0708 August 2007

Fantastic looking and sounding. The science is believable, even if it reminds you of a few other cerebral sci-fi movies. I love some of the details: the design of the space suits, the airlocks, the gravity in the "bomb room." The story takes a weird left turn in the final act, but it doesn't stop being entertaining. Danny Boyle has said he wanted to make a movie about the idea of touching the sun, and in that regard, he succeeded.

Blechh. The only entertaining aspect of this psychic Godzilla crystal space monster kiddie flick was the pseudo science... When one of the characters presented a theory on the dubious black-hole-white-hole-DNA-melding origins of Space Godzilla, I had to back it up and laugh at it twice.

Even better than I'd remembered. Over the top violence and a great comic book treatment. Blade himself is practically a non-character, but you sort of fill in the blanks and enjoy the action just the same. Guillermo Del Toro's commentary made me appreciate art behind the movie even more.

A slow burn ghost/mystery film in the tradition of Japanese horror. Not bad, but very illogical at times.

My second favorite of the series, after The Prisoner of Azkaban. It's good to see the kids actually taking action. Rather than waiting for bad things to happen, they prepare themselves for a coming war. According to some (like my sister) they shredded the book, but as a movie, it holds its own.

I got very confused in the second half of this. And when I'm too confused, I get bored. I had heard mixed on this, but I at least expected it to make sense. The plot was surprisingly less-than-epic. There was this huge world set up, and then we just watch people fight over what side one boy will go to, dark or light. I found it hard to care, as I didn't see much difference in behavior between the good guys and bad guys. Maybe that was the point? Oh well, I'll probably see the sequel anyway.

After seeing Cat O Nine Tails, I wasn't expecting much from Bird. Not that Cat was bad, it just didn't thrill me like Argento's Deep Red or Suspiria. I was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining Bird was, though. It had plenty of laughs (intentional and unintentional) and some fun suspense sequences. The mystery aspect is secondary to the visuals, but that's to be expected in an Italian thriller. When the mystery is solved, it almost seems like an afterthought -- there weren't enough clues along the way to justify the ending, but that just adds to the fun.

A pretty good sci-fi set up that turns into the Poseidon Adventure halfway through. Not as bad as everyone says. Just not as good as it could have been. Sign me up for an Alien 5... I want to see Ripley 2.0 fight aliens on Earth!

A devastating character study. What does imprisonment with no hope of release do to a person? Werner Herzog brings a documentary sensibility to this based-on-true-events story. You feel you've crashed with the Christian Bale character and followed him into the jungle.

Big dumb fun. I enjoyed this so much more than Transformers. Is it true to the Die Hard franchise? Maybe not, but by the time Bruce Willis was avoiding missile fire from a military jet, I didn't care. I just laughed and applauded the insanity.

I had to fight with people who didn't believe in this concept. The worlds of Predators and Aliens interlock pretty well -- much better than Freddy and Jason or Godzilla and King Kong. I had more than 10 years to get used to the idea, though, having read the comics. (Other unlikley pair-ups I've read in comics include Robocop vs. Terminator, Superman/Aliens, and Batman/Predator. AVP is starting to sound pretty good, isn't it?) Alien Vs. Predator is a fine adventure story. Not ground-breaking like Alien or Aliens, but it doesn't have to be. It takes some plot elements from the books and adds the Charles Bishop Weyland in Antarctica angle. I love Lance Henriksen, of course, so I just wish his character had made it to the end of the movie.

My opinion of Italian gore films has not improved. I had a great time watching this in a theater full of rowdy fans, but the movie itself is dreck. There is no plot, no story, no character development. Just a series of events in which people are chased and zombified by drooling demons. There's not even any magical reason for the demon/zombie plague. I can forgive a loose approach to logic, but a total disregard for it is off-putting. The gore is well done, but as is the Italian style, it's wet and gushy. When the gory monsters attack, the camera lingers and nobody runs. They stand there transfixed as the audience is forced to take it all in. Ick.

The movie that made me want to make movies. Depp's enthusiasm is contagious, and it doesn't matter that his films are unappreciated. It's the crew's sense of family that counts.