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FILMS I MISSED: 2019 EDITION

If anyone who reads this blogs, knows the drill. People make best/worst films of year list, I make films I missed list. I'm not included anything nominated for awards, because they get wide released the year later and not on any streaming originals, which I can watch anytime. I do things differently here. Let's go.


1. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu


Pokemon as a franchise has a cross generational appeal, lots of people grew up with the games and anime series, I year older than this, I remember watching the show around the Diamond and Pearl era. This film looked great, the Pokemon look great in live action, it seems to be doing a Who Framed Roger Rabbit vibe and it has Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu which seems like perfect casting for this version. They also filmed it at the Chatham Dockyard, where my mum worked. Didn't get to watch it, might show up on a streaming site, but I'll get round to it. But in the meantime, I have that one scene from the Norm Macdonald sitcom, Norm.


2. Terminator Dark Fate

I have only watched the original Terminator film from 1984, but I still have a knowledge of the franchise just through pop cultural osmosis, mostly that T2 is the best one, the third sucks, the one with the Christian Bale rant is the one with the Christian Bale rant and Genisys has JK Simmons. This one looked interesting, with a new cast of characters and a returning Linda Hamilton and it had good reviews. There was some hub bub from the usual suspects because the three protagonists are all women, which when you look at it, these films have been Sarah Connor's story. I didn't watch because I moved and the new cinema I got two, both of them, have a small selection of screens, so and there was some timings I had to work around. By the way expect to hear the phrase, not any good timings.


3. Doctor Sleep

In 2013 Stephen King wrote a sequel to the Shining called Doctor Sleep, about Danny being grown up and dealing with the incidents in the book. There was a lot of speculation on if and when a film adaptation would be made. Most of the tepidness around it would be on the smae lines as making a sequel to Psycho or Jaws (which both got sequels). But the response to this film has been pretty good. It looks to recreate the sets from the original film. Ewan McGregor seems to play Danny is an interesting way, like yeah, Danny would be traumatised from those events and the villains seem interesting.


4. Men in Black: International

I love the Men in Black films, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones were great, every aliens looked great and I now also sense a strong immigration control theme underlying the film. This film looked interesting, seems to focus on other agents and makes it more globe trotting. It seems to be an interesting direction and it has all the stuff I love from the films like the aliens designs and the chemistry between the main stars. Didn't see it and a vast majority of people didn't see it either.


5. Toy Story 4

Yeah I skipped, I just moved when it came out. Needed to settle in. That's why. Seemed to be like El Camino for kids.


6. It: Chapter Two

I watched the 2017 film, which I thought was pretty good, I was looking forward to see if they do all the crazy stuff (SPIDERS), but again, two cinemas, small number of screens, not any good times. Had to miss it, like the first one. Fitting.


7. Gemini Man

The word of 2019: De-ageing. We have lots of technology that been making older actors look younger, like the Irishman. Gemini Man seemed to take this in an interesting direction, with two Will Smiths and a film directed by Ang Lee. There was a lot of mix reactions, but I still wanted to see it. Maybe the next time.


8. Serenity

It was the twist. If they made a film with THAT twist, that's the reason I'm watching a middling thriller film.


9. Crawl

A film that is basically Tremors but with alligators and water, seems awesome, not where I lived apparently.


10. Cats

Cats is a musical that has been ironed into the pop cultural osmosis. You've heard Memories, you have an idea of what the costumes looked like, we know it's written by Andrew Lloyd Webber. But I didn't know what madness is inside it. The fur technology looks... too realistic, but I wanted to sit down and watch a car crash on the big screen, but I didn't get to it. I failed the #CatsChallenge


So those were the films I missed, but 2020 has a lot more films I'm looking forward to watch and possibly miss depending on how I'm feeling.

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