28-34
A busier month:
28. Near Dark. Another one of those films people talk about a lot that turns out to actually be not very good. Far too slow, with too many obvious holes in the set pieces (often having to do with the sun coming up or going down unfeasibly fast). It also seems as though it wants you to be excited just because it's a vampire film, and never mind the fact that it's not doing anything interesting, although this may be a function of having been superseded. There are a few moments of reasonable intensity. Quite pleased that I managed to correctly deduce that Christopher Franke must have been a member of Tangerine Dream by dint of the fact that the score for this film, by that group, sounded a bit like the score for Babylon 5 at points.
29. Toy Story 3. Good, and with great bits -- the claw pay-off, the terrifying monkey -- but not quite great; which is to say that for me it's on a level with the previous two. The prison-break stuff all felt a bit obvious, such that I was waiting for the story to go through the motions to get to the interesting bits.
30. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Neither as bad as it could have been -- Benjamin doesn't start interacting with famous events and people of the 20th century, and some of his glancing engagements, eg WWII, are quite nicely done -- nor as good as it really should have been, given the people involved and the strength of the basic concept. Also, while Brad Pitt's age makeup is pretty good, everyone else's is terrible.
31. Man on Wire. This man is mad. Entertainingly mad -- the image of him prancing around naked on the roof of the World Trade Centre trying to find an arrow by feeling the attached fishing wire against his skin is going to stay with me for a while -- but mad nonetheless. Watching this as a double bill with United 93 would be interesting.
32. Salt. Were I Nick Lowe, I could no doubt construct a witty summation based on the fact that this script about sleeper Soviet agents being activated in present-day America feels itself like a film script that's been dusted off from twenty-five years ago. Not being Nick Lowe, I will instead just say that I rather enjoyed this as an old-school runaround.
33. The A-Team. Obviously rubbish, but I had an awful lot of fun watching it.
34. Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Obviously very clever, but I actually had less fun watching it, because I'm so familiar with the comics and this version is so obviously not as good. That said, I want to see it again, and suspect I will enjoy it more when I do.
28. Near Dark. Another one of those films people talk about a lot that turns out to actually be not very good. Far too slow, with too many obvious holes in the set pieces (often having to do with the sun coming up or going down unfeasibly fast). It also seems as though it wants you to be excited just because it's a vampire film, and never mind the fact that it's not doing anything interesting, although this may be a function of having been superseded. There are a few moments of reasonable intensity. Quite pleased that I managed to correctly deduce that Christopher Franke must have been a member of Tangerine Dream by dint of the fact that the score for this film, by that group, sounded a bit like the score for Babylon 5 at points.
29. Toy Story 3. Good, and with great bits -- the claw pay-off, the terrifying monkey -- but not quite great; which is to say that for me it's on a level with the previous two. The prison-break stuff all felt a bit obvious, such that I was waiting for the story to go through the motions to get to the interesting bits.
30. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Neither as bad as it could have been -- Benjamin doesn't start interacting with famous events and people of the 20th century, and some of his glancing engagements, eg WWII, are quite nicely done -- nor as good as it really should have been, given the people involved and the strength of the basic concept. Also, while Brad Pitt's age makeup is pretty good, everyone else's is terrible.
31. Man on Wire. This man is mad. Entertainingly mad -- the image of him prancing around naked on the roof of the World Trade Centre trying to find an arrow by feeling the attached fishing wire against his skin is going to stay with me for a while -- but mad nonetheless. Watching this as a double bill with United 93 would be interesting.
32. Salt. Were I Nick Lowe, I could no doubt construct a witty summation based on the fact that this script about sleeper Soviet agents being activated in present-day America feels itself like a film script that's been dusted off from twenty-five years ago. Not being Nick Lowe, I will instead just say that I rather enjoyed this as an old-school runaround.
33. The A-Team. Obviously rubbish, but I had an awful lot of fun watching it.
34. Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Obviously very clever, but I actually had less fun watching it, because I'm so familiar with the comics and this version is so obviously not as good. That said, I want to see it again, and suspect I will enjoy it more when I do.