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| Fuck all those other threads: INC's holiday movie round-up by I need clarification 12/27/2007, 9:52am PST | ||||
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| We're up at the in-laws' for the (non-Chosen) holidays, which means free babysitting, which means we've been out every day seeing just about every single movie currently in theaters. There isn't one we haven't seen, so here is your one-stop shop for all reviews:
I Am Legend What can you say about this movie? It's exactly what it is - a straight line from beginning to end. Some of the line is told in flashbacks, but it still manages to be absolutely curve free. My main criticism is Will Smith needs to be less involved in the making of the movies he's in, maybe to the point of not even being in them. All his sci-fi shit lately has been just one long slogfest of semi-exciting action sequences surrounded by long passages of him "acting," which is somehow becoming more and more suspect. In fact, I think I liked him better earlier in his career when he was less inclined to act and more likely to clown around until something else happened. Now we have long passages of him talking to mannequins and bonding with his dog. This is perhaps the worst part - I've never seen a movie less able to evoke any feeling of companionship between a dog and its master, and they're the only two characters onscreen for most of it. We get nonstop sequences of him chatting with the dog, washing the dog, rescuing the dog, vice versa (the dog washes him haha no actually it rescues him), etc., and yet they can't even ham-fistedly make me (or anyone else) CARE. Also, since we've all seen the trailer where the lion eats the deer it isn't a spoiler to ask why only humans and dogs are infected (also rats). The Kite Runner Speaking of shamelessly manipulating emotions, this movie does it in spades. Or Arabs. Also about a boy and his faithful dog, in this case another boy. Anytime you see two boys playing together and walking around with their arms over each other's shoulders, you know it's not going to end well. Plus they say so at the beginning. There aren't a lot of curveballs in this one, either, but it works much better because Will Smith isn't in it. My major complaint is it seemed to turn out to be more and more about the author of the book than about any of the people who actually do things, so we get a detailed study of how he asked his wife to marry him and how she's a saint and how he finally becomes a man (at like 30) by standing up to her ancient father at dinner one night. Meanwhile everyone else is dying (or worse), but I guess at least this guy got his book published, so let's hope the next movie is about negotiating his contract and maybe examining the first galleys. That's it, those are all the movies that are out right now. |
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