MARVELous Movie Marathon

First part written on 6/22/17, second part written on 1/9/18, but retroactively dated from 12/31/17. 

It used to be our tradition -- after the school year was over during graduate school or, when we were still in Brazil, mostly during the "winter break" in July, we would rent lots of VHS tapes of movies and watch them for several days in a row.

We still did that when we had our first baby, back when we lived in Massachusetts and there was this great video/DVD rental place that let you rent 5 DVDs or VHS tapes for 5 days for 5 dollars, that was so great!

After the second baby came, it became harder and harder and even though we had Netflix (one DVD at a time) we would only watch movies sporadically. There was one year in particular, 2007, I think, that we kept a Netflix DVD for THREE MONTHS and wouldn't stop and watch it. We could have BOUGHT two or three copies of that DVD, that's how much money we wasted.

So several years ago I stopped our Netflix subscription. I NEVER EVER liked their streaming services because there are very few good movies in it. Same thing with Amazon prime streaming, which we've used since it became available -- once in a while we find a film we like there and stream it. I'm not into TV shows or original series.

Here is a list of films I've seen in the past 3 weeks (before 6/22), the Marvel movies (which my son insist I see, in order, so I can go to see the new releases with him in the theater) have an M:

Anna Karenina (DVD from the library) by myself
Imitation Game (DVD from the library) -with hubby
Hidden Figures -- blu-ray with husband and youngest son
Bright Light (had already seen it, but saw it again, by myself, DVD from the library) - the special features are awesome
M - Iron Man (streaming from Amazon)
The BFG - blu-ray from Netflix - special features are excellent. I saw it with my youngest son.
M - Iron Man 2 - blu-ray from Netflix (DVD.com) - watched part of it again (second half) with director comments -- it's great to hear their comments
M - Thor - got it from the library. Liked it OK, until now, my least favorite Marvel character.
       (until 6/22) Rest of the summer (all movies listed were blu-rays from "DVD.com"):
M - Guardians of the Galaxy (I saw this one out of order, Kelvin watched it with me, then we saw #2 in the theater)
Moonlight - I liked it, my husband liked the other Oscar favorite more.
M - Captain America: The First Avenger (my son may have seen part of it with me) (He watched National Treasure and the sequel on DVD, I didn't)
M - The Avengers (I'd seen it in an airplane years ago and loved it, now, with the context, I liked it even more)
M - Iron Man 3
M - Thor: The Dark World (I liked it OK)
M - Captain American: The Winter Soldier (I liked this one)
M - Avengers: Age of Ultron - my son had said it was his least favorite, but I liked it. It's pretty dark and a good criticism of the emphasis on militarization in this country.
La-la-Land  - my husband LOVED it, I didn't care for it that much. I think my husband loves the very realistic fight scene & the ending. Sigh... I kind of hated the music. BLAH.
M - Ant Man (this was fun!)
Hacksaw Ridge - saw with my husband (the true guy belonged to our church and lived pretty close to where we live -- I was very impressed by this true story. In spite of Mel Gibson, sigh...)
M - Captain America: Civil War -- I think we saw this streaming from Netflix. I had seen it in the theater with my son last year and enjoyed it, but hadn't fully understood it, obviously. I liked it a lot.
M - Dr. Strange (I thought I wouldn't like it, but I did)
Loving - wow, what a nicely done film! I think I've never seen a movie with so little dialogue, seriously! Great film, and very close to "home" too. ;-)
Queen of Katwe - I saw this on my own and I really liked it. Special features are good.
The Theory of Everything - fascinating! My husband the physicist obviously watched it with me.

WOW, 24 films, 13 Marvel.

I then saw a couple of missing episodes of Masterpiece's Victoria and cancelled my plan.

I saw the other two Marvel movies in the theater with my son: Spider-Man: Homecoming (pretty great) & Thor: Ragnarock -- so much fun! We've decided to see Infinity Wars on IMAX. I already put it on my calendar!

Yeah, this was MY YEAR for becoming a Marvel Cinematic Universe fan, wasn't it? It may be the year I've seen more films in my whole life. Definitely the summer!