109 - My Little Pony: Equestria Girls

    Picking up at the end of the third season, Twilight Sparkle's crown is stolen on the night before her coronation, and she is sent into another reality to reclaim the crown from Sunset Shimmer.  Upon traveling to the other reality, she finds herself in a human form, and navigating a high school in her quest.
    The trailer for this was a real source of argument among the brony community.  There were a lot of things to be worried about.  It looked like they were transplanting the core characters into a high school setting, and giving them a normal teen comedy/romance story to work with.  There was the implied romantic interest between Twilight and some guy.  The re-design of the characters was also a bit annoying.  They looked like the Bratz equivalent of the ponies.
    Despite these problems, I'm pleased to say that it's actually a pretty good movie.  For a tie-in to a children's cartoon, it's well written, well animated, and it tells a satisfying story that is rewarding for fans of the show.  It's long enough that it doesn't skip over needed points, and short enough that it doesn't feel like they're just padding things out.
    I should address some of the points that fans were worried about.
    The high school style plot is fit over a normal MLP-style story.
    The character designs look much worse outside of the context of the movie.  They do look like they have absurdly skinny arms and legs, but it seems that everyone has them.  The lankiness of their design actually serves a purpose.  Also, the bizarre quality of the color schemes that the movie uses is amazing.  It actually makes it clear that this story does not take place in the real world.  There are people with green skin wandering the hallways.  Twilight's purple skin isn't out of place.
    The romantic subplot was pretty restrained.  It's mostly just clear that Twilight is attracted to this guy, and he seems a little into her.  There's no kiss.  This seems to be a way to introduce the guy into the pony universe.
    The songs are a little interesting.  They're more electronic, which I don't care for.  There are some interesting moments, particularly in the Equestria Girls song.  There's a tempo change that seemed like it would be pretty difficult, and the chord changes go in a direction I wasn't expecting.
    Cathy had felt pretty convinced that this wouldn't be good.  I was a little wary, but I still held out hope that the people working on the show know what makes it work.  She was pleased, and I was too.

108 - Super 8

    A group of young kids (middle school?) are shooting a movie when a nearby train is derailed.  The train is carrying a bizarre secret that affects the whole town, and brings the government in to contain the situation.
    That's as spoiler-free as I can get it.  But I can't maintain that level of secrecy.
    I was very happy with this movie at first.  The relationships between the kids, the brewing romance, the film they're working on, all of that was wonderful.  Once the plot kicks in, I felt a little disappointed.  The story involves an alien that the government has been holding and experimenting on, which is otherwise peaceable, but years of being held captive and being tortured has made it resent mankind.  It's been creeping around town, stealing electronics in an effort to build a ship to return home.  There's something vaguely Star Trek-like about the story.  The second half of the picture seems to be a homage to classic monster movies, wrapped up in a Twilight Zone/Star Trek ending.  This isn't terrible, and it didn't make me dislike the movie, but it just couldn't hold a candle to the strong opening.
    I found myself thinking of some comparisons to Stand By Me, which handles relationships in a similar fashion.  The romantic angle of this is a nice, but pushes a little too far.  The heartfelt conversation doesn't ring true.  Maybe if the content of it had been placed into a different context.
    There's one other thing that I wanted to point out.  Abrams has handled movies with some massive destruction before.  He produced Cloverfield, directed Mission: Impossible 3, and did both of the modern Star Trek movies.  He even wrote Armageddon!  He has a certain technique that I've gotten a little tired of.  He loves his lens flares, and I don't mind them most of the time.  But he combines those with handheld shots, in an effort to insert the viewer into the action.  I actually like this technique, but the problem is that he tends to do it way too often.
    His interest in spectacle destruction is a lot of fun.  What stood out in this movie was a sequence near the end.  The military is working on combing the evacuated town in an effort to recapture the alien.  The alien's influence over electrical parts has caused a lot of the heavy weapons to fire and target randomly.  This type of destruction is really wild.  I haven't seen anything like it.  It's one thing to see a skyscraper, or a large building crumble, or get knocked by a monster's tail.  This is a suburban town, and it looks like a neighborhood I would know.

107 - X-Men: First Class

    Set against the Cuban missile crisis, Sebastian Shaw tries to instigate a nuclear war in hopes of bringing mutants in control of the Earth.  Meanwhile, Professor X and Magneto recruit other young mutants in hopes of stopping his plot.
    I think I was a little more dissatisfied with this one than I was before.  The weaknesses have jumped out, even though there are still some very enjoyable aspects that I can enjoy.
    The rewriting of X-Men cannon in an effort to make this story compatible with the X-Men world of the previous three movies.  The original X-Men lineup had Iceman, Cyclops, Beast, Marvel Girl, and Angel.  In the three previous X-Men movies, Cyclops is part of the older guard, same with Marvel Girl.  Beast is even older (which fits nicely) but Angel and Iceman are both pretty young.  Cyclops is also the older brother of Havok, who appears in First Class as a late teen (I think).
    The inclusion of Darwin really bugs me, especially after reading up on him.  His abilities make him nearly invulnerable, but they kill him off far too easily.  The villainous henchmen - Riptide and Azazel - seem to be filler.  They don't contribute to the plot, but they contribute to the action.  This was part of the problem with X3.
    I found the music distracting this time.  In particular, Magneto's theme.  There was a lot of effort to fit some electric guitar work into this soundtrack, but it seems to work against the time period.  I looked up who did the score for it… and he does good work.  He's done a lot of recent movies, and most of them have excellent soundtracks.

106 - Reefer Madness

    A 30s propaganda film that warns of the dangers of marijuana use.
    This is a legendary title that I've had plenty of opportunity to see, but never had the motivation.  I've never been into pot, but occasional stoner comedies can be enjoyable.  In this case, most of the fun comes from how ridiculous the movie is.  There's an effort to make pot seem as dangerous as possible, at the expense of being believable.
    I wonder about the reception that the movie would have from a person who didn't have any knowledge of the actual effects of pot.  The portrayal here involves manslaughter, running over a pedestrian, a suicide, and insanity.  There's no indication of the actual effects of smoking pot - mostly laziness and hunger.  But without the broad knowledge that our culture has, I wonder how believable it would be.
    The acting and direction is hard to evaluate, given the propaganda angle.  It's not the sort of thing that was intended to make an artistic statement.  When people are directed to do things that are over-the-top, it's hard to say if they're a good actor or not.
    It's an interesting relic, but it's not for me.

105 - Bloody Birthday

    A trio of kids, born during the same eclipse, celebrate their birthday weekend by going on a murder spree.
    I read something a long time ago that was posted on the AV Club about this movie.  While it sounded like my kind of movie, I didn't search it out.  I happened across it on Netflix, and the title and summary sounded like fun.
    It's a bit silly, but still fun.  There isn't much motivation given for why the children kill.  We get a little bit of an explanation, mostly just that because they were born during the eclipse, Saturn was obscured, so somehow they should be missing a part of their personality.  This isn't a satisfying explanation.  The murders are actually handled pretty well.  I've seen plenty of "evil children" movies, and most of them are darker than this.  When I watched this, there was still a strange sense of happiness to it.  I'm not sure why.
    There are a few noteworthy cast choices.  We get to see a youngish Julie Brown dancing around topless as she gets changed.  One of the evil kids is played by Billy Jayne, who I know I as Mikey on Parker Lewis.  He's wearing glasses in this, which reminds me a lot of Christian Slater in Twisted.  Man, that one's obscure.
    One thing that makes this movie especially funny is how breakneck the pace is.  After class, the kids mention to their teacher that their birthday party is next Monday.  After coming home from school, the kids kill off one of their parents.  Then we're at the funeral for him.  Then we still have a few more days before their birthday.  This wouldn't be much of an issue, except that I thought the story was starting on a Friday.  Nevermind - this is trivial.
    This isn't quite as creepy as The Children, but it was still fun.  Maybe a little closer to the level of creepiness of The Bad Seed, where most of the violence is implied.

104 - The Transporter

    A man who works as a courier for a variety of shady characters winds up running afoul of a client when the client uses him to transport a girl.
    I saw this last year, I think, and this time, I showed it to Cathy.  This is a very unusual action movie.  It starts out with a fun driving chase, which seems to be reasonably serious.  The action keeps on getting a little more silly each time through.  By the time we reach the last twenty minutes, it's much more funny.
    Besides the opening chase, there's one scene in particular that I latch onto.  There's an oil fight.  In a garage, Statham fights a handful of henchmen, and this involves tipping over a few oil troughs.  There's something so hilarious about this.
    One of the other touches I noticed was about the way that Statham moves when he's in an action sequence.  He has this robotic look to him, but it may be a way of trying to make it look like his movements are especially precise.
    I've also read up on Statham in the meantime, and found that he did his own stunts for this one.  I like that.  Part of the thrill of Jackie Chan's pictures is the knowledge of the effort that went into it.

103 - Rites of Spring

    In two intersecting plots, a group of people working on holding a girl ransom crosses with a guy who kidnaps women and passes them on as a sacrifice.
    I sort of gave a spoiler there.  Sorry.  But I can't anticipate anyone actually watching this who wants to be surprised.
    Part of what attracted me to this movie was the poster/box art.  It looks remarkably 70s or early 80s.  Unfortunately, it's a completely modern style story.
    There's something about the plot that seems off to me.  These types of stories - ones that mix more than one type of story - can be very disorienting.  Like the first time you see From Dusk Til Dawn, and the movie drastically changes direction about halfway through.  I wonder if I should attribute that to Psycho.
    Both of the stories seem a little under-done.  The ransom storyline seems more fleshed out, but it also plays out exactly as you expect it to.  Everyone turns on each other, since no one can trust one another.  The sacrifice thing is less detailed.  We get the sacrifices crucified in a field, wearing an animal mask.  The background for this story is less clear, but lots of hints are dropped.
    I can't really claim this is memorable.  For an independent horror, it's pretty decent.  It's easy enough to follow what's happening, and it's technically pretty good.  No annoying editing.