It’s just so wrong
So very, very wrong.
My love and I both had crap days. We both got home tonight feeling the need for utter mindlessness, so when we discovered The World is Not Enough waiting for us, it felt like fate.
It’s just such utter crap!
Denise Richards – Dr Christmas Jones – argh! What an embarrassment to the sorority of Bond girls everywhere!
Even Sophie Marceau is pretty crap. And I loved Hamish Macbeth, but Robert Carlyle is also quite average.
As for Pierce Brosnan… well, it’s reaching Roger Moore levels of stupid one-liners, in this one. The stunts aren’t quite as daft as they get in the next one – and the speed boat chase is pretty cool – but still, I feel quite impatient watching it a second (third? Can’t remember) time.
Perfect, though, for a Monday night with the need to do nothing.
Deja-Vu
Another movie review…
We got Deja-Vu throuh BigPond Movies, and it waited on our shelf to be watched for a good number of weeks. We finally got around to it and… hmm. Interesting.
I really enjoy Denzel Washington movies. He’s a great actor. We had no real idea what this movie was about before we watched it, which might have been our mistake. The movie’s mistake is largely that it doesn’t really know what genre it wants to be. In general it is basically a detective story – quite an interesting one, too. And very clearly post Sept 11, too (as are many movies of this type, since they so often make use of the idea of rogue terrorists, or the safety precautions necessary to hopefully deterring them). But then it goes into this weird scifi thing, involving time travel and bizarro paradoxes (paradoces?) that just got, well, weird. And bizarro.
In theory I liked the idea behind the film, but I don’t think it was done with enough panache. Or gumption. Or balls, perhaps – “we like this time travel idea, but we don’t want it to be tooo out there, so reel it in a bit…”.
I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I could recommend it to anyone as a great movie. You’d have to be a mighty big fan of Denzel, or want to see how to mix (or not) standard detective work with scifi in a movie. Or, you know, at home by yourself with nothing to do on a rainy night. Possibly with chocolate, popcorn, and/or alcohol.
The Sweetest Thing
I don’t know why, but we are watching The Sweetest Thing. It’s terrible. It’s all about Christine Applegate and Cameron Diaz showing off their bodies and being ridiculous. It purports to be about the sexual revolution, wherein the girls get to sleep around and have the fun that we’ve always imagined the boys got to have since, after all, they don’t have to worry about getting knocked up. Of course, it turns out that that isn’t fulfilling, and what the girls actually really want is a steady relationship with a man who makes them laugh.
I have no problem with the idea of steady relationships – hell, I got married at 22. What I do have a problem with is people who pretend like they’re being controversial or breaking sexual stereotypes, but actually simply reinforce them.
And use really, really bad jokes to get there.
Nachos Libre
We got this on DVD for Christmas. I had thought it looked dubious in the movies… and we didn’t finish it tonight. We got about 2/3 of the way through and then gave up. It’s just silly. And not particularly funny, nor original. The best thing was the sidekick – he was good.
Ghostrider…
… was forgetable.
We went to see it on the spur of the moment today, since we were at Highpoint anyway. We’ve been wanting to see it at least partly because bits of it were virtually shot in our backyard (virtually as in nearly in our backyard, not virtually as in concerning computers. And where ‘nearly’ is a few km away).
Basically, disappointing. I don’t know what Cage has done, but he is looking less craggy and character-ish, and more Tim Allen, which was a bad thing for the character in this film. I thought the effects were ok, although J disagrees about that; the female character was pretty pahetic – partly her acting, largely the script. With which I have several major issues – like lack of character and/or plot development. It would have been heaps better if the devil characters had been more interesting, and there had been more back story: like, why were they going against Mephistopheles? And why were they so damned easy to beat? I think I’ve mentioned this before – I like it when villains actually make sense, when you can appreciate the twistedness of their logic. And the same goes for Meph himself, here: yep, he’s the Devil (well, it seems like he should get the ‘the’, but I’m not convinced it’s justified), but… so what? I need a bit more to go on!
It was redeemed by being about half shot in Melbourne. It is always fun to spot places you know/ have been to in films. The amount shot in the cemetry didn’t seem to justify the weeks that the film crew spent there, blocking off the road….
Snakes on a Plane
J saw the ads, and said in some bemusement: “It looks terrible!”
Oooooh yeh.
Flight of the Phoenix
J will never let me live this one down. We didn’t see it at the movies because he was still too cut at Dennis Quaid for being a wuss in The Day after Tomorrow. I got it out, though, because I had always thought it looked good from the poster, and because the blurb said it was “action-packed”. Yes; well. It wasn’t toooo bad… Miranda Otto was ok, in her bit-part… ok, it was a really average movie. I would not recommend anyone to see it. However, I found out one reason why it seemed appealing and didn’t deliver; it’s a re-make. The original had Peter Finch, Richard Attenborough, James Stewart and Ernest Borgnine!!! Kat says it is fantastic, so maybe I will watch it tomake it up to mysellf… but I don’t think I will suggest it to J.
National Treasure
We saw this on the weekend. It was about as silly as expected; attempting, in some ways, to mimic Last Crusade – but at least there, it was clear where the treasure had come from, and the clues made a modicum of movie-sense. The same cannot be said, alas, for this movie. It was entertaining, I’ll admit, and Nic Cage was not nearly so painful as he might have been; Sean Bean was a lot of fun and could have had a lot bigger part, in my mind. I might watch it again… in maybe 5 years, when I’m in the mood to be mildly amused.
Mars Attacks
Of course I’ve seen this before; I’m watching it right now to prepare for Film Studies. Very funny. I like it. Students might not get all the funny bits, though, since I’m sure most/all won’t have seen all that many old scifi movies such as this movie is based on. I’m sure there are lots of sly gags that I don’t get, because I haven’t seen the right movie.
Which reminds me: I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Independence Day, but I don’t remember ever noticing the start-up screen message and sound when Jeff Goldblum’s character, David, opens his laptop: “Good morning, Dave.” HA HA HA. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud in class since I didn’t think the kids would think it was that funny.
Dirty Dozen
When I was at the video store the other, I saw The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission. It had Lee Marvin, and Ernest Borgnine, and I thought that it might not be too bad. How wrong I was. It’s appaling; I’m watching it at the moment. Even Lee is wooden and stilted. Very sad. I’m blaming the script, personally; it’s very close to the original, in some ways, but with no panache; quite different in others, but really bad.
Randomly Yours, Alex 