Spiderman: Homecoming

Where spidey's suit gets an upgrade!

This movie follows a very excitable and young Peter Parker (played by Tom Holland) right after his appearance in Captain America: Civil War and how he keeps sacrificing his personal life on the chance of working with the Avengers again, despite regularly getting ignored by his handler. When his patrols come across some thugs in possession with alien tech, he decides to take them on solo to prove himself.

I suspect Spidey is up for this.

While I wasn't looking forward to another reboot of the Spidey franchise, I must admit this did a very good job of doing just that and linking it to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Tom Holland also fits the character well as does Michael Keaton who plays a likeable and memorable adversary. I question some of the other casting choices but overall they do their jobs well and the story is both visually stunning and highly entertaining. Definitely one I would like to see again, I give it 4.5 suit ladies out of 5.

Robocop (2014)

50% Robocop. 50% Filler.

Much like the original movie, the protagonist police officer gets seriously injured early on and thanks to movie science becomes an android hybrid who continues his previous role as Robocop - who then goes on to finish investigating the run of the mill case he was on when he was so rudely interrupted by almost certain death. The actor who plays him here is a bit of a robot, but that works in his favor as mostly he is one for the majority of his screen time anyway.

I'm also quite happy that they somewhat kept the original theme music, and armor too - though I don't mind his black "tactical" version either. Having the robots out in full circulation right at the start was a welcome change for me as well, since it setup the stage for awesome action scenes. There are many little problems in the movie too like, bad guys not knowing how to shoot and bad guys simply not being threatening enough to the hero but the biggest, biggest flaw is simply that a huge chunk of the movie doesn't have Robocop in it.

Sums it up nicely.

Every single shot with Samuel L. Jackson could have been cut. All the political stuff could have just been setup as background noise. Michael Keaton definitely didn't need that many assistants. I'm not saying any of them were of poor acting quality, it just felt like they were fluff pieces to pad time to the film. Simply put, I felt there wasn't enough Robocop in Robocop and give it one and a half bullets out of five. Not only do I not want to watch it again, but I can strongly recommend to everyone else - even action fans, to give this a miss. There are simply better films out there.

Birdman

After hearing all the awards this has been nominated for I decided to go see it the other day without any real expectation of what was in store for me. Yes, it's not really a superhero movie, it's about an actor who happens to be famous for a previous movie role (the titular "Birdman") trying to make a successful stage play. That in itself sounds incredibly dull, however the method that it is delivered is pretty cool, having just one long camera shot (via movie magic) almost the entire span of the movie. I dread to think how much rehearsal time and takes it took for everyone to get each sequence correct.

As you would expect, the acting is superb. Not just from lead Michael Keaton, but from all the others too - again probably perfected through the fires of stress and repetition due to how the movie is shot. Despite having many funny moments the story is a pretty depressing one but that didn't really bother me so much. What did bother me was the choice of music, or lack of it - in favor for many percussion solos (which are cleverly injected in some shots, complete with drummer and everything). Sure there are some parts with a solo cello playing some dark tunes but usually it's the drum guy you hear even in the opening and ending credits. If the point of that was to make me uncomfortable, it worked.

Do I make you uncomfortable?

From a technical view point, this film is great. Did I like it? That is a different question. Let's just say, I give it three out of five soliloquies. Despite that I can't really recommend it unless you like that technical aspect in film or just are a fan of Mr. Keaton.