"We don't get a lot of things to really care about."

It is really difficult to talk about this movie without kind of spoiling the whole reason to recommend watching it. Needless to say, Pig is a cleverly-subversive rebuke of the toxicly-masculine "revenge porn" movies that it is inspired by -- movies like John Wick and Taken with a little Quentin Tarantino thrown in. The movie was pitched to me as "Nick Cage goes John Wick to rescue his kidnapped truffle pig." I like John Wick and Taken just fine, and I was surprised at where Pig ended up going, but it goes without saying that Pig ends up offering something much deeper and more meaningful.

Pig is a sad, depressing movie about dealing with loss and grief; about reflecting on lives that didn't turn out the way we wanted them to; about the past that was, the present that isn't, and the future that will never be. Sometimes life spirals out of control because of the poor choices we make; sometimes it's just tragic bad luck. Either way, we cannot undo what's done, and we can only go on one more day at a time.

Yet in spite of the depressing path that the story takes, Pig somehow manages to present an uplifting message about connecting with other people through empathy for them and their situation, and about finding common ground between people who cannot possibly be more different. Even if you can't get what you want through civil discourse, it's still not worth resorting to violence.

Pig will be another example that I will point to, along with The Martian and Moana, of a movie that doesn't need a traditional villain or a climactic fist-fight or shootout to tell a compelling and tension-filled story that can connect with an audience. Once again, the writers of any future Star Trek movies should pay close attention to this one, and take notes.

So yes, I highly recommend watching this film. If you haven't watched it yet, then you can stop reading here and come back when you have watched it, because I can't talk any more about why I like it without spoiling everything that makes it good and meaningful.

Did you watch it yet?

Fanboys have been demanding it for years, and now, finally Warner Brothers has seen fit to grace audiences with a version of Zach Snyder's original vision for the Justice League movie. And you know what? It's actually not that bad.

I would have been much less tolerant of the movie's 4 hour runtime if I had been stuck having to sit quietly and watch it in a theater. Being able to watch it at home, on the comfort of a couch, with friends, and able to stop to go to the bathroom or take a snack break, really helped to make the movie feel like less of a drag than it otherwise might have.

Zack Snyder's Justice League is 4 hours long, but is a much better movie than the theatrical cut.

Heck, the movie almost seems designed for audiences to get up a few times to take a break and maybe even chat about what's going on. The movie is broken up into 5 or 6 "parts", with each part beginning with a title card showing a name for the part. It's essentially divided up into 40-ish minute episodes as if it were a TV mini-series.

As such, each character gets time to shine. They all get more development, and they all have a unique role to play in the final confrontation. The whole conflict isn't just won because Superman shows up. Each of the other characters still has to do their part. Well, the heroes all get meaningful roles. Louis Lane still feels like she could have been cut from the movie entirely and it wouldn't make a difference, even though she's supposedly the key to preventing the disastrous future that keeps showing up in Batman's dreams.

Doing good for the sake of good

Perhaps most importantly, the heroes in this movie feel a little more like the heroes that we know from the comic books, even if they are still darker, edgier, and exceedingly grim and emo all the time. Unlike in Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice, these depictions of Superman, Batman, and so forth actually seem to care about everyday people, and we have multiple scenes of some of them going out of their way to fight crime and save lives. Better yet, their selfless acts are not depicted as being done as a begrudging obligation that they'd rather not be bothered with. These heroes actually do good for the sake of doing good. They also don't spend the whole movie bickering with one another, let alone indulging in the petty conflicts or dick-measuring contests presented in Dawn of Justice.

The heroes act more like heroes.

It's impossible to know how much of this was originally part of Snyder's vision at the inception of the DCEU, or if it was course-correction based off of feedback of Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice, but Snyder's Justice League is surprisingly lighter in tone than either Man of Steel or Dawn of Justice. But not to the point of self-parody that was present in Joss Whedon's re-shot mess of a film.

Where can the Marvel Cinematic Universe go after Thanos? My vote is for Doctor Doom to be the next overarching big baddie now that Disney owns Fox (and the Fantastic Four license). Thanos already successfully wiped out half of all life in the universe, and despite the Avengers gaining access to a time machine, they did not undo any of that! How do you up the stakes going into the next phase of Marvel movies?

Well, introducing a multi-verse seems like the logical next step.

It's so logical, in fact that Marvel didn't even seem to hide the idea in Far From Home's marketing. The second trailer, which I think premiered within a week of Endgame's release, pushed the multi-verse idea hard -- as well as spoiling Tony Stark's death for anyone who hadn't made it out to see Endgame within that first week.

It's all spoilers from the next paragraph on. If you haven't seen the movie yet, then I recommend it. It's good! Not Into the Spider-Verse good, but Far From Home is one of the better Marvel movies, and Mysterio is totally awesome.

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If Infinity War was the Empire Strikes Back of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then Endgame was poised to be the MCU's Return of the Jedi. RotJ was a "good enough" capstone on a legendary film series, and that's pretty much where my expectations for Endgame sat. Endgame exceeded my expectations. It's far more than just a "good enough" sequel, though it's still not as good as Infinity War.

Endgame could very easily have just been a movie about all the heroes picking themselves back up after being knocked down in Infinity War, coming together, going after Thanos, and beating him up for two hours. Then they get the Infinity Gauntlet and snap all the dead heroes and people back into existence. No harm done, happy ending for everyone.

Not the case.

Several of my friends suspected that Thanos would remain the point-of-view character, and that he, himself, would be overcome with grief and regret over having killed Gamora. That Thanos would actually be the one to undo everything, redeeming himself in a way similar to Darth Vader. That didn't happen either. The point of view has shifted completely back to our heroes -- what's left of them.

Thanos' grief is not the subject of the movie, nor does he spend the movie gloating. Grief is, however, the overarching theme of Endgame, which handles the subject with maturity and nuance -- at least, up until its morally muddled ending (more on that later). The Marvel movies have always included themes of family, and the lengths one would go for family. Endgame explores how we deal with the loss of family, the grief and depression that comes with tragedy, the trauma and guilt of failing to protect those you care about. It's powerful stuff, and it pulls no punches.

And I totally cried when the movie went full-blown Star Trek VI with its end credits. It's too bad they didn't include the Stan Lee marvel logo that was included in Captain Marvel. This being the capstone MCU movie that everyone is going to see, I feel that tribute would have served this movie well. Or maybe put that tribute at the end of the movie, along with the other credits. Ah well.

It's hard to talk any more about this movie without going into spoiler territory. So I'm going to start with minor spoilers and work my way up to the more major ones. If you haven't seen the movie yet, then you can close this page now and know that I give it my fullest recommendation. Otherwise, feel free to read on, but know that things are going to get increasingly spoiler-y as I go on. Feel free to stop if you feel like you're about to read something you don't want to hear.

The remaining heroes must deal with the grief and guilt of having failed to stop Thanos.

I'm late to this party. With Avengers: Endgame due out in the next couple weeks, I finally got around to seeing Captain Marvel. I had planned to see it with a friend the week after release, but illness and work got in the way, so we never made it out. Also, I just haven't been out to movies much since being blown away by Into the Spider-Verse -- seriously, it's out on home video and streaming, go watch it! There's a few other movies that I've been wanting to see, and I'm going to try really hard to not miss them in theaters. I'm really looking forward to Jordan Peele's new movie, Us, which I'm hoping to see this week or next. And apparently, DC's Shazam! might actually be good?!

But I finally had a weekend afternoon to myself, and decided to go to Captain Marvel, since my girlfriend didn't want to see it. As is par for the Marvel movies, it's good enough. Marvel has yet to produce a true flop, but I feel like Captain Marvel is a bit of a regression considering the studio's recent track record.

I like when the Marvel movies experiment with genre, but Captain Marvel remains a pretty standard fare origin story.

The big problem is that we're back to origin stories. Spider-Man: Homecoming smartly passed on re-re-telling the story of how Peter Parker became Spider-Man, and was all the better for it. Recent movies like Black Panther, Guardians vol. 2, and [especially] Infinity War, had moved beyond the dull origin stories and un-interesting, cookie-cutter villains to offer truly engaging and transcendent films. Captain Marvel kind of falls in with Doctor Strange as being a passable -- but ultimately skippable -- entry. At least it isn't as contradictory as Doctor Strange.

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