Avengers: Endgame (PG-13)



It was okay. Best scene was Tony Stark running into his father in the past, but otherwise it was a three hour parade, knocking off people whose contracts were ending.

Look, everyone and their great-aunt Edna already knows about this movie, do you really need me to talk about this circlejerk of the last twelve years of Marvel movies? Or the confusing time travel shenanigans that lead me to believe there's a timeline where everything's hunky dory because Thanos never got to use the gauntlet, because their Thanos and his army hopped into this timeline? Or the logistical clusterfuck bringing nearly 4 billion people back to life after five years would be?

Since this is the conclusion to the main MCU story that started in the original Iron Man, let's go ahead and look back on the MCU as a whole (the only three I haven't are the Iron Man sequels and Ant-Man and the Wasp). The strongest movies were the ones that were actually about something, like Thor: Rangarok, Guardians of the Galaxy, or heck, even some of the earlier solo films, while the most forgettable were the ones that only existed to set something up for a future movie like Thor 2: The Dark World (the Reality stone) and Captain Marvel (uh, Captain Marvel). Some were in between, like Doctor Strange, or the first Ant-Man.

And to answer my question from Infinity War, yes, Thanos wiped out half of all life, including the plants and animals people get meat and wool and oxygen from and build things out of and shit. Because he's a fucking dumbass.

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Lilo and Stitch (PG)



I'm trying to think of another Disney movie where (A) there wasn't a true "villain", only antagonistic forces, and (B) the biggest assholes were the protagonists. Inside Out was driven by Riley's reaction to her move but Joy wasn't so much malicious as naive, and in Emperor's New Groove Kuzco was a total ass until being a llama humbled him, as was the whole point of the movie, but you could still point to Yzma as the villain. Lilo and Stitch, though? Stitch at least had the excuse that he was genetically engineered to be chaotic and destructive, plus he grew out of it, but holy shit Lilo nailing up the house and throwing a tantrum made it hard to care about her for the rest of the film.

Driving the conflict are a scientist who claims to be "evil" but is more doing his thing for shits and giggles, a government agent and a space cop who are just trying to do their jobs, and a broken, racist system fucking over indigenous Hawaiians that's actually pretty heavy for a kid's film. It's going for a "The world is a storm of incomprehensible bullshit out of your control, but as long as you have family, everything will just work out in the end" message, which I guess is heartwarming, but also a bit naive and a screw you to people in abusive households ("But those aren't real families!" Yeah, that's a No True Scotsman, honey). And it helps if aliens land on your doorstep!

Okay, maybe I'm being a little mean. It's colorful, Stitch's character arc is fine, Lilo's sister was a lot better than her, and it at least tries to shine a light on problems plaguing native Hawaiians even if "space aliens will save the day" isn't a reasonable answer for it, but I just don't see it becoming one of my favorite Disney films.

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Untitled Goose Game (Nintendo Switch, E)



Hey, remember when this game came out last year and Twitter exploded with goose memes, then a month later everyone just kinda forgot about it? At least until the co-op mode was announced? Granted, 2020 has been such a shitshow that it's understandable this got drowned out, but my point is that's what playing the game itself is like. It's an amusing aside about being a mischievous goose terrorizing a small British town and messing up everyone's stuff and making them fall on their bums while it lasts, but upon completion I said to myself "Well, that was cute, what's next?"

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