He Took Her To A Movie
The first half of 2006 has been rather dire for movies.
Tristram Shandy began the year on a disappointing note, while V for Vendetta was an admirable, albeit arrhythmic, attempt at adapting Alan Moore's atrociously alliterative anarchist anthology (if you think that was bad, imagine having to read that out-loud -- on screen; Hugo Weaving is the man). Inside Man was serviceable and completely forgettable; the same could be said about Mission Impossible III, but JJ gets a few props for making shit blow up good (negative points, however, for casting the PSH if you aren't going to use him). And while I find Superman intensely uninteresting as a character, Bryan Singer has crafted a couple of thrilling set pieces and adds enough depth of feeling to make his reboot of the franchise the first good 'summer movie.'
For those of you who have been paying attention to the sidebar, my recommendations will come as no surprise. Thank You For Smoking is a fiercely cynical, but always entertaining satire. An Inconvenient Truth might just be a glorified Powerpoint presentation, but it is (surprisingly) never dull and grounds Gore's stoic neo-Kantism in the tragedies of his biography. Regardless of how you feel about Altman or Keillor, there are two reasons you should see A Prairie Home Companion: Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. And finally, Brick, a film which premiered at Sundance last year, is easily the best movie so far of 2006. A film noir by way of the schoolyard, it is taught, visually striking, and sharply written (and at the risk of completely alienating you, features Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the toughest anti-hero since Bruce Willis in Die Hard).
Special honors go to X-men III, a franchise killer of epic proportions and The Da Vinci Code which not only made Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou look bad, but also the Louvre and Paris -- not even Jesus or God walked away from the film untarnished.
And to wrap things up, some random numbers that may or may not correspond to how I felt about the movies of 2006 (let Mark have his rebellious subjectivity):
Tristram Shandy - 69
V for Vendetta - 64
Inside Man - 72
Thank You For Smoking - 82
Brick - 90
Mission Impossible:III - 73
The Da Vinci Code - 9
X-men III - 24
An Inconvenient Truth - 84
A Prairie Home Companion - 80
Superman - 76
Tristram Shandy began the year on a disappointing note, while V for Vendetta was an admirable, albeit arrhythmic, attempt at adapting Alan Moore's atrociously alliterative anarchist anthology (if you think that was bad, imagine having to read that out-loud -- on screen; Hugo Weaving is the man). Inside Man was serviceable and completely forgettable; the same could be said about Mission Impossible III, but JJ gets a few props for making shit blow up good (negative points, however, for casting the PSH if you aren't going to use him). And while I find Superman intensely uninteresting as a character, Bryan Singer has crafted a couple of thrilling set pieces and adds enough depth of feeling to make his reboot of the franchise the first good 'summer movie.'
For those of you who have been paying attention to the sidebar, my recommendations will come as no surprise. Thank You For Smoking is a fiercely cynical, but always entertaining satire. An Inconvenient Truth might just be a glorified Powerpoint presentation, but it is (surprisingly) never dull and grounds Gore's stoic neo-Kantism in the tragedies of his biography. Regardless of how you feel about Altman or Keillor, there are two reasons you should see A Prairie Home Companion: Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. And finally, Brick, a film which premiered at Sundance last year, is easily the best movie so far of 2006. A film noir by way of the schoolyard, it is taught, visually striking, and sharply written (and at the risk of completely alienating you, features Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the toughest anti-hero since Bruce Willis in Die Hard).
Special honors go to X-men III, a franchise killer of epic proportions and The Da Vinci Code which not only made Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou look bad, but also the Louvre and Paris -- not even Jesus or God walked away from the film untarnished.
And to wrap things up, some random numbers that may or may not correspond to how I felt about the movies of 2006 (let Mark have his rebellious subjectivity):
Tristram Shandy - 69
V for Vendetta - 64
Inside Man - 72
Thank You For Smoking - 82
Brick - 90
Mission Impossible:III - 73
The Da Vinci Code - 9
X-men III - 24
An Inconvenient Truth - 84
A Prairie Home Companion - 80
Superman - 76
posted by d l wright at 7/01/2006 08:08:00 AM
5 Comments:
So you did hate X-men... I wondered after you never posted your thoughts. But I figured that you'd hate it... because it sucked and all. Care to expand?
Yeah, I was going to post my thoughts -- I had a pretty lengthy dissection of the X-men fillum, but you and Ben covered a majority of the bases and you can find more comprhensive eviscerations of the movie on the internet.
Two addition thoughts:
1) The Marvel universe is populated with such a rich array of mutants, I don't know why Ratner took it upon himself to create new ones - or tepid variations of existing ones (I guess that bone dude could have been modeled after Marrow). The climactic battle could have been amazing if it had pitted unused villains (and perhaps some turned-evil heroes) against our X-men. Instead, we got some silly post-emo kids whose only powers seemed to be jumping far. Even the small scene of Rouge waiting in line to be cured could have featured a few 'easter eggs' of mutant cameos (Chamber would have been perfect).
2) The movie was not only internally incoherent, but was completely contradicted within the context of the overall trilogy. Does anybody else remember the plotline of the first X-men movie? I can't blame you if you don't -- it wasn't very good. Magneto had created a machine that could turn humans into mutants. What was one of the plotpoints in X-men III, wait for it... a cure to turn mutants into humans.
Luckily with Spider-man III on the horizon, I don't ever have to think about X-men III again. The trailer looks good -- does anyone else think Sam Raimi might be faking us out with the symbiote? Just because Eddie Brock is going to be in it, doesn't mean that Venom will necessarily be making an appearance. Aren't they all just contracted for three movies anyway?
I'm pretty sure that the full Venom will appear. I saw one of those "trailers" on youtube the other day. (You know the ones... they pop up before the actual trailer and aren't "real" but seemingly have "real" movie footage.)
I'd wonder if the movie will end with the "reformed" Eddie Brock that popped up a few times (notably in the Ultimate Carnage series). After all, if Wolverine can get his own movie why not Venom. I don't think I'd even mind. Topher Grace does, after all, rock.
I'll abridge that last comment by saying that the trailer I saw before was clearly a fake. (I watched it again.) But the rest of what I said still stands.
Geek Correction: Mark means Maximum Carnage.
Art School Confidential - 70.
This is what happens when your subtext overruns your actual story. Funny (although lampooning an easy target) but the plot twists in bizarre and outlandish directions.
Post a Comment
<< Home