Watched a crapton of movies as the covid booster headache didn't go away. At least in America, youtube has quite a good selection of movies on there for free.
-The Lawnmower Man: Early 90s scifi movie, sort of a cross between Flowers for Algernon and Akira. Not bad, the computer graphics were clearly impressive for the time and cheezy fun now, and it reminded me of the "virtual reality' graphics used in
that one Community episode. (JESUS WEPT!) Fun, but no need to seek it out.
-Sum of All Fears: Standard Tom Clancy technothriller. Ben Affleck is too pretty to play Jack Ryan (and only has two facial expressions, confused and constipated), and reworking him from a high ranked analysis to a junior cube-rat introduces a lot of strange decisions and plot holes; particularly once Ryan realized the bomb did not contain Russian uranium. Still, watchable as far as technothrillers go.
-Titan AE: Don Bluth (Anastasia, Rats of NIMH guy) animated sci-fi movie. An alien race destroys Earth, scattering humanity to the corners of the galaxy. Plot and characters are derivative with a lot of similarities to Treasure Planet, but competent voice work with outstanding animation and visual design. If you liked Atlantis or Treasure Planet, watch Titan AE.
-The Man in the Iron Mask (1998): Three Musketeers come out of retirement to replace their corrupt king. Enjoyable, but really talky with not as much swordfighting and swashbuckling as I hoped. On a good side, the movie does a good job setting up each of the musketeers and their traits, but on the bad side it takes a really long time. In a 2 hour movie there can't be much more than 10 minutes of action. Some of that may be due to how unfamiliar people are with the Three Musketeers these days. The movie felt like the end of a trilogy, not a stand alone movie, and had to rely heavily on telling not showing as a result. Not bad, but no need to seek it out unless you want to see a really young Leonardo diCaprio as the King of France.
