22
May
Tuesday Media Roundup #19
Movies going back to early April!
The Pursuit of Happyness – Everyone like nothing to something stories. This one avoids sap and forceful attempts at manipulating the viewer and ends up being very enjoyable.
The Holiday – It’s like two movies in one and neither could have stood on its own. Kate Winslet’s story is the more interesting of the two but that’s mostly because of Arthur, played by Eli Wallach.
The Queen – I’m not big on royals. I barely know who is who and I didn’t pay much attention when Princess Diana died except to feel sorry for her sons. That said, I really enjoyed this movie for showing some of how they have had to adapt to society changing over time. I’d like to see a movie that just focused on that.
Film Geek – The story of someone really, really obsessed with film. He can’t really talk about anything else. It has moments that are really funny and never ventures into the slow boring area. I also think following the early 80s John Hughes model for the story gives it an extra boost.
She’s the Man – Twelfth Night set in a high school. It’s a good adaptation and it’s funny all the way through. This is definitely one to see if you haven’t yet.
Thank You For Smoking – There’s probably not any movie that explains the lobbying system we have currently better than this movie. At the same time it pushes a message of personal responsibility and manages to be funny.
Hollywoodland – I’m not really sure where this one went wrong. I thought the acting is fine by all involved, the pacing seems ok, but all through the movie I just didn’t care about anyone in it. Maybe it’s because I was flying to Atlanta.
Music and Lyrics – I wasn’t really expecting anything from this but it ended up being really cute and fun. Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant surprisingly work well on the screen together and the pokes at the 80s are a lot of fun.
Disturbia – The movie that is supposedly like Rear Window. It’s kind of like that, but I think a closer match for movie comparisons is The Hitcher. I like how all the characters are played.
Hot Fuzz – Best comedy of the year right here! It starts out more like Spaced and then gets more Shawn of the Dead in feel. The early tag-line of “from the guys who watched every action movie ever made” makes a lot more sense now.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – Anything with Robert Downey Jr. is alright by me. The next day the movie was still in my head and I wanted to watch it again. Just writing this is reminding me how much I want to watch it again. You should watch it again too, even if it’s the first time.
Children of Men – It started well. I bought into the vision of how humanity would behave without a hope for the future. But then when the waring factions started doing dumb things and all the interesting characters got killed I discovered that I really didn’t care what happened to the main characters which made the last 30 minutes or so really bleah. I kept going to the end hoping for an improvement but no reprieve for me.
28 Weeks Later – This one had potential to be good. It doesn’t have to ask you to buy the dumb mechanics of the Rage virus since that is established in the first film. It starts well in how it shows clean-up and containment working and then it just gets dumb. It stayed visually interesting to the end but there was no chance of being scared. People in the theater were laughing by the end and it wasn’t being played for laughs.