Movies
We all saw Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning tonight. It was absolutely bonkers but still a fun story and the good guys win in the end! 🍿
We wrapped up our weekend by watching Dog with some delicious Calico Popcorn made with ghee. Great movie and touching story. 🍿
Tammy and I saw The Ballad of Wallis Island tonight at Edina 4. The movie was delightful. Tim Key was particularly good in a very restrained way. Great story.
Into the Wild
Mazie and I watched Into the Wild tonight. I first saw this in 2008 and read the book a month later. I told Mazie I thought she would like the story and she was game to give it a go. She isn’t much into movies.
We both enjoyed watching it and prompted a lot of good discussion. We also revisited McCandless Wikipedia article which has some updates from the last decade that I wasn’t aware of. The Eddie Vedder soundtrack is still amazing.
“Happiness only real when shared.” — McCandless
We had a fun time seeing the matinee of Paddington in Peru today. He is an incredibly cute bear. 🍿
We went to Captain America: Brave New World tonight. This was a “gift” from Tammy and Tyler who don’t care for Super Hero movies at all. I think they can be a lot of fun. I thought it was a good movie — exactly what I was expecting. 🍿
We all watched Scrapper tonight. It was loved by critics and won multiple awards. For us it moved very slow and was too much “in your face” indie. The story was good and all, but a rare case of a movie we almost stopped watching.
We watched Game Night tonight. Fun movie!
We watched Inception tonight. Tammy and I are both sure we saw it when it was released but didn’t remember much of anything. Tyler thought it was a really good movie. 🍿
We watched Fly Me to the Moon tonight and I thought it was a great movie. Tammy liked it too and Tyler was a bit bored. Enjoyable movie with a fun story all in the context of the Apollo program and landing on the moon!
We went to A Complete Unknown today at the iconic Heights Theater. I thought the movie was great and Timothée Chalamet did a great performance as Bob Dylan. Now I want to listen to Dylan music for the next several weeks. It was also great to hear a couple of Minneapolis callouts. Great movie! 🍿
If you set out to make a modern version of Die Hard you would end up with exactly Carry-On. It is a fast paced action movie set in an airport on Christmas Eve and the good guys win in the end. I thought Jason Bateman was great in it. 🍿
We all went to Mufasa: The Lion King tonight at Edina 4. I’ve always enjoyed the Lion King movies and this was a great one as well. 🍿
We had a fun time watching Red One tonight. We like Dwayne Johnson movies and Christmas to boot. Was fun! 🎅💪🏆
The Matrix
I have wanted to watch The Matrix with Tyler for a while. I remember seeing it in the theater and being blown away by the film. I was also taken aback that it was released 25 years ago. Yikes.
I was tentative about the R-rating. I visited the Common Sense Media reviews for The Matrix and the average parent review suggested it was fine for 12 and up. A 25 year old R-rating isn’t what it used to be it seems. With further inspection I decided it was fine so we rented a fresh 4K version from iTunes, versus the DVD rip I have on Plex, and fired it up.
I had forgotten that it was AI that they were fighting against. It was interesting to see that storyline in the context of AI that we have today. The cell phones were comical in design dating before the glass slab era. Bullet time was amazing back then but not very notable given todays effects. The story was still very interesting and well done. We both liked it.
Tammy and I went to A Real Pain tonight. I thought it was fine and a bit boring. The reviews say it is “powerfully funny” which I didn’t get at all. It also seemed odd that [Kieran Culkin](Kieran Culkin)’s character behavior seemed so similar to Roman Roy. 🤷♂️
