Film Shorts: Valley Cinemas and Beyond

Didn’t we just see a Marvel comic book movie last week? Well, if it’s Friday that means yet another ransacking of the comic book heritage, which adults hated when I was a kid. This week it’s Fantastic Four. Same genre (comic character origin story), different company (Fox instead of Ant-Man’s Disney or Spider-Man’s Sony).

If you’ve seen the Jessica Alba FF you’ve seen this one. Four scientists, out in space, rendered mutants. It’s a familiar story told with numbing repetition and noise.

Pixels is a Saturday afternoon wish fulfillment epic for boys around 10 years old, and for men who remember being 10. After a flashback to a big video game convention from the early 1980s, the adult Brenner (Adam Sandler) is now a home computer installer, while his friend from those days is … the President of the United States (Kevin James). Then aliens attack earth, but use as their weapons video games from 1982, the same games used in that old competition, where Brenner came in at second place. The aliens misinterpreted a friendly-gesture “this is who we aren’t” video sent into space by NASA as a declaration of war. The President & Co. must enlist the help of gamer friends to fight their foes. In the end, everyone gets what they want. Everyone else is pleased too in an ending that Wayne of Wayne’s World would call “mega-happy.” With its in-jokes and rival plot inconsistencies and technical nonsense, Pixels is probably something that will play better on the home screen when the time comes.

Your local RedBox service machine should be filling up soon with a modicum of new films. Besides Ex Machina, mentioned here a few weeks ago, there is the new Liam Neeson thriller, Run All Night. Yes, it’s the latest variation on a Neesonian theme — dad fighting for his child — but this time around he’s a criminal with divided loyalties. There is also a European flavor to the film with Scandinavian actor Joel Kinnaman as the son, and European director.

Over at Amazon you can get caught up on the quirky humor of the sitcom Community, which ended up at the shopping site after cancellation by NBC. The show is not to everyone’s taste, what with its “meta” approach to itself, and the in-jokes and cultural references, but the aging students at a Colorado community college make a fine, fun team, and the plots are always wild and unpredictable.

On August 8, Netflix is offering the eighth season of the BBC kids sci-fi show, Doctor Who. I’m not yet completely sold on the new Doctor, one Peter Capaldi, as he feels like a throwback to the 1960s - my favorite Doctor remains David Tennant — but the show remains clever, fun, and suspenseful.