Archive for the 'Movies' Category

Over the past week or so I’ve watched quite a few movies I haven’t seen before. Top of the list being I Am Number Four and The Social Network. So we’ll keep this concise.

I Am Number Four: 8/10; It was a fresh take on the recent swathe of OMFG*drools* that has been going on over the past couple years with the popular emergence of Twilight. Now there’s the Vampire Diaries (which I must admit has a great Smallville vibe to it that makes it enjoyable) and other semi-necrophilia promoting shows (yes getting hot and heavy with the undead is still necrophilia as at one point they died and didn’t come back human). The ending was rather cheap “oh look we’re open for a sequel… like wide open”, but I haven’t read the book so I’m unsure if they’re simply being faithful to the source material or acting on the confirmation of a sequel book. The actors were all well above-competent in their roles, which is very unusual for an initial YA adaptation.

The Social Network: 7.5/10; I don’t like .5′s, but this movie didn’t really deserve an 8. The writing was splendid, but I feel much of the character development was derived solely out of public accounts of Zuckerberg. Outside of the courts and published blogs the character seemed to drift before being snapped back to reality. I enjoyed it, it was a good watch through and it had some funny moments. However, I still got a slight derogatory geek-stereotype feel in many scenes, especially the very end scene with him pining over his ex.

X-men Origins: Wolverine: 7.5/10; I really hate giving .5′s, but this movie really did deserve an 8 but certain scenes really hung. The beginning and end were truly great, it was the middle that hung like a dead man at times. The end was action-tacular, although – as with most Origin stories – it didn’t feel like it resolved much of the character problems it created.

My personal hope for another X-Men Origins would be that they dump the main characters and focus on someone you’ve never seen before like Emma Frost. Hers is a story worthy of 3-hours. Worlds most powerful psychic turns stripper, takes over the anti-mutant Hellfire Club (which is to be featured in this years X-Men First Class), teams up with Magneto and becomes the sole leader of the Hellfire Club, before reforming and eventually leading the X-Men against her ally Magneto.

I mean screw Wolverines “I like a girl” crap, Frost is one of the ruthless females in the comic universe you can’t avoid liking.

Magnolia: Undetermined; We watched about 25-minutes, couldn’t understand a damn thing that was happening and turned off when a dying guy talked for 5-minutes. I usually have the attention span to wait through vapid scenes, but aside from like a 3-minute scene of a cop finding a dead body in a closet I got zero plot or story. I’m guessing it was about coincidence given the intro, but coincidentally it was boring as crap.

I’m generally very lenient with my reviews, generally because I only watch what I think I’ll like. Given the strong ratings I actually expected something worthwhile. I mean I loved Benjamin Button and that took like an hour to get started. I liked The Postman for god’s sake! Perhaps if Magnolia hadn’t been the first movie for me to almost fall asleep in from boredom I might have got to the point of why the reviews are an 8/10, but for me it was a 3/10 solely because John C. Reilly.

That’s all for now. More reviews when I watch more movies.