Movies I've Seen In Theaters

I can imagine 1937 movie audiences just completely losing their shit when they saw this beautiful, masterfully animated film up on the big screen. I mean, it had to be literally stunning, since all cartoon animation up to that point had been primitive, restrained, and largely black-and-white at that. Then along comes this incredible, unprecedented achievement, full of life and music and humor and emotion...they must have been weeping in their seats.

The first movie I ever saw in a cinema. Upon subsequent viewings, the ominous music that would play whenever the hunters were drawing near would always scare the hell out of me.

Okay, so it's nothing like the video games. But when taken as a dark-toned sci-fi adventure by itself, it takes on a whole new definition. Humanoid dinosaurs living in an alternate version of Manhattan, planning to take over our world by devolving us into apes? The fate of the world resting in the hands of two unassuming plumbers who just want to get the girl and go home? Yeah, man, I can get down with that.

Like the Addams Family movie, this adaptation of "The Flintstones" really gets it right. The casting is spot-on, and the props and scenery all look like they were lifted directly from the TV show. Very well done.

The moral of this story seems to be that an unattractive man can never win the hand of an attractive woman, even if said man fights valiantly to save the life of said woman. Instead, said woman will inevitably choose the handsome jock.

The innumerable Looney Tunes cartoons are just about the most entertaining things ever. However, when you force all of the characters together into one room and make them adhere to a cohesive storyline for ninety minutes...well, that's just something they were never meant to do.

You might not have noticed this before, but in many ways, this movie's storyline is strikingly similar to that of the original "Superman" movie. Like Superman, Hercules falls from the heavens as an infant, and is adopted by an elderly farming couple. Like Superman, Hercules exhibits great strength as a teenager and is reviled for it. Like Superman, Hercules learns the full story of his origins from a likeness of his father within a temple. Like Superman, Hercules becomes enormously popular before being confronted with a crisis so great that even he can't prevent it. And like Superman, Hercules must perform an incredible feat in order to bring his dead girlfriend back to life.

Interesting, eh?

Missed the mark completely.

Spider-Man has always been my number one superhero, so I was really excited when this movie finally hit theaters. Unfortunately, I was destined to be a tad disappointed with the end result. It was one of those movies that was good enough, but could have been so much better. In retrospect, having gazed upon the entire trilogy, I think Sam Raimi was probably the wrong choice for this particular project. He injected too much cheese, too much cliche, and too much romantic comedy into this and the other Spidey movies, and Tobey Maguire wasn't the ideal Peter Parker/Spider-Man either.

In the aftermath of Halle Berry's Oscar win for "Monster's Ball", it seems as if the makers of "Die Another Day" were trying to make this a "Bond & Halle" film, rather than a "Bond film, with Halle". Also, this film manages to just about match the gross, decadent excess of "Moonraker", so it's just as well that the series reinvention came along with the very next film, "Casino Royale". After a film like "Die Another Day", there was no place to go but back down to Earth, and damned if that didn't turn out to be a much better place to be.