April 2019

This month, I got my tooth #5 pulled, after cracking it while eating a sandwich (thanks, Jersey Mike’s Subs!). It was also the month of Desert Storm in Lake Havasu, which I attended to cover for Speedboat. It was over 100 degrees, so I had to curtail some of my outdoor activities. BOOKS: I read more Neil Simon plays (finished Barefoot in the Park and I Ought to Be in Pictures). I listened to the audiobook of Cary Elwes’ As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride, and started The Shape of Lies by Rachel Abbott. MUSIC: I began listening to and grading every song by Death Cab for Cutie. TV: I watched every episode of Hot Date, a very funny sketch-comedy series recommended by my friend Anna.

Here are the three movies I saw in April:

HIGH LIFE (2019)—Another overrated sci-fi drama to put on the shelf next to Interstellar. In this one, Robert Pattison leads a group of criminals aboard a spaceship who are tasked to travel to a black hole to find an alternate energy source. I found it to be long, muddled and boring. (4)

TEEN SPIRIT (2019)—Elle Fanning plays a bored British high-school girl of Polish descent who gets a chance to compete in a kind of American Idol-type TV singing contest. All the odds are against her, but she perseveres in what amounts to a fairly by-the-numbers competition movie. However, what the film has going for it is some very good music, plus Elle’s above-average performance and amazing beauty. Rebecca Hall also has a nice role. (9)

AVENGERS: ENDGAME (2019)—This is the movie that wraps up the Avengers storyline that began with last year’s Avengers: Infinity War. Half of the superheroes have evaporated, thanks to ultimate villain Thanos (Josh Brolin), who got the “infinity stones” and wiped out half of humanity. Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) devises a plan to bring them back, and it involves time-travel. I’m not a huge time-travel fan, but the movie is generally entertaining, if overlong. (8)