Tropic Thunder - Ha! Pretty great. Not super great. Maybe people told me it was too great ahead of time so I'm a tiny bit disappointed. But still great. Thumbs up for pretty much everyone in it. Except jack black, I kinda hate him, I don't think I've ever liked a movie featuring him. I appreciate the addition of the comedian character, I just don't like him. Everyone else is great, though. I haven't seen any comedies this summer, so I'm not sure how it compares. I wasn't rolling on the floor every other minute, but there were defintely lots of good laughs and a good movie over all.
The Dark Knight in IMAX - Hey! I got to see batman in imax, it was pretty badass. IMAX issues: I didn't notice a single transition from IMAX to widescreen or back, it was just pretty. I was also in a theater with a far superior sound system to the first time, it was awesome. Movie issues: still amazing! It was interesting watching again. On the one hand you have more time to pay attention to little flaws. Bale's throat cancer voice was even more glaring. Silly things like dent actually walking around and breathing and talking w/ half a god damn face stood out. On the other hand, paying less attention to the story left me with more attention for little things that fill the movie out and make it seem even greater. My measure of how enthralled I was the first time around was how long it took me to think "oh yeah, heath ledger is dead." Believe it or not, it took me even longer this time! It's still a great movie, this was just a great movie louder and prettier.
Meet the Robinsons - Soooooo, if I don't say this is the best movie ever, I MIGHT get broken up with :) Fortunately, she doesn't read this! It's a cute enough movie. It's a 3D animation disney movie, kind of like that jimmy neutron show. It's a nice story, I guess, and its funny. It's not exactly the best animated film ever, but it's an ok time if you want silliness!
Meet the Robinsons (Retraction) - I have recently been informed that there is a direct relationship beteween good times and appreciation of Meet the Robinsons. Let me be clear: Meet the Robinsons is the Greatest Film of All Time. I have little doubt that the best filmmakers in our history actually travelled forward in time to see this movie before going back to create their own films, which stand as mere reflections of the brilliance of Meet the Robinsons. It is, without question, the single most significant artistic creation of the last 100 years.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) - I had never seen this classic, and with the new one coming up I figured I should. It is certainly of an era, but it doesn't suffer too dramatically from being made 50 years ago. The story is pretty timeless, of course, and appropriate for modern day too. It's a strange movie, it's whole premise is the tension of feeling like we are on the edge of annihiliation, but i wouldn't really say the movie feels tense. Maybe because its old, or maybe I just don't like whole it was played. I just felt like I should have felt uneasy the whole time. I sort of fear I won't feel that with the new one because it will be too showy. The new one looks decent, I guess Keannu Reeves is appropriate to play someone w/o emotion. But though the trailer is moderately dramatic, I dunno if it will make me feel like we're all gonna die. Anyway, the original is good enough, and its theme probably would have blown me away if I was around then. Besides, it's a classic, you have to see it anyway! Btw, wiki tells me that there is a christian interpretation of the movie. I guess that makes sense, guy comes to save us from ourselves, dies, comes back. I'm moderately annoyed that no one can ever again try to save people without being jesus though.
Leatherheads - Uh oh. I have a history of liking pretty much anything George Clooney is in. I can't really think of any movie I didn't like. And things he has a part in creating are usually even better. The Ocean's sequels are maybe an exception, but they are sequels, so whatevs. But Leatherheads flies hi over george clooney's shark. It's just not nearly as cute as it wants to be. It has trademark GC quirkiness and charm and banterish dialogue, but it falls flat for me. There are maybe 5 to 10 real moments of cleverness, but the fact that I tried to count points out how lacking the movie is. Something just rang untrue and forced with these characters. Seemed like I should have liked it, but no, I'm afraid I didn't, it's the end of an era! Btw, did they digitally lower clooney's voice? I swear it gets deeper with every movie.
Capricorn One - So I heard an On The Media story about investigative journalism that listed a bunch of old movies about reporters, so that's my next kick. This is first on the list, a 70s movie about a faked mars landing and the reporter who investigates it. I have to ignore that part of my brain that says this might have tied into people believing the moon landing was fake cuz that would just make me angry. Besides of that, it's a pretty decent movie. It's kind of cheesy and 70s-ish in feeling. The fonts, the music. I don't really think its a great "reporter movie" though. Eliot Gould is kinda goofy and just bumbles his way into the investigation. And the investigation itself is pretty stunted too, and the whole thing ends abruptly. It's an interesting movie, I guess, but I hope the rest of the list does a little better.
Shock Corridor - Alright, this is more like it! This is another reporter movie, the premise is the reporter gets himself committed to a mental hospital in order to solve a murder that happened inside the hospital. First the flaws: it suffers some from old movieness. It has overly dramatic music, some overly dramatic performances. It has an absolutely ridiculous scene in the women's ward that literally has them all as sex crazed maniacs. They really call it the "nympo ward"! It was stupid and insulting. It is also really poorly editted. Jarring cuts within a scene, often action scenes that for some reason couldn't get done in one take. One was so bad a guy on the floor rotated 90 degrees through a cut. It felt very amateur in a way that I don't understand, it was 1963, there's no excuse for it. But with those out of the way, this movie is greaaat. The concept is great, its like Cuckoo's Nest except different. It treats madness a little simply, they are crazy and have moments of lucidity. It sets up a pattern he uses to do his investigation that is very formulaic, but it leads to great performances. The main guy does a good job, though his crazies are maybe too crazy. There are four principle patients he encounters, three are pretty good. The last, a black man who was the first to desegreated in a southern college, went crazy, and now rants like a KKK member, is fucking fantastic. He does a fabulous job and is filmed pretty well while he does it. It treats color (in the film sense, its a mostly B&W movie) really fantastically. And surprisingly, given the rest of it, it edits images of madness together well. It ends in a way that is almost inevitable, but is still good to watch. The movie absoultely has its flaws, it almost makes me want for a remake so that those flaws could be ironed out. But they might mess up what is great here, which is absolutely worth watching.
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