Archive for the ‘movie review’ Category

Weekend in review

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

Built 2 small Lego sets, and one medium large kit.

Watched Captain America, The Green Lantern, Cowboys & Aliens, and the final Harry Potter.
Re-watched Down Periscope, hi there Patton Oswalt, being all quiet and background-y.

Cowboys and Aliens was an OK movie, probably a good flick for the big screen, just an OK flick for a home theater of less than heroic proportions. Plot holes the size of a bus, character’s whose primary motivations change on whims, and lots of stuff blown up real good. And grit, lots of grit. Sometimes I thought Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford were having a squinting contest.

Captain America was similarly engaging entertainment, fun in the moment, but nothing that will stick with me, beyond a vague sense of contented satiety.

The final Harry Potter, I will need to rewatch more than once, while not primarily occupied with Lego construction. It seemed to tie everything together, killing off characters left and right, while leaving some unscathed for the final epilogue scene, I’m sure satisfying in it’s mundane suburban fantasy to most fans, but for someone without the path of kids and family before them, it seems childish and hollow. Which is probably a good thing.

The Green Lantern was the least engaging of the weekend’s entertainments, with the oddly reminiscent of the second new Hulk film’s disfigured scientist sub-plot. Like many super-hero films, without a proper grounding in the mythos, too much of the film comes across as contrived and artificial. And the you-know-they-won’t-make-a-sequel-now, kiss of death, setup for the next crisis ending. I’m still waiting for the second Flash Gordon film; by the time they get to covering who picked up Ming’s ring, we might have the technology to bring back Freddie Mercury for the soundtrack album.

Nostalgic Dissonance

Monday, January 9th, 2012

Experienced a bit of nostalgic dissonance this weekend, watching the blu-ray Star Wars I got for Christmas. I can overlook most of the little edits and ‘upgraded’ special effects, though Greedo is an annoyance still, but when you get to the final movie, its bad enough that they aren’t playing the proper Yub Nub song, and have a bunch of inserted views from other planets’ celebrations, but when they get to the final glowing trio of Jedi, they put Hayden Christensen in, which made me IMDB it…he was freakin TWO YEARS OLD when Jedi came out.

Nuns on the Run

Monday, December 26th, 2011

I had dim memories of liking this movie, and it being my introduction to Robbie Coltrane.

On re-watching, I found it still enjoyable, and was surprised to realize it also starred Eric Idle, funny what the mind forgets vs remembers. Anywho, the interesting bit to me was how, in the end credits, Eric and Robbie get a second credit line for the last drag-outfits they wore, as separate actors by their character names.

I wonder if any other movie does that.

The Ref

Friday, December 23rd, 2011

For a movie about a whole bunch of felonies (burglary, kidnapping, blackmail), it really is a heart warming tale of hope for redemption.

The Invention of Lying

Friday, October 14th, 2011

This is a really sweet film. The scene where he realizes how much joy he can bring to other people, by telling them lies, is very touching. Ninjas and aliens working together, the first religious dogma, and it’s only half-way through the film.

SyFy gets something right

Friday, July 8th, 2011

I’m at home, packing and waiting for word that everything is done and recorded, and I notice that SyFy has an OST movie marathon on, so it’s been going in the background as I do stuff. Khan was on, and as it was ending on it’s sappy moment, I’m thinking to myself, well, at least I’ll get Christopher Llyod’s klingon, but then I notice that they are skipping 3 and going straight on to 4, my fave OST movie. It’s nice to see recognition that 3 was really a place holder movie.

Goliath Awaits (MR)

Monday, August 30th, 2010

I love the internet, most of the time.

Like when it can supply me with not just the name of a half-remembered tv-miniseries, but the entirety of it.  Mark Harmon has had a long career, even if I don’t realize it sometimes.

The film is just as over-the-top-silly as I remembered it.  Caricature villains, a rigid social structure under autocratic rule offered up as a impossible utopia to the messiness of a real world under democracy, doomed by the frailties of human ego.

And yet, it still manages to age remarkable well.  It helps that 90% of their time is spent on a liner built during WW2.

Most annoying plot hole is the whole “it’ll never work” rigmarole over the heat exchanger.  What exactly did the script writer think the difference was between a heat exchanger based on lava, and a scotch boiler based on oil?  Pointing out that simply generating more oxygen doesn’t remove carbon-dioxide would have been more believable.  Whatever.

Hi, Dharma! (MR)

Monday, August 9th, 2010

Hi, Dharma! is a nice little film from South Korea.  The premise is simple, gangsters on the run end up hiding out at a monastery.  It’s a cliched plot really, with the twist being that instead of some dusty pueblo church’s sanctuary a la spaghetti western tradition, it’s a Buddhist monastery on top of a lush mountain.

I’m no expert on Buddhism, so I can only suspect that much of the movie’s “point” is showing how the monks need a more practical grounding for their faith, while the gangsters need some spiritual uplifting.

As with any foreign film, there are some idioms that are lost in translation, while other jokes are universally understandable.  I still don’t get the foreign student character, at least not past the most superficial layers.

I was entertained.

Hot Tub Time Machine

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Hot Tub Time Machine turns out to be better than expected.  Ends on a much more sentimental and thoughtful note than I would have thought possible from such a silly premise.  Good performances and lots of 80′s fashion disaster flashbacks, with of course a Better Off Dead reference…at least one that I caught, surely there were more =p

Ninja Assasin

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

The dialogue was mostly terrible, the blood splatters and spurts were over the top, and they do most of the movie in the shadows, so you can barely see what’s going on a lot of the time.  Still, I was entertained.