Movie Reviews: Interstellar and Big Hero 6 - Tues., Nov. 11

Thank you to all our veterans and soldiers who have fought, and are fighting for, our freedom. Bob and I respect and compliment you for your service to our country.

When we left off on our last blog, Bob and I had planned to do the Wurstfest Volksmarch on Sunday. Instead I slept in and took it easy Sunday morning. Bob was up before me and had the leak in our 5er roof fixed before I got up. Let me back up...

Saturday morning, Bob ran 16 miles with his marathon training group. I worked until 6:00 p.m. After work, Bob, Tom, Rosemarie, and I headed out to Random Beer Garden in Boerne, Texas (about 45 minutes from San Antonio). Random is owned by Bob's boss at MPS Construction, so Bob does accounting for both businesses.

One of the kids' bouncer slides has a leak in it, so they needed Bob's pick-up to deliver it to San Antonio for repairs. While we were there, we enjoyed the beautiful fall evening, partook of the food truck offerings, had a beer, and some root beer, and met up with Bob's son, Randall, who works at Random.

Vietnam Vet Tom and Rosemarie at Random

Little Texas Kitchen food truck menu.

Bob, Tom and Rosemarie ordering at Z's Wood-Fired Pizza

Jodi taking Tom and Rosemarie's order

The little kid below was having a blast with all those balloons. I'm sure he slept well Saturday night after running back and forth and 'round and 'round with those balloons.

Bob, Tom and Randall had quite a time trying to get the deflated, balled-up, really heavy bouncer into the bed of the pick-up. They were using a fork-lift, but even that didn't make it much easier. After much maneuvering and trial-and-error, they got the bunched-up bouncer slide onto his pick-up.

While sitting at a picnic table enjoying conversation, a shooting star or meteor passed by in our range of vision, lasting a good 4-8 seconds. The tail of it looked green. 

Randall's girlfriend, Jane, was on her way to Random, so we thought we'd stick around and meet her. Randall gave Tom and Rosemarie a tour of his travel trailer. Just as we were heading out, Jane arrived. Poor girl, when she got out of her car, all of us looked like a receiving line to Randall's trailer. No pressure meeting relatives for the first time. LOL. Jane has her own painting company. They do interior and exterior painting. We said our good-byes and headed back to San Antonio.

Saturday night, Bob and I decided not to do the Wurstfest Volksmarch on Sunday morning. Instead, we opted to sleep in. At 2:20 we met Susan and Darren to see "Interstellar."

Movie review: "Interstellar" 

Earth's future looks pretty grim in the beginning of this movie. The nitrogen level in the air is rising which will soon cause asphyxiation of the human race, crops are being decimated by blight, and haboobs (huge dust storms) are coming frequently causing problems with breathing. Some people move underground.

A widowed dad (Matthew McConaughey as Coop) with two kids farms corn, just like his daddy before him. With a twist! You see, before farming, Coop retired from the space program where he apparently was a helluva pilot. Coop loves his kids dearly and is especially attached to his ten-year-old daughter, Murph. Murph is having trouble in school for challenging the beliefs of her time about space travel to the moon.

At home, weird, supernatural-type occurrences happen in Murph's room. Books come off the shelves, dust lines up in unnatural ways on her floor. Murph thinks it's a ghost. Coop shakes it off and tells her to study the occurrences scientifically to make sense of what she's seeing.

What Murph discovers leads her and her dad to a secret NASA underground complex. There they find preparations being made to send a spaceship on an exploratory mission to look for planets humans can inhabit, theoretically to save the human race.

Because Coop is a retired NASA pilot, he is top choice to lead an expedition through a wormhole to another part of space where 12 explorers had gone before, sending back data if they could.

Coop wants to do it to save humanity and, especially, his kids. He can't tell Murph when, or if, he'll be back. Murph thinks he is deserting her and won't even say good-bye to him.

Off he goes into the wild blue yonder as commander of the secret mission. His mentor from NASA, Dr. Brand (Michael Caine), thinks Coop is the only one capable of completing the mission. Brand tells Coop he hasn't yet figured out how to bring them back, but he is working on an equation for new technology to bring them back that he hopes to have solved before they need to return. Coop's second in command on the mission is Brand's daughter, Amelia (Anne Hathaway). 

The space travel portion of the film is astounding. I liked this movie better than "Gravity." Wow, wow, wow. Although it's hard to wrap your head around all the physics and astrophysics involved in space travel, it's still an awesome flick. For example, an hour on a planet equates to seven years in earth time.

Once through the wormhole, there are three planets NASA's former expedition research thought might be suitable for human inhabitants. The first planet this team visits turns out to be all water with massive waves. This sequence of the movie causes nail-biting excitement.

After visiting the first planet, there is only enough fuel to visit one of the other two planets. A vote is taken amongst the crew members as to which planet they should visit. A choice is made, for better or worse, and they reach a planet so cold, even the clouds are ice.

The rest of the movie needs to be shrouded in mystery, so you can experience the same impact the rest of us did. I will tell you, see this movie. Put it high on your list. It's incredible. The movie will make you think, educate you, and take you on an emotional ride. Very enjoyable. I give it 5 stars. The one drawback is that it is hard to hear the dialogue in many parts due to the soundtrack. I plan to rent the DVD when it comes out and watch it with subtitles so I can "hear" what they were saying. Oh, yeah, if you can, see it in IMAX. The whole movie was filmed in 70 mm, so if you see it on a smaller screen, you will miss some of the edges of the space scenes.

Movie Review: "Big Hero 6" (Monday)

As if to make up for the horrible movie ("John Wick") I saw last week, this week I have seen two exceptionally good movies in two days. "Big Hero 6" is an animated movie that takes place in San Fransokyo. The previews show a big, kind, awkward, marshmallow-looking robot.

The movie starts out at a robotic fight competition with bets being taken on which robot will win. The second competitor up is Hiro, a 14-year-old boy with a small, silly robot. He is up against a big, sumo-wrestler-like man with a huge, macho robot with a saw on its arm. Hiro gets on the wrong side of the big guy. The big guy sends his henchmen to hurt Hiro to scare him away from further 'bot fights.

At just the right moment, Hiro's brother roars up in a motorcycle and whisks Hiro away. However, they are stopped by the police and both Hiro and his older brother are put in jail. They are rescued the next morning by their aunt, who is their caretaker. She exhorts Hiro to stop fighting 'bots. But, being a rebellious teen-ager, Hiro wants to go out and fight his 'bot again the next night.

His older brother says he'll take him to the competition on his motorcycle, but they have to stop at his college on the way there. Hiro doesn't completely understand what his brother does at the "nerd college." We learn his brother has invented a medical assistant robot, Baymor, that can diagnose and treat a young patient without scaring them. Baymor is the big, soft cushy 'bot from the previews.

While at his brother's "nerd college" he sees projects the other students are working on. He is so taken with their creativity, he wants to go to the college. While there, he meets the dean who tells him anyone can attend the college if they can win the annual robotics competition.

Hiro decides college is more important than fighting 'bots. He throws himself into creating a winning presentation for the competition. He wins, gets accepted to the college and finds out his creation has been stolen by someone very bad.

A big explosion and fire wipe out the robotics building at the college and kill Hiro's brother, who had gone back into the building to save the Dean. When Hiro finds out his microbots have been stolen, he and his brother's friends from the nerd college, go looking for the microbots. What they find is bigger than they could have imagined.

The remainder of the movie shows how the "nerd" kids, including Hiro, redesign their inventions and become like super-heroes. With their arsenal of tricks and new costumes, they go after the baddie who stole Hiro's microbots.

Hiro, meanwhile, is teaching Baymor about violence, builds a new super-hero suit for Baymor and attaches wings and thrusters to make Baymor more mobile. What ensues is a fun, intense, crazy, madcap chase scene.

This movie has a great script, good voice actors, a wry sense of humor, and Baymor, the robot who steals the show. I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy this movie, but it won me over. I think it is the best animated movie of the year to date. There is a feel of Japanese anime in the movie too. I give this movie five stars. Very entertaining!

Early Monday morning (7:00 a.m.) I hit the laundry room to do six loads of dirty clothes. At 10:45 a.m., was "Big Hero 6." After the movie, Susan, Darren and I went to IHOP Express near the theater for a late breakfast.

From there, I went to Petco for cat food. Next was Planet Fitness to work out. Then I had to take my car in for its annual inspection. Twenty minutes and $15 later, my car had a new Texas inspection sticker.

Today, I was up at 8:30 a.m. to see if Tom and Rosemarie wanted to have a pancake breakfast. They hadn't seen my invitation until this morning and they were just about packed up and ready to go. Tom helped me put in our awning when a big wind started flapping it a bit too much. Soon thereafter, Tom and Rosemarie headed out to Galveston, Texas where they will spend the winter.

At 1:00 p.m. I was at the hairdresser for a spruce up. From 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. I was back at Planet Fitness working out on the equipment. Tonight I made hamburgers and steamed broccoli and cauliflower for dinner, then kicked back to watch "Master Chef Junior" and "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."

Travel Bug out.