Chernobyl - 2019

This HBO miniseries has been on my watchlist for a long time. I don't know a lot about Chernobyl, and I'm always willing to learn more.

The series is broken up into 5 episodes. Each episode focuses on different problems, but there are subplots that carry through to the end of the series. Of course, the disaster as a whole is the main focus. What caused it? How are they going to contain it?

Dog lover warning - the fourth episode was so hard to watch. I understand they had to limit the spread of radioactive wildlife, but there was no way they were going to find every pet and kill it. I'm not a cat fan, but I know they are experts at hiding. But the extended story of the liquidators was heartbreaking. I closed my eyes at some points. I just can't watch stuff like that. 

On an accuracy scale, I understand this is a drama. The setting is also a place notorious for covering up the severity of things. If you think I'm exaggerating, understand it was said to be a minor accident for a while, or even better look up the official death count. The thing I love the most about watching shows based on true events is when I can look deeper into what actually happened.

To that end, I found the translated tapes of Valery Legasov, and I plan on reading through those. I also found an interview with one of the divers who opened the valves in the basement. I read through the interview, and it was super interesting. Alexei Ananenko was one of the three divers, and they actually survived their heroic actions!

Chernobyl happened in 1986. I was only 9 years old at the time, so I didn't know a lot of the details. The show really showed me a lot of the human toll that was thrown at the disaster. It's another topic I'm going to be diving into in the future. The show was really well done, and it really made me think. The facts at the end were staggering. Seriously, look up the official death count. It's ridiculous. Good Series!

Captain America II: Death Too Soon - 1979

After being disappointed watching the first installment of this movie duo, I didn't have super high hopes. I did hold out a bit of hope, however, since Christopher Lee was in this. That man had an interesting life, and he was an actor I always enjoy watching.

In this super weird superhero movie, Captain America has to try and stop Christopher Lee from aging everyone. Lee is hiding at a penitentiary as acting warden and has a professor locked away creating a serum that ages people. He sends an angry baby puma to the president to prove that his formula works. In a few hours, the cat has grown, but it's still angry. Anyway, Captain America does some...stuff and saves the day.

This was probably more ridiculous than the first one, but much more tolerable to watch. The bigger questions came out in this one for sure. Why did the professor have an exploding lock on his door and no one cared? Why did he have to make an aging serum to create an antiaging serum? Why did Captain America break onto the dock in the middle of the day and beat up all the dock workers? Were they all working for Miguel (Christopher Lee)? Why did Captain America purposely Peter Pan off the dam (The Fugitive reference for the young ones) and splat his motorcycle at the bottom? And how did he get the bike back? WHO came up with the idea to attach a glider to the motorcycle and film it for 5 minutes straight?! 

The end was straight up brutal and hilarious, and I have no words for it. The whole movie was strange, but I enjoyed it enough to watch it again for laughs. I'm still wondering where Steve got the cat and where it went. The whole "line up outside the vet without any pets" plan was totally not suspicious, and I found it hilarious they had minions outside town who just sat there all day and logged who traveled over the bridge. Jeep posse! I'm giving it a Fun Movie! review, but it's not good, and it's definitely not for everyone. One final question: Why didn't anyone question the ethics of testing the antidote on the twins? 

Contagion - 2011

I was browsing through my recorded movies to find something to watch this morning, and this was the one I picked. There are lots of big names and recognizable faces in this movie, and I hadn't seen it before.

It's really easy to sum up the plot of this movie. I'm calling it Covid: The Movie. Brief explanation if that isn't enough for you is a woman flies home from China. She's sick and dies. People around the world start to die, and it's important for the CDC and WHO to find out where it came from and how to stop it. The story is told from numerous viewpoints and from places all over the world.

The movie was a little heavy on the looting/crime aspect, but everything else seemed fairly accurate. Food supply woes, stocking up on water and hand sanitizer, and the movie even has the conspiracy guy who thinks he cured himself with a homeopathic remedy. The one guy commented his wife made him undress in the garage and sanitized everything, and that reminded me of when first responders and hospital workers would talk of when they'd go home after work during the pandemic.

They really crammed a lot into this movie. No scene was wasted since we were following so many characters on a global scale. I liked the camera work a lot. Especially at the beginning when they were keeping a shot on something a sick person touched. You knew what it meant, and it was ominous, and it's always been something that bothers me.

The other part I really liked was the end. I'm not going to spoil what it was, because it was just really clever. The taped version I had was 2 1/2 hours, but it flew (and I skipped commercials). I loved that they took the time to focus on some of the science involved in the identification of the virus and creation of a vaccine. I found that really interesting. The conspiracy nut was a little annoying, but I'd totally watch this again. Good Movie!

Captain America - 1979

I really love the old classics. What's been especially fun for me has been digging up old Marvel attempts and seeing how different they are from the CGI present. I watched the serial (1944) and had a lot of fun with it. 

This particular version was...something. It was not what I was expecting at all. Steve is coming back in 1979, so there's no Nazi fighting, and the man isn't really very patriotic either. He's more of a reluctant, whiny man-child. He's also a bit dense.

I'm guessing they were trying to meet their screen time limit for the pilot, because they showed looong scenes of driving. Sometimes Steve was in a van, sometimes he was on a motorcycle, and at the end he was puttering around in a helicopter.

Big shoutout to the helicopter pilot, though. He flew pretty low a couple times, and I was impressed. The end was the weirdest thing I've ever seen in a superhero movie. They track the villain (who is reading a book while sitting next to a neutron bomb) with a helicopter (again, for an extended period of time) and then Steve almost kills him with exhaust. I'm not sure why the villain decided to stand right next to the vent where the crap was coming in, but whatever. Watching Captain America sitting next to the prone form of the villain while his doctor friend was saving the man was so weird.

Overall, this thing was so strange. Steve had a soothing voice and no emotions. He also doesn't accept being Captain America until almost the end of the movie. My daughter fell asleep, and she's the one who usually is all in on the nonsense. I have no idea how they had another movie after this one, but it has Christopher Lee, so it can't be worse than this one. It just can't...

Three Wise Men and a Baby (2022) & Three Wiser Men and a Boy (2024)

I'm going to lump these into the same review since we watched them fairly close together. We played bingo with them, but we didn't have a lot of hope when we knew what they were about. That particular theory was correct.

In the first movie, you have three brothers who have to team up to take care of a baby. The poor little mite was left of at the firehouse with one of the brother's names on it, and they just decide to take care of it since the mother says she'll be back for him. The men learn about each other and become closer as a family.

In the second movie, it's five years later. The firefighter has married the mother and is now father to the boy. The other two are all-in on the uncle job and still working on their lives. All three of them are dealing with real life issues, and now they also have to deal with Mom's new boyfriend.

Both these movies were more tolerable than the others we've watched recently. I honestly enjoyed the first one, and we all had a few laughs with it. The second one wasn't bad, but I didn't like it as much as the first one. The overly perfect pastor-man was a bit much to deal with - for the brothers and me. Neither movie gave us a bingo, but we didn't care. Actual good movies for sure!