In an effort to distract myself from Real Life, the past week or so has seen me doing a lot of “movie catchup”. Watching some flicks that have been in the queue for a while, but I just haven’t had the time…
- Lucy – Scarlet Johansson plays a woman who, through a botched drug smuggling deal, gets an overdose of a drug that unlocks the ‘unused 90% of the human mind’. There were aspects of this movie that were a lot of fun, but my suspension of disbelief busted a gut trying to keep it’s head above water. The basic premise has been debunked for years… and while I understand Johansson’s continued detachment from humanity as she essentially went from happy go lucky girl to demigod, the ‘stony faced look’ got old pretty fast. But, hey, explosions, car chases, and gunfights. All is well, right?
- Maleficent – I went into this hoping it would be a nice alternate take on Sleeping Beauty ala Wicked, a new perspective on an old story. It gave me new perspective alright. I’ll cut right to the chase. This movie was awful. There wasn’t anything even remotely believable about the story line, the actors, or the horrific overuse of plot devices. The visuals were “good”, in that it was vaguely pleasant to look at, but after 45 minutes of trying to be supportive to my partner (who loves the genre and this story), even SHE couldn’t hold it in any longer. Angelina Jolie tried really hard to be true to the original Sleeping Beauty character, but then tried to twist it to fit the new story arc – and in the end, it was a complete mess. There wasn’t a single character I could relate to. Not the king, the queen, Malefic
Maximus shows what he thinks of you. ent, young Aurora (played by Elle Fanning), nada. Bleah.
- Tangled – Moar Disney, I know. This one has been sitting on the back burner for a while, but finally got to watch it. It’s fun! They toss out anything approaching seriousness and just run with good clean goofiness. Rapunzel’s character presentation was brilliant, as were all the characters. The animation was EXCELLENT (the producers even said that even though this was a 3D CGI movie, they worked extremely hard to make it look hand drawn, and succeeded quite well, IMHO). Unsurprisingly, I thought Maximus as the Horse Who Thought He Was A Dog was delightful, if a little forced. “Yes, we get it, he’s a dog. But he’s a horse. Lets move on.”
- Shooter – In general, I like Mark Wahlberg. This flick was pretty much dead on predictable from the outset. Sniper gets snubbed in the line of duty by the military, gets set up later for a ‘special job’ after he’s in “retirement”, blah blah. Having said all that, it was enjoyable, even in it’s predictability. I found the ending absurd, to the point of “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” being voiced in the living room, so be warned. You’ll see it coming a mile away.
There’s a bunch of others on the queue as well, but it felt nice catching up on things “everyone else has seen”. This list is, alas, ever growing… hope I can keep up.