Universal Frenzy

Rating: 5/10 (16 December 2018)

This was a bit of a shell game, quick changes, shifting focus, frenzied light show on top of scientific jargon to draw us into believing that something was accomplished. "Timeless" had the same conceit: go to the past to change it so that your wife and child would return. But history was present to provoke thought and I-didn't-know-that moments. I felt sorry for the gangster who produced the fantastic machine: he loved his wife and child. Sometimes death is death. The saving grace is that we miss the dead and remember them. as in Coco. Also a fantastic animation. So, on that basis, the cartoon worked. Marvel is over the top. I loved Peter Parker as paunchy. His wife missed him because he dove into his rescue work. A death of a marriage, each rescue escapade was another nail in the coffin. The visual jokes were good. The "heart" was there. Stan Lee was there as usual. We miss him, but his "heart" lives on. A bit much for the preschoolers. Cool for the older ones. Narrative lacking cohesiveness for the retired. Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" confused me at the time. I suppose I was supposed to "get it" but the visuals for his entry into whatever he was entering were cheesy. But, like this Spider-Man, some visuals just danced, like the Blue Danube playing while the ships docked. Swinging through a forest? Superb.