Quick Reviews of Various Movies!

WOW I haven't written here in so long. Let's say Civil War drained my life energy, because it's not wrong. So here's a short review of everything I've watched since Civil War:

• X-Men: Apocalypse: Despite the strange hate going on about this film which I only learned about later, I really enjoyed XMA! I thought the effects were great, the characters were surprisingly believable and well-developed despite the sheer amount of them, and the plot really sucked you in. The pacing was a little uneven, going from action-packed to suddenly slow (aka Apocalypse and his #squad posing all Instagram-like on sandy dunes, haha), and the villain, as with most superhero movies, was kind of weak in terms of motivation/actual plot to ~dominate the world, but overall I thought it was a clear, straightforward movie, with clear (if not overly simplistic) motivations wrapped in fun action scenes and maximum use of most of the characters' powers. Yay team movies and yay action sequences!
• Highlight/s: Apocalypse giving makeovers to his new friends, Quicksilver being Quicksilver, "Magneto... you ARE the father!", ... was that Wolverine perving on a teenager?

• Finding Dory: Finding Dory was a mixed bag for me. It definitely wasn't as good as Finding Nemo, but it still shone in its own way (and I still cried multiple times in each viewing, so I mean...). As with most Disney Pixar movies, it worked on various levels that could work for both younger and older viewers - or if you don't like age binaries, the thinking crowd and the non-thinking crowd. It had very strong mental health themes without ever having to explicitly mention it, which I liked, because it could get preachy very fast had it been told rather than shown. On one hand, the film knows exactly how to tug at your heartstrings (see: Baby Dory) and how to make you laughcry, but on the other, by the time Dory escapes the Marine Life Institute, the movie kind of goes crazy and stops taking its ties with the human world seriously in terms of what is and isn't plausible - which can be good or bad depending on the viewer. I myself am not sure about how to handle it, but I can't say that a line of otters snuggling each other and causing a major highway accident isn't entertaining, haha.
• Highlight/s: BABY DORY, beautiful aquarium animation, that moment when you know the writers decided "to tell with it" aka a fish and an octopus septopus successfully taking over a truck

• Ghostbusters: ALL THE YESES. This movie was almost criminally hilarious. Its plot was... like most Ghostbusters plots, but with better effects, great characters, and a great number of cameos (more than half of which had to be explained to me, haha). This movie was just a whole thing in itself, and the audience was just along for the ride. Between Kate McKinnon being the best, and Chris Hemsworth showing us just how secure he is in his career (answer: very), this was so much better than I anticipated. (And just to put it out there, there's nothing overtly ~feminist in this movie - I mean, they're all girls on the team, but they don't feel the need to mention it or point it out every minute like everyone seems to be seeing.)
• Highlight/s: Chris Hemsworth (is this ironic?), that Iron Man/Avengers 1 moment where there's a giant portal pointing to the sky and they kill the mothership and everything else conveniently dies, KATE MCKINNON

• Star Trek Beyond: I watched this in 4DX (my first time there!) and it was so worth it. SPACESHIPS IN 4DX! The movie was pretty good, and I thought its plot was interesting enough, but it was really the characters and relationships between them that carried the movie for me. I particularly loved the new character, Jaylah (above, being a boss), for her no-nonsense attitude which was often as frightening as it was hilarious. It had all the things you'd need for a fun action film in space: aliens, spaceships with lasers, fun-to-watch characters, and an understandable plot injected with humor and a good deal of emotional investment. (And with 4DX, you get that PLUS moving seats, wind/smoke/lighting effects, and goo splattered on your face whenever an alien sneezes!).
• Highlight/s: forget Spock and Kirk, it's time for everyone's secret OTP, Spock and Bones ♥

• Suicide Squad: Suicide Squad was okay, if a little lackluster compared to whatever they promised in the trailers. I don't think it was as bad as ~critics are making it out to be, but it definitely wasn't as good as some people are saying. On one hand, it had some very interesting characters, and I really liked the style of filming when they introduced each character. On the other, these good points weren't developed properly and weren't maximized during the rest of the film. Harley's character was dampened by her strange and vague (in a bad way) relationship with the Joker, and Deadshot's character fell into the rabbit hole of Will Smith characters known as "What if Will Smith were...?" (aka Deadshot's character was basically "What if Will Smith were an assassin?" - something that has been repeated over and over again in every character Will Smith plays, and it's just... tiring and boring to watch in this case). In addition, the fight scenes were awful - not just for a superhero movie, just for any movie in general. The climactic fight against the gyrating Enchantress was barely visible through rubble, so you could barely see what each character was doing. Many times, the movie also fell toward "telling" the narrative rather than "showing" it - which, for a comic book movie based on a visual medium, is... I mean, how did they even do that?
• Highlight/s: Joker's random scenes that could have been cut and it literally would have been the same movie (and might have made more sense), ~hip gyrations~, fun graphics, soundtrack a la Guardians of the Galaxy, that Iron Man/Avengers 1 moment where there's a portal pointing to the sky etc you know the drill, ... did they just say that the soul of that lady's husband was in that sword? WTF. MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT THAT!

• The Secret Life of Pets: If anything, this movie solidifies Illumination Animation's niche in the movie world as the makers of animated movies with no deeper meaning. This isn't necessarily bad - who doesn't enjoy a superficial movie whose main goal is to entertain once in a while? The characters in these were very cutely designed, with some "unexpected" character twists which were actually pretty predictable (cute fluffy animals that aren't so cute and fluffy in the end, etc), but - and this might just be the boring adult in me - this kind of entertainment doesn't hold your attention for too long. Lack of investment in the characters and an overly simple conflict served to make my eyes glaze over about halfway through. 
• Highlight/s: There is literally a whole scene dedicated to showing the joy dogs feel at infiltrating a hotdog factory, WARNING: this movie is not Cat People friendly, watch at your own risk

That's it! I was going to include Tuos in this, but it was too interesting and fun to think about to condense in one paragraph. Hopefully I can write it out soon!