In November we enjoyed a nice variety of movies–old favorites and new ones (at home and the theater), we watched a new TV series with the boys and Super Rockstar and I watched a few just us. And, at the end of the month, since it was after Thanksgiving–we started our annual re-watching of favorite Christmas movies.
1. Ant-Man and the Wasp. I think the first one in this series will always going to be my favorite, but I also really like the second one–a lot of the same schtick, but also a lot of fun new gadgets and Hope fights alongside Ant-Man as the Wasp.
2. Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan TV Series. Super Rockstar and I were in “show hole” and decided to re-watch this series. It is really, really good. There are only 4 seasons–I would love it if they would do more.
3. House of David TV Series –Season 1. David’s story is one of my all-time favorite of the Bible. When I saw there was a new TV series based on him–we decided to watch it as a family. Overall, I thought it was really good. They have a disclaimer at the beginning declaring that it is a fictional representation of the Biblical story, but I didn’t like what they chose to make up about David’s back story–that he was a bastard son of Jessie. Nowhere in the Bible is that even remotely mentioned and I’m surprised they made it such a major part of his story in this TV series.
4. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. This is my least favorite of the Ant man movies. I had forgotten why until we watched it this time around. The idea of exploring the quantum realm seems like an intriguing story, but it just didn’t turn out very well. The acting is pretty bad all around and the story is too far out there. None of us liked it much.
5. Jurassic World: Rebirth. We loved this in theater and enjoyed it just as much at home. So much great action, tension and big, bad dinosaurs.
6. Get Smart. This is a fun Steve Carell movie where he plays a spy that wants to be in on the action rather than at a desk analyzing. It’s based on the old TV series, and it has a lot of great humor and is a fun story.
7. The Terminal List: Dark Wolf. This is a spin-off of the Terminal list TV Series with Christ Pratt playing a Navy Seal. This one focuses on the character, Ben Edward’s story. We really liked it.
8. Playdate. Kevin James plays a stay-at-home dad who connects to another stay-at-home dad who turns out to be on run from some bad guys trying to capture his son–who isn’t really his son, but it turns out he is. Make sense? It’s just a silly, dumb movie that left us all feeling cringy.
9. The Naked Gun (new one). I loved the original with Leslie Nielsen playing Frank Drebin. This one is Liam Neeson playing Frank Drebin Jr. It’s ok. A lot of the same schtick of the original, but not nearly as funny. The boys liked it. Super Rockstar and I didn’t care for it as much.
10. Free Birds. This is a really cute animated movie about a pardoned turkey who finds a time machine. He and another turkey travel back in time to the first Thanksgiving so that they can take turkey off the menu forever. It’s a really fun movie.
11. Play Dirty. Mark Walberg plays the head of a thief ring. They go for a big heist and end up coming up against the mob. The trailor looked good, so we gave it a shot. But it wasn’t all that great and pretty forgettable.
12. Mrs. Doubtfire. Our boys had never seen this movie, so we decided to watch it. Their overall opinion–cringy. They were also really bothered by the divorce theme of the movie.
13. Spirited. If you have not added this to your annual Christmas movie watching list–you need to. It is a fantastic musical comedy revolving around Ebeneezer Scrooge (Will Ferrell)–who now serves in the afterlife seeking out others to help redeem from their lousy lives. He meets his match when he tries to help a man who has been labeled an “unredeemable (Ryan Reynolds). It’s a GREAT story, fantastic songs and choreography. It’s a favorite of all of us.
14. The Grinch. This animated version that came out in 2018 quickly became a favorite of ours. I really like how even though he ist still very “grinchy”, he has a softer side–caring about Max and he really just wants to be included.
How about you? What have you been enjoying watching?