Overread at the Movies!

I’ve had a little bit of extra time lately, so I’ve been off to the movies. I’m going to try to give review-ish type accounts here, but I should warn you that I’m very bad at it. I give generally give away spoilers and pay far too much attention to things that other people don’t care about and ignore what is ‘important.’ I also love bad movies. That should let you know that I’m not the best guy to give a movie review, but I’m going to anyway. So, with that self-protective caveat, I give you:

Overread at the Movies!

First off, the cinema near me is not a very good one. I should be happy enough – it’s got stadium seating and it’s clean, but it’s a soulless hulk of a Hollywood shill. All the big films come there and nothing with less than a huge release gets anywhere near it. To get to the cinemas that play thoughtful films or anything foreign, I have to take a 30 minute – 1 hour bus ride. I don’t do that much.

So, anyway, the preshow has turned into a full on ad-fest, which I don’t really mind so much, but I kinda miss the trivia that I remember other cinemas showing. Here it seems to have been replaced with screensavers. I kid you not. Between every third of fourth ad, there is a little 3-D pipe sculpture or a pulsating blob like you used to see at 70’s discos. Well, maybe you saw them there.

I gave up trying to find out who the best local realtor is, and relied on my cell-phone for entertainment while I waited. No, it wasn’t set on vibrate, it’s a little poker game. Come to think of it, that doesn’t sound very wholesome either.

Ok, Part the first:

Trailers

I love trailers. They are the only part of most movies that I see, because so many movies are just so bad, but I love trailers for the bad movies just as much as the good ones. Highlights:

The Dukes of Hazard

First off, I really don’t want to like this. I really don’t want to. But it looks funny. Kenny Rogers as Uncle Jesse and Burt Reynolds as Boss Hogg? Ok, I’m showing my white trash heritage, but that’s funny already. I can’t imagine it will do well, so maybe it’ll be a quick trip to TBS, but then again, I never would have bet on the NASCAR thing working out as big as it has.

Dark Water

This one actually had me laughing. It’s a horror story about, as near as I can tell, A WATER LEAK. Horrifying, eh? Actually I think there could be more of these movies in a series. Anyone who has rented in New York could testify to the terror of The Copper Pipes or Pre-War Wiring. That’s some seriously scary stuff.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Holy crap. Is that really Johnny Depp’s voice? I’ll go watch this one, no matter what. I don’t even have to think twice about that. I loved this movie the first time around, and just like the good little consumer I am, I always go out and see the remakes of my childhood fantasies. I’m almost always devastated about how they’ve destroyed the memory of it all, and this’ll probably be like that too, but hey, it looks pretty good right now. Who wouldn’t want to see that little girl turn into a blueberry again?

The Fantastic Four

Ok, I’m pretty skeptical of this one. It just looks bad. I try not to be overly critical about computer graphics, but this one just looks bad. The Thing looks… too cartoony next to the clarity of all the other more human-esqe characters. I still may go to see this one, because, like I said, I enjoy having my childhood fantasies crushed, but my expectations are pretty low.

War of the Worlds

Eh. I’m not sure why, but I can’t seem to get into this one. Maybe it's Tom Cruise, whom I think I've just seen enough of. Maybe it's the overly prepared hype machine that's been unleashed. Maybe it's just because the trailer looks really bad.

Movies:

Madagascar

I’m a sucker for cartoons, what can I say. That’s all this was too, just an hour and a half cartoon. The acting was standard and stereotypical. Nothing really stuck out as particularly good or bad, which is a win for Dreamworks, I'm sure. There were a couple of audio jokes, and other stuff aimed at the parents, as well as the standard crotch-kicking humor. I’m not saying it was bad by any means. Obviously, Pixar has set the bar much higher than Dreamworks cares to jump, but this is a funny movie, if you aren’t looking for anything more than pretty shallow stuff. Full points for the ‘Great Escape’ penguins. They threatened to steal the show every time they showed up.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

This was great mindless summer film fun. It is exactly what you think it’s going to be about. The husband and wife are hired killers, but neither one knows the other one’s job. They end up ordered to kill each other, and then have to fend off the hundreds who come to kill them. What I think is actually a step above about this movie is that it really tries to be funny. It doesn’t just throw in a couple of jokes. It’s truly committed to being funny. This may not work for a lot of people. You got your comedy stuck in my action film. You got your action film stuck in my comedy. The only other movie I can think of that tried that True Lies. Very funny stuff - and no need to engage the brain.

Batman Begins

Again, I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff, but I was very sad about Batmans 2,3,4… have there been 4? I forget. There was probably a direct to video starring Keanu Reeves as Batman and that Nanny woman as Batgirl. Oh, god. There was Catwoman. Oh. God, was that awful. I mean I’m all for getting Halle Berry in a leather outfit, but maybe take the money you used to hire her and get a 2^nd tier actor and use the rest to get a writer? Ok, back to this Batman. It’s good. It feels a lot different than the previous ones, which is good. It also doesn’t seem beholden to necessarily fit in with the worlds crated in the other movies, which is also very good. Comic book writers learned long ago that you should write whatever you want. Maybe it’s another universe. Maybe it’s an alternate Batman. Who cares, just get rid of all that baggage from the earlier bad movies and write something good. This one’s got a lot less fantasy than any of the previous movies. It’s still completely unbelievable, but they do put a lot more time into the characters, which is a quaint, underused gambit in movies of late. Just to prove how much this stuff has sunk into my brain, every time there was a shot of the Wayne mansion, all I could hear in my head was the announcer from the TV show saying ‘Stately Wayne Manor.’ That’s not healthy, right?
One last thing - I guess this is proof that I'm getting old. The fight and chase sequences are truly cut so fast as to be nearly incomprehensible.

Now that I look at all that, I guess they’re not really reviews at all, are they? More like impressions. I probably should have called them impressions instead of reviews. I should come up with a scale… Stars? Points?

Trailers (interest out of ten)

The Dukes of Hazzard

What I tell people – 2

What I really think – 6

Dark Water

If only it were Dark Crystal, now that was a good movie – 1

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Pre MJ trial – 8

Post MJ trail – 6

The Fantastic Four

Flame Off! – 4 (appropriate, no?)

War of the Worlds

Maybe I just have too many Thetans? – 5

Movies (Entertainment out of ten)

Madagascar

Pixar, it ain’t – 6

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Ok, She is gorgeous, but those lips are just huge! – 8

Batman Begins

Even though the name sounds like a Pre-K alphabet game - 7