To be sure, part of it is worrying about competition. There was another drought when Kong versus Godzilla came out - no one wanted to compete with the 8 million pound gorilla. So now we have Cruella, which is also on Disney Plus, and then In The Heights and Fast and Furious 9 are coming out. I just wish Disney would release a bunch of films to the theater that they put on Disney Plus at the start of the pandemic. We have deliberately not watched Mulan because we want to see it in a nice big theater.
I think I'm gonna make my first theater visit in about 16 months in a few days. Planning to go see A Quiet Place II. Been two weeks since my second shot, I'm all vaxxed up and ready to go!
If you can, and it's not too expensive, it's totally worth seeing that film in Dolby Cinema. The sound design is astounding.
In the Heights OMG, movie of the year for me! I cannot imagine seeing another film this year that I enjoy more than this one. I was completely unfamiliar with In the Heights before I saw it today, although I am a big Lin-Manuel Miranda fan from having seen and loved both Hamilton and Moana. I think In the Heights tops them both. The one person I know who saw the stage show of In the Heights told me it was better than Hamilton. She was right. The music was absolutely wonderful, and I cared about every character. I got choked up several times, sometimes from the music alone, and sometimes from the combination of the music and what was going on with the characters. I think I will be seeing this one again!!
Vickie and I were able to see this a month ago as a special AMC sneak preview. I called my theater geek niece afterwards and told her that she'd love it. We met for breakfast this morning and found that she saw it last night, and indeed, she did. She loved the Original Cast Recording and was disappointed that they had removed a few favorite songs and a couple of characters, but we both agreed that a three and a half hour musical would be a bit of a hard sell. We're seeing it again tonight in Dolby Cinema. I'll also get the captioning device so I can get all the words.
We saw the first of two films of today about half an hour ago - Renny Harlin's The Misfits. Really dumb. We knew it would be dumb going in, but what the hell, we were able to see it at no additional cost to us due to AMC's A*List. If you wonder just how bad a film with both Pierce Brosnan and Tim Roth could be, this film is the answer. Both were the best things in the film, and it was a diversion. We're killing some time before we go see In The Heights in Dolby Cinema, and we've seen it before and know that it's excellent.
Tenet It’s popped up in Sky Cinema now as well, though I don’t feel the desire to rewatch it anytime soon.
Before yesterday, last theater visit was January of 2020. But I've been the past two days. A Quiet Place Pt 2 - solid, I guess. Didn't disappoint me, but didn't wow me. I don't think I ever felt it as tense as the first one. Not interested in any furtherance of this story. Censor - I was excited to see this after reading Kurt Loder's review, and it was decent, but didn't quite grab me the way I hoped.
Just got out of 12 Mighty Orphans. Neither of us have any interest in sports, but find sports movies enjoyable. It is exactly as the trailer promised, a crowd-pleasing story of a depression era, scrappy, ragtag group of orphans led by a coach who believes that they can beat football teams that are bigger, better equipped... blah blah blah.
Just got out of a documentary: Rita Moreno: Just A Girl Who Decided To Go For It. To be honest, it's one of those things that probably would work just as well on television. We saw it because we have AMC's A*List, and why not?
Our second film of the evening was Edgar Wright's documentary about the band Sparks called The Sparks Brothers. Neither my wife or I were knowledgeable about the band, but it was a very enjoyable documentary. There was a bit about about this forum's favorite band that had me helpless with laughter.
Haha. I’m planning on seeing both of these this weekend myself. . The fact we are seeing the same films just shows how few films are out there right now. Now that I’m on summer break from school, I was hoping I would be able to go to weekday matinées instead of just on the weekends, but no such luck - there are still only evening shows on weekdays around here. Oh well, maybe later in the summer. Going to the movies on a hot summer day during the week is one of my favorite things to do.
It's difficult some weeks to use up all three A*List reservations. There are only three films playing at AMC Studio 28 that we haven't seen - an anime film called Demon Slayer The Movie: Mugen Train (as opposed to, I suppose, Demon Slayer The Dessert Topping), The House Next Door: Meet The Blacks and The Devil Made Me Do It: The Conjuring. They have brought some films back, like the Denzel Washington film Fences and tomorrow we'll be seeing Love and Basketball. So it's worth checking all your local theater listings.
The Rita Moreno film would definitely be fine to watch on TV. And it will probably show up there shortly, if it’s not there already, as I noticed during the credits that it’s a PBS film. I enjoyed this film a lot, on several levels. I did not know much about Rita going into this film, other than her role in West Side Story, which is one of my favorite films of all time. (Steven Spielberg, you have a lot to live up to later this year!) At 90 (!) years old (87 in this film), she is a force of nature. If I am fortunate enough to survive to that age, I hope I am able to live exactly as she is in this film - which is exactly the same as she ever was! What an inspiration!
The trailer looked great. The most enjoyable part for me was my wife discovering that both Rita and Morgan Freeman were in The Electric Company, a show she was completely unfamiliar with. She told me later that she was wondering why he appeared in the movie - were they friends? She didn't recall them being in any films together.
I am also completely unfamiliar with The Electric Company, so that was a surprise to me too. I am too old to have watched that show as a child. (I am more the Wonderama/Captain Kangaroo generation.). And I have no children of my own, so missed knowing about The Electric Company via that path as well.
I'm 60 and was past the age demographic, but I watched a lot of the children's afternoon television programs, mostly out of boredom. Electric Company, Mr Rogers's Neighborhood (major crush on Betty Aberlain) but my all-time favorite show when I was a kid was Make A Wish with Tom Chapin.
And this was my second film of the weekend. Like you, I knew nothing about this band (other than their name, for me). It surprised me that I did not recognize even one song by a band that is liked by so many musicians. I thought for sure I’d recognize at least one, but nope! In spite of that, I really enjoyed this. It was so very entertaining and funny, and did not seem 2 hrs 21 minutes long at all. I looked up the director, Edgar Wright, when I got home, and see he also directed Baby Driver, which I really liked, and somehow he made this music documentary as fast-paced and enjoyable as that film. As for the music of Sparks, it’s not really my kind of thing. However, I was familiar with that “this forum’s favorite band” moment you’re talking about (I think - the music video), and now I knew who he was supposed to be! I laughed out loud. It is interesting that Sparks is involved in the upcoming film Annette, which was already on my radar due to the involvement of Adam Driver. I recommend this film to any music fan. There will be some musician you like on screen raving about this band, and overall it is very, very funny and entertaining.