It’s Summer: Time for Movies!

We’ve been pretty darn lucky this year, here in the Valley of the Sun, in that it didn’t start to get supremely hot until the latter part of May, waiting until this point to consistently hit triple digits.  Additionally, we’ve been having more rain than normal for this time of the year, and while the humidity is destroying my early morning runs (this Thursday, I did 7.5 miles – 4.5 of them tempo pace – in a temp of 78 degrees with 88% humidity.  There was a reason I left Florida, y’all), it’s been keeping the temps down a bit longer.  Regardless, it’s pretty easy to see that summer is in full swing, and for Chris and I, that means weekend mornings at the movies!

I was going to put the movie poster for Jurassic World here.

You know, the one with Chris Pratt on a motorcycle,

running along with a pack of raptors,

and then I was going to make some crack – in a movie announcer voice – 

about how “this summer, Chris Pratt is…the velociraptor whisperer.”

And then I found this on Google Images.

And it was good.

While we love movies of all sorts, we rarely pay to see a movie in the actual theater unless it’s one of the summer tent pole blockbusters, preferring instead to wait until we have a free HBO/Showtime/Cinemax/Starz preview weekend to record the dramas and comedies and then watch them from the comfort of our house (in your own home, no one can see you pause the movie to go the bathroom 87 times or weep your eyes out.  I’m looking at you, John Wick. Actually, extended sidebar here, because it’s a good story:  We went to see John Wick in the theater on Chris’ birthday, and we’d both taken the day off from work.  We did a late morning showing, so the audience was comprised of the two of us and approximately four gentlemen, each well into his 60’s.  When the dog died, the sound of my keening and weeping filled the theater.  I thought they were going to ask me to leave, and I’m not kidding.  I’m surprised I wasn’t offered a handkerchief, but maybe those guys weren’t gentlemen after all). 

A screenshot of John Wick from the site www.doesthedogdie.

The dog dies.  Like big time.

Since we’re always training throughout the horrible summers here, we normally wake up early on weekend days, trying to finish our workouts before we succumb to heatstroke (normally, we make it, but I distinctly remember one 20 mile run where Chris came to get me in the car near the end.  I was like, “I’m only 1 mile away from finishing!  I can walk it!”  Chris was like, “you’re MAGENTA.  Get in the car.”  He was right, of course).  That means, of course, that we’re ready to get on with our day – as well as being starving for lunch – around 10am.  Since the rest of the world isn’t ready for lunch before noon (lame), we often find ourselves at the movie theater, snacking on popcorn and watching images flicker across the screen. 

So far this summer, we’ve been pretty happy with our movie theater forays, although we are getting admittedly more discriminating in the movies we see (for example, in past years, we would have paid good money to watch The Rock run from tsunamis in San Andreas.  Not this summer, my friend).  This summer, we started out with Furious 7.  I know, I know (I can tell you’re thinking of making me take back the “discriminating” comment), but it dawned on me somewhere before the 5^th movie that we’ve seen EVERY F&F MOVIE IN THE THEATER (including one where I took a phone call in the lobby and Mom told me she had breast cancer.  I took comfort in the dulcet tones of Vin Diesel and virtual fumes of testosterone), and we certainly couldn’t stop that trend now.  Overall, it was a fun romp, albeit lacking in some of the nutso car chases/stunts from the earlier movies (in one movie, they hauled a BANK VAULT around the streets of Rio behind a car.  It was amazing).  I suppose when you have someone like Jason Statham as your main bad guy, you switch more to him punching on Vin Diesel and less of him just driving a car around.  Makes sense.  I’ll also fully admit that the Paul Walker tribute at the end choked me up.

Although they did launch cars out of an airplane.

That was pretty awesome.

Next on the docket (I think. I’m old and it was over 30 days ago) was the newest Marvel movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron.  I’m a sucker for superhero movies (I made Chris see both Daredevil AND Elektra in theaters back in the day.  He still hasn’t forgiven me), and this one didn’t disappoint.  I still miss the sense of fun that Robert Downey, Jr. brought to the very first Iron Man, but this one was entertaining.  Lots of incredible action sequences, lots of witty banter, lots of moving the overarching story forward (including shading in some of the characters that were a bit lost in the first Avengers, notably Hawkeye), lots of shots of Thor’s arms.  Also, James Spader was meant to voice a sarcastic, genocidal robot.  I mean, seriously, he was born to do this. 

But seriously.  Arms.

Doo be doo be doo…

Oh, sorry, back to the blog.

After that, we took in a viewing of Mad Max: Fury Road, and we were totally enamored of its charms.  For starters, the movie is f*ing gonzo.  Just absolutely balls to the wall freaking nuts.  It’s essentially 5 minutes of plot to set things up followed by 2 hours of car chases, during which stuff explodes by the metric crap ton.  Secondly, a lot of things explode.  Like A LOT, and isn’t that what summer movies are all about?  However, underneath all of this, the movie sneaks in a feminist agenda, mainly centered around Charlize Theron as Furiosa, one of the main bad guy’s minions that goes rogue; she’s the true hero of the movie, and she’s as bad-a$$ as they come.  Seriously, she’s the second coming of Ripley, and it’s amazing. 

I would like to say Furiosa is my spirit animal,

but I’m nowhere near that cool.

This weekend, we had a chance to see Jurassic World, which is one of the films I’ve been most excited about this summer.  I’ve seen the original approximately a meeeellllion times, and I fall in love again on every single viewing; truly, of all the films of my childhood/young adulthood, it’s probably the one that still holds up best.  As a kid who grew up adoring dinosaurs and wanted to be a paleontologist for a certain number of years (the alternative being astronaut training, of course), the original was an absolute marvel; although things obviously went south (big time) in the original movie, the idea of being able to touch a triceratops was breathtaking, and it captured my imagination, as it did for so many of us at the time. 

Although the subsequent sequels to Jurassic Park were horrible, I went into World with a fair amount of faith, given the time lag since the first movie, the amazing effects shown in the trailers, and of course, Chris Pratt.  Seriously, he can do no wrong.  I happen to follow both Chris Pratt and Jimmy Buffett on Twitter, so when I learned that not only did Jimmy Buffett play the party for the movie’s LA premiere (with Chris Pratt gamely signing along on “Margaritaville”), but that there’s an Isla Nubar Margaritaville café/store in the movie, I figured the stars were aligning to make for a truly epic movie experience.

So much yes.

Overall, we enjoyed World quite a bit; the scares were fun, and the dinos are still pretty cool, even though we've all seen what CGI can do since the original came out.  Is it as good as the first one?  Of course not, and I don't think anything really ever could be.  However, it's entertaining, and Jake Johnson from New Girl as the tech guy that helps man the control room steals pretty much every scene he's in.

Over the next few months, we still need to see the newest addition to the Terminator franchise, as well as Inside Out from Pixar and potentially the new Fantastic Four movie.  Stay tuned for more opinions!

Later,

Amy