Watchmen
So, have just watched Watchmen. Hard to formulate what exactly my opinions are, really. On the one hand, it was really quite excellent. On the other, I think that both my enjoyment and the percentage of the film I was able to watch would have been substantially increased had the level of violence dropped to about 30% of the level in the film. By the end I was just turning away during most of the scenes involving Rorshach (and a good number of the others). The rape scene left me feeling really quite shaken.
I don't have a problem with violence in films per se - I will vigorously defend that in Pan's labyrinth as absolutely necessary for the film, but I do dislike gratuitous violence, and it seemed to me that whilst this film could never have been done in the style of X-men, say, there was slightly too much focus on really making me want to hide behind something.
Usually this would put me off completely, but then there really aren't that many films that I actually like - as opposed to just saying 'meh' - that to come out of this still with a feeling of 'that was quite excellent' in spite of the violence tends to indicate that it's worth overlooking the violence to an extent.
The conclusion was very satisfying, which pleased me a lot, and I thought the score worked very well also. Even to the extent that I found the Jimi Hendrix appropriate, whereas I usually find his music incredibly tedious.
Oh, and I didn't notice the blue penis, until about half-way through when I remembered that people had talked about it and looked for it. Can one analyse its period of oscillation to demonstrate that they weren't on Mars? I did somewhat expect to see it erect after the conversation when Manhattan waxes lyrical about Laurie and how she came to be, as a symbol of his humanity/lack thereof (probably both, I suppose, given the nature of that scene), but then I think you're still not allowed to show an erect penis in an 18. Or maybe that was never something they wanted to suggest.
Not sure if I would recommend or not. Suspect I err to the yes, just on the fact that I think it is the best superhero film I've seen. Though if you don't like violence, probably not.
ETA: Link stolen from tektotheriggen - a recording from an aborted attempt at a Watchmen cartoon in the 1980s...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDDHHrt6l4w