If actors have potboilers, this movie was one.
One of the perks of being married to somebody working for a high-def content streaming company is that I get to watch a lot of streaming stuff in high-definition mega-pixel vision on the very large television he suddenly became interested in owning. I do have to endure beta software, the occasional bug, and the ever-present husband stopping everything to examine some tiny problem in close detail, but this is mostly worth it. Mr Pedia has also developed an amusing expertise in pointing out encoding glitches. He is a codec snob now.
I just watch the stuff. Preferably stuff in which things explode or people punch each other while backflipping or people swing swords around convincingly. I have never seen a Jason Statham vehicle I wasn't willing to watch. (Get it? Statham plus vehicle? I kill myself.)
Last night we watched the movie Priest in mega-pixel gigantovision. I mostly wanted to see Karl Urban in a black hat facing off against Paul Bettany in a martial arts showdown on top of a speeding future dystopian locomotive. The movie indeed delivered with a scene of that exact description, but what I had to endure to get there was so not worth it. OMFG. The dialog was smack bang on the nose, every single word of it. Bettany could deliver those lines. Urban reveled in them. There was some other actor, some allegedly good-looking male lead type playing alongside Bettany, who could not manage to make those lines work to save his life. It was agony listening to him. Every time he opened his mouth I wanted to skip forward to the next scene with Maggie Q and Bettany doing wire stunts and killing vampires.
I was left thinking that this was a great piece of world-building that was completely wasted by an idiotic script. I often come out of movies thinking that, but Priest was an epic case of it. Also it was an epic case of "endless expository introduction explaining the setup in detail completely unnecessarily". Trust your viewers, oh director. That exposition should be done indirectly, by showing us your world, not by having some freakin' stupid animation with voiceover.
Grump.
Mondlicht by Nova from m-cast.net (Rating: 0)
I just watch the stuff. Preferably stuff in which things explode or people punch each other while backflipping or people swing swords around convincingly. I have never seen a Jason Statham vehicle I wasn't willing to watch. (Get it? Statham plus vehicle? I kill myself.)
Last night we watched the movie Priest in mega-pixel gigantovision. I mostly wanted to see Karl Urban in a black hat facing off against Paul Bettany in a martial arts showdown on top of a speeding future dystopian locomotive. The movie indeed delivered with a scene of that exact description, but what I had to endure to get there was so not worth it. OMFG. The dialog was smack bang on the nose, every single word of it. Bettany could deliver those lines. Urban reveled in them. There was some other actor, some allegedly good-looking male lead type playing alongside Bettany, who could not manage to make those lines work to save his life. It was agony listening to him. Every time he opened his mouth I wanted to skip forward to the next scene with Maggie Q and Bettany doing wire stunts and killing vampires.
I was left thinking that this was a great piece of world-building that was completely wasted by an idiotic script. I often come out of movies thinking that, but Priest was an epic case of it. Also it was an epic case of "endless expository introduction explaining the setup in detail completely unnecessarily". Trust your viewers, oh director. That exposition should be done indirectly, by showing us your world, not by having some freakin' stupid animation with voiceover.
Grump.
Mondlicht by Nova from m-cast.net (Rating: 0)