Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
While I’m not nearly as much of a movie buff as many, I do like ’em and watch ’em when I can.
Here’s a fairly disturbing idea — celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Rocky Horror Picture Show by remaking it as a made-for-TV movie, keeping the original music and lyrics, but updating it to a more modern setting.
Okay, so maybe there’s a small chance it could work — but I don’t think i’m too optimistic about that. I do, however, like some of the ideas on casting that Rebecca Blood proposed.
Okay — so I rented the latest effort from David Lynch, Mulholland Drive. I was a little unsure about it, since the last new Lynch film I’d seen was Lost Highway, which I could not get into at all, and chalked up as two hours of my life that I wouldn’t get back.
After watching Mulholland Drive…
…I give up on David Lynch. Now I need four hours of my life back from him, instead of just two.
Maybe if I got it, I’d know if it was good or not — but Lynch is just too wierd, even for me.
I just got back from seeing Scooby-Doo. It was a mildly entertaining way to waste a couple hours when I had nothing to do, but I can’t really say much more than that about it.
Plotwise — well, it’s Scooby-Doo — not exactly a subject known for its in-depth plots. The effects were passable, but barely. I was a little surprised at some of the more adult-aimed humor that was tossed in — enough that I got a giggle (or at least a smirk) from time to time, but not enough that most parents would have problems taking their kids to see it.
I can say that while most of the cast didn’t really impress me, I was really surprised with Matthew Lillard as Shaggy — he became Shaggy just as much as I thought Hugh Jackman did as Wolverine in X-Men.
All in all — well, a rental if you’re curious, but I can’t give it much more than that.
It’s been a while since I did this, but two DVDs have come out recently that I knew I had to get, so I went ahead and splurged a bit before heading off to work. My most recent additions to my movie library are….
Legend: the last of the ‘three ‘L”s’ of fantasy from my childhood (the other two being Labyrinth and Ladyhawke) that I needed to pick up. While it doesn’t seem to be for everyone (I think that, like Star Wars, you need to have grown up with it to be as obsessed about it as I am, and seeing it for the first time as an adult doesn’t work as well), it has always ranked as one of my favorite films. Tom Cruise before he got mega-superstar-cocky, the gorgeous Mia Sara, and my all-time favorite Tim Curry role as Darkness, together with the visual splendor that Ridley Scott is so well known for (assisted by what must be a record for “most amount of glitter used in a motion picture”). Too cool.
Real Genius: one of my all-time favorite comedies of all-time — quite possibly my single all-time favorite comedy, in fact. A script that seems to be almost entirely a series of one-liners, all strung together with just enough plot to make it work. I really don’t know how many times I’ve seen this movie — and I’m always willing to watch it again. In the words of Chris Knight: “It’s a moral imperative.”
Incidentally, each of these movies has the distinction of having one of my first “movie star crushes” — Mia Sara in Legend, especially in the black dress given to her by Darkness, and Michelle Meyrink as Jordan in Real Genius. No real point to that fact — it just popped in my head.
One word: overkill.
Sometimes good, sometimes bad. But that’s the single most precice and concise description I can come up with to summarize Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
I told you I’d get around to this. ;)
In brief — it rocked. There are a select few movies that were a successful translation from the comic book medium to the silver screen (Superman, Batman, and X-Men — all IMHO, of course), and Spider-Man just rocketed straight to the top of that list.
Plot — well, okay, it’s a summertime comic book movie, but for what it was, it worked quite well. Cast — spot-on. Effects — a bit shakey here and there, but overall quite impressive. Directing — Sam Raimi kicks much booty.
David Fincher‘s (one of my favorite directors) latest film, Panic Room, has been in the theaters for a few weeks now, and I just finally got around to seeing it today. Some fan, eh? Ah, well, life’s been a bit crazy lately.
Not quite awake enough to make a full writeup, but in brief — entertaning, not bad for a matinee, but not nearly up to the level of his last few films (Fight Club, The Game, and Se7en). However, PR is a much more straightforward film than any of those three — a story of a mother (Jodie Foster) and her daughter (Kristen Stewart) trapped inside a ‘panic room’ inside their new house by a small band of thieves trying to get to a fortune hidden inside the house. Fincher has his usual fun with the cinematography, and the cast all does well — there just wasn’t a lot to the story. Decent mindless escapism, however — worth a rent when it comes out.
I’m not normally one for many of today’s ‘comedies’. Humor, for the most part, seems to be sinking deeper and deeper into the lowest forms of sophmoric bodily-function humor (something I mentioned briefly in the next-to-last paragraph of my post regarding Evolution back in January). My dad and I often have very similar opinions on movies, which is why I was somewhat suprised a while ago when he told me that Scary Movie was worth a rent — and even more so after I’d seen it. Admittedly, much of what he related to me as what he enjoyed about the film was amusing (a girl running from a killer comes to a signpost with two signs, one pointing towards “Safety” and the other towards “Certain Death”, and she follows the “Certain Death” path, and similar such silliness), however the majority of the film entirely failed to impress or amuse me.
A while ago, though, I started seeing trailers for Not Another Teen Movie, and they actually caught my eye. I didn’t ever get around to seeing it in the theaters, though, so Candice and I rented and watched it a couple nights ago. Surprisingly enough, for the most part, I wasn’t let down — I had a grin on my face for the majority of the film, frequently giggled, and even out-and-out laughed at a few moments. This, then, is my counter-recommendation to dad’s recommendation of Scary Movie. In my opinion, a much smarter and funnier spoof film, and well worth watching — especially if you’ve seen any of the many ‘teen films’ from the 80’s through today.
Candice and I had been talking for about a week now about trying to take some time out of our schedules to wander down and see a movie, and finally got the chance last night. It was Candice’s turn to pick, so we ended up watching Life or Something Like It, with Angelina Jolie.
While it wasn’t anything amazing, it was certainly a very cute little romantic comedy, and I think it might be the best role I’ve seen Jolie in (and a very welcome change from the dreck that was Tomb Raider). An enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes, at the very least.
