Aloha

Way too much going on in this movie.  Way too many relationships, an old flame, a new flame, but do we even care about this guy?  He's a scientist?  Gets blown up in Afganistan/Iraq doing something sciencey.  He's working for a billionaire that ends up being some kind of a bad guy.  So maybe they just wanted to do a movie set in Hawaii?  Paid vacation?

I usually enjoy the choices that these actors make.  Bradley Cooper, Bill Murray, Danny McBride, Alec Baldwin, Emma Stone, et al. all amazing talent.  And there were good, memorable scenes, John Krasinski playing the strong silent pilot guy (but they showed this great scene in the trailer).  There were good scenes at the officers club with Bill Murray dancing with Emma Stone.  Just too much goodness in this one.  Maybe it was the editing, or the story was too convoluted.  A launch, trying to get land from the Hawaiians, love stories, old flames, new flames, . . . some type of spiritual thing going on.

I think I was disappointed by this movie because there were so many amazing people in it, and it did not deliver.

Ex Machina

This was an interesting movie.  An AI test, with the subtext of gender issues, and sexualized robots.  Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Sonoya Mizuno, and Oscar Isaac were all very good.

I thought it was a very smart movie that raised many questions.  I think one was the sexualization of the AI.  The AI having a gender, and a sexy body definitely confused the whole issue and the test of the AI.  I think it was interesting how the AI wanted to survive and was willing to do anything to survive, lie, cheat, and kill.  And the open ended ending was awesome.  To think of some AI wandering around out there doing what it needed to do to survive.  Interesting.

I have to admit that I was uncomfortable with the sexualization of the robots.  I see it as fetishistic.  It kind of makes me squirm.  It combines this whole inability of someone to relate to other people with sex, artificial inteligence, kind of confusing the whole issue.  I guess it is kind of a meeker version of the Terminator movie.  

Mad Max: Fury Road

Road, Roooaaaddd.  Road.  It is a funny word to say.  This is a reference to a David Spade scene, I think in Black Sheep, a very funny scene I think of whenever the word "road" comes up.  Ok, not everytime the word comes up, but sometimes.

Fury Road is the long awaited reboot of the Mad Max franchise that helped make our favorite antisemitic Aussie film star Mel Gibson so famous.

This one has Tom Hardy as the Mad Max character.  I enjoyed this movie quite a bit, but there was a tiny bit of frustration with Max's slowness in getting involved in the fight.  That was my only problem with this film.  Max seemed too concerned with his own survival.  Overrall, amazing special effects, costuming, editing, performances.  It was an amazing film.

Hot Pursuit

Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara do very well together in this movie.  I definitely laughed hard a few times.  Witherspoon's character was a strict cop, while Vergara's character was the spouse of a drug kingpin.  I thought it was interesting that most of the male characters were played by mostly unrecognizable actors.  Kind of refreshing.  I loved the combination of the characters accents, the Southern and the Spanish.  All in all it was a fun movie.