, 2016

Finding Dory

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Four stars

All the ocean’s fauna (save one squid) rally behind the eponymous blue tang.  When beset by doubt they ask what she would do, “WWDD?”  Dory herself utilizes this trick, the guiding principle larger than the fish it represents.  Larger than the Christ it recalls, though come to think of it he, too, is symbolized by a fish.  Am I saying Ellen DeGeneres is Jesus?  No I am not.

D & W: Andrew Stanton & Angus MacLane, More W: Victoria Strouse & Bob Peterson, A by: Bert Barry, Don Shank, James W. Brown, Catherine Hicks, Kishan Ramjas, Leo Santos, Sikand Srinivas, Tsung-Yin Hsieh, etc..P: Jeremy Lasky, E: Axel Geddes, M: Thomas Newman w/Ellen DeGeneres,  Ed O’Neill, Albert Brooks, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy, Kaitlin Olson, Idris Elba, Sigourney Weaver, etc…97 min, USA, 2016

Teenage Turtles 6: Shadowlands

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Three stars

According to Eckhart Tolle our slavish devotion to the mind robs us of the deep divine stillness of being.  Turtle brothers battle a brain.  Taoist, hormonal, subterranean, CGI New Yorkers in the latest filmic entry of an ip with an awesome/grotesque toy-line from my youth.  Megan Fox symbolically strips onscreen out of old April into new.  Will Arnett does a comedy bit with a wall cable.  There’s a pop punk cover of the 80’s cartoon theme.  Tyler Perry is wonderfully unrestrained here, he never turns into a fly though.  Not even post-credits.

D by: Dave Green, W by: Josh Appelbaum & André Nemec, P by: Lula Carvalho, E by: Bob Ducsay & Jim May, M by: Steve Jablonsky, A by: Ryan Bradley, Oz Gani, Wong Joe, Kai-Hu Lan, etc…thnx Peter Laird, Kevin Eastman, Michael Bay; w/Laura Linney, Tyler Perry, Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Stephen Farrelly, Gary Anthony Williams, Brain Tee, Tony Shalhoub, etc..112 min, USA, 2016

Star Trek

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Three stars

Mother Goose is buried in Boston.  The soil soggy with the blood of the people who give the state it’s name.  Glyptodont bones in Cambridge, duck boats on the Charles.  In 2009 I visited old Sam, we played the apple stem game and went to the backyard bicycle BBQ Boots threw.  I saw Justin & Amanda, now locked in holy matrimony.  I took the train to Salem and a man dropped a ziplock baggy of feces and I wondered if he was a witch.  We saw this movie.  We took these pictures.

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D by: J.J.Abrams, W by: Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman, P by: Dan Mindel, E by: Maryann Brandon & Mary Jo Markey, M by: Michael Giacchino, thnx Gene Rodenberry, w/Leonard Nimoy, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Zachary Quinto, John Cho, Chris Pine, Karl Urban, Winona Ryder, etc.. 127 min, USA, 2009

Ned Rifle

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Three starsTwo stars

Philosophers, poets, and laborers.  In hotel rooms, bars, and bookstores.  The highway winks away over the horizon.  We have time enough to choose our words precisely, to etch and carve the minutes into these salty bed sheets.  There are such things as love & lust & God & consequence.  The pistol has one loaded chamber and Chekhov demands it must be fired.

D, W, & M by: Hal Hartley, P by: Vladimir Subotic, E by: Kyle Gilman w/Liam Aiken, Aubrey Plaza, Thomas Jay Ryan, Parker Posey, James Urbaniak, Martin Donovan, Robert John Burke, Lloyd Kaufman, etc…, 85 min, USA, 2014