Guys! Movie season is back! The past month has been too busy to go see movies that I was only lukewarm about, but I’m pretty sure from here on, there’s something I want to see every weekend again!
As I sat on Tuesday night watching Antoine Fuqua’s new version of The Magnificent 7, I tried to remember the last time I watched the 1963 movie, (sometime in high school, I think,) and when the last I watched the Kurosawa’s original Seven Samurai, (probably college), when I decided that The Western was a genre I actually gave a shit about, (definitely college), when I realized I’d go see Chris Pratt in anything (halfway through season 3 of Parks And Recreation) and when Denzel Washington became a constant presence in my 5 favorite actors (middle school, though I didn’t realize he had the official title of Greatest Actor of All Time Period until about 2 years ago.) So that’s a lot of baggage to bring into a movie, that, on it’s own is pretty fluffy.
Don’t get me wrong, I like fluff, especially fluff like Magnificent 7, which is good looking, exciting and fun fluff. If you don’t know the story of The Magnificent 7 you probably haven’t ever watched movies before, so I suggest you get on it, but basically, in this variation, a robber baron has begun victimizing a small town of hardworking farmers, they recruit a bounty hunter, Sam Chisholm (Washington) to defend them and send the guy running, he gets together a band of six ragtag friends, (Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio and others) and they chase of the bad guys.
Of course what makes the story special is that the heroes are kind of bad guys themselves, who’ve decided to do something good, for the money, but still.
Overall the movie is great. It’s stunning visually, and the cast jibes well, and the action is clean and the quips are there. It’s not anything special though and can’t touch the magic of it’s source material. (That’s really unfair, I know…but still…) The whole enterprise is worth it to see Denzel, in all black, on a black horse, riding through the desert. That’s an image that the world deserves.
Rankings!
- The Nice Guys
- Don’t Think Twice
- Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
- Pete’s Dragon
- Ghostbusters
- Captain America: Civil War
- Kubo And The Two Strings
- Star Trek Beyond
- The Magnificent 7
- X-Men: Apocalypse
- The Legend Of Tarzan
- Suicide Squad
- Finding Dory
- Independence Day: Resurgence
- Alice Through The Looking Glass
Trailers
I don’t think there was anything new…Inferno looks like, really, really bad though. Rogue One still makes me cry.