Weekend Entertainment Pursuits, Part II

[bryant]

Wanted sucked rocks. Here’s a list of the good:

• Set pieces: the skyscraper assassination, the sunroof bit, the keyboard across the face.
• Angelina Jolie’s performance, which was surprisingly nuanced and subtle, especially at the end.
• The Russian thriller-verging-on-horror aesthetic: the knife fight in the denoument.
• Timur Bekmambetov bringing in his

Comments

[immlass]

I feel better about my decision to see Indy IV at long last tonight instead of this after reading your comments.

[telepresence]

See, if I had to identify one stink bomb this year Indy 4 would be it. Wanted has a lot of problems but I was still entertained by it at the shoot-uppery level. There's literally about 1 minute 30 seconds of real enjoyment to be gotten from Indy 4, IMO.

[immlass]

My expectations aren't high for Indy IV, either.

Fortunately, it's a free ticket.

[editswlonghair]

I just saw Indy IV the other day, and it did what I wanted it to do: it is a fun popcorn movie and it cashes in on a lot of nostalgia. Would I have wanted it to be another 'Raiders'? Yeah, of course. But since neither 'Temple' or 'Last Crusade' were as good as 'Raiders', I knew going in that I wasn't getting that. ;)

[dariusk]

It takes some serious skill to start with a Millar property and then make it *worse*. (And I loved Red Son, just everything else he's done has left me underwhelmed.)

[dariusk]

Did you know that Grant Morrison gave Millar the idea for the ending to Red Son? It made so much more sense when I learned that, because honestly when I finished the book I was thinking, "Wow, that is some Grant Morrison caliber writing right there."

[stevenkaye]

OK, it's not just me that the misogyny bugged then.

Maybe Angelina Jolie took all the character development and they couldn't spare any for Terence Stamp?

I didn't read the comic, so can't comment on that.

The gratuitous "I'm walking into the building now" jump cuts were funny. All in all, for me it was a neat SFX vehicle with a plot that made no sense whatsoever. Which was what I expected, after Day Watch.

[bryant]

michele_blue pointed out that Stamp had his very own loom in Europe, which neatly solves the problem of how Fate makes itself heard now that Wesley destroyed the Fraternity. I think this means he's the sensei in the inevitable sequel. Wanted did fifty million last weekend, which is solidly in the top ten for R-rated openers, so we're gonna see another one.

... huh. There's another thematic issue. On the one hand, the message is all about freeing oneself from the chains that bind and doing whatever the hell one wants. Raar, freedom. On the other hand, Sloan's biggest crime was telling Fate to screw off. Oh, incoherence.