The Good, the Bad, and the Funny

We were stuck in what seemed like an infinite loop, of trying to catch movies at the theater, and missing them. But thanks to some clever engineering and good timing we've managed to catch up. So without further ado, our short and sweet reviews of Alien: Covenant, Valerian and The City of 1,000 Planets, and The Orville.

Alien: Covenant was promised by some reviewers to finally close a lot of loose ends in the Alien universe...NOPE. We left wondering how that was supposed to answer anything other than why aren't there Engineers running around the galaxy anymore? And how many bad choices must a crew make in order to create danger in well thought out space thrillers? The whole thing left us feeling a little underwhelmed.

Valerian and The City of 1,000 Planets on the other hand was great fun to watch, visually speaking, and the opening sequence about the creation of space station Alpha hit us right in the feels. but (spoiler alert) we spent hours afterwards wondering how exactly the relationship between main characters blossomed from "I can barely stand you" to "sure let's get hitched" without any real romance or bonding in between...but the movie sure was pretty.

And last but certainly not least The Orville, has given us two decent offerings, a premier pilot and a second episode, both of which delivered good laughs at the sci-fi tomfoolery of an odd-couple divorced first and second in command, and plenty of strange alien types. Seth McFarlane is up to his usual sophomoric level of humor, but there's a few higher level laughs to be had. So far we are enjoying.

The Guardians are Back!

Oh what a weekend we had! A handful of great movies flashed over our screens this weekend, but we're here to talk about one in particular. The Guardians of The Galaxy: Volume 2 was an epic space romp! We were left breathless and sides hurting from the comedy, and were definitely star-struck by the glorious alien worlds and space travel this time around. Our heroes are joined by old frenemies Nebula, and Yondu (with ravagers in tow), as well as some new faces like Mantis an empathic alien with cute antennae and big doe eyes. This movie definitely breaks the trend of weaker sequels, the action is better, the comedy just keeps rolling, and the villain stirred a lot more emotions up than Ronan did in the first entry. Baby Groot comes close to stealing the show. several times, but every character ALMOST does this at some point in the movie. The only character who felt underserved was Gamora, who's only got enough time in the film to just barely start dropping her guard against Peter Quill, she's still out of his reach though nothing really happens with their relationship, but that's okay. Every other character has enough going on, and Peter in particular has some...personal issues to sort through in this movie so his focus isn't on romance.

What keeps popping up is the comedy though. From Baby Groot's Opening dance number, all the way to the last teaser in the credits the comedy just keeps coming. Where the first guardians would toss a joke and just leave it in our laps the second iteration throws the audience a joke, and just before it lands in our laps another character picks it up and runs with it; often managing a few lateral passes too. We can see these characters are really starting to build real relationships with each other due to this comedic snowballing. They jab at the members of their team with familiarity. Jokes that would've ended in a fist fight when they first met now just bring the crew closer together.

We give The Guardians of The Galaxy: Vol. 2 our seal of approval.