Monthly Archives: March 2017

Kong: Skull Island review

18 Saturday Mar 2017

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‘Twas beauty killed the—what’s that. He’s still alive? Oh… well never mind then.

by Thom Yee

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Kong: Skull Island images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

So, I’ve never actually seen the original King Kong, not all the way through or all in one sitting at least. That’s not something I regret either despite being ‘the movie guy’ in my group of friends and despite being a person who prides himself on his knowledge of movie history. It may ultimately be a failing on my part, but I just don’t have a great deal of patience when it comes to the classics, and, as has been the case with Citizen Kane, The Graduate, or Scarface, I doubt that I’m going to see the original King Kong anytime soon. I’ve seen parts of it of course, the same way we’ve all watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory, pressed the wrong floor in a cramped elevator, or eaten at Subway, but there was never any intentionality behind those viewings, so while I have a pretty good idea of what the movie was about, I don’t really know what people see in it. But I have seen the 2014 Godzilla. Continue reading →

Logan review

11 Saturday Mar 2017

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Ew… no! Blood! Unngh!

by Thom Yee

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Logan images courtesy of 20th Century Fox

The last time we checked in on a Wolverine movie was in 2013’s The Wolverine, a small, self-contained little story where Wolverine travelled to Japan and was charged with the care of the rich heiress and granddaughter of a soldier whose life he saved in World War II that quickly and drastically grew less small and less self-contained when that same soldier wound up betraying Wolverine in a bid to steal his youth-imbuing healing factor. I know that’s a bit more than a spoiler (and a really long and convoluted sentence), but, frankly, eff that movie and its weird Viper-snake-ladies, its ridiculous Silver Samurais, and its jump-right-off-the-rails-of-sanity third act after its much more even-toned first two [acts]. Besides The Wolverine’s bullet train sequence, there is almost no reason to see that movie, at least not in its entirety. Continue reading →

Get Out review

04 Saturday Mar 2017

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You cool like dat? I’m cool like that.

by Thom Yee

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Get Out images courtesy of Universal Pictures

One of the most cogent and convincing arguments I’ve ever heard in my life was about cheating:

“If you can take advantage of a situation in some way, it’s your duty … to do it. Why should the race always be to the swift, or the Jumble to the quick-witted? Should they be allowed to win merely because of the gifts God gave them? Well I say, ‘Cheating is the gift man gives himself.'”

Eugenics isn’t explicit in that statement, but I think it is implicit, and eugenics, or at least the idea of pre-determining a preferred path based on your beliefs on superior genetic traits, is an idea at the core of Get Out. Continue reading →