musings

Paula and I went to see George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead last night. Like all of George Romero‘s zombie movies, this one is a bit (and I emphasize bit) of social commentary wrapped in a zombie thriller. Where Dawn of the Dead was an allegory for mass consumerism, Land of the Dead embodies the Marxist class struggle. Like the other Dead movies, however, the social commentary really amounts to “Hey, look!”. It’s not deep by any means. Land of the Dead is nothing at all like scary. There are a whole lot of cheap startles, but there’s no real tension. There is, however, an unholy amount of gore. And now that Romero has a real budget, the gore is incredibly visceral. Zombie fans, rejoice, this is the first good zombie movie since the not-zombies-at-all 28 Days Later….

Go see Howl’s Moving Castle. It’s a fantastic movie and, like all of Miyazaki’s work, visually arresting.

I speak, of course, of Batman Begins. In fact, if it weren’t for Sin City, I’d have said it was the best comic book movie ever. Excellent casting, pacing and writing, and great direction (mind you, again I was forced to endure fight scenes shot from too close with too much shaky handycam style direction). The title of the movie, “Batman Begins” is apt – this is less a movie about Batman than it is about the birth of Batman. The trauma, and the psychological underpinnings that turned Bruce Wayne into Batman. It never felt forced or awkward – and unlike the first of Tim Burton’s Batman movies (which, by the way, I’m happy to consign to the Trash bin of my mind, along with the abominable Joel Schumacher disasters) the writer didn’t feel like obliged to tie in the origin of Batman with his nemesis – that is to say, the Joker wasn’t the guy who killed Wayne’s parents. If you’ve not done so already, go see this movie. Forget the Burton movies, forget the campy 60′s series (okay, don’t – it was fun) and for God’s sake, forget the Schumacher films. This movie is the definitive Batman film. If they can keep this level of quality up, I’m actually looking forward to the (inevitable) sequels.

Paula, Cy and I went to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith tonight. It’s not a great movie – my major complaint being the start-stop pacing – but it is a heck of a lot of fun. There are some awkward puns, some neat in-jokes, and about 15 million bullets, but mostly there’s the Brad Pitt – Angelina Jolie chemistry. I’m not actually a particularly big fan of either of them (but now that I think about it, Brad Pitt was truly amazing in Twelve Monkeys, Kalifornia, Snatch, True Romance, and Fight Club, so I guess I’m letting some of his poorer movies, like the truly awful The Devil’s Own, taint my opinion of his skills) but they had great chemistry in this movie.

And I don’t care what Cy says, Angelina looked dead hot. I don’t think she’s ever looked better.

I saw Kingdom of Heaven tonight and really enjoyed it. The pacing was a bit uneven, and the score wasn’t spectacular, but some good (and some great) performances and Ridley Scott’s terrific direction made it worth seeing. My knowledge of twelfth century history is pretty much non-existent, so I can’t pass judgement on the historical accuracy (or lack thereof). The story felt a bit forced too. But Jeremy Irons, David Thewlis and Alexander Siddig were just fantastic. Nobody does epic battles like Ridley Scott – and nobody does historical epics like Ridley Scott either. If you liked Gladiator or Blackhawk Down, you should see Kingdom of Heaven.

As an aside, I think Gladiator was probably the best of the three – it had a stronger lead performance (but weaker supporting performances). I liked Kingdom of Heaven better than Blackhawk Down – not that it was a better movie, but the historical setting was more to my taste.

Stephen and I took Sarah (his daughter) to see Madagascar this afternoon. It was okay. I wasn’t expecting much – in fact, I was expecting that the trailer gave away all the funny bits. I wasn’t far wrong – the trailer gave away half the funny bits. The other funny bits all came from Sacha Baron Cohen (better known as Ali G). His character was utterly hysterical. The stars of the movie (voiced by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith and David Schwimmer) really weren’t very funny at all. What is it with David Schwimmer, anyway? That guy’s voice inspires in me the urge to punch him. Repeatedly. Anyway, performances aside, the movie has some serious problems with pacing. We’re talking 20 minute long stretches of utter boredom problems. Multiple 20 minute long stretches of abject boredom. In an 80 minute film. Bad screenwriter! No cookie for you! If you do see it, stick around for the “music video” during the end credits – it’s about the funniest thing in the film.

I saw Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith tonight.

Eh. It was about what I expected. No, actually, it was better than I’d expected. I expected terrible dialogue (check), terrible acting from Hayden Christensen (check) and decent performances from Ewan MacGregor (who was actually excellent) and Natalie Portman (yep). The plot wasn’t bad, given that you know where it’s going to wind up, but the details made it more interesting. You finally got to see what motivated Anakin Skywalker into becoming Darth Vader. But really the best part of the movie was Obi Wan’s reaction to Anakin’s betrayal. Ewan MacGregor is a fantastic actor – his final speech to Darth Vader was worth the price of admission.

The special effects (if that’s even fair – the whole movie’s a special effect) were a mixed bag. As usual, the sets were stunning. Great lighting effects, great ambiance and believable looking scenes were pretty much everywhere (well, the living quarters were all spartan to the point of asceticism, but barring that). Where things fell apart were the animations. Nothing seemed to have any weight – characters bound into motion, leaping into the air, seemingly popping from stock-still to top speed with nary a hint of acceleration. I know Sith and Jedi all Use the Forceâ„¢ but droids and mundane creatures all had the same style of motion.

Anyway, overall I got a slightly better movie than I expected – and RotS is far and away the best movie of the new trilogy. If this is really the last Star Wars movie it, at least, ended on a (relatively) high note.

As an aside, I simply can’t get enough of that Jesu album. It’s the front runner for album of the year so far. By the way, if it shows up in the little iTunes thing on the sidebar of this site, and the album cover shows a CD called “Sacred Classics” it’s Amazon being brain-dead. Despite the fact that “Jesu Jesu” (the Artist/Album keyword pair) has an exact match, it’s the second hit in the search, regardless of whatever sort criteria I use.

I had a bit of a lame Friday night. Cy dropped by and we rented a couple of movies – by utterly random coincidence, both featured the truly lovely Naomie Harris. We grabbed After the Sunset and 28 Days Later ….

After the Sunset was, well, a dud. It’s a caper flick starring Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek as a pair of jewel thieves, and Woody Harrelson as the FBI agent attempting to capture them. It’s not that it’s a desperately bad movie, it’s just lame. Now, it wasn’t all bad – it did feature almost 97 minutes of Salma Hayek wearing little more than a bikini. I’ve seen movies that were equally lame that didn’t have 90 minutes of bikini-clad Salma Hayek and they were, indeed, less enjoyable than After the Sunset.

28 Days Later … was amazing. On a purely visceral level, it was far more satisfying as a zombie movie (though the zombies weren’t actually zombies) than either of the Resident Evil movies or House of the Dead (I’ve not seen the other recent zombie movie, the remake of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead). But really, it wasn’t actually a horror movie at all. It has all the requisite splatter and gore, but it’s far more deliberately paced, without the hundreds of jack-in-the-box startle shots so common in horror films. If you’ve not seen it yet, rent it – it’s a very good flick.

Sin City is a colossal achievement in cinema. It’s the perfect adaptation of comic to movie. No, scratch that. It’s not an adaptation at all. The movie is the comic. Each frame of the comic is faithfully recreated. The cast was fantastic – great perfomances all (okay, Michael Madsen might as well have been a wooden plank with a pair of horn rims on, but he had all of 5 minutes total screen time), a great look, and all the wonderful cheesy over-the-top noir dialogue of the comic. Go see this movie. And then go again.

Last night I saw Ong-Bak and I was floored. It’s an amazing movie – some of the best action I’ve seen in years. In terms of grand production, it’s not anywhere near the scope of a film like Hero or House of Flying Daggers, but as a low-budget fast action movie it can’t be beat.

The only mar on the night? A couple of idiots who insisted on carrying conversations on their cell phones during the movie. One guy, in particular, took something like three or four calls, and carried on conversations loudly. How self-centered must you be to think that this kind of behaviour is acceptable? If I’d been sitting next to the guy, he’d have been wearing my drink. After a lot of yelling by angry moviegoers, finally somebody complained to management and this knucklehead (and a few other morons) were escorted out of the theatre to the delight (and applause) of the rest of us. Some people. Gah.