Tag: review

Last weekend was Memorial Day weekend signifying the beginning of summer. And that means the steady ramping up of movie watching. I love the summer movie block buster season. It’s like a whole new sport and every week a different game is on to watch.

First up this summer (not counting Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith) was Madagascar. Boring. I have seen lots of movies and this was the first one that bored me. Not very funny. Story was “ho-hum.” Animation was mediocre. After watching the Incredibles, this movie has sent the CG animated movies back a generation. It was nothing special. I can only recommend the penguin scenes and the monkeys.

2 of 5 stars.

Tonight. I caught The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It felt awkward to be in a theatre with teenie boppers, and I usually don’t considering I have seen She’s All That and Mean Girls in the theatres, alone in a crowd of very young girls. Why have a movie entitled traveling pants and not have the four protagonists wear them all the time? I expected the girls to have their story told while each one wore the pants. Not so. Early on the eponymous pants were brief in their appearance. Later they started playing a more prominent role, but by then I was disappointed. The movie was a tear jerker. The women and girls in the audience were crying. I was laughing. If I was more girly, I might have found it good. I am too much of a guy to have liked this movie.

2 of 5 stars for making me feel creepy.

I didn’t have a review to Revenge of the Sith so I’m gonna put up the beginning of an email exchange regarding episode 3 that I had with some friends.  It’s just the beginning because we began to diverge.  Lots of thoughts about this movie….

 

 

[BEGIN REVIEW]

 

Yikes.  Was it good or bad?  Two thumbs up?  Two of four stars?  You’ve read a lot into the movie.

 

Yes, I did see it this weekend.  I saw it twice in fact.  I might see a third time (sound sucked in both theatres which didn’t cause it justice).  I’ll give you my ranking first I haven’t thought what I want to say in a review.  Initially, I gave it 3 of 5 stars, but on second viewing 4 of 5 stars.  It got better when expectations dropped, although they were low to begin with.

 

As per items in the movie that bothered me (or not).  Hopefully Wyman, you’ve seen it, but if you haven’t SPOILERS ahead.

 

Lucas is too much in love with technology, CG FX.  My major complaint was that it was a busy movie.  Every scene needed something moving.  Even the slow or close up scenes.  Not one frame was not cluttered by a CG effect. 

 

I did notice how cheezy Darth Vader’s suit looked after all the geegaws of the original trilogy.  It did look 70s.  Yet, it was thoroughly satisfying to see.  In fact, the blockade runner of Senator Organa when we were inside it, it was bright and made me remember the opening scene of episode 4.  I liked the old timey look of the things that had to be done to match continuity of the later episodes.  Very nostalgic. 

 

Yes. The Jedi suck.  They can’t sense the Darth Sidious when he’s in the same city, yet they can sense the death of Jedi the Universe over?!  There are only a few Jedi who can kick ass, but each Sith Lord is match for twenty?!  Can you get any lamer than the Jedi who go to arrest Darth Sidious?  I mean take a swing at the guy why don’t you, although Mace Windu had him if not for that lamer, Annikin.

 

The acting.  Bad.  No one will get an Oscar (TM) for this.  In my mind, it exposed Natalie Portman as not as good an actress we thought her to be.  There were only two who may leave unscathed, Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid (sp?).  I thought Ewan did an admirable job as a young Obi-wan Kenobi.  He evoked manners of the older Ben Kenobi, Sir Alec Guinness, that I saw him growing to be that guy.  The first trilogy was all the Emperors and McDiarmid (sp?) captured it all.  Over the top!  He was chewing scenery left and right that he was brilliant in this.  He was the one actor who embraced the idea that this was a campy movie.  Lucas was too serious, but the emporor sure didn’t play it as such.

 

Overall, the movie was a fitting denouement of the Star Wars cycle.  I was glad to have it end.  What was amazing is that it neatly wrapped up both trilogies.  Was Annakin “the one” to bring order and balance to the force?  It did not look that way at the ending of episode 3, but taken into larger context of all 6.  Yes he was.  He was the one who killed the emperor.  He was the last of the Sith and also last of the old Jedi order.  (Yes. Luke was a Jedi, but one that was self trained).  I liked that the movie neatly segued into the 4th episode.   It was good, but thank god its over.

 

(Man why’d you have me write so much)

 

[END REVIEW]

Don’t have the wherewithal to write a full review so here’s a quick rank.

Sahara. 3 of 5 stars
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. 3 of 5 stars.
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. 4 of 5 stars the second time through.
Monster in Law. 3 of 5 stars. Much funnier and better than I thought.

It’s just about summer movie season. And to get a start, I caught the latest remake of The Amityville Horror. Not the movie I wanted to watch (The Upside of Anger), but was coaxed into it. In fact I was called out when I complained that it would scare me. It did, but I think it was more because of knowing that something sudden was going to happen. Anyway the movie was standard haunted house. Creepy ghost children. Bleeding walls. Voices telling the occupants to get out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What sucked about this version, they had to explain why it was haunted. You will not believe it, or you would’ve guessed it. Indian graveyard! Plus scary missionary! What?! Dumb. Don’t watch this until it is the only thing on TV.

1 of 5 stars.

The battery on my laptop is going quickly, because I just got the 20″ Apple Display, that I have to review the two movies I saw this weekend

Guess Who. And in starring in Sydney Poitier’s role as the awkward part of an inter-racial couple is Ashton Kutcher. America has just been punk’d. It was weird watching this flick. It was a marketed as a comedy, but had some tones of the original on which it was modeled after. There were some flat spots because of the need to harken back to the original. It was maddeningly a mixed bag. Funny at times, stupid serious at others. It was a train wreck in the making.

2 of 5 stars.

Sin City. Don’t believe the hype. I have read 3 of Frank Miller’s comic books from this series. They were awesome, especially when I went through my high end pulp fiction phase (think: the black lizard imprint of vantage (?)), yet placed on the big screen, the dialogue sounds awefully bad. The stories were straight revenge. I wish they done the “Dame to Kill for” story, but I think they weren’t after the femme fatale plot of many noir flicks. This was Death Wish for the comic book geek set.

3 of 5 stars.

While I went in expecting a terrible movie, I was pleasantly surprised by this comedy. It wasn’t as bad as the reviews made out to be and it wasn’t as bad as the lack of audience for it has been.

Be Cool was a meta movie. It knew that it was only a movie and played itself out as one. In fact the story line was explicitly told in the first scene. If you kept this in mind the movie was fun. I like that it was meta. It had Swingers. It had Pulp Fiction. It had weaved a wonderful story. I liked it.

3 of 5 stars.