While working underground to fix a water main, Brooklyn plumbers—and brothers—Mario and Luigi are transported down a mysterious pipe and wander into a magical new world. But when the brothers are separated, Mario embarks on an epic quest to find Luigi.
This movie is like a video game display copy. It looks amazing but when you open it up there is literally nothing inside.
★★
A disgraced internet personality attempts to win back his followers by livestreaming one night alone in a haunted house. But when he accidentally pisses off a vengeful spirit, his big comeback event becomes a real-time fight for his life.
After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War, the universe is in ruins due to the efforts of the Mad Titan, Thanos. With the help of remaining allies, the Avengers must assemble once more in order to undo Thanos' actions and restore order to the universe once and for all, no matter what consequences may be in store.
This was my second watch and, now the hype dust has settled, I think we can say this is an fairly average entry in the MCU.
There is no arguement that this movie contains some of the greatest moments in comic book movie history. Obviously, if you score it purely on “those moments” alone it’s a five star masterpiece. And to pull together such an enormous cast into one movie, without it being a total disaster is, again, worthy of so much praise.
But… the plot (hilariously) is straight out of an Ant-Man movie and makes next to no sense. And, like all Ant-Man movies, establishes “rules” and then just breaks them. The extent to which it tries to wring emotion out of the audience, during the first two acts, is tedious and becomes wearing. This is especially true considering how easily accessed this emotion is during key moments. No wonder my 9 year old was so bored.
However, you just can’t overlook “those moments”, and some of the character arcs, especially Thor and Stark, are very satisfying. There’s still plenty to like about this.
★★★½
Klaus Badelt · Song · 2003
He’s a Pirate by Klaus Badelt
Just when his time under house arrest is about to end, Scott Lang once again puts his freedom at risk to help Hope van Dyne and Dr. Hank Pym dive into the quantum realm and try to accomplish, against time and any chance of success, a very dangerous rescue mission.
There are a lot of good things in this but let’s start with bad ones…
The “physics” – most importantly, I cannot suspend my disbelief to the extent required. Shrunken things keep their mass when it’s convenient yet lose it when not. The pocket tank in Ant-Man is the tip of the iceberg. I just can’t. I’m sorry.
The story – the majority of the film is a goober hunt. To make it worse, we have two sub-plots with other parties also seeking the goober. Even worse, their motivations are simplistic or nonsense. We also have at least two other subplots on the go.
The length – it’s 2 hours. You have one almost entirely redundant sub-plot, which you could have ditched and saved 20-20 minutes. Yes, it is requied for one of the key action setpieces but, you know, try harder?
On the plus side, we get:
Jimmy Woo – excellent character
The Wasp (Mk 2) – now Hope isn’t quite so (justifiably) angry (about everything) it’s easier to warm to her and she is an excellent superhero
Luis’s best flashback monologue by far – enough said
Bobby Cannavale’s cop dishing out those hugs – super-wholesome
Super action – there are some excellent setpieces
But, overall, I just couldn’t wait for it to be over.
★★
Chris and his girlfriend Rose go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family's overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter's interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.
The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
I added a new custom view to my Outlook Tasks but it automatically put it at the end of the Current View list in the Outlook Tasks Home Ribbon:
Obviously I want it in the top row so I don’t have to go digging. You can’t drag and drop them in either the “Manage Views…” dialog box or in the UI. I found this on a quick search: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/outlook-contacts-can-you-arrange-the-views-in-the/8e6d9609-a57f-47e2-af3c-74fa54bb8faf
TL;DR – you can’t manually rearrange them…
But that doesn’t make sense because I clearly have in the past. “Maybe it only shows four ‘custom’ views or it’s (somehow) alphabetical,” I wondered. To test this, I went to “Manage Views…” I copied a View and renamed it and… it automatically sorted all of my custom Views in alphabetical order to the top of the list!
It seems that any rename will trigger this re-sort.
Megan Turner, a rookie NYC cop, foils an armed robbery on her first day and then engages in a cat-and-mouse game with one of the witnesses who becomes obsessed with her.
The premise is decent but as a film it doesn’t have much personality. Some props to Ron Silver who is convincingly unhinged and good ol’ Clancy Brown for actually being somewhat likeable!
★★★½
A punk rock band becomes trapped in a secluded venue after finding a scene of violence. For what they saw, the band themselves become targets of violence from a gang of white power skinheads, who want to eliminate all evidence of the crime.
