Movie Reviews @ The Temple

And here goes another 80 million movies.  I realize no one cares what I think, but I rather like writing it down for when I forget in, like, a week.

Cloverfield - so cool!  Really, it did everything it wanted to do very well, and it was great.  There's a few dumb things you have to forgive, some forced humor, some convenient plot, the whole artifice of the found tape bullcrap that doesn't really hold up.  But it was actually very funny, pretty well acted, and super cool as far as revealing things as it went along.  Totally lived up to what I hoped.

Juno - This is pretty much as good as everyone says.  The first 20 minutes annoyed the crap out of me.  I'm so sick of bullshit old people writing dialog for bullshit young characters.  "Hey man!  that's the widget!  yeah, that outfit is totally juicebox!"  See?  I can do it too, pick random words as new adjectives or interjections and you are totally cool and young.  ANYway, besides that bunch of crap, the movie is great.  I didn't love the main girl till the end, because the first 1/2 is laden with all the aforementioned bullcrap.  But in the end she is great.  And the supporting cast is universally amazing.  Michael Sera (playing the same character, again, unfortunately) still does great, the step-mom and dad are awesome.  Jason Bateman and Jennifer Gardner are completely amazing.  Especially the latter, who is nominally playing an extreme role, but does it with perfect balance and honesty.  So anyway, it's a very good movie.

The Orphanage - Wow, very very good as well!  I've seen three great movies in four days.  This is totally what a scary movie should be, tense and atmospheric and not dumb.  I guess the Japanese movies do this as well, but I liked this more than any of the Japanese horrors I've seen.  There was a bit of mystery hunting in the last 30 minutes that sorta sucked, but the rest of the movie had me all the way through.  Can't say the ending, of course, but I will say that it could have been super lame but wasn't.  Maybe not everyone's style, but I was okay with it.

By the way, I saw the trailer for the american version of The Eye again after having seen the original.  I think this will be the first time I've ever done it in that order.  But anyway, from what I can tell, I saw excerpts from every single scene in the trailer, up to and including the ending!  It looks like a very direct remake, which seems sort of lame, but it will be interesting to compare, I guess.

In The Name Of The King - Ok ok, before you say anything, I have never paid money for an Uwe Boll film (for the uninitiated, his entire career is making awful video game movies).  But I have also never not paid for a Jason Statham movie (unless you count War, which I don't).  So you see I really had no choice.  In the end, it was pretty damn awful.  The production values were surprisingly adequate.  Sets looked good, costumes looked alright, weapons and armor of the heroes looked proper, though some minor characters were clearing armed in tin foil.  Special effects, too, were actually quite good.  A couple failings (in the woods, in the last sequence), but the teleport effect is actually the coolest I have ever seen.  The acting, however, is horrible.  And the writing is the most god awful, horrendous, mind-splititng, puke-inducing drek ever shat onto a page.  Well, maybe not ever, but it is really bad.  Just ever pathetic cliche, over worked joke, unnecessary explanation, etc.  If you watch it on mute, the action is good enough.  Just don't listen, your ears might bleed.

Hairspray - Well, this was fun I guess.  I don't understand my relationship with musicals.  Chicago is my favorite of all time, I looooove it, and it's pretty corny.  Somehow that music, that time period, charms me.  Across the Universe & Sweeny Todd recently made me happy.  This seemed fun, but I didn't love any of the music, the characters were mostly annoying.  I did like the group dance sequences though.

Rescue Dawn - This was pretty tense, pretty good!  It's basically a vietnam POW camp story.  It looks like an old vietnam movie, though it came out last year, which is really great.  It sort of feels like not a lot happens, but that's the point I guess.  Everyone does a pretty good job, including Steve Zahn, surprisingly.  And Bale is, as he is continually proving, great.  Dunno what else to say, I think it's great, you should see it.

Resident Evil: Exctinction - What?  What did you expect?  It's RE.  Zombie attacks, you shoot it.  Zombie dog attacks, you kick it.  Zombie bird attacks, you light it on fire.  Then do it some more.  Then ogle Mila Jovavich a little.  Then some more stabby stabby shooty shooty.  Then you go home.  This is how it goes.  By the way, this movie makes me want a Walking Dead movie, or even better tv show, SO MUCH.  Walking Dead is a comic, probably the best zombie story I've ever read/seen, it's really great.

Color of the Cross - So... this is basically black jesus.  Made by a company called Black Christian Films, ha.  An entirely normal jesus story, retold with a black guy playing jesus, and occasionally someone says "do you think they are persecuting him because he is black?"  No seriously, they say that.  I mean, it would have been a legitimate question, if the messiah shows up in double digits BC and he is a different race than most of the jews.  But still, it seemed entirely unneccessary, the whole movie.  I suppose it's no worse than whiter than snow jesus movies, but I don't really dig them either, so wadayawant?