Author Archives: Thom Yee

The Mummy (2017) review

17 Saturday Jun 2017

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Shouldn’t somebody be saying “There’s a storm coming”?

by Thom Yee

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The Mummy (2017) images courtesy of Universal Pictures

The odds are you’re never going to talk to Tom Cruise.  I mean, that’s pretty obvious from the perspective of logic and reason and cosmological significance — the odds are you’re never going to talk to a lot of people, important or otherwise.  Even you and I are probably never going to meet or have a conversation (and you come here to read our reviews all the time, don’t you?). What I mean when I say you’re never going to talk to Tom Cruise is that you’re never going to get to know Tom Cruise.  You’re never really going to meet him.  Maybe you’ll be allowed to ask him a question if you’re lucky and get chosen out of a crowd at a press junket, maybe you’ll hear what seems like a personal anecdote about him from someone you know who works in Hollywood, but Tom Cruise, a world-famous actor, a franchise unto himself and an icon who’s likely to spend the rest of his life in the public eye and leave a body of movie work behind that will be watched, loved, and even studied for generations after?  That’s not someone you’ll ever have a personal conversation with or learn a lot about even if you do somehow find yourself in a position to say something to him. Continue reading →

Wonder Woman review

10 Saturday Jun 2017

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Everybody quiet down!  Women are talking!

by Thom Yee

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Wonder Woman images courtesy of Warners Bros. Pictures

“I respect women incredibly.  I have just amazing admiration and respect for women.  I have more respect for women than anybody would understand. I cherish women.  And I treat women with respect.  I have tremendous respect for women and the many roles they serve that are vital to the fabric of our society and our economy.  I respect women more than I respect men.  We know they believe in certain things that we don’t want to believe in.  I want to help women.  Nobody has more respect for women than I do — that I can tell you.  Nobody.  I have tremendous respect for women.  And women have respect for me.” ~ Donald J. Trump, current POTUS Continue reading →

The Great Wall review

27 Saturday May 2017

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Who did you think was going to headline the movie?  Andy Lau?

by Thom Yee

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The Great Wall images courtesy of Universal Pictures and China Film Group

I never planned to write a review of The Great Wall.

Actually, that’s not quite true, it looked interesting enough to pencil into our schedule after its first trailer dropped, at a time still months away from its eventual release and at a point that I didn’t have to pay it much attention, but as we drew closer and closer to its opening, outrage around the circumstances of the movie only seemed to grow.  Instead of just being a movie, The Great Wall became a lightning rod of appropriation among cultural critics and mediocrity among movie critics.  It’s especially on that latter point that it seemed unlikely we would ever be discussing it at any great length here at GOO Reviews.

But this May… Continue reading →

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 review

13 Saturday May 2017

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“We’re not friends, we’re family.”  Huh, where have I heard that before?

by Thom Yee

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Honestly, it’s starting to feel a little weird that we live in a world where I can talk to my mom about Rocket Raccoon.  At this point, I could probably even talk about Rocket Raccoon with your mom.  We geeks are really getting spoiled right now.

So anyway, the original Guardians of the Galaxy did did very well with us here at GOO Reviews, but the farther we’ve all gotten from it, the more I’ve personally learned to… well, not to dislike it, but to not love it SO much.  Guardians of the Galaxy is a movie defined by extremes, its most visible and memorable elements probably being its colourful comedy and its general wackiness, and though those extremes aren’t necessarily that surprising given that it is a comicbook movie, it still lacks some of the nuance that’s allowed the best superhero movies to endure (even as the most enduring superhero movies usually come across as far more sanctimonious and self-serious).  That doesn’t mean Guardians isn’t well remembered or that it couldn’t or shouldn’t be your favourite superhero movie, but Guardians was the type of movie that left me feeling extremely satisfied at first but ultimately somewhat empty, like a really, really great fast food meal.  Continue reading →

Win It All review

29 Saturday Apr 2017

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To gambling, the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems

by Thom Yee

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Win It All images courtesy of Netflix

Manifest destiny is one of those concepts that’s surprisingly easy to throw around, even if we don’t all have a firm grasp on 19th century colonialism, because it’s so tempting to believe what we’re doing is right. What we’re doing is inevitable. What we’re doing is something we ought to be doing, something that will bring about the way things should be and, perhaps, always should have been. It’s a lot like gambling that way. It’s an act of faith.

Gambling is something you do at least partially because you believe it can help you to meet your end goals. That doesn’t necessarily make it a lot better or an easy thing to condone, but I think it makes it easier to understand. Continue reading →

The Fate of the Furious review

22 Saturday Apr 2017

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Hey!  He did kill Han, right?

by Thom Yee

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The Fate of the Furious images courtesy of Universal Pictures

If you had asked me all those years ago in 2001 as I waited for the lights of our theatre to dim and The Fast and the Furious to begin if I thought it would be a movie that could spawn more than six direct sequels, I probably would’ve asked right back, “Who are you?  Why are you talking to me?”  I was hostile like that.  And I usually didn’t talk to strangers.  But if you had, nevertheless, somehow convinced me to share my honest opinion of the movie and its potential to grow into the powerhouse, box-office-ruling franchise it’s become?  I’d probably say, “Pfft.  Yeah. And the American people will one day elect Donald Trump as their first Nazi President.”

But enough with the misdirection jokes. Continue reading →

Your Name. (Kimi no Na wa) review

15 Saturday Apr 2017

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Where’s Lindsay Lohan when you need her?

by Thom Yee

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Your Name. (Kimi no Na wa) images courtesy of Toho

Did you ever wake up crying and you weren’t sure why? You’ve had a huge swelling of emotions that you could feel like the heat from a roaring fire, and then snap! Just like that, you’re awake; you’ve experienced something of almost unbearable emotional intensity, something deeply draining, something almost alive, but with every second that passes you drift further and further away from whatever it was that made you feel that way. And you forget it. You forget the moments, the details, the places and names, all gradually but surely disappearing with every second that passes. You get up, go to your bathroom, and study yourself in the mirror, the face looking back at you familiar but foreign, and a horrible feeling starts growing in your stomach and your heart, a feeling that tells you that, though it was just a dream, you’ve somehow lost something of infinite value. A feeling so big it makes you want to cry. But you don’t. You have a cat to feed, a humidifier to turn off, and a degrading job to get to, so you wash your face, put your clothes on, eat your cold breakfast, tie up your shoes, step out the door, and try to join the human race. Just like everyone else. Continue reading →

Iron Fist (Season 1) review

08 Saturday Apr 2017

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Ow! My chi!

by Thom Yee

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Iron Fist images courtesy of Marvel Television, ABC Studios, and Netflix

Did you guys know Iron Fist came out? I feel like if I wasn’t actively keeping up with this stuff, I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

Anyway, Iron Fist is just the latest in Marvel’s series of prestige-format Netflix shows focused on the more human side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that began with Daredevil in 2015 before giving us Jessica Jones later that year and Luke Cage just last fall. Though the mandate for the Marvel Netflix shows has been to focus on more grounded stories in the MCU (at least in comparison to the movies), they’ve gradually but definitely moved more and more towards the fantastic. Continue reading →