Midnight Special

#StokerScore 7/10

Sci-fi. Often a genre that puts people off before they even consider the film, the actors or the story and the diversity of the genre means that this is not without reason. As with any genre of movie some are well made, well thought out, well written and clearly drawn characters. They can catch the viewers imagination by looking at a subject from a different angle or just playing with our emotions. And then there are the opposite of these and unfortunately sci-fi has too many bad movies. Movies that could have been great but were just too careless.

why is it never somewhere easy, like the local mall?

Close Encounters of The Third Kind was Spielberg's 1977 sci-fi opus that followed a group of people who were motivated to find a place where they would meet aliens, aliens who are increasingly witnessed by people with an affinity. Twenty years earlier John Wyndham wrote The Midwich Cuckoos in which a group of children are born to regular parents but who are ultimately not human.

Midnight Special appears to draw from both of these sources in its tale of Alton, a young boy who seems to be sickening due to his being 'special'  (he cant go out in daylight and needs special goggles and ear protectors to sleep) and the attempts of his parents and their friend to help Alton to reach his destination before either a religious cult or the federal government can stop them.

The movie has a great cast with Michael Shannon and Kirsten Dunst as the parents, Joel Edgerton as their friend and Adam Driver as an NSA advisor. Jaeden Lieberher holds his own as the young boy, never coming across as a kid who can't act.

annoying

not annoying

The story keeps you involved and we're thrown right into the mix from the get go. Background is filled in through conversations and characters have motivations for their actions. But where the story lets itself down is never really explaining how Alton came to be nor the meaning behind the big reveal towards the end of the movie. It certainly left me with more questions than answers.

Nevertheless, the story was well told, effects were astonishing for such a cheaply made movie and if you can get past the questions and allow your imagination to answer them for you, you'll love this...

Captain America: Civil War

#StokerScore 10/10 

Expectations..... having them means that sometimes we're happy when they're met and unhappy, even angry when they're not, but is it fair to have expectations in the first place? There's a classic quote from Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip where Calvin suggests that the lower he keeps peoples' expectations, the easier his life is. As cynical as that quote is and as funny as it sounds coming from the mouth of a 6 year old, the uncanny accuracydoes make you stop and think. 

In my younger days I had the chance to meet a hero. I just want you to imagine that for a minute, I met a genuine hero. Someone idolised by millions to the point that they even transcend normal conventions of the word "hero".

My hero was Henry Cooper and he was a British heavyweight boxer. A 1960's pugilist who actually fought Muhammad Ali twice, Henry was considered a genuine hope for World heavyweight champion.

Was he undone by Angelo Dundee cutting Ali's glove, allowing Dundee's fighter  time to recover from an 'Enry's Hammer' left hook? This seems to be a question for the ages but it didn't stop him from being a hero. 

Approaching my twentiethy birthday I was working as a trainee manager in a bingo hall in York and henry was due to make an appearance as the brand ambassador for Mecca Leisure. Up to this point I'd never really met anyone famous with the exception of a few Leeds United players so so say I was starstruck would have been an understatement. Henry, or Mr Cooper as I called him when I was introduced to him, met every single expectation I had of him, His way of carrying himself, at that time in his fifties, was exactly the regular, working-class-guy-made-good that he was, no need for PR people to manage any character flaws. He wasn't patronising to me as the kid whose job was to help him find whatever he needed on his promotional visit to our club, just the opposite in fact. 

Of course there are others who say "never meet your heroes", just in case your expectations are destroyed and they, whoever these people known as 'they' are, are sometimes right and the person you meet doesn't match your quite realistically irrelevant,expectations.

Expectations went with me to watch Captain America: Civil War. Expectations due to the trailer, the cast, and the story and because here would be a number of characters that I'd been introduced to by many of the preceding Marvel movies as well as from the comics that I'd read as a kid

This movie didn't just meet my expectations, it left them trailing in the dust and not because it was keeping my expectations low. This is Marvel's best movie to date. To say that takes nothing away from the rest of the great movies they've been making since 2008, rather it is just making a very simple statement of fact.

The story is clear even if characters motivations aren't obvious at first. Stark wants to make up for past mistakes and expects everyone to agree. Rogers doesn't trust any politician and never will. But how the other characters fall in line isn't as straight forward. So this mix of action and drama worked perfectly and the witty one-liners gave some real laugh out loud moments too.

It's a Captain America movie and he's the star of the show but the supporting cast weren't bit players. Often the problem is that there's not enough screen time to do so many people justice but because we know the characters so well by now it wasn't an issue. It was also very nearly stolen by up and coming Tom Holland with relatively little in the way of screen time but more than just a cameo.

What was most refreshing was that The Bad Guy wasn't wearing a costume and threatening to destroy the world. By the time we get to Infinity War the threat will be very much in everyone's face so it was a pleasure to watch a superhero movie that kept you guessing as to what happened, but what will happen going forward.

Get your popcorn and sit back for a perfectly crafted movie that will make everyone at DC/Warner Brothers cry over missed opportunities and hopefully rethink their own expectations.