Kind of a busy week, even down to taking a little more off the shelf than I put up. It got started with Adoring which is exactly the cute comedy about the intersecting lives of people with adorable pets in a pretty nice Beijing neighborhood. Or at least, I think it's Beijing; I'm not yet at the point where I can tell Beijing from Shanghai from the other large mainland cities. It's pretty disposable, like those Garry Marshall holiday movies, but I was kind of in the mood for cute doggies and kitties and piggies.
I was in the mood for some people getting punched in the face the next night, which my copy of Undercover Punch and Gun technically delivered, but it's a lackluster-enough movie that you can see why it's apparently been sitting on a server for a couple years. Good fighters in Philip Ng, Van Ness Wu, and Andy On, a cameo-filled cast, and an occasionally weird sensibility, but somehow it never becomes fun in the way it should.
A few days of weird work schedules later and I was at the Brattle on Friday for the first night of "(Some of the) Best of 2019", which began with the really quite good Atlantics. Not only did I see the Netflix movie without paying for Netflix, I didn't even have to shell out cash for a ticket because of my theater membership. Hardly a genuine bit of rebellion, but I enjoy it.
The next day had some errands including doing laundry at a different, closer, less-fancy-but-about-the-same-price place than usual, and man, no-one was there, there was a soft couch, and no TVs were blaring Spanish Lifetime or the like. Just blissful quiet. After that, I found a way to avoid the Red Line Shuttle to get to Boston Common to check out a couple of war movies: 1917 on the fancy new Dolby Cinema screen and Liberation on the screen physically closest to Chinatown. The first was better for not being flagrant propaganda, but the generally have complementary issues.
Sunday was a long one, but it was an absurdly nice day to walk around. Things started off at the Kendall, where the 3D screenings of Cunningham were down to one matinee a day, and I'm kind of curious about the kid toward the back and what his story was. Was a parent or a sister really into dance and it was decided that there was no need for a sitter what with the movie (probably) rated PG? He wasn't really disruptive, but you could absolutely tell that a 3D portrait of a titan of modern dance was not really his thing.
After that, there was plenty of time to get back to Harvard Square, use a coupon on the wrong sort of USB cable to replace the frayed on on my phone before something went badly awry, and visit Charlie's Kitchen for the first time, despite the fact that one would think that I would have eaten at a place billing itself as "The Double Cheeseburger King" at some point in the last twenty years. I had not, and it was a good, o mussing-around bacon cheeseburger. After that, on to a double feature at the Brattle, where I was happy to finally see Fast Color after it didn't have a regular theatrical run in Boston and its other special screenings didn't work with my schedule. It's good, I continue to love Gugu Mbatha-Raw and David Strathairn, and I'm looking forward to the series.
And then I hung around for Captain Marvel, and didn't realize that I'd never posted my review of it on the blog - but did on my Letterboxd page - because I was kind of busy elsewhere during that time.
Captain Marvel
* * * (out of four)
Seen 12 January 2020 in the Brattle Theatre([Some of] The Best of 2019, DCP)
I think the Brattle had some issues with projection, because the picture looked kind of dim compared to when I saw it in Imax over in Hong Kong. Kind of a shame.
Second time around, it gives off the same feel - absolutely Yet Another Marvel Origin Story, but an example of it being done very well indeed, and, seen eight months after Avengers: Endgame, it doesn't play as if it's just setup.
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