Smoke and Ashes
9.5
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Book
Haunted by his memories of the Great War, Captain Sam Wyndham is battling a serious addiction to...
Poirot Investigates (Hercule Poirot #3)
7.3
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Book
The very first collection of superb short stories featuring Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings… ...
Marvel Strike Force
Comics and Games
7.2
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App
In MARVEL Strike Force, ready for battle alongside allies and arch-rivals in this action-packed,...
Marvel Comics Game App Superheroes
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
7.5
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Movie Watch
In 1805, aboard the H.M.S. Surprise, the brash Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and his trusted...
The Last Guardian (Artemis Fowl, #8)
6.3
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Book
Opal Koboi, power-crazed pixie, is plotting to exterminate mankind and become fairy queen. If she...
Pirates Don't Go to Kindergarten!
Book
Yo, ho, ho! It’s a mutiny against kindergarten! Pirate Emma is about to start kindergarten! But...
picture book adventure pirates
Love, Pucks, and Other Stories (Rush Hockey #4)
8.0
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Book
I hated hockey players. While the Rush had cleaned up their act and were no long wreaking havoc in...
Contemporary Sports Romance
That's the starting point for this novel, which imagines that the lower-deck crew are well aware of this fact, and thus do their utmost to avoid ever being selected to go on an away mission.
Very self-aware, in other words, although it could probably do with being a little bit shorter than it actually is - drop the Codas at the end, maybe?
TacoDave (4012 KP) rated Avengers: Endgame (2019) in Movies
Apr 26, 2019
If you read my review of Captain Marvel, you'll see that I was underwhelmed because they didn't really explain her powers or weaknesses. Avengers: Endgame is exciting, funny, rich, and fantastic, full of great callbacks to earlier MCU movies and references to things we hadn't heard about it a while.
And yet... Here comes Captain Marvel. Again, her powers aren't explained. She doesn't help much until the last 20 minutes, and in those minutes she is seemingly invincible. Because we don't know what can hurt her, the stakes are minimal. It's an invincible woman punching an invincible man and there isn't really an expectation of anything.
But then she gets hit. And someone says "She has backup" or "She has friends" or something similar, and then we see almost every female character from the MCU come behind her to help.
I literally don't care if a superhero is male or female. It doesn't matter. But by forcing scene into the film, it is a reminder that Captain Marvel = Girl Power!!! and it pulled me right out of the film. It was an unnecessary political statement in the midst of a galatic battle. And I hated it.
I'm pro-woman. I'm pro-man. I think both sexes have unique attributes and abilities and features. But trying to say "The women have her back!" was, again, like I felt the directors sitting next to me in the theater, poking me in the ribs, saying "Look at the woke subtext!!!"
It isn't necessary. It is dumb. Let the heroes - all of them - have moments of strength and weakness. Imagine if there was a hero who suddenly called on the name of God and a big cross appeared behind them and the hand of God came down and helped them. That's the kind of heavy-handedness (pun intended) it felt like.
Go see the movie. It's great. But that one bit really soured the end of the movie for me, reminding me that it was a fictional story set in modern times. Why?
