The MikeCam

Just saw Land of the Dead completely unexpectedly tonight. The original idea was to see Fantastic Four, but I’m glad we didn’t because it looks like trash and this was more fun anyway. The movie itself was… interesting. Interesting in that it wasn’t as bad as I expected a crappy horror film to be. The plot still sucked balls, but the premise of the world of the film would actually be an interesting and feasible basis for a sci-fi film: a post-apocalyptic world where humanity lives in small, protected enclaves while the bulk of the world is overrun with zombies. Kind of reminds me of that Final Fantasy movie. They mustn’t have been there too long, though, if they were able to find supplies so easily. You’d think they’d start running out after a little while, what with the zombies being kind of unproductive and all. Production quality is actually very good, which I guess is what happens when you give lots of money to an experienced director. Acting is hit or miss. John Leguizamo is the man, but that evil millionaire-in-the-clouds dude is a total bomb in the acting department. The story isn’t really all that bad in its basis – the idea of the zombies slowly learning is, like the world, interesting. Unfortunately, it was translated idiotically on screen, as some zombie inexplicably becomes less than mindless (or should I say more than mindless?) and then the ending is rather stupid and unsatisfying, to put it mildly. Truth be told, I’m just not at all one for horror films, but I do have to give this one some credit. Go see it with some friends if you want to laugh a bit and watch the girls jump. ;)

Just wanted to quickly say that I saw Batman Begins on Monday night and enjoyed it a lot. I’ve only seen bits of some of the other ones, so I don’t know how it compares, but I thought it was a very good action movie. On my own little mini mental ranking scale of movies, I would put it as the type of movie that is a quality, enjoyable movie. Because, to me, there are movies that are good and amazing and spectacular, and then there are movies that are just solid, well-done, and enjoyable, then those that are kind of stupid but fun, and then there are the butt ass stupid movies like Son of the Mask. Sorry Joey, just had to grind that in…

Saw Mr. & Mrs. Smith with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt last night. Bottom line, it was fun action comedy that I enjoyed a lot. I do wish, however, that Vince Vaughn had played in it more, his scenes were the funniest (“Mom! We’re on high alert here! I could have killed you, you don’t even know!”). Also, the kiss and make up between Mr. and Mrs. was rather abrupt and would’ve helped the movie by being more sincere. The bit about the job that they both took on was kind of confusing to me, I couldn’t understand a lot of the dialogue in that section and didn’t really understand who the kid was or what they were each trying to do. The ending fight was completely ridiculous and a little unsatisfying because of it, it made a kind of lame conclusion. I enjoyed the Fight Club reference on the kid’s t-shirt when they caught him. IMDB credits list Efren Ramirez (Pedro Sanchez from Napoleon Dynamite) as being in the film, but don’t list a role for him and I don’t recall ever seeing him. Angela Bassett is similarly listed, I think the list is a little wonky. Anyway, enjoyable film, check it out.

What a stupid movie. Not as bad as some, I guess, and mildly entertaining, but over all pretty stupid jokes and use of the storyline.

So I went to see a midnight showing of Star Wars: Episode III tonight. Instead of an incredible, redeeming, climactic ending to the prequel trilogy, I sat through two hours of this:

(thanks xchel)
George Lucas can just suck my balls. Seriously, the man blows like a cheap whore. He can’t write his way out of a cardboard box and he has far too much money and interest in moviemaking for his or anyone’s good. He proved this pretty well with the first two prequels, but still I came back for more. What a sucker I was. Now, everywhere I look, I see Lucas taunting me, humiliating me. For the third time. I don’t know how anyone in their right mind and not on Lucasfilm’s payroll could possibly give any credit to this movie. I mean, the two plus hours were bad enough, but did they really need those cardboard “pwnd” cutouts in the lobby afterwards? I’ve been pwnd by George Lucas x3.

Watched The English Patient this afternoon. Great movie, a little convoluted and maybe even slow at times, but still very good. I guess my main gripe is that I felt like the stakes weren’t really escalated very high. The content was there, just something about the pacing made me feel a little detached and didn’t get me too worried about any of the characters.