More movies
Mar. 28th, 2008 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficBefore I post about my new tv obsession (guesses, anyone?) a few more movie reviews.
Transformers
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trinityvixen is right. Too many squishy bits. Not enough robots. There was at least one too many sets of humans we're following around, if not two. That whole Aussie programmer chick? Completely unnecessary. We didn't really need the baby daddy soldier either. Or the section seven people.
I think the real problem was that this was two entirely different movies that didn't mesh well. Or at all. First, there's the ID:4 style alien invasion movie—lots of humor, but ultimately about evil evil space aliens we must destroy. And then there's the ultra-campy, based on an 80s kids cartoon show with character names like Megatron, leader of the Decepticons, jive-talking disco robot, complete non-ironic use of dialog like, "It's you and me, Megatron." "No, it's just me, Prime." "At the end of this day, one shall stand, one shall fall!" "You still fight for the weak! That is why you lose!" movie.
I'm more interested in watching the second, personally. Once the autobots showed up it was a jarringly different movie.
But ultimately, I found it forgettable. The last forty minutes of robots fighting was pretty awesome, though, even with all the confusing shaky cam.
Two more thoughts: one robot dies, and it has to be the black one? Really? Even black robots can't survive a sci fi film. And at the end, when Shia and his lovebunny are getting it on on Bumblebee, with Optimus Prime watching…isn't that really kinky?
Gremlins
I never saw this before, so I figured it was time to catch up. This movie is very twelve-year-old boy. It's a little too scary for kids, but it's way too immature for adults. They set up some classic horror movie caricatured townspeople in the beginning, but don't pay off any of it with showing each of them getting their comeuppance. They apparently filmed all this, but cut it for time. Instead, they have a twenty minute sequence of gremlins going CRAAAAZY in a bar. How many pieces of popcorn do we need to see thrown? Honestly?
It's like that scene in Labyrinth with the goblins partying while Bowie sings "Dance Magic," but instead of being a couple of shots, that seems to be the whole movie. Labyrinth came out a few years after Gremlins, though, so they were probably ripping off Gremlins.
Gizmo is unbelievably cute, and I respect the technical accomplishment of bringing these creatures to life pre-CGI, but ultimately I found the movie kind of annoying.
I did listen to a bit of the commentary track though, which was by the writer, director, and the stars. Since this is twenty years later, they could comment with impugnity. The lead guy kept going on about how he tried really hard to get intensity in his eyes, but he always ended up looking like an idiot, and the director talks about how they kept looking at the dailies, and this guy was always gaping like a guppy and Spielberg asked him why he couldn't get his lead to keep his mouth shut. That was really more entertaining than the movie.
Stranger Than Fiction
This movie was adorable. I expected not to like it, thinking it was just a Will Ferrell vehicle, but it's one of the cutest movies I've ever seen. Flawed yes, but how can you not love the pop-up graphics and the narration by Emma Thompson? And he brought her flours. Aw. I almost died when I saw that scene.
It's also a very meta movie—all about the conventions of story-telling in books versus movies. I quite enjoyed the writing of the narration—I feel like I know this sort of book. I've read this sort of book. (I'm not a big fan of it, though.) But if something with that intelligent whimsy in its prose crossed my desk, I would definitely take notice. So it was interesting to see that purely literary manner of story-telling contrasted with film story-telling, with an added bonus of Ferrell trying to do literary criticism of his own life. Definitely a good time.
Transformers
trinityvixen is right. Too many squishy bits. Not enough robots. There was at least one too many sets of humans we're following around, if not two. That whole Aussie programmer chick? Completely unnecessary. We didn't really need the baby daddy soldier either. Or the section seven people.I think the real problem was that this was two entirely different movies that didn't mesh well. Or at all. First, there's the ID:4 style alien invasion movie—lots of humor, but ultimately about evil evil space aliens we must destroy. And then there's the ultra-campy, based on an 80s kids cartoon show with character names like Megatron, leader of the Decepticons, jive-talking disco robot, complete non-ironic use of dialog like, "It's you and me, Megatron." "No, it's just me, Prime." "At the end of this day, one shall stand, one shall fall!" "You still fight for the weak! That is why you lose!" movie.
I'm more interested in watching the second, personally. Once the autobots showed up it was a jarringly different movie.
But ultimately, I found it forgettable. The last forty minutes of robots fighting was pretty awesome, though, even with all the confusing shaky cam.
Two more thoughts: one robot dies, and it has to be the black one? Really? Even black robots can't survive a sci fi film. And at the end, when Shia and his lovebunny are getting it on on Bumblebee, with Optimus Prime watching…isn't that really kinky?
Gremlins
I never saw this before, so I figured it was time to catch up. This movie is very twelve-year-old boy. It's a little too scary for kids, but it's way too immature for adults. They set up some classic horror movie caricatured townspeople in the beginning, but don't pay off any of it with showing each of them getting their comeuppance. They apparently filmed all this, but cut it for time. Instead, they have a twenty minute sequence of gremlins going CRAAAAZY in a bar. How many pieces of popcorn do we need to see thrown? Honestly?
It's like that scene in Labyrinth with the goblins partying while Bowie sings "Dance Magic," but instead of being a couple of shots, that seems to be the whole movie. Labyrinth came out a few years after Gremlins, though, so they were probably ripping off Gremlins.
Gizmo is unbelievably cute, and I respect the technical accomplishment of bringing these creatures to life pre-CGI, but ultimately I found the movie kind of annoying.
I did listen to a bit of the commentary track though, which was by the writer, director, and the stars. Since this is twenty years later, they could comment with impugnity. The lead guy kept going on about how he tried really hard to get intensity in his eyes, but he always ended up looking like an idiot, and the director talks about how they kept looking at the dailies, and this guy was always gaping like a guppy and Spielberg asked him why he couldn't get his lead to keep his mouth shut. That was really more entertaining than the movie.
Stranger Than Fiction
This movie was adorable. I expected not to like it, thinking it was just a Will Ferrell vehicle, but it's one of the cutest movies I've ever seen. Flawed yes, but how can you not love the pop-up graphics and the narration by Emma Thompson? And he brought her flours. Aw. I almost died when I saw that scene.
It's also a very meta movie—all about the conventions of story-telling in books versus movies. I quite enjoyed the writing of the narration—I feel like I know this sort of book. I've read this sort of book. (I'm not a big fan of it, though.) But if something with that intelligent whimsy in its prose crossed my desk, I would definitely take notice. So it was interesting to see that purely literary manner of story-telling contrasted with film story-telling, with an added bonus of Ferrell trying to do literary criticism of his own life. Definitely a good time.
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Date: 2008-03-28 07:54 pm (UTC)I haven't seen Gremlins in forever, though the inferior Gremlins 2: The New Batch has been on my parents' satellite in the past few months. I remember being terrified of it, especially the scene where Spike generates more gremlins in the fountain/pool. It was gross and totally not appropriate for a kid the age I was when I first saw it, you're quite right. I wonder if the actor who played Billy liked Gremlins 2 better? I don't remember him being any better/worse in it, but that might be interesting to look at.
And Stranger Than Fiction was pretty good, but I wasn't in love with it (the flours scene, I grant you, was very cute). The problem with meta is that if its not funny, it's obnoxious, so wherever the humor of Stranger Than Fiction fell flat, it really stalled.