Memorial Day Movies
Jen and I saw two movies this weekend, one on Video on Demand and one in the actual theater. Brief reviews follow.
Napoleon Dynamite is the worst movie I've seen in at least six years (the benchmark being used there is The Velocity of Gary which, if you haven't seen it, I am tempted to recommend just so we're all using the same "absolute zero" mark). Honestly. People apparently love this movie; I cannot fathom why. Jen and I kept watching it, hoping against hope that there would be some brilliant reveal at the end to explain it. Let me save you two hours of excruciating, confused boredom: there is not.
By contrast, X-Men 3 is merely awful. Badly written, badly directed, badly acted, badly FX'ed, and--to top it all off--badly viewed, because there was something casting a shadow on the screen at the theater throughout the movie, and the world's most ADD child seated directly behind us. (The last scene in the movie involves Magneto, the major antagonist for the entire 3-movie arc: the child's question? "Who's that?" If the kid isn't old enough to remember the major villain, they may not be getting much out of the movie--just a thought.) And the "so secret the theater employees tell you about it on the way in" secret ending after the credits? Bad. If you haven't seen this film yet, pull a Highlander 2 and pretend it never existed. On the plus side, complaining about the shadow to a manager netted Jenny a pair of free movie passes, and I snuck in an absolutely delicious rice krispy treat from Whole Foods. Unfortunately the previews (Ghost Rider, Snakes on a Plane, The Omen, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, etc) were nearly as bad as the movie.
We also saw Mirrormask recently. It was visually fascinating, but the story was remarkably passive and the ending was flat as a freshly baked crepe, which is too bad since I like most of Neil Gaiman's stuff. I think the problem is that the passive type of story (where things happen to the protagonist, rather than the protagonist doing things) works better as a book (Jenny would say "as a short story") than it does as a movie, at least for me.
However, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 comes out soon. Hopefully Johnny Depp doesn't let me down.
I didn't think X-Men 3 was all that bad. But who was that Magneto guy? I just remember Hugh Jackman in a skin tight leather suit. <sigh> Ok.. I admit it.. that was the entire appeal for me. I don't like comic books, I don't like superhero movie.. I just luv me some Hugh Jackman :) Oh, and I missed the secret ending. Apparently, the people at Universal's theater just wanted us to get the heck out of there, so we didn't get a heads up. 'Twas a nice place to see a movie though.
You didn't miss a whole lot regarding the secret ending. Basically (highlight to read):
The scientist Moira that Xavier was showing a video of to his class as an ethical case study comes into her no-higher-brain-function patient's room. He turns his head and says (in Xavier's voice), "Hello, Moira." Just to drive the point home, she gasps "Charles?"
On the subject of eye candy and superhero movies...
First off... umm, Ben Foster the guy with the abs and the wings? Why couldn't we have had much more screen time for him? He was such a dorky kid and he grew up... well.
Secondly, I think Eric has won me over to enjoying the superhero movies if they're well done. We loved Spiderman 2 and saw it twice (decided to see it again when we were drunk, so take that decision with a grain of salt). I did think this one was truly appallingly bad though.
Not to mention, they dialed up the misogyny in this one. Seemed like every singly female character got called "bitch" at one point or another. Funny how nobody ran around personally insulting each and every male character. I don't remember that being true in the first two movies.
I didn't think it was terrible but my expectations were really quite low - not my kind of thing, I went for Simon. I also missed the secret ending so thanks for filling me in but we guessed that they were leaving it open for yet another movie from the last scene (pre-credits).
We did however get the Pirates of the Carribean trailer and that was way more exciting than the movie itself. It looks like it's going to be great assuming they haven't used all of Jack Sparrow's funny lines in the trail...