🍿 I watched Karate Kid: Legends (streaming on Netflix). Overall a fun movie with a great cast, but the pacing feels rushed sometimes.
movies
🍿 Superman (2025)
The new Superman movie is so refreshing for showing Superman as bright and hopeful. I got so tired of the dark and gritty style of the last few Superman movies, because that style doesn’t match Superman’s personality or optimism.
🍿 I saw Ballerina this weekend. If you liked the other John Wick movies, you’ll like this one, too. I’m glad they gave Eve (the main character) an actual backstory and a distinct personality. She isn’t just a female version of John.
🍿 Ladyhawke (1985)
Ladyhawke has been on my list of movies to watch for a while, and I have no idea why I added it. It’s a ridiculous movie, but I kind of liked it.
My favorite bits:
- 80s synths in the soundtrack, for a medieval fantasy movie? Okay. 🙃
- Matthew Broderick’s character lies constantly and not even very well, but the other characters believe him. 🤨
- A joust inside a church. No one tries to stop them or move them outside. 😆
- Animorphs-like transformations. 🙂↔️
🍿 I watched First Man today.
Making a movie about real events can be difficult because the audience likely knows the outcome of the story. The movie felt boring to me most of the time. But despite that, I recognize the cast was great, and the filmmakers included a lot of details to make the movie authentic to real life.
Movies I watched in 2024
1/3/25
Here’s the list of movies I watched in 2024. Titles with an asterisk after them (*) are ones I recommend.
My top 5, in no particular order
- Predestination *
- Deadpool & Wolverine *
- Spy Game *
- America’s Sweethearts *
- tick, tick…BOOM! *
Superheroes
- Deadpool (re-watch) *
- Madame Web
- Glass
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (re-watch) *
- Superman: Unbound
Documentaries
- Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV *
- Jim Henson: Idea Man
Prequels, sequels, and re-makes
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park
- Jurassic Park III
- Wonka
- Code 8, part 2
Sci-fi
- Jurassic Park (re-watch) *
- The Adjustment Bureau
- Uglies
- Somewhere in Time
- Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
- The Lobster *
- Planet of the Apes (1968) *
Grab bag
- The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
- The Fall Guy
- Carry-On
- Inside Man *
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (re-watch) *
- American Splendor
- Kung Fu Panda *
If you’d like to see movies I’ve watched in the past, I have a list going back to 2015. 🍿
🍿 Somewhere in Time (1980) - Streaming for free on Tubi. It’s a well-made movie with a great cast. I feel like it was probably well-received when it came out, but I don’t think it aged well.
🍿 Uglies (streaming on Netflix) - Same genre as Hunger Games and Divergent (and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing). I read the book years ago and liked it, so I watched the movie. Uglies is not super amazing, gonna blow your mind. But not every movie has to be. This is fine for what it is.
🍿 I watched the movie Predestination last weekend. It’s based on a short story, called “All You Zombies” by Robert A. Heinlein.
The movie is confusing in that you learn info out of order. But if you’re okay with that, I recommend watching it.
The hot air balloon in Elemental
10/3/23
I watched Elemental without knowing what to expect, because Disney’s marketing missed the mark (again). But I liked the movie overall. One of my favorite parts was seeing how each character used their element, like Ember inflating a hot air balloon.
I wanted to draw the scene with the hot air balloon floating over the city. I started with a pencil sketch. It’s rough. I wanted to figure out the foreground vs. the background and where the balloon was in the sky, in relation to the skyline.
Here’s a photo of when I was painting the larger areas. I simplified colors and composition (all those buildings!) because it’s so much detail.
Here’s the finished drawing.
Walking into Hill Valley
2/5/23
Here’s an illustration inspired by a scene in Back to the Future: Marty walking into Hill Valley.
I made this as part of a course on illustrating with Posca pens. The assignment was to use two shades of the same color as the main colors in the piece. Since a lot of this image is grassy fields, I chose two shades of green. I kept Marty’s outfit realistic (orange vest and blue jeans) to signify that he’s out of place…or, more accurately, out of time.
Here are some thumbnail sketches I did prior to painting the scene. I wanted to test out colors–what looked good for the grass and Marty’s outfit.
And here’s the simple pencil sketch I started with.
