Reviews

I saw five movies last week­end; three were on TV as I con­va­lesced from a stom­ach flu, and the oth­er two were:

X‑Men III
I don’t know X‑Men canon. I don’t real­ly care about X‑Men canon. With that in mind, I enjoyed this movie. It was fast-paced, most­ly, and well-act­ed, gen­er­al­ly. Kelsey Gram­mer in par­tic­u­lar sur­prised me; I quite liked his char­ac­ter, both the on-screen per­sona and Gram­mer’s por­tray­al of him.

In addi­tion, no mat­ter what else you like or dis­like about the film or the fran­chise, I must say this: Mag­ne­to is one of the most com­plex vil­lains I’ve ever seen on screen, in any movie, of any kind. Not a bad accom­plish­ment for a super-hero film.

and

The Da Vin­ci Code
Some­times I get the feel­ing that I’m a mem­ber of a super-secret soci­ety with a rather short mem­ber­ship list: the peo­ple who have nev­er read Dan Brown’s nov­el The Da Vin­ci Code. I tried, O how I tried, to read it; but some­where before the hun­dredth page, I got fed up with the expo­si­tion, the every-chap­ter-has-a-cliffhang­er, and the sense that the whole thing tot­tered on a set of, oh, nine hun­dred inter­lock­ing con­spir­a­cies from down through the ages, the dis­proof of even one of which will set the whole thing at nines, leav­ing a scat­tered mess of half-baked ideas and loopy fallacies.

The movie’s kind of the same way, only I did­n’t leave at the half-hour mark. But the expo­si­tion is still a huge part of why I did­n’t like the film; there was one scene in par­tic­u­lar where Tom Han­ks looks Audrey Tautou in the eye and essen­tial­ly says, “Now lis­ten close­ly, Audrey, because the audi­ence needs to know this”, and then pro­ceeds to spew forth a piece of pure info-dumper­a­tion, com­plete with words you won’t find out­side of the Oxford dic­tio­nary. No one in the world–not even a Har­vard pro­fes­sor of Reli­gious Symbology–would use words like that in conversation.

So: Meh. Now at least I know how the nov­el ends, and all with­out hav­ing to, you know, read it.

Oh, the movies on TV? Chas­ing Amy, which I had­n’t seen since when­ev­er it first hit VHS; Gat­ta­ca, my DVD copy that my dar­ling wife bought for me; and one of my all-time favourite movies, def­i­nite­ly my favourite action movie ever, The Road War­rior.

G’night!

So I showed Capote at the Evans tonight. I knew essen­tial­ly noth­ing about the man before I watched the movie. Nor­mal­ly I have a hard time watch­ing a show where the main char­ac­ter is unsym­pa­thet­ic, but some­how this show was quite com­pelling. Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man did a fan­tas­tic job in his role as Tru­man Capote.
The film’s Capote was a self-serv­ing, loathe­some, manip­u­la­tive lit­tle bas­tard; I can’t speak to the real, flesh-and-blood ver­sion, because like I said, I knew basi­cal­ly squat about him going into the film. I sure hope that being a lit­tle turd isn’t a require­ment to be an author. I don’t think I could live with myself.

Also fas­ci­nat­ing is the fact that part of it was shot on loca­tion here in Man­i­to­ba. I was sur­prised to dis­cov­er that lit­tle fac­toid, but in hind­sight, I should­n’t have been. After all, what’s flat­ter than Kansas (where about two-thirds of the movie took place)? That’s right: Manitoba.

On the whole, it did­n’t suck. But I don’t know if I could watch it again. It’s not the grat­ing voice; I got used to that fair­ly ear­ly on. It’s the way Capote uses every­one and every­thing around him, and then denies doing it, even to him­self. There’s a scene, late in the film, where he breaks down and cries, but after every­thing that led up to that point, I had to won­der if they were real tears or if he was try­ing to get some­thing from some­one with them.

So last night I got an email from a friend of mine (let’s call him Kevin, since that’s his name):

Sub­ject: Aeon Flux

I knew some peo­ple might not like it. But this review is ridiculous:

It was so uncom­fort­able to watch this film, I felt like I was des­per­ate­ly hold­ing back a bout of extreme diar­rhea while hav­ing din­ner with my girlfriend’s folks for the first time. While the feel­ing kept ebbing and flow­ing, the pain nev­er quite left. It was just bet­ter to grit my teeth and clench down, pray­ing for an end to the night.

-rot­ten tomatoes

Soo Care for the mati­nee tomorrow?

And so we went, because, hey, it’s got to be bet­ter than diar­rhea. No, wait, extreme diarrhea.

It was bet­ter. It was cer­tain­ly not great, but it was short of stom­ach-churn­ing­ly bad, too.

The good: The spe­cial effects. Some of the music. Some of the per­for­mances (with a caveat of “they did what they could with what they were giv­en”). The one girl with four hands (though it’s not the first time I’ve heard of it, it’s the first time I’ve seen it con­vinc­ing­ly done in a film (see “spe­cial effects”)).

The bad: Well, the script. The art­sy-fart­sy shots at times. The lame attempts at humour (there was only one line that made me laugh). The math (two exam­ples: we’re told right at the out­set that 99% of Earth­’s pop­u­la­tion were killed by a virus, and the “remain­ing 5 mil­lion peo­ple” formed a city. Um, 1% of 6+billion is more like 60 mil­lion than 5 mil­lion; and there is a point where we’re told that 400 years is equal to 7 gen­er­a­tions. I thought a human gen­er­a­tion was about 20–25 years, so 7 gen­er­a­tions is less than 200 years, tops).

Watch­ing the cred­its, I was struck by the thought that Pete Postlet­whaite and Frances McDor­mand prob­a­bly won’t be putting this one on their resumés.

I’m such a curmudgeon.