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Despite getting poor reviews, this film was actually fairly decent.

Robin Williams plays some kind of homosexual, night broadcaster that creates stories rooted deeply in his personal life. Apparently, this makes his audience feel a little overly close to him. At a point in his life where things are starting to fall apart he gets a manuscript of a boy who underwent some kind of terrible trauma as a child, and who as a result is not quite ill. He soon develops a phone friendship with the boy and his foster parent over the phone. Soon, he discovers that the boy he thinks he knows might actually be a fabrication. This is where the movie gets good.
The story is not fantastic, but is just interesting enough to keep the film moving from scene to scene (the entire film is only 75 minutes). Also, thanks to some acceptable acting there was a fair about of tension that built up in a few scenes, and all this without a single “shocker” scene in the entire film.

If you don’t feel like watching one of the bazillion comedies or computer animations out there right now, this might be a decent alternative for you. I know the only reason that I saw this was because it was the only thing starting when I showed up, but it was worth the price of admission.

Michael Mann is officially one of the worst writers/directors of this era.

Last Sunday, I decided to get out of the house, and go to another air conditioned location. In this case, the movie theater. Now, nothing spectacular opened last weekend, so I was forced to choose from a narrow selection. Basically, I was either going to see “John Tucker Must Die” or “Miami Vice.” I knew that JTMD would be awful, and the only redeeming value would be looking at the scantily clad females laced throughout. Also, I knew that Heat was just a horribly boring film, but Collateral was decent, so I threw caution into the wind and went in to see Miami Vice.

I should have just went to see “John Tucker Must Die.” At least then the women in the movie would have been attractive.

Miami Vice…where should I begin. Let’s go with high definition; just like Collateral it looks like MV was shot using HD cameras, its easy to tell, because you get the “bright” backgrounds. Now, the problem with HD is that it will betray your lies. Throughout the film it is extremely easy to tell which scenes were shot outside, and which were shot inside a studio. In scenes were it is dark, when they are supposed to be outside (but are actually in a studio) the backgrounds are very dark, now to hide when they are outside they ran some kind of filter over the film to darken the background like the studio scenes. The problem with this is that it screws with the color hue and saturation so it looks extremely wrong. There is a specific scene that is just awful, where they go from a beautiful shot of a plane flying through clouds to a scene of Fox inside the cockpit against a fake background (which is clearly painted on a board or something that someone must be walking by the cockpit to give the illusion of movement).

Next, ugly women. I am not sure what the motivation was here, but the women features in this film were nothing special. I suppose it could give it a “realistic” element to the film, but the two guys are not “average” looking guys so I am pretty sure they could score some better looking ladies. To make matters worse, they even do some brief nudes scenes with these females that just make you ask, “why?”

Oh, and pacing. The pacing in the movie was just awful, awful I say. Anyone that has seen Heat, or Collateral, or any of this guys movies I suspect knows exactly what I am talking about. His films are always too long, and brutally boring. There are long wooden dialog scenes that just make you want to beat your head against wall. Sure there are some actions scenes, but they aren’t as good as they used to be. I know Heat has one of the best shootout scenes ever, and this movie has some decent actions but all the shots are so tight and quick that you basically miss everything that is going on.

Here is a quick question for you: what genre is Miami Vice? If you said action, you are wrong. If you said drama you are closer. It is more of a crappy romance with a couple of action sequences (not unlikely Star Wars 2, though SW2 might have been better).

Boring characters. I know my Mann experience is lacking, but I know at least in Heat and Collateral there were some interesting characters in the film that you actually were interested to hear what they had to say, and see what they were going to do. In MV this just is not the case. The characters are all boring, any of them could have been killed by some random person and I could not have cared less. Hell, it would have been great because something actually happened.

I believe that those are all the relevant aspects of the film. I cannot in good conscience recommend this film to anyone. So, if you were thinking about seeing this film feel free to save your money. And, if you have to get out to the theater, there are some decent things showing right now: Dead Man’s Chest and Clerks II.

There is not a whole lot to say about this movie. It is in many ways like the first one, as it is features the original characters, some Jay and Silent Bob, traditional “bathroom humor,” nerdy banter (favoring Star Wars), and so on. It all works, so none of it is a problem.

Do not doubt that there is some screwed up stuff in this movie. Perhaps the worst is a scene that I shall refer to strictly as “the donkey scene.” There is also something that I would refer to as a “full fontal” nudity scene, but that was kind of self censored in a way (thank goodness).

The only thing that kind of annoyed me about the film is the relatively constant ragging on Transformers and Lord of the Rings. It is pretty obvious that Kevin believe the original Star Wars trilogy as the penultimate geek experience.

Regardless, if you like the original, I cannot really see a big reason as to why you would not like the sequel. So, you should probably go out and see it.

So…that photo popped up when I searched google for “Pirates of the Caribbean” so I considered it to be fair game for this post.

Pretty much everyone I know that saw Dead Man’s Chest enjoyed it to some extent. However, all these people like the original, so I have not necessarily received an objective opinion in that respect.

I thought the film was decent in some aspects, and weak in others.

Despite what many people say, I actually liked the original Pirates of the Caribbean. I thought that is had a fairly decent story that was characteristic of films that come out of Disney. I think a lot of people got the wrong impression about what the film would actually be about, so their expectations were not satisfied.

The second film is in many ways like the original, but…less complicated, if that is possible. Dead Man’s Chest removes story depth in favor of a variety of action sequences. Also, the tone of the film is generally darker but still well within the bound of Disney.

Many people I talked to mentioned that the film just stopped, there was no resolution or anything of that nature. So, I was prepared for an abrupt hail towards the end of the film. However, this never transpired.

The basic goals of the characters were accomplished in this film, so in a certain sense there was a bit of resolution. Also, after the climax of the film they did a setup for the sequel due out next year. So, it was not as bad as people were saying that it was. I was expecting something as jarring as the abrupt halt of Halo 2, but actually got something more like the end of the Lord of the Rings movies. So, not too bad in that respect.

Really, the only thing that I did not really like about this film was the attempt to get across many instances of visual comedy that I found utterly simplistic and immediately insulting. Each time the audience burst into laughter when a Jack Sparrow was in some kind of predicament I become quite annoyed. But, even in this aspect it was not that bad.

If you liked the original, I would strongly recommend that you see the sequel because it offers many of the qualities that made the original good. If you did not like the original, you probably do not have very good taste so I cannot help you.

Well over a week ago (on opening day) I went out to see Superman Returns. Normally, I write posts about movies within a couple days of seeing them, but since I have been spending most of my down time working on Dark Room instead of working IN Dark Room, I haven’t had a chance to ham fist my thoughts. But, I digress.

The film itself was fairly decent. Really the only problem is that the various different subplots do not blend together very well. In that way, it very much reminded me of Van Helsing (although better than that). The actions sequences were all done pretty well, although my favorite scene was towards the beginning of the movie when Superman saves the space shuttle and airplane.

They tried to pull off some canned drama with Clark and Lois by adding in a child that Lois apparently had while Superman was off in the cosmos. And, to make matters even more bizarre, this child is the offspring of Superman (though it is not immediately obvious).

The whole Lex Luther thing was pretty incoherent. I have not seen the original films in a long time, but I don’t remember the Lex parts being so bad. However, I suppose that this could be explained by the fact that Kevin Spacey is not a good actor.

I’m not exactly sure what the name of the guy was that played Superman…Brad? Or something? It doesn’t really matter. Regardless, I do not really think that his body type really reflected the iconic appearance of Superman. I would say this Superman has the slimmest build of those that I have seen (I do admit that I am not a huge fan of Superman, so I have not seen all the other related works that have appeared throughout the years). I would have liked to have seen someone with a little bulkier build. Obviously, he does not need to be a body builder, but I don’t really think he should look like a bean pole either.

All things considered though, I would say that it was a pretty decent film. It is worth going to see if you are looking for a good summer flick. But, it just doesn’t look like it cost $200 million to make. Eh, see it.

Ironically, while I am writing this I am watching a show on National Geographical called “Science of Superman, The.” It takes and incremental scientific approach to Superman’s various different super powers. I actually think that I might like this micro-documentary more than I liked the movie. If you have National Geographic I suggest that you check your local listings and take a gander.