Three and a quarter movies
Watched three and a quarter movies over the break, mostly on DVD.
The Hulk - The version from this past summer with Ed Norton. It was solid and well done, with no obvious blemishes, but nothing particular spectacular either. Don't get me wrong; the special effects were excellent and the actions scenes well-staged, but it didn't have the same wow factor or entertainment value of Iron Man or Spider-Man or the Dark Knight. It has less depth and ambition than Ang Lee's version, but that's actually a plus, as it has none of the ponderous self-absorbtion of that film either. I don't want an exploration of Bruce Banner's childhood psychological traumas, I want to see the Hulk smash things. In that, the movie does alright. There were also a number of nods to the tv series that warmed my geeky heart.
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army - There were a number of distractions going on while I watched this movie, so I got a broad sense of it, but missed some of the details. At any rate, it was entertaining, and I liked it a bit better than the first film. It has a bit more humor and imagination and was just a little more fun. The movie also looks amazing, with fantastic sets and costumes and props that reminded me a lot of the work of the artist Brom (I checked the credits; he wasn't involved). The main antagonist had something of an Elric vibe to him, and he and his sister actually fit my idea of what fantasy elves should be like more than the ones in Lord of the Rings. The climactic battle against the golden army itself is very cool and very well done. I read a review which pointed out two gaping plot holes in the film and, unfortunately, they're valid complaints, but I still thought it was a decent film overall.
Twilight - Jessica wanted to see this with me, not because she thought it was a good film, or because she thought I'd like it, but because she thought it would be fun, in that so-bad-it's-good kind of way. She was more or less right. Twilight is like Angel or Buffy the Vampire Slayer without any sense of irony. All the vampires are supposed to be pale-skinned, naturally, so the director decided to achieve this effect by having the actors wear a ton of pancake makeup. It looked like someone threw bags of flour at their heads. Seriously, it was so distracting that it was bothering me that the other characters didn't say anything, like, "why are you wearing a ton of pancake makeup?" I was also distracted by the male lead's Groucho Marx eyebrows and red lipstick. I'm told that he's "dreamy," but to me, he looked somewhere between pouty and constipated. Subtlety is not a strong point in this film: when the male lead first sees the female lead, the action goes into slow motion, and since she's passing by a fan, we get a dramatic wind effect. Meanwhile, when she first sees him, he happens to be sitting in front of a stuffed and mounted white owl with it's wings outstretched. Of course, since he's in front of the owl, you can only see it's white, feathered wings, which look as if they're sprouting from his back. I think this is called symbolism, or something. There are a lot of moments where I laughed out loud during this film, none of them where I was supposed to.
The Crow 4: Wicked Prayer - Ever since I showed Jessica The Crow, she's become obsessed with it (and the graphic novel) so, even though she knew it would suck, she had to watch this sequel. So we did. This was the "quarter" movie I mentioned, since we only made it through about half an hour before shutting it off. If Twilight was entertaining-bad, this was just awful-bad. I mean so bad it makes Battlefield Earth look like Citizen Kane in comparison-bad. Even awful films usually have one or two mildly redeeming features, aspects which, if not good, are at least adequate. There was nothing good in The Crow 4. Nothing. The movie pretty much rips off the original Crow, including red-lit flashbacks, a psychotic female villain who has a thing for cutting out eyes, and a character who actually says Sarah's opening voice-over word for word, except that she's actually saying it directly to a crowd in the movie, rather than as a narration. You've got the obligatory horrific murder of the hero and his girlfriend early on, only without any of the tragedy or horror of the first film. In fact, I wasn't really sure why they were being killed (something about a satanic ritual), and I didn't particularly care. Part of the blame for this falls on the cast, who will all probably be on a future season of The Surreal Life. First, you've got Edward Furlong as The Crow. The Crow should not be puffy. Second, you've got Tara Reid, who pretty much exists only to let other actors know that if they're in a movie with her, they've made a terrible mistake. And then there's David Boreanaz. I like David Boreanaz, but he doesn't exactly command a wide range, and so he'll never rise much above this level in the movies (he should stick to tv, where's he's carved out a nice, solid niche). Even so, I really hope he fired his agent after this movie. Anyway, other than that, I had no idea what was going on after the first five minutes (and most of the rest of the cast looked similarly confused), the director looked like he had just discovered the existence of visual effects, and was determined to use them all, and then there's just the straight out dumb stuff, like when the bad guys dump the corpse of the hero and his girlfriend into an old refrigerator, and then set the refrigerator on fire. And then dump it into a shallow, muddy pool. And finally, there's the scene where Boreanaz, who plays the world's least menacing satanic cult leader, throws a celebration for his gang includes deviled ham, deviled eggs, and devil's food cake (and then gets petulant when no one wants any). I think that maybe the director intended that scence to be ironic, but honestly, I can't tell. Anyway, it was right around then that we had had enough.
The Hulk - The version from this past summer with Ed Norton. It was solid and well done, with no obvious blemishes, but nothing particular spectacular either. Don't get me wrong; the special effects were excellent and the actions scenes well-staged, but it didn't have the same wow factor or entertainment value of Iron Man or Spider-Man or the Dark Knight. It has less depth and ambition than Ang Lee's version, but that's actually a plus, as it has none of the ponderous self-absorbtion of that film either. I don't want an exploration of Bruce Banner's childhood psychological traumas, I want to see the Hulk smash things. In that, the movie does alright. There were also a number of nods to the tv series that warmed my geeky heart.
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army - There were a number of distractions going on while I watched this movie, so I got a broad sense of it, but missed some of the details. At any rate, it was entertaining, and I liked it a bit better than the first film. It has a bit more humor and imagination and was just a little more fun. The movie also looks amazing, with fantastic sets and costumes and props that reminded me a lot of the work of the artist Brom (I checked the credits; he wasn't involved). The main antagonist had something of an Elric vibe to him, and he and his sister actually fit my idea of what fantasy elves should be like more than the ones in Lord of the Rings. The climactic battle against the golden army itself is very cool and very well done. I read a review which pointed out two gaping plot holes in the film and, unfortunately, they're valid complaints, but I still thought it was a decent film overall.
Twilight - Jessica wanted to see this with me, not because she thought it was a good film, or because she thought I'd like it, but because she thought it would be fun, in that so-bad-it's-good kind of way. She was more or less right. Twilight is like Angel or Buffy the Vampire Slayer without any sense of irony. All the vampires are supposed to be pale-skinned, naturally, so the director decided to achieve this effect by having the actors wear a ton of pancake makeup. It looked like someone threw bags of flour at their heads. Seriously, it was so distracting that it was bothering me that the other characters didn't say anything, like, "why are you wearing a ton of pancake makeup?" I was also distracted by the male lead's Groucho Marx eyebrows and red lipstick. I'm told that he's "dreamy," but to me, he looked somewhere between pouty and constipated. Subtlety is not a strong point in this film: when the male lead first sees the female lead, the action goes into slow motion, and since she's passing by a fan, we get a dramatic wind effect. Meanwhile, when she first sees him, he happens to be sitting in front of a stuffed and mounted white owl with it's wings outstretched. Of course, since he's in front of the owl, you can only see it's white, feathered wings, which look as if they're sprouting from his back. I think this is called symbolism, or something. There are a lot of moments where I laughed out loud during this film, none of them where I was supposed to.
The Crow 4: Wicked Prayer - Ever since I showed Jessica The Crow, she's become obsessed with it (and the graphic novel) so, even though she knew it would suck, she had to watch this sequel. So we did. This was the "quarter" movie I mentioned, since we only made it through about half an hour before shutting it off. If Twilight was entertaining-bad, this was just awful-bad. I mean so bad it makes Battlefield Earth look like Citizen Kane in comparison-bad. Even awful films usually have one or two mildly redeeming features, aspects which, if not good, are at least adequate. There was nothing good in The Crow 4. Nothing. The movie pretty much rips off the original Crow, including red-lit flashbacks, a psychotic female villain who has a thing for cutting out eyes, and a character who actually says Sarah's opening voice-over word for word, except that she's actually saying it directly to a crowd in the movie, rather than as a narration. You've got the obligatory horrific murder of the hero and his girlfriend early on, only without any of the tragedy or horror of the first film. In fact, I wasn't really sure why they were being killed (something about a satanic ritual), and I didn't particularly care. Part of the blame for this falls on the cast, who will all probably be on a future season of The Surreal Life. First, you've got Edward Furlong as The Crow. The Crow should not be puffy. Second, you've got Tara Reid, who pretty much exists only to let other actors know that if they're in a movie with her, they've made a terrible mistake. And then there's David Boreanaz. I like David Boreanaz, but he doesn't exactly command a wide range, and so he'll never rise much above this level in the movies (he should stick to tv, where's he's carved out a nice, solid niche). Even so, I really hope he fired his agent after this movie. Anyway, other than that, I had no idea what was going on after the first five minutes (and most of the rest of the cast looked similarly confused), the director looked like he had just discovered the existence of visual effects, and was determined to use them all, and then there's just the straight out dumb stuff, like when the bad guys dump the corpse of the hero and his girlfriend into an old refrigerator, and then set the refrigerator on fire. And then dump it into a shallow, muddy pool. And finally, there's the scene where Boreanaz, who plays the world's least menacing satanic cult leader, throws a celebration for his gang includes deviled ham, deviled eggs, and devil's food cake (and then gets petulant when no one wants any). I think that maybe the director intended that scence to be ironic, but honestly, I can't tell. Anyway, it was right around then that we had had enough.