The King’s Speech – So this won an awful lot of awards, huh? It is a pretty good movie, although… not that good. Maybe I’m being a bit contrarian (shocker). It’s still very good. It’s certainly a pretty interesting story. I do have an odd reaction to the reality of the story. My first instinct is hey that’s amazing truth. My second larger instinct is, uhh… so what? So a royal guy can’t speak well.Meanwhile, in the background, some of the most amazing moments of the 20th century are happening. Hell, Churchill is a side character. But I get it, this royal guy was more than that to the people, and that can certainly be a very important thing in trying times. Besides, we’ve seen WW II, sad as it is to say, there’s probably not much more story there (at least when it comes to the broad historical strokes, I’m sure there’s an infinite number of little stories). Anyway, everyone does an outstanding job, the movie looks great. All that stuff is thumbs up. But there is something missing that doesn’t make it amazing for me. I have no trouble saying it’s great, but it does not leave me feeling like some of the amazing movies of the past few years. I’m thinking Slumdog, or the Wrestler, hell even visual treats like Sunshine or 300. This movie was good, but I don’t ever need to see it again, it doesn’t reach that upper level. I’m not saying it doesn’t for others, just not for me.
30 Days of Night: Dark Days – This is another movie based on the same 30 Days of Night comic series. I quite like the series (though it never gets anywhere close to as good as the first set). This is kind of the same. The first movie wasn’t really very good, but it was good enough to enact a story I really like, so I liked it. This is a less good enactment of less good source material, so it’s less good. But still, I think I probably liked it better than most people would.
Gasland – Yikes. Documentary about how natural gas mining (via this “fracking” technique where they bust open the ground to get at the gas) is pretty effed up. I hear now that people are thinking it might actually cause earthquakes. I write this a few days after the big one in japan, so I can certainly see that having some impact. But this movie is about the polution of ground water. People who can light their kitchen faucets on fire due to the gas content. People getting sick. Environments getting fucked. It’s pretty miserable. Like many of these things, I get angry, but I do nothing. It will continue. Until maybe it stops and they do something else shitty. Very cynical, I know. But through a combination of feeling there’s nothing I can do, and knowing that I don’t do those few things, that require great effort, that I can do – I’m left kinda frustrated about it. The movie itself is fine. The narrator’s voice is ridiculous, I think he thinks he’s batman. The filming is kind of stupid. I think he was going for a gritty handheld thing, but that means he’s using crap cameras half the time. It’s effing 2010, there’s no such thing as crap cameras. 50 bucks get you HD, stop screwing around with this grainy crap. But besides that stuff it’s fine. It gets you the info, it’s obviously biased toward its thesis, but I’m pretty sure I’m on their side, so that doesn’t much bother me. It’s worth watching, you’ll be pissed, but it’s probably best to know what’s going on, especially if you live near any of these natural gas shales (I’m looking at you, Colorado family members).
A-Team – Oops, I never reviewed this. Not that I think it’s important that I do, it’s not. But in 3 years when I search my blog to find out if I’ve seen it, I want to remember not to watch it again. I mean, it’s not all that bad. It’s just a big ball of what you’d expect. Booms and bangs, stupid jokes, flying tanks. You know, the standard.
From Paris With Love – On the other hand, make sure I never see this again. What a piece of crap. Face/Off… is that the only thing Travolta has ever done that’s worthwhile? I guess I never saw Saturday Night Fever or Grease, so maybe those get a pass. But what else? Seriously. That dumb fucking subway heist movie? Dianetics: The Movie? The baby movies? Ok seriously, what else? I’m resorting to IMDB now. Swordfish – that had the line “not everything ends the way you think it should”. Those are the only redeeming 5 seconds of that garbage. Oh right, Pulp Fiction, that’s a good one. Aaaand, that’s it. Ok, 4 movies, tops, he’s ever done, that are remotely watchable. Well, you can’t call him inconsistent, because this movie sucks. He sucks. Is that supposed to be acting? Yelling a lot? Trying to pretend you are a bad ass? He has 5 seconds (is that a theme?) that are kind of Bourne-ish that’re neat. Besides that…. yeah, nothin’
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