Monday, January 25, 2010

Brief Movie Reviews

Blue Steel

This is a decent thriller from Katherine Bigelow, who makes movies that turn out better than you would expect based on their descriptions (try summarizing Point Break without making it sound like a joke). She made the totally awesome / not playing in a theater near you The Hurt Locker, and also did the little known / underrated Near Dark, which for my money is the best Southern road trip vampire action / horror / comedy / Western ever made. Blue Steel is not her greatest achievement - it's a solid thriller with some real suspense, but unfortunately contains some situations that occur only because they're in the script. Blue Steel is a solid 4 bunny movie with enough mis-steps to lose a half bunny.



Watchmen

Hearing the makers of 300* were involved and seeing the IMAX trailer with all of it's 300-style slo-mo action did nothing to make me want to see this film. I'm now sorry I missed it in IMAX. Appropriately, it's not a wall-to-wall action event like (insert superhero) part IV, but it isn't supposed to be. The movie is mostly faithful to the graphic novel that spawned it, which in this case is a good thing. I'm cutting half a bunny from the rating for the small bits that would have been better left alone. I don't think they captured the emotional tone of the ending quite right, and (possible spoiler follows) THEY CUT THE GIANT TELEPATHIC SQUID! Fuckers. How often do I get to see a movie with one of those? Not counting Asian films, I mean.



* It's not that I didn't like 300, just that it was a noisy spectacle with guys with six-pack abs shouting at and hurting each other, kind of like pro wrestling. That's not the way Watchmen was meant to be told.

Update:

If you don't have an opportunity to watch the movie, this short video captures it all perfectly.

5 comments:

Jay said...

I saw Blue Steel a few years ago. It was pretty good despite Jamie Lee Curtis being in it.

Haven't seen Watchmen, and I'm not sure I'm going to. But, I did enjoy 300.

Captain Dumbass said...

I'm guessing the blue guy's dick didn't make it into the kids version.

Unknown said...

Yeah Watchmen was awesome but the short version improves on it by leaps and bounds.

Grant said...

Jay - the filmmakers did a great job of bringing Watchmen to life while remaining mostly faithful to the graphic novel. If you've read it, you probably won't be disappointed. If you haven't, then get off my Internet. :p

Captain Dumbass - they managed to obscure it with camera angles and his aura, but I'm sure the IMAX 3D porno version will have all the giant blue penis you could ever want.

SJ - it's amazing how they managed to shorten it so much while keeping the tone intact.

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