Schlock Mercenary

Cutting straight to the chase here, I love this movie. Captain Marvel clears my Threshold of Awesome with room to spare. I’ve wanted more genre-movie Brie Larsen since seeing her in Kong: Skull Island, and Captain Marvel is better than any such thing I could have imagined. She was perfect as Carol Danvers, and the story is exactly what we needed as an introduction to her—with the added bonus of origin stories for Coulson and Fury. In my review of Doctor Strange I expressed how happy I was that the Marvel Cinematic Universe finally had a proper grown-up on stage. I’m excited to see how Carol Danvers interacts with the rest of the heroes in Avengers: Endgame this spring, because Captain Marvel gives us another proper grown-up, and this one didn’t start out as a self centered man-child. There are two post-credits scenes. Beyond that I won’t say anything, except of course there are two post-credits scenes. This is an MCU film.

I’m having difficulty summing up my feelings about Alita: Battle Angel. In part this is because the family trip to the movies ended up in an argument about whether or not it was a good movie, and the argument was not one of those pleasant “discuss the film things,” so on that level the film was an utter disaster. I had nothing but regret for the time and money spent on it. But that’s hardly a fair measure. My 16yo son’s opinion of the film is probably a better metric: SON: “We need to own this.”

I’m about half-way finished with the book sketching—a little over half of the Delegates And Delegation books are sketched, and a little under half of the Broken Wind books are sketched. I had a super-productive session Monday evening (Feb 4th), sketching in over 200 books over the course of about seven hours. Sessions since then have been less productive, topping out at around 90. If you’ve been watching this space hoping for movie reviews, I’m sorry to say I haven’t been going to the movies. It’s cold outside. Also, people who paid for books are waiting for me to get all this sketching done. I’ll definitely be in the theater for Alita: Battle Angel, and Captain Marvel, but I’m not behaving like a responsible movie reviewer this month.

It’s that time of year again, when our family room is full of boxes and the game table is covered with books.