Mel & I have watched a few movies in the past few months and I haven’t talked about them, so let me catch up here. It’s been a dissappointing summer.
Superman Returns
While I enjoyed the old movies what I really wanted was a “reboot” of the character along the lines of Batman Begins. A new beginning, and a new vision. Instead I got a good, but not great movie that really felt like the old 80s Christopher Reeve versions. Unfortunately they didn’t do much with their new CGI tools. Superman never fights anything, he just catches and lifts really big heavy things, and is only defeated by a bunch of thugs and enough kryptonite to make him as weak as a baby. And don’t get me started on the Jesus Christ imagery. Yeah, I get it, he’s a saviour. Stop beating us over the head with it and give us massive superpowered combat, dammit!
Brandon Routh did an excellent job as Christopher Reeve. I’m sure that was the direction he was given, and he accomplished it well. Any problems I’d have with his performance are definitely to be blamed on Bryan Singer’s direction and chosen style. The same is true of Kevin Spacey — he was quite obviously playing Gene Hackman. Again, a great job, but I’d rather see him do a fresh concept. Both Superman and Luthor have changed in the comics over the last few decades and the movie should have updated along with that. The animated Superman series is great for this.
The only person not playing as though they were the actor in the original movies was Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane. Lois is supposed to be a hardnose sassy reporter. Instead we get a curly brown-haired softie with almost no sass except when she wants a smoke. Bah!
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
I really enjoyed this movie up until the “ending” and then I literally shouted “What? I WANT A REAL ENDING!” as the credits rolled. Fortunately they filmed the third movie at the same time and I believe it’ll be out next year.
The action and plot is ridiculous. But the action was so well done I was able to set my brain in neutral and just enjoy the ride. And of course Johnny Depp is fantastic. I could’ve done without so many “rum” jokes. “Keep an eye on the rum” was a good one, but the “Why is the rum gone?” repetition alluding to the first movie was just cheap.
Clerks II
Hoo boy. It’s a sad day when a movie makes me question my enjoyment of other movies by the same director. This movie plodded along with terrible acting that I couldn’t get away from and some truly hackneyed dialog from a writer that is supposed to be good at it! After pondering this incongruity I realized that my complaints all had to do with the love scene writing, and looking back on Kevin Smith’s previous work he’s hasn’t had anything great in any of those when dealing with love either.
There’s a scene where Dante and his boss (the amazing Rosario Dawson, who was good and is gorgeous to boot) are talking about his upcoming wedding and they’re all cozy and intimate and he admits that he’s scared of the wedding. She asks him why and he says that he can’t dance and he’s worried about looking like an idiot for the “first dance”. Firstly, that’s retarded. It’s a slow dance, nobody gives a crap. Secondly I saw a million miles away that she was going to offer to teach him to dance and they’d have a “moment” and sure enough that’s exactly what happened. I hurt my eyes rolling them.
Ok, so pulling out all the lovey dovey crap, it was pretty good. I’d rank it around Mallrats, my least favorite of the Kevin Smith movies.
It’s possible I’m giving it a hard time because I kept getting annoyed by shitheads in the movie theatre talking out loud in full voice during the screening. I was able to shut up the guys right behind us, but some jackasses way in the back couldn’t be dealt with.
If movie theatres want to keep people coming and not just waiting for DVD releases they should stop putting in ads that tell people WHO ARE ALREADY AT THE MOVIES that movie theatres are better and instead keep one of their minimum wage monkeys in the theatre policing shitheads like this and make the experience more enjoyable for all.
So yeah, dissappointing movies. However, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying HBO’s “Entourage“. I caught up on the first two seasons over the summer (thank you BitTorrent!) and the third is now nearly done. I’ll be picking up the DVDs soon — who says file sharing costs sales? Without BitTorrent I never would have seen the show and would never have bought the DVD sets. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, MPAA.
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