Movie Reviews

Ah, while I’m posting movie reviews, here’s a movie I experienced vicariously through my Mom and sister Sammi:

Atonement.
At one point, Kiera Knightley wears a really pretty green dress.
Ten Forks.

I went to see 27 Dresses tonight. Alone, because I could not convince my sisters that it was a worthwhile investment of time. But it was actually on the upper scale of romantic comedies – occasionally funny, plenty of boyish charm and awkward moments, and neither of the women were all that good looking (which is like, important to a RomCom and explains Meg Ryan’s continued success in them, even though she is like, 85 or something).

Malin Akerman is one of those odd women who looks really good as a package, but all those close-up shots of her face (when you can’t see her incredibly long, shapely legs) make her look a little like a mutant. I am not joking! She has a beautiful, if too skinny, body, and then this melted mutant head. It’s jarring. Actually, nobody in this movie is all that good-looking, though when you get just a little bit of James Marsden’s boyish grin with his one-time-I-stared-at-James-Marsden’s-teeth-for-six-hours-and-I-saw-god pearly whites, you are simultaneously fascinated and somewhat attracted. Though I doubt any mortal man or woman could withstand kissing those teeth (his lips are immaterial). It’s be melty faces from The Lost Ark all over again.

Yes, I did just compare James Marsden’s teeth to the Ark of the Covenant.
Perhaps that’s how Malin Akerman got that melty mutant face.
Anyway, as they go, it was pretty enjoyable, no real eyeroll moments, moments that seriously slapped my feminist sensibilities in the face, or moments where you could not suspend your disbelief any longer and had to sigh loudly.

For a RomCom, it was like, a 0 forker, but for a regular movie, it was more like 4 forks. There was nothing really wrong with it, and you could see it again, but it’s not going to sit anywhere near Pride and Prejudice (the Beeb version). It was uninspiring, and did not leave me with a song in my heart.

Also, I’d forgotten how much I enjoy going to movies alone.

I just watched Three Kings on TVO. I first watched it years ago at Chris K’s place with a bunch of the boys, and I’d forgotten what a terriffc movie it was. I mostly remember Bassam being angry/frustrated that it portrayed Iraqis in a bad light, but I found then and find now that I have sympathy for almost every Iraqi character in the movie.

I imagine I’d feel differently about the whole movie if I was Iraqi.

The truth of the matter is that, given the circumstances that the movie lays out, most people would walk away from those prisoners and never look back. I cried while watching it, and at least half of the crying was for the people who are never rescued by any heroic effort of anyone from any nation. In the movie, maybe they rescue like, a hundred people. In real life, I’m not sure that the Americans actually helped any Iraqis escape. Who’s willing to risk a court martial and a further disruption of their life for some people in the desert who don’t even speak English? The kind of heroics in this movie don’t exist in real life. Certainly not in any military I know of.

Oh, it’s a well-made movie, anyway. It’s funny and cynical and Mark Wahlberg does a great job. He’s really good at the kind of pathetic, wring-your-heartstrings without getting sappy thing. The shot of him working as a photocopier repairman is so human. And the torture scene makes you want to cry for the torturer, which is great directing.

So this movie pretty much slays me, and sits in that place which makes it difficult to give forks for. I’m sure twenty of you have all kinds of criticism of it, but I’d put it on my shelf of movies I could watch over and over.

Okay, so that shelf also contains:
The Indiana Jones Trilogy
The Star Wars Trilogy
Independence Day
Tombstone
Chaplin
GirlFight
Blue Crush
BBC’s Pride and Prejudice
State and Main
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

For a girl who used to think she didn’t like action movies, I sure do like a lot of action movies.
Also, Three Kings used a different kind of film and processing that gave it this dark blue cast which is really beautiful. And some of the editing is soooo perfectly spot-on.

Hey, why didn’t anyone warn me that Sweeney Todd sucks? I mean, jeez. None of us could manage a straight face through the whole thing, and as the credits were rolling we start singing our own made-up verses to that pretty women song. The only person in the entire movie who could sing was the kid, and not even Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, and Alan Rickman (three actors I generally enjoy) could make me enjoy it. Is the musical this bad? And oh, that stupid sailor kid! Man, he opened the movie and he could not sing. I knew from the first note that it was going to suck. And the editors should get a beating – sailor kid sets down his bag across the street from Joanna’s house, sings his way straight into the middle of the road, walks straight back, and then walks about twenty feet to his left, where he recovers his bag. What?!
This last sentence should tell you, also, that I was more concerned for the fate of the sailor’s bag than I was for any of the characters.
Plus, c’mon arterial spray. They must have used vats of red paint and all kinds of pneumatic devices to get all that freakin’ blood shooting around. It was silly.
Eight forks. The costumes were okay.

I went to see Shoot ‘Em Up with Terry last night, and I highly recommend it. No time to write a review right now, but it’s a totally enjoyable film. I’d say it gets maybe like, 2 forks if you’re a regular person, maybe 600 forks if you’re a feminist. As I’ve learned to do, I left my feminist in the back of my brain.

The Incredible Hulk: It was one of the most spectacularly awesomely bad movies I’ve seen; at times, the whole audience was giggling and starting to make jokes.

When Sandman first appears with his power, I couldn’t help but lean over to Sam and stage-whisper “Ow… I’ve got grit in my eye.”

It was all downhill (er, uphill?) from there.
The Parker dance number was, um, the most spectacular moment of the whole movie.
Man, memo to Sam Raimi: no more movies by committee, okay?
I can’t rate it right now, ’cause I’m too tired, but I’ll write like, something about it tomorrow.
What an awesome night!

Incidentally, Curse of the Golden Flower is a great movie, and we get to see Chow Yun-Fat being all evil. It’s a lot slower than your typical martial arts movie, so if all you really want to see is ninjas kicking ass, you’ll probably have it skip the vast swathes of character and plot development that lay beautifully between the fight scenes. Excellent female characters, unbelievable sets, and Chow Yun-Fat: hoo, baby. Even old and grey and evil, he’s still a damn fine man.
3 forks.