Minions crossed my Threshold of Disappointment, which is quite an accomplishment considering the fact that I really didn’t expect much from it.

I think the core problem was that I didn’t care. Nothing seemed to be at stake. Sure, there were some funny moments, and the animation was brilliant, but ultimately the film failed to connect with me anywhere.

Like Penguins of Madagascar, Minions attempts to take hilarious side characters and extend the hilarity to a feature film. Minions was hobbled by one of the key rules of the setting: the Minions themselves must never speak intelligibly.

Remember WALL-E? Imagine the first act of that story with a narrator interpreting it all for us.

That is exactly what happened for the opening scenes of Minions. I don’t mind having a narrator set the tone, and Geoffrey Rush was great at that, but when the narrator must tell me what a character is thinking, feeling, and saying, something has gone terribly wrong.

Minions enters my list at #16. If you’ve got kids who are begging to see this, my advice is to take the money you would have spent on that, and buy something cool for them with it. Then rent this when it comes out on DVD.

I’m listening to the Terminator: Genisys soundtrack, by Lorne Balfe, as I write this. It is quite good.

Per my remarks on Twitter, Terminator: Genisys is NOT the movie in which Starbuck says to Sarah Connor “this is my friend Neo. We’re here to help with your robot problem.” That impossibly wonderful crossing of the streams was my brother Randy’s idea, and we both know that it’s something we’ll never have.  Perhaps our grandchildren will get it on SpacePirateBay, or Googazon’s hTube, but it will never be ours.

Terminator: Genisys does manage to cross some streams, though, and to great effect. If you’re familiar with the first two films, and perhaps a little confused by the third, the fourth, and the TV show, (the confusion results because you’re trying to use the word “continuity” in conjunction with the words”time” and  “travel,”) you will find that  Terminator: Genisys plays with all of the source material, and will reward those familiar with the franchise for paying attention.

(As of this writing the original Terminator film, starring the inimitable Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor, is available on Netflix. Should you watch it first? Maybe!)

I would have enjoyed the film much more had I not seen so many cool reveals in the trailers. They telegraph quite a bit of what’s coming, but the studio did manage to hold a few things back, and the surprises were delightful. I want to talk about those things, and how effectively the story turned expectations upside down, but then you’ll have less fun in the theater than I did, and that is almost the exact opposite of what I should be causing to happen with these reviews.

Emilia Clarke, who plays Sarah Connor, initially struck me as looking far too young and tiny for the role. Funny thing: she’s within a year of the same age Linda Hamilton was when she defined Sarah Connor for us in 1984’s Terminator.

Despite being four inches shorter than Hamilton, Clarke had me convinced by the end of the movie. It’s probably because she’s a fine actress, and has that amazing ability to project herself as larger than life. Not having watched enough Game of Thrones to see her as Daenerys, I can’t speak for everything she does, but that particular piece resumé should speak much more loudly to you than anything I say.

Terminator: Genisys did what few* sixth installments in a cinematic franchise do: it crosses my Threshold of Awesome, entering my 2015 list at #8.

Regarding that, it seems that either my standards are slipping, or this is a good year for movies that I enjoy. Or maybe I’ve become a better judge of what I should see in the theater. My Threshold of Disappointment has only been tripped once (Furious 7), and the middle ground between disappointment and awesome is occupied by three titles: Insurgent, Strange Magic, and Seventh Son.

The year is half over. I hope this does NOT mean that I’ve accrued a stack of movie karma that will require balancing in the coming months.

(*Note: sixth installments that cross the Threshold of Awesome: The Avengers in 2012, and The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies in 2014. Sixth installments that don’t?)

I had forgotten how good a proper comedy can be. Spy, starring Melissa McCarthy, did everything right. I laughed hard, and left the theater on that happy high that comes from laughter with, rather than laughter at.

This isn’t a sit-com kind of movie where we laugh at the absurdity that grows out of an absurd situation. It’s a comedy with character, and the absurd situation is actually kind of terrifying. In order to maintain tension we aren’t allowed to laugh at it very much. That’s fine. There’s plenty of funny elsewhere.

After having seen Scarlett Johansson, Charlize Theron, and now Melissa McCarthy in action roles, I’m afraid Scarjo’s Black Widow finishes in a distant third place. Theron’s Furiosa was amazing, and set a new bar, but I’m putting McCarthy’s Susan Cooper over that bar and in first, because she was the only one of the three to ace the delivery of the stand-up-and-cheer moment.

I could write a 5,000-word treatise going into more detail about how this works for me, but I have comics to make and an RPG to write. I’ll just say that Spy clears my Threshold of Awesome, and leaps to the top of my list. I had so much fun…

UPDATE

One of the reasons this movie worked so well for me is that it treats its genre, the super-spy thriller, in much the same way my own Schlock Mercenary treats science fiction.

This quote from writer director Paul Feig is telling:

I’m a big fan of spy movies, and I wanted to create a broad action comedy in that genre. The comedy comes from the characters. It’s not a spoof or satire. The danger and action are genuine. We wanted it to have the tone of a spy film, but still be as funny as we could make it. I also wanted to create a relatable story in which we could all wonder, ‘If I was recruited as a spy and sent on a mission, how might I react?’ —Paul Feig, cited on IMDB

That’s not the only reason it works, but that’s a big one, and for me that was the biggest surprise. I went in expecting a spoof, and what I got instead is the very thing I most love creating.