Mike From the Internet

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Media Bites – March 2019

This month was decent for movies, but very lacking for new TV. Here’s my wrap up of some of the movies, television shows, music, and other media that I’ve consumed and thought was worth sharing for the month of March 2019.

Movies

Captain Marvel – I knew a little about the character going in, but not much about the story. I knew Carol’s origin in becoming Ms. Marvel (and later Captain Marvel at least in the comics) and had made some assumptions based on the trailers that ended up being completely wrong – which I didn’t mind at all. There was one story turn that I didn’t expect or love (especially since I thought it was going to launch the post-Infinity Saga era of new MCU movies) but in thinking about the turn I can appreciate the story they are telling in this political climate. I really enjoyed the movie (it would probably come in at number seven on the overall MCU rankings for me) and I definitely want to see it again in the theaters before End Game.
Triple Frontier – If Oscar Isaac is in the cast there is a high probability that I will watch that movie. So we watched this one and it was…okay. Nothing earth shattering or award winning, just okay. It’s a good way to spend your evening if you want to watch something and kind of ignore it.
Apollo 11 –  A great documentary – though not what I expected. I thought it was going to be an actual documentary with interviews both past and present, and tell a narrative of the mission. Instead it was a consolidated look at the entire mission’s timeline in a ~2 hour run time. I still really enjoyed this and urge you to see it on the biggest screen that you can see. The doc also has a great score, which unfortunately was louder than some of the mission communications going on so you couldn’t hear some things clearly.
The Matrix – I was able to see The Matrix on the big screen for the first time ever since our favorite theater chain Alamo Drafthouse was doing a special screening. I haven’t seen the movie in about 10-12 years, so I was pretty pumped to see it again and on the big screen. But man, the video quality of the screening we saw did not hold up. I don’t know if it was a bad print, upscaled DVD being projected or what, but it didn’t hold up in the ultra hi-def 4K whatever world we live in now. That said, it was still fun to watch, and I wish we could have done a screening of the whole trilogy.
Fried Green Tomatoes – I had never seen this movie before and Ali demanded we go see it. I enjoyed the movie, but it really wasn’t something I was missing from not having seen it.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Alternate Universe Version) – Yeah, I watched it again. But this time I watched the alternate version of the movie which featured much more of the original script filled in with storyboards, animatics, and temporary voice overs. The filmmakers definitely made the right call cutting what they did. The extra scenes slowed the movie down without adding too much substance. There was a nice scene between Peter and Miles, but they ended up using most of the dialogue later in the movie.

TV

Crashing – I think I talked about Season 3 last month, but unfortunately this series was just canceled by HBO just before the third season finale aired. It’s a great finale and it does end the series in a good spot if it doesn’t continue – something Pete Holmes hintedat that it may have a follow up movie to finish the story. The whole series is streaming on HBO and is worth the watch. You can probably binge it all on a weekend.
The Umbrella Academy – Overall really enjoyable series. Fun story, great music, and generally good acting. I really didn’t like the casting of Mary J. Blige or Ellen Page. Mary J. Blige seemed out of place to me and Ellen Page has no range whatsoever.

Music

It’s still early in 2019 so this playlist isn’t that big just yet, but here are my favorite new songs for 2019 so far on Apple Music, and Spotify.