The Queen of Katwe

A couple weeks ago I was visiting someone's home and they invited our kids to watch the Queen of Katwe. I had only heard about the title before and I have not seen any movies since I've been living in Africa so I was looking forward to watching a video with my kids.

I came in after it started so I didn't see it all, but the movie is about a poor family in Uganda who start playing chess and get very good at it to the point that the daughter is able to travel around the world while representing her country in international play. It takes place over a period of five years and features some of the struggles she experienced and how her chess coach and family helped her along the way. The main character is eventually is able to purchase a home for her single mother and family from the success of her efforts. Sorry- I guess that was a spoiler.

This movie is a nice feel good movie based on a true story. The cinematography was also very impressive with beautiful colors and backdrops but I felt it was a little too cleaned up as if were a travel promo for Uganda. I understand it is a Disney produced movie, but it is about people living in poverty in the slums of Africa but all the clothes, colors, and scenery were spotless and I didn't recall seeing any garbage or pollution during the film. That's not a big deal but just something that stuck out to me.

Overall The Queen of Katwe was a nice inspirational movie. I give it 6.9 stars.

Summer Movie Update

I have not written many movie reviews this year so it's time to catch up by posting a brief one sentence summary of the movies I've seen and posting them in order that I liked them.

Dunkirk 8.0- Good war movie and an amazing story. You can see my prior post for more details.

Wonder Woman 7.7- It's good to see a DC comic movie finally do well but I think I heard too many over the top reviews and recommendations so I was a expecting something even better than the Godfather.

Spiderman: Homecoming 7.6- Tom Holland does a good job in the latest Spiderman reboot.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 7.5- It was a pretty good sequel to the first one.

War For the Planet of the Apes 7.5- Great special effects. Kind of dark and depressing.

King Arthur 7.2- I was surprised that hardly anyone liked it. I really enjoy Guy Ritchie's style and thought it had the coolest opening battle scene I've seen in a long time.

Masterminds 7.0- One of those dumb yet very funny movies. I actually watched it several times.

Kong: Skull Island  6.9- Cool effects but I didn't ever end up caring much about King Kong or the other characters during the movie.

Keeping up with the Joneses 6.7- Not the best comedy but there were many funny moments.

Ghost in the Shell  6.6- Don't remember a ton about this one except it was kind of Blade Runnery and Scarlet Johansson did not look very Japanese.

The Mummy 6.3- I can't remember the last time I saw a Tom Cruise movie that wasn't very good, but this one fell flat.

Dunkirk

I have to admit I was not familiar with the events at Dunkirk during World War 2 so when I saw the movie trailer I didn’t really get excited to see it until I realized that Christopher Nolan was the director. I have loved all of the movies he has directed so I was wondering how he would put his customary mind spin on a true war story.

The way he added his usual mind exercises into the movie was by telling 3 different stories of 1) the stranded soldiers at the beach, 2) the British citizens who came to their rescue, and 3) the fighter pilots in the air. Each of these three sections took place at a different time rate but all merged together by the end.

Dunkirk portrays the events that took place when 400,000 British troops were forced to retreat from the Nazis to the beaches of France (Dunkirk.) They were stranded and waiting for boats to transport them back across the channel to England, but they were short on boats and the ones they had kept getting bombed from the air or sunk by German submarines. The British ended up sitting on the beach unable to defend themselves properly from their attackers and were forced to just wait for a miracle.

I liked Dunkirk, but like most good war movies, it reminds us how much war sucks. Even though I liked it I can’t say I’d be super excited to see it again. It was not very graphic like Saving Private Ryan or some other war films, but it was still pretty bleak and depressing in nature until the end.

I give Dunkirk 8.0 stars.

Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed is a movie based on a video game which should have been a red flag for me, but to be fair it was probably better than a Donkey Kong or Pac Man movie.

Michael Fassbender stars as a troubled man who is executed in prison early in the movie. We later find out that his death was staged and he was preserved by a secret organization that need him for their experiment since he is a direct descendant of ancient Spanish Assassins. They have a machine which allows him to transport back in time so he can experience what his ancestor in Spain experienced. In this movie there is an ongoing battle between the Templars and the Assassins. The Templars are trying to find the original apple from Eden which is made of gold and contains a DNA code that will some how allow the them to take away free will from mankind and thus eliminate violence.

This movie had a great cast with several distinguished actors but I just had a hard time getting into it. I also got tired of watching a CG hawk fly around in so many of the transition scenes.

The parts of this movie I enjoyed the most were when the main character transported to Spain during the inquisition. The fighting and escape scenes in Spain were more entertaining than the modern day parts of the movie. I also didn't care for the ambiguity of trying to determine who the heroes and villains were. Both the Assassins and Templars seemed like jerks with bad intentions but the movie obviously features the assassin's viewpoint.

I am usually a sucker for time travel movies but I can only give Assassin's Creed 6.3 stars.

Movie Summaries from 2016

8 years of reviews

This last year I probably watched twice as many movies as I did in 2015 thanks to Vidangel. They also just had their site shut down this week due to lawsuits from big movie studios. Anyway I have loved their service and hope they can work the legal issues out and get some kind of editing service going again in the future. There are many rated R movies that look appealing but I don't want to sit through 50 F-bombs and other questionable content when I watch a movie so until they come back you wont be seeing any rated R movie reviews.

Here is the summary for the movies I that came out in 2016 ranked from best to worst.

Rogue One -8.3
The Force Awakens 8.2
Arrival 8.0
Captain America Civil War 7.9
The Jungle Book 7.9
Doctor Strange 7.8
Bridge of Spies 7.8
Sully- 7.7
Batman vs. Superman 7.4
Spectre 7.3
Inside Out 7.3
Creed 7.3
X-Men: Apocalypse  7.2
Jason Bourne 7.1
Antman 7.1
The Intern 7.0
Legend of Tarzan 6.8
Star Trek 6.8
The Shallows 6.8
Central Intelligence 6.7
Ben Hur 6.6
Suicide Squad 6.5
Hail Cesar 6.5
War Craft 6.2
The Fifth Wave 5.9

Edited Movies Watched on Vidangel during 2016  (some of these are older movies)
Gone Girl 8.4
Inglourious Basterds 8.3
Django Unchained 8.2
The Kingdom 8.0
Sicario 8.0
Shaun of the Dead 8.0
No Country for Old Men 7.9
The Butterfly Effect 7.9
The Revenant 7.8
28 Days Later 7.8
Gran Torino 7.8
Kingsman: The Secret Service 7.8
Ex Machina 7.7
Lone Survivor 7.7
Looper 7.7
13 Hours 7.6
District 9  7.6
Cloud Atlas 7.5
Equalizer 7.5
The Gift 7.5
Drive 7.5
Spy 7.4
10 Cloverfield Lane 7.4
127 Hours 7.4
Prometheus 7.3
Southpaw 7.3
Zombieland 7.3
John Wick 7.2
Snowpiercer 7.2
Shooter 7.0
Safe House 7.0
28 Weeks Later 7.0
Safe House 7.0
Horrible Bosses 6.9
Focus 6.9
Book of Eli 6.8
Elysium 6.7
Olympus Has Fallen 6.7
Lucy 6.6
London Has Fallen 6.4
Escape Plan 6.1