11.28.05
Random Reviews
I just thought back on all the movies I’ve seen during this past few weeks, and I thought it might be nice to post my thoughts on some of them to keep them fresh in my mind. And to force my opinion on you, of course, that’s what blogs are for! Of course, I don’t really want to write detailed and intelligent comments on 5 different movies. Well intelligent perhaps, but not the verbose kind of intelligent. So what better way to comment on them all than in the form of short and useless reviews?
For this purpose, I have created two alpha-channeled PNG’s for use as “stars”. Stars are too trivial for me, so I chose this motif:
Yes, they are cat paws. Forgive the silliness, this is a blog; I’m allowed to do ridiculous things. Please note that if the icons above are on a greyish background, you’re using Internet Explorer or a similar stupid browser which can’t handle PNG files with alpha channels. I urge you to download a proper browser. Well then, let’s see what I’ve been watching lately, in a tentative chronological order:
War of the Worlds:
Watched this with my parents. It was quite a pleasant surprise, I was expecting a half-assed action movie rehash, but I got a very aesthetically powerful alien horror movie. Tom Cruise played reasonably well, but the real protagonist of the movie were the special effects. This movie was really just a series of rather frightening images punctuated by occasional mediocre dialogue and some good suspenseful scenes. When I say the dialogue was mediocre, it’s because it wasn’t anything really memorable, but on the other hand it seemed natural enough and fit the movie. The only scene that really stood out in terms of substance - rather than pure style - was when a throng of panicked survivors fought over the only functional car. It was a good movie, but the ending was a downright disappointment. I never read the book or heard the radio play, but I believe they dealt with the alien invasion from a large, national perspective as opposed to following one specific guy around. When you choose to see things from the point of view of one man, your audience will expect him to have something to do with the ending of the movie, but - without spoiling too much - the conflict was resolved completely without the help of the protagonist, which felt pretty flat. I give War of the Worlds 3 out of 6 paws for the creepiness, the car scene, and the awesome images. The three missing paws are one for the mediocre dialogue and two for the lame ending.
Valiant:
Another rental watched with one of the parental units, my mother. Valiant is a French cartoon depicting World War II from the perspective of a squad of British homing pigeons. The concept is very amusing and consistently carried out, and it has many amusing details (such as the antagonists being German nazi falcons). It’s very short though, and the story is pretty trivial and predictable. I give it 3 paws for being nice but largely unoriginal and unspectacular. I barely even remembered that I’d watched this movie, and I’m sure it’ll be completely out of my memory in two weeks, but it was worth the price of renting it.
Serenity:
if you’ve seen the series
if you haven’t
I watched Serenity at the premiere or sneak premiere or something last Friday. Went with Torsten and a couple of his friends who I didn’t know. As a recent fan of the prematurely cancelled TV series, I enjoyed this movie immensely. It managed to excellently bring the series to a satisfactory closure, it contained plenty of what made the serial so good, and it managed to shock the Hell out of me by killing off main characters! The only real problem with this movie exists if you never watched the series, because the movie assumes you already love all the characters and doesn’t really bother to spend any time introducing them to you. And your affection for the characters is a HUGE part of what makes this “franchise” so good. I’ve heard a lot of real media criticise the somewhat shallow and one-liner based script, but I rather enjoyed the cocky humor and the snappy retorts, and compared to the recent James Bond movies, Serenity is a bloody Shakespeare play. Okay, so that’s not saying much, but let’s just establish that the script of Serenity gets the job done. I could go on and on about this movie, but I would rather get this post done, so let me point you towards Scott Kurtz’ comment on it if you’ve already seen the movie or you don’t mind spoilers. His post will give you a very nice idea of what I thought of Serenity, as I concur on all his points.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith:
Another co-parental rental (haw haw), this was a humorous action movie just as I expected. The setup was amusing, but the plot was predictable, I saw the plot twist coming from a MILE away, and the ending entirely failed to surprise me. I’ll give this movie two paws for the action and the excellent acting of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, but that’s all it really deserves. It was a decent way to pass an evening, but it’s really more suitable for a week day than a Saturday.
Constantine:
Just watched this one, and I’m actually not entirely sure if it should get 2 or 3 paws. It’s an occult action movie based on a comic book, much like Hellboy minus a few paws. The basic concept is mildly original and I think the main character might even have been pretty interesting if Keanu Reeves had managed to do something with it other than the usual ultra-clichéd “film noir dark brooding hero” that Max Payne only gets away with because it’s a computer game and it has plenty of self-irony. Really, if you’d just fired Reeves and cast Christian Bale as Constantine instead, you’d have gained at least one extra paw from me. The action was nice, but the dialogue was largely uninspired. It would probably have been best to just leave this as a comic book, and if this movie is still present in my memory a week from now, it’ll only be because of the cool depictions of Heaven and Hell. Just like with the other movies, this one wasn’t really bad enough to make me regret the rental (but then again, renting movies is pretty cheap), but it wasn’t really memorable. If you ever find yourself in a video store with some extra money in your pocket, do yourself a favour and pick up Hellboy instead. It’s the same movie, but with more original ideas, better actors, and better dialogue.
