Thursday, October 23, 2008

rewind: movies I watched on the flight to Japan

I fully intended to sleep most of the flight, but I ended up sleeping only about 90 minutes. Instead, I tortured myself with bad movies. Hooray!

The Incredible Hulk
Two words: utter crap. That's a crappy way to begin a movie (seriously, overdone pantomime with the credits? it was cheesier than a goofy silent movie) and end a movie (um, what?). In fact, the whole movie sucked in ways that can't be enumerated. If this is how you're going to treat graphic novels, you shouldn't be allowed anywhere near them. I'm talking to you, Hollywood!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
I can't imagine that anyone who has any sort of respect for the Indiana Jones series would enjoy this movie. In fact, I can't imagine anyone who has any sort of respect for anything in general would enjoy this movie. It's time to quit when you've gotten so formulaic that you might as well be a Dan Brown novel. You know what doesn't belong in an Indiana Jones movie? Aliens. Forget Harrison Ford and the utter ridiculousness of his stunts. Even his scene-chewing antics can't overshadow the fact that this was an Indiana Jones movie about aliens.

Hancock
Um . . . why? What's the deal with the screenplay here? Did some pages go missing during filming and nobody noticed until after post-production when it was too late to do any more shooting? I love Will Smith (his choice of scripts lately has just not been all that great), and I liked the rehabilitating superhero angle, but the rest of it was just confusing. The plot twist? Stupefying. And predictable. But mostly stupefying.

Leatherheads
Didn't get to watch all of it, but what I saw was entertaining. Nice vaudevillian touches, very true to the era. I also appreciated the World War I scenario, that being a special interest of mine. I'm actually sorry I didn't get to see how it ended, even though I could guess because it's still a predictable Hollywood movie. But at least it wasn't confusing. And there weren't any aliens.

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