I’ve seen a pretty huge
I’ve seen a pretty huge number of movies in the last few weeks, i’ll give my rundown and synopsis reviews, in order of enjoyment.
1) Pirates of the Carribean: I saw this in a pre-release screening last week. Christian and I have developed this theory about Jerry Bruckheimer. When you go to his website, you’re greeted by a looping portion of the theme song to Crimson Tide. Our theory is that this is actually his person theme song. When he hits the unlock button on the keyfob remote for his car, the stereo turns up and his theme song swells. When he enters his office, a receptionist greets him and presses play. When he heads home, a computer program senses his presence and starts the theme. It’s a very tough and cool way to walk around. Anyway, at the screening of the movie I was really surprised that he came up and introduced the film, since I didn’t hear him coming.
It was great. The direction and cinematography were interesting, much more than you’d expect from a typical summer fluff film. Johnny Depp wore an enormous amount of eye makeup and said things like “get working you scallywags!” and hammed it up like crazy. The guy from lord of the rings was good, and Geoffrey Rush was, of course, excellent. There aren’t nearly enough pirate movies, and this is without question one of the best.
2) The Hulk: People are crazy. The Hulk’s CGI is fine, far better than the CGI in the Spiderman movie. It fits the movie perfectly, I never doubted that he was in the scenes. I actually found the CGI in The Matrix more distracting, because it was trying to be so close to real, the border between real and cgi was glaringly apparent. With the Hulk, you just accept that he’s this giant green guy. The split frame shots, the long closeups on people’s faces, the way the action proceeds all make you feel like you’re watching a comic book in a way i’ve never seen done.
It wasn’t really an action movie, although it certainly had exciting parts. It wasn’t a typical superhero movie, our hero had ambiguous morals. The four main performances were great, that group of actors alone could carry a movie. Realizing that the first Batman movie was great, I still think this is the best comic book movie ever made.
3) The Italian Job: I don’t really like Mark Wahlberg, but he was inoffensive, maybe even blandly charming, in this movie. The rest of the cast was spot on, and it was a cleverly put together caper film. Stylishly directed, funny, and it’ll make everyone who sees it want to go out and buy a mini cooper.
4) Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle: This movie is insane. Seriously. It was like watching a two hour music video montage. The first movie was over the top, but this one was absolutely fantastical. There was never any letdown in the action, never really any buildup, which I think hurt the movie. In the first movie, there’s 10 minutes at the racetrack with characters interacting before Crispin Glover and Cameron Diaz take off in racecars. None of that here, just one crazy action scene after another. There was none of the real goofiness that the first movie had (Bill Murray fighting Tim Curry in the sumo wrestling suits, for instance). The Angels went from being hardasses who could jump in the air to being superheros who were impervious and could more or less fly.
I think the movie had no incidental music. It was all pretty much rock songs, straight through. They must have spent a ton of money just licensing all the songs. I felt spent by the time I left the theater.
5) Legally Blonde 2: Another free movie, we got flyers to see this one when we went to see The Hulk. Emily and her friends really wanted to see it, so we went. This was a taping of MTV’s “Movie House” and one of the worst experiences of my life. Our paper said “arrive at 7 for an 8 o’clock movie,” so we showed up at five of seven. We waited outside the theater in a pretty long line until about 8:15, when the finally let us into the building. Then the real fun began. We had to wait around, gathering into a big group, and then streamed up the escalator so we looked like an enthused crowd going to see the movie. Then we had to do it again, since they didn’t get enough good footage. More waiting. When we finally got into the theater, they needed to record a “medium cheer” and other crowd footage. They said, “don’t worry, there’s a surprise for you.” The surprise? Reese Witherspoon reading a 30 second canned speech on the screen. And our reaction wasn’t good enough, so we had to watch it and “pretend you’re seeing her for the first time” react again. The theater was hot and stuffy, the free popcorn stale and the free soda watery. I think we finally started the movie around 10 pm. When the movie was finally over, they told us that we had to leave one row at a time, due to fire regulations. What they really had to do was film excited groups of people leaving the theater. They kept us in our seats for almost another half hour, with some stupid assed mtv producer trying to keep us entertained. He asked what sorts of things people would like to see on MTV, and some smartass says “music videos.” His response was literally: “Do you get MTV2? That’s for the videos..Ask your cable provider to get you MTV2″ What a fucking corporate shill. When we finally got out of the theater itself (just the room), we were corralled against a wall to be background for an interview. So we just walked away. Some guy got all excited and started squealing into his walkie talkie “These people are leaving illegally, don’t give out the cds.” No soundtrack for us, big loss. So, if I seem unenthused about the movie, you have an idea why.
It was fine. The first half hour seemed slow and boring, and it got funnier, but overall didn’t do much for me. If you really liked the first one, you’ll probably like this one, but it’s more or less the same movie, but set in washington dc. Oh yeah, and it has much less Luke Wilson in it, so that sucks. Rent Old School instead, you’ll get more Luke Wilson, and it’s much funnier.
