Two Movies and a Book

Actually had a little time off at the end of the month. Possibly my last days off until Thanksgiving if the rumors are true. Managed to squeeze in some movie watching and book reading.

Read on for some thoughts on THOR: RAGNAROK, PHOENIX FORGOTTEN, and Rachel Bach's novel  Fortune's Pawn.

 

THOR: RAGNAROK (2017)

Directed by Taika Waititi 

Written by Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Tessa Thompson, and Jeff Goldblum

First off, if you haven't seen director Taika Waititi's WHAT WE DO IN SHADOWS, you should really check it out. It does for vampire movies what SHAUN OF THE DEAD did for zombie films. It's hilarious and I really hope the rumored sequel shows up someday.

If you have seen it, then the type and amount of humor present in THOR: RAGNAROK won't come as that much of a surprise. The Marvel Cinematic Universe movies have never been one to shy away from humor, and the trend continues here. Chris Hemsworth is a funny guy as evidenced in the recent GHOSTBUSTER reboot/remake and the shorts featuring Thor and his roommate and it's nice to see it here, tho sometimes the humor I think detracted from some pretty serious things going on. Still, it is fun seeing Thor and Loki doing their squabbling brother thing and Loki's reaction to the Hulk's first appearance got a good laugh from the audience I was with.

Cate Blanchett as Hela not surprisingly rules the screen when she's on it, even if she appears to be about 90% CGI most of the time,  and Jeff Goldblum plays the role he was born to play - namely, Jeff Goldblum.

As is the norm for these things, it's full of nods both to the comic history and to other goings-on in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but nothing too overwhelming. Heck, I appreciate their willingness to believe the audience is out there keeping up with things.

I haven't looked at numbers but I'm guessing it'll do pretty well at the box office. I usually hit up the first Friday showings (in 3D if available) because I can often be about the only one around and for this movie, there was actually an audience.

And people are finally catching on. Once the end credits started - no one moved. Yes, there's a mid-credits and an end-of-credits tag on this one, too.

 

PHOENIX FORGOTTEN (2017)

Directed by Justin Barber

Written by T.S. Nowlin, Justin Barber

Starring Florence Hartigan, Luke Spencer Roberts, Chelsea Lopez, Justin Mathews

From IMDb:

"20 years after three teenagers disappeared in the wake of mysterious lights appearing above Phoenix, Arizona, unseen footage from that night has been discovered, chronicling the final hours of their fateful expedition."

Yeah, I've mentioned a few times that I'm not really that fond of the 'found-footage' stuff. But I keep watching them because they keep making them about stuff I'm interested in - in this case, basing the story on the real "Phoenix Lights" incident.

For the kids out there, in March of 1997 hundreds, if not thousands, of people saw a mysterious string of lights in the sky over Phoenix, Arizona. The Air Force reacted in their typical fashion, at first stating nothing was going on and then later when the story didn't go away tried to explain it as a series of flares dropped during an exercise despite many witnesses describing the lights as ringing a solid object which blocked their view of the stars. The Governor of Arizona at the time played it off with a joking press conference which included a staffer dressed up as an alien, but later, after he was out of office, admitted he'd seen a UFO and called the Phoenix Lights "otherworldly." 

This movie uses that as its jumping off point. You see, back in '97 Josh Bishop and his friends Ashley Foster and Mark Abrams went investigating in the desert and never came back. Their car was found, along with a video camera and a tape, but nothing definitive ever surfaced as to their fate.

Twenty years later, Josh's little sister Sophie goes looking for answers. Part of the movie is Sophie's investigation as she interviews people that knew the missing teens and people who were involved in the search afterwards, and the rest is the recovered footage Josh shot.

I'll tell you right now, if you've seen several of these things, you already know pretty much what happens. Story-wise, there aren't many surprises. The best parts for me were the kids getting together before going on their ill-fated road trip and their interactions on the way. Once in the desert, it becomes every other found-footage movie - lots of wandering around in the dark, lots of weird noises, and eventually...something happens and the movie ends right when it gets to the good part.

As found-footage stuff goes, I thought it was a little better than most. Being backed by Ridley Scott's production company probably helped out some.

Amazon.com description:

"Devi Morris isn't your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It's a combination that's going to get her killed one day - but not just yet.

That is, until she just gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn't misnamed: it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she's found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her Plan. But the Fool doesn't give up its secrets without a fight, and one year on this ship might be more than even Devi can handle.


If Sigouney Weaver in Alien met Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, you'd get Deviana Morris -- a hot new mercenary earning her stripes to join an elite fighting force. Until one alien bite throws her whole future into jeopardy."

I get spoilery, just so you know....



I'm more of a pulp sci-fi fan than I am a fan of hard s-f. I also really like the Mass Effect series. Reading the description, Fortune's Pawn by Rachel Bach sounded like something that could scratch that itch.


It started off fine for me. Devi is tough and driven to be the best. I'm down with that. She signs on to a ship that runs into far more trouble than it should, hoping to catch the eye of the most elite armored unit around. I'm down with that. There's a bit of a mystery as to what the captain is up to and just why the heck does ship run into so much trouble? I'm down with that.


And then she meets the ship's cook, and before long the book takes a hard turn into ultra-cliche romance novel territory. We're talking a cook who's "tall, dark, and handsome" with long hair and long fingers and a "secret" that means they "can't be together." We even get a scene in the rain where he tells her to stay away because it's "too dangerous" (which, aside from being totally cliche doesn't seem like the best argument to use against someone who was specifically looking for the most dangerous job she could find). I'm sorry but I wasn't down with all that. I don't mind the idea of my main characters hooking up and/or falling for each other (again - Mass Effect fan, remember?) but this was all way too much, especially for a book with a description that doesn't bring up the romance angle at all.


If you like your romance novels with a pinch of sci-fi action, this will probably work for you but if you're looking for sci-fi action with maybe a bit of romance, I'd say look elsewhere.