Friday, November 8, 2013

What to Watch This Weekend: November 8, 2013

The Dark World is more epic than the average Marvel movie. It's a big adventure spanning several worlds with battles seemingly inspired by Lord of the Rings and J.J. Abrams' Star Trek films. This seems more fitting than the fish-out-of-water plot of the first, though the culture clash between the Asgardians and Earthlings returns to provide comic relief.
Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx's fun team dynamic liven up this standard, fairly corny action movie. The effects are decent, but much less spectacular than those in Roland Emmerich's past summer blockbusters. I'd take WHD over the year's other White House-related thriller, similarly average but less fun Olympus Has Fallen.

Streaming (Netflix): Computer Chess
Sometime in the early 1980's, teams of computer programmers meet at a weekend conference and pit their machines against one another in games of chess hoping for a chance to take on an expert human player. This 2013 mockumentary looks like it was made decades ago; it's grainy, shot in black-and-white, and features fashion and comically large computers that disappeared many years ago. It's a weird, awkwardly and dryly funny look at geeks and the eighties, enhanced by its ancient presentation.

Netflix Link: http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Computer_Chess/70268896
Denzel Washington plays a pilot who, despite landing a crashing plane and saving nearly all its passengers, lands in hot water due to alcohol and drug addictions. Flight's marketing emphasized the crash investigation portion of the plot, but it's really about the personal struggles of its troubled, addict anti-hero.

Netflix Link: http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Flight/70243453
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Flight-Denzel-Washington/dp/B00B0LPYXG

No comments:

Post a Comment

ShareThis