I saw A Wrinkle In Time in the IMAX theater on opening night, and loved it. The film is beautiful, and the younger cast members were absolutely brilliant, especially Storm Reid and Derek McCabe.

It’s been decades since I read the book. In fact, it’s been so long that I barely remember it, so I can’t speak to whether or not the film is faithful to the finer points of the source material. I am, however, confident that the film is quite faithful to the theme of the book.

The film didn’t have as much explanation of tesseracts  as I hoped it would, but there were several scenes that at least paid homage to the various pop-sci explanations of higher-dimensional math. In particular, the shadows of the rafters against the sloped ceiling of Meg’s room created some interesting patterns. The shadows were not mentioned at all—they just existed, and it made me happy to see that somebody framed the shot to display a lower-dimensional projection of a higher-dimensional object.

Some of the dialog seemed a little “on-the-nose” to me, but it worked on me so I can’t complain. A Wrinkle in Time is only the third film I’ve gotten around to seeing this year, and enters my list at #2, just below my Threshold of Awesome, but well above my Threshold of Disappointment.

Annihilation did some magnificent things, but ultimately it didn’t tell a story that I enjoyed very much. I can’t complain at all about the acting, the effects, the camera work, or the sound design, because everything was spot on, and much of it was outstanding. What was missing, however, was a surprising-yet-inevitable reveal that could recontextualize all the alien weirdness for the viewer, giving us a truly satisfying ending.

Annihilation had a lot going for it, but I wanted it to be something other than what it was. I liked it, but I didn’t really enjoy it, and so it slips past my Threshold of Disappointment.

(NOTE: This review is a bit late, yes. My bad. I’ve been super busy.)

I saw Black Panther on Friday afternoon during its opening weekend, and while I really enjoyed it, I must acknowledge that my experience in the theater was different from the experience of a great many movie goers whose skin color is different from mine.

I identified most with Martin Freeman’s character, and loved the way he responded to being an alien in a world he didn’t know existed. Other viewers will likely identify more closely with Chadwick Boseman’s character, or Lupita Nyong’o’s, or Letitia Wright’s. I loved all the characters, but I don’t see myself in all of them, at least not to the same degree.

This strongly supports my belief that the stories we tell should reflect the diversity of us humans. It matters. 

To my eye, the film’s biggest weakness is the plot device it has in common with several Marvel films of the past decade: Iron Man fights a bigger, badder Iron Man. Ant Man fights a bigger¹, badder Ant Man. Hulk vs a bigger-badder Hulk. Doctor Strange vs. a bigger-badder wizard.

In short, Hero fights Villain who has the same suite of abilities as Hero, but is better equipped to use them.

It’s not a bad formula, but it’s gotten predictable. Fortunately, Black Panther had plenty of non-mirror conflicts going on, and the formulaic one, Black Panther vs Killmonger, served really well as a climactic statement of the movie’s central theme. Of the MCU² films using this device, I think Black Panther gets the most out of it.

Black Panther was great, and I look forward to adding the Blu-Ray to my collection for repeated viewings. It was also the first film I saw this year, so it takes my “most fun I’ve had in the theater this year” slot by default, which is a much lower bar than the film deserves to clear.

¹ Yes, both of them were pretty small, but the yellow one was still bigger. Also, weaponized.
² I’m looking forward to Avengers: Infinity War, but what I really want now is the Shuri/Valkyrie/Gamora team-up.³
³ Directed by Patty Jenkins, obviously.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was every bit as much fun as I hoped it would be. In part this is because I saw it with my sixteen-year-old daughter, but mostly it’s because the folks on-screen were simply delightful. Also, yay  video game physics!

It clears my Threshold of Awesome, and takes slot #6. Yes this means I did in fact have more fun at the second Jumanji  than I had at the ninth Star Wars.