Monday, September 29, 2003
Movie Review: View From the Top
I'm walking in thinking that this will be a dumb comedy (which I like). I hate Gwenth Paltrow. I think the Mike Meyers character might be funny.
The movie was entertaining and seemed fast moving (or just short). The audience semed to enjoy it. If you're someone who laughs out loud at obvious jokes and enjoy stupid comedy than you should go see this movie. You may even make a new friend or two.
It's a safe movie in that most of the world isn't going to get outraged about a movie that inaccurately portrays the lifestyle of a stewardess & that aspect of the airline industry.
Still, I found it upsetting that at a time when the airline industry is in the tiolet and the airlines themselves are all doing very badly; cutting back routes; laying off hundreds and thousands of employees; cutting back on perks (for patrons and employees alike I'm sure), this movie seems to suggest that a stewardess leads a lifestyle normally thought to be reserved for the wealthy and and the famous. Beautiful apartments in Manhattan with wide views of the park; staying at the most luxurious hotels in Paris, London and Rome whike flying; $1500.00 dresses. Is this the reality?
I give the movie a 6. If I were a steward I would give it a 1.
11:58:49 AM
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Movie review: Head of State
Let's get right to the point. This is without a doubt one of the worst movies ever made. This movie is the type of bad that goes beyond the movie itself and makes you doubt the meaning of life. For a movie that didn't try to be anything more than a dumb comedy, this movie asks the larger questions... Why are we here? Is there a god? Is humanity basically good or evil? For all of our new technologies, advancements in medical science, materials sciences, the modern PC etc. Have we made any progress?
Surely if there were a god; if we had made any progress; if humantity were basically good, this movie wouldn't exist. This is the type of movie that I hesitate to tell my friends not to see. Why? For the simple reason that this movie is now a part of me. It's eaten away a little at my soul. I fear that if my friends don't see this movie they won't understand what has happened to me. I feel like I've lived through some sort of a life altering disaster. My review could start and end by just saying that unless you've had it happen to you, you can't possibly understand.
I initially thought this was going to be just another dumb comedy, which in my mind isn't a bad thing. I like dumb comedies, if only because it's so hard for them to disappoint. From the trailors (I hadn't read any reviews), I thought this was Chris Rock and Bernie Mac trading on their credibility to make a little easy money with an entertaining but forgettable silly little movie about old, rich white people caving to the force and appeal of in your face black culture (with just enough insight and bite to ring true). Right before going to see the movie though I read a positive review in Entertainment Weekly and I raised my expectations a little.
The movie opened on Mt Rushmore and ended with a Mt Rushmore with Chris Rock's face added to the monument. I could spend hours just talking about the rediculousness of just this minor gag, which like the rest of the money is incredibly flat and absolutely not funny. What happened in between is a series of set em up knock em down forced cameos, an ill conceived plot. Remember the saying 'it's funny because it's true'? This movie is unfunny because nothing in the movie rings true. The world is not like this and if you can identify with anything in the movie I feel sorry for you and I feel sorry for me because I live in the world with you and might run into you at some point.
This movie is what you would get if a retarded pedophile mad scientist found a way to bring a bad stand up comedy routine to life as a living venerial disease in the form of hitler reincarnated as an evil pirate of some sort and then the hitler pirate made a movie.
Everything in the movie is a cliche. There are no real insights. At one point a debate between Chris Rock and his opponent, the then Vice President of the United States turns into a "you did", "no you did" argument that goes on for a least a minute. This is Chris Rock's idea of comedy? I've given him way too much credit for way too long.
At the point when I thought the movie couldn't possibly get any worse there was a scene involving hundreds of extras running through the streets in fear. The problem (other than the fact that the scene, like the rest of the movie, was totally off-base) wasnthat all of the extras had huge goofy smilies on they're facing. I could almost see them mouthing the words, "Hey look I'm an extra in a movie. Yippee!". Hey mister director, (who I think was Chris Rock by the way) F-you very much for making it absolutely clear that you didn't care at all about the movie.
I give this movie a 1 out of 10. Why? Not a 0? Zero has ben retired in the name of Battlefield Earth.
John Travolta is a dick.
11:55:58 AM
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Movie Review: X Men 2
I have to start by saying that this movie is much much better than the first. If you liked the first movie, or desperatly wanted to like the first movie, then you should see this one (and you probably have already). The effects and the staging of the movie is bigger than the first, which is what you'd expect from a sequel like this. That having been said, everything was very much inline with the first movie. Continuity is a good thing.
The story was the real problem with the first movie. It simply tried to do too much. It attempted to introduce all the the major characters (and there are a lot of them with the X Men; all with individual personalities, powers and motivations. The X Men has the potential to be the most involved of the mainstream comics/comic-to-movie crossovers for this reason) and then set up a wild and confusing conflict involving not only two still undefined groups of mutants but also involving "normals"... Just from the first movie does anyone know how to refer to non-mutant? To be blunt the first movie was just dumb.
The story makes sense this time around, in it's own way, though there are still problems. The story tries to do less and takes more time to do it. The conflict has been reduced in it's complexity and is just easier to understand.
X Men 2 is a entertaining movie for sure. It should appeal to a wide audience and I would expect that people who go to see it will like the movie. There is enough interesting stuff in the movie to talk about afterwards and it probably is worth seeing twice (or buying the DVD). I give it a 7 out of 10.
Now that the movie review is out of the way I want to take a minute to talk about why "X Men" is one the comics I like the least. First of all, I like all of this stuff so I definitely like X Men. Comics tell us that it's ok to be different and that we all need to learn to appeciate the differences in others. They preach tolerance and understanding. They ask us to believe that one person or a small group of people can make a difference and they wrap all of this up by very clearly separating good from evil. We like comics because there is no grey area and we're all uncomfortable with grey areas. Which isn't to suggest that good people don't do bad things in comics. But comics are so character driven that anything a good chracter does becomes good somehow if only by association. To keep everything simple you'll notice the complete lack of any sophisticated treatment of government and politics, such things aren't so easily carved into nice little categories. Because of all of this, a good comic is all about character development.
We want to know as much as we possibly can about our heros and in comics they never disappoint. Where did they come from? Why do they do what they do? What makes them so special; how are they like us, or more to the point, how are we like them. And then of course, there are all of those cool super powers. Somehow just knowing about them makes us feel as if they're within reach. It all falls apart if there is very poor character development or no character development, and it falls apart if the illusion is broken... if the story doesn't play by it's own rules and follow it's own logic.
In my opinion the X Men has problems. There are just so many characters to explore... It's certainly a good foundation for what could be one of the best comic franchises but X Men too easily loses its focus and character development is very slow to happen and always seems a little forced and contrieved. There are endless tangents that are never brought back into the fold. The tangents become loose ends and when they are finally picked up again it's difficult to remember why we cared in the first place. The characters are just thrown together in conflict or alliance in ways that don't make a lot of sense. People hold grudges. I have to believe that mutants would hold grudges too. Some of the relationships that come and go are just rediculous. It makes it hard to stay interested in any of it.
Finally, I accept that there are mutants, great, that's fine, I have no problem with mutants. But, if the idea is that these are naturally occuring mutations (I understand that there are some enhancements too) then the mutations should have more similarities than differences and there should be at least one example of a disadvantageious mutation. Sure, it may be accepted scientific theory that abrupt mutation may be responsible in part for evolution but I don't understand, even if we're just pretending, how that becomes thousands or hundreds of thousands of completely independent mutations. I don't think its possible to defend. And to pull ourselves more fully back into the world of the X Men. Where is the evidence of the countless billions of dollars that would be spent in pursuit of research on both sides, human and mutant, trying to understand these mutantions. It seems to me that every one of the mutants and a statistically significant percentage of the humans would be very interested in seeing that research happen. Are these mutants all sterile? Maybe that's why there aren't more second generation mutants running around. I could go on and on but I won't. Did you really read all of that? Do you feel bad about that? Thanks. Let me know what you think. I give X Men (not the movie) a 5 out of 10. I give my own review a 7 out of 10.
ote: I did this review before the new and improved 100 point system outlined here. I'm transferring some of my reviews from an older weblog. All new reviews will use the 100 point system.
11:48:24 AM
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Movie Review: The Matrix Reloaded
I'm not going to spend any time in this review going over details about the story for several reasons...
1. Anyone reading this is likely going to see the movie and doesn't need me ruining the surprise of any of it. Good or bad I don't pretend to be able to tell the story of this or any other movie better than the movie itself (its writers, directors etc.)
2. To be honest the story in Matrix Reloaded defies review. What you get with Reloaded is only 1/2 of a movie and it's impossible to review the story based on only seeing 1/2 of it played out. If I were going to review the story at this point it would be horrible. Major characters introduced who go nowhere and do nothing of significance; entire plot archs that just disappear into nothing; meaningless dialog... but with Revolutions coming all of this open-ended stuff is fantastic. Reloaded is a good movie and Revolutions is a necessary part of the story, which is a very good thing.
Now that we have that out of the way (what I'm not going to review) I should quickly get on with it.
The movie starts out much more quickly than the first one did. There is certainly not a lack of action and thrill/drama. I will say that some of the action sequences seem superfluous and almost all of them linger a little longer than would seem necessary. You could easily make the point that this is part of what the movie is intended to be. I wouldn't argue with you. No points off here.
The CG is everywhere and the movie makes no apologies about it. In fact the camera slows down and focuses on the CG at those times when it's at its worst. CG is amazing, but there are rough edges. There seem to be two approaches to dealing with CG as an art. You can either hide the CG at all cost, arranging all of the other elements in the movie to mask some of the deficenies in what CG is capable of or you can let the rough edges show through as part of the finished work. Matrix Reloaded strongely sides with the latter approach. This is the type of movie that is sure to move the leading edge of CG forward a little and the treatment of CG may ultimately be why we consider the Matrix important.
There is a lot of religious symbolism and imagery here, more than I expected (I didn't expect much if any walking into the movie). I want to complain about it but you could make the point that the movie is making some statement about the importance of religion as part of the human condition so I won't complain, though I wish it weren't there.
If there is one place where there are flaws in the movie unrelated to the story it has to be with the movies overall look. I'm thinking about Zion specifically. When we first saw the Nebuchadnezzar I thought I was seeing a ship hacked together from mostly working pieces and held together by intelligence and ingenuity of her crew. I thought I was seeing an old ship, a ship that emphasized function over form. I thought that was what I was being sold and I bought it no problem. I didn't have a lot of problems with the look of the first movie. It was hard to complain about the very narrow view of the free human world that you were given. Reloaded offers a much expanded view and to my disappointment we only get more of the same thing. With a tag like "Free Your Mind" there is no evidence that there are any artists, interior designers, fashion, etc. It's a uniformly drab world and I'm not buying it. Zion looks like a world built by machines not humans and given that this movie is about a struggle between machines and humans I would expect the movie to be more sensitive to that.
Free your mind to do what exactly? According the the imagery in the movie the only reason to free your mind is to fight to keep your mind free and to be pretty miserable in general. A smaller, related point... when will big budget movies understand that the world isn't a theme park. Art directors, set and costume designers and the rest of them all go to such lengths to create an all encompasing illusion that they lose track of the fact that nothing ever looks completely like the cliched representation of what it's supposed to look like. Close your eyes and picture Manhattan (NYC) in your head. OK, got it? The reality is that all of Manhattan doesn't look like that. There are people, buildings, entire city blocks that look out of place. It's too easy to design as if these things just don't exist. Maybe this simplistic approach to the look of the movie can be explained away... Maybe they only have access to very limited building materials for ex or maybe they have limited exposure to anything outside of Zion and so little inspiration. I would disagree with both of these arguments. The movie creates a very different picture of what the humans in the movie are capable of when it gives you a peek at Zion control. I don't imagine that it could look any more dissimlar than the rest of Zion, so if there is a black at one end of the spectrum and a white at the other, it is reasonable to assume there would be some grey area in the middle. As far as exposure to outside influences is concerned. The humans in the movie have the Matrix and with the Matrix they have all of the inspiration in the world. I can't believe that they wouldn't borrow from and emulate some of what they see in the Matrix either for pleasure, or to provioke some other emotion, in the name of propaganda, to reconnect with what is otherwise a lost history or for any number of other reaons. In fact, I could spin this into a much more troubling criticism of the movie arguing that the people of Zion would be trying to preserve the Matrix even as they work to destroy it and the machines' control over it.
To sum this up... is a very good first half of a movie but absolutely does not stand on it's own as far as the story is concerned. You would have to be a psychopath to see Reloaded and then not see Revolutions.
There is plenty going on here and plenty of the mind-fuckery you would expect.
One tip: Stay through the credits (all 10 minutes of them) to see the Revolutions preview that follows.
I give Matrix Reloaded an 8 out of 10.
note: I did this review before the new and improved 100 point system outlined here. I'm transferring some of my reviews from an older weblog. All new reviews will use the 100 point system.
11:43:43 AM
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Movie Review: Finding Nemo
I have very high expectations for the movie. Every review I've read has been glowing and the stuff from Pixar before now has been very good -even the rushed sequel to Toy Story which I thought has a stronger plot than the 1st.
These CG movies are progressing so well and absolutely no one is better at them than Pixar. Everybody else is behind the curve and Pixar repeatedly seems to be releasing the right movie at the right time setting the pace.
Based on the previews I know that visually movie is going to be impressive. I understand that the story is very good as well.
Now the review:
The movie is really very good. It was fast paced but not frantic. The visuals were amazing and the story and characters were fun. No sexual innuendos that these movies seem to resort to so that they can be said to appeal to kids and adults alike. I have to say that after seeing so much of that over the past several years I think it's a little creepy.
I give the movie a 100.
That isn't to say that it was a perfect movie. I give it a score of 100 because it is perfect for the movie that it is. I don't think they could have made a CG movie about a bunch of fish looking for another fish who was captured by a dentist and put into an aquarium any better than this one.
11:37:05 AM
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Movie Review: Bruce Almighty
No colorful commentary this time. Just don't go see this movie. There is absolutely nothing good about it. It's not enjoyable. Fight any temptation you might have to see it.
I give it a Degree of Difficulty score of 5 (a dumb comedy but one that was hyped and with a plot that had potential).
I give the movie a rating of 2.
The final score is a 10 out of a possible 100
11:32:06 AM
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The GoGoHappy Sunshine Radio Super Fantastic Search For Reader #3 Contest
I'm on a search for my 3rd regular reader.
This is a contest that you can actually win (and if you're reading this then you probably will... if you want to).
Here's how it works.
If you are a regular reader of my weblog, just send me an email telling me who you are and make some statement about my weblog...
that's all there is to it.
As a prize you can pick any one item from the robreed section of http://www.cafeshops.com/robreed and your comment will be permanently added to my weblog. It's all very exciting.
Legal notices:
- Comments cannot be returned.
- By submitting a comment you are giving me (Rob Reed) permission to use your comment for purposes related to this weblog.
- Heather Martin and Jenn Martinelli are not eligible for this contest.
10:51:46 AM
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Well... again it's been a long time since my last post. I have been working on weblogs but doing design stuff (not to this site). Whenever I spend a lot of time on design I don't seem to post. Reading through other people's weblogs, I think this is a common phenomenon.
For every individual weblogger the amount of time spent working on weblogs seems to be constant so that time spent working on design in inversely proportional to time spent actually posting.
I think this is a significant observation. I want to give it a name... any suggestions?
I have more design work to do so there will probably be some hiccups in the regularity of my posts. I'll do my best to keep em coming.
10:34:38 AM
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