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I was sleeping badly anyway, really, up every hour or two, so I simply gave up when the really loud music started. Really, it could be much worse. The upstairs neighbors are a sweet young goth couple with a very well behaved son. They limit their music to an hour or so at a pop and only play it loud in afternoons or early evenings. If I could hear the lyrics and melody through the ceiling instead of just an incredibly loud base line, I'd probably like their bands. It's just I can't sleep through it and I was too ill and it was too loud for me to read or even deal with, so I cashed my free ticket to the movies. The plan was, watch the movie for free (buy nothing), and hit the evening food bank. I cleverly sprained my ankle getting the food inside. Ouch.


Long, long ago, some friends and I went to see the first Jurassic Park in a theater back when it was new. Three of us were disgruntled afterwards due to the bad plot and annoying characters. (Don't start me on my theory of faux-feminism as applied to Jurassic Park and Medicine Man or I'll lose track of the review.) Suffice to say, we were legitimately miffed for completely valid reasons we could elaborate. Asher was blissful. We didn't get it. He was a bright guy; how could he love the movie. Asher said words that I have taken to heart to this day, "I came to see the giant dinosaurs running around on the big screen. There were dinosaurs and they were good."

Those of you who were my friends during the Troy debacle may not credit this, but sometimes I go to a blockbuster to "see the dinosaurs." Movies I do this with, I don't require to be good, though I'm happy to be surprised. My standards are generally pretty high and for me to lower my standards this way, I have to anticipate and see something very pretty indeed.

I explain this because all I really expected from The Mummy III was beautiful shots of terra cotta soldiers marching and fighting and stuff and a vague hope that I'd get to see Jet Li fight people, preferably the charming Michelle Yeoh, of whom I am fond. The measuring stick is primarily held up to these expectations. For the rest... my expectations were low.

This was a good thing, really. The terra cotta stuff was absolutely wonderful on the big screen. Completely satisfying. The fighting rather less so for much the same reason that watching the fighting in Blood Sport is disappointing. In Blood Sport, they went around to a whole bunch of gyms where they fought different styles and picked the best guys willing to be in the film. There are some absolutely stunning bouts between various masters, but the narrative arc requires Claude van Damme to win, and it completely breaks any suspension of disbelief that this could happen, having seen the gentlemen involved fighting. Because of the essential mismatch between Jet Li and the leads, I built up hopes for Yeoh/Li battle that simply weren't satisfied, leaving me with the martial arts equivalent of blue balls.

The rest of the film, didn't manage to live up to my popcorn/B-movie expectations either. The humor was either non existent or aimed for the under ten set. The new young leads were problematic. The actor and the character of the son were highly unappealing by being bland and abrasive simultaneously. My guess is they were trying to make him a contrast with Brendon Frasier, but it simply pointed out how banal the family plot was and I kept wanting to fast forward over the dialog so I wouldn't have to watch him "act." The ingenue was problematic as well. she was lovely still or in motion, and her acting was fine as long as it was silent. unfortunately, her English dialog sounded wooden, as if it was memorized phonetically and she was afraid if she didn't get it out quickly, she forget how to pronounce the next sentence. This made for real awkwardness in scenes were the two of them were alone together as they were awkward together, her acting an emotion with her face and body, but with a flat delivery and him with acting skills only a degree above Hayden Christensen's, no chemistry, and material to get through that I've seen in more TV shows than I could count.

Honestly, they'd have been much better off to boil down the boilerplate interpersonal stuff to a few key lines and looks, instead of making everything elaborated and wasting all that screen time. Show it, don't tell it. This would have minimized the weaknesses of the younger pair and I wouldn't have been left squirming by sequences like half naked Brendan Fraser making out with his wife in front of their son and long awkward dialog sequences telling me stuff I already knew when I really wanted to be watching exciting Mummy action. (It's not that I would have minded them playing the Freudian angle if I could have been convinced it was intentional. I mean, yes, there was plenty of blatant d**k measuring by proxy elsewhere, but watching that kissing sequence I felt like no one shooting it had thought it through).

There was also the basic problem I have with anything like this. I am uncomfortable with the bad archeology and I wince every time an antiquity, archaeological find, or irreplaceable bit of architecture is ruined. I do realize that this is a personal problem. I know intellectually that those are sets and props, but I hate the thought of it.

Miracle at Saint Anna
I'd like to start out by commending the trailer for doing it's job of enticing me into the theater without spoiling the film or telling me too much. This is what a trailer should do.

The film was not perfect: there were some sections that could have been streamlined, some of the characters a touch stereotyped, and I definitely could have done without the sappy and predictable last five minutes. That said, I loved this movie. I am looking forward to seeing it again. I have always felt that the African American experience in WWII is underrepresented, given the casualties even in their support roles such as combat engineers. It was also good to see the Italian campaign highlighted. Seriously, this movie captured the sheer crappiness of being an Italian peasant during WWII. The combat footage was just as visceral as Private Ryan's and I maintained curiosity and interest as to how things would play out until nearly the end. This movie was everything I'd wanted it to be and hadn't quite dared hope for while watching the trailer.

Yes, I know no one liked this but me.

Quarantine


I had cleverly avoided all the advance advertising eccept for the bare bones that it was an outbreak movie. This was to my advantage as the movie was mostly spoiled for Squirrel by it's own trailers, which I had gone to lengths not to see/pay attention to.

This is a b*****d child of Romero and The Blair Witch project. It's fairly honest about this, being full of homage shots stolen from both. That said, it really wasn't bad as a Grindhouse film. It was exploitive, violent, a bit predictable. I could tell from the set up/fore showing at various points how they would likely play out. There was legitimate suspense for me, not having seen the spoiler trailers, but it was only on a few points. it still managed to be creepy and the disease model, though dicey, was acceptable. I was willing to give them the amount of wiggle room they took, as they seemed to play fair unlike 28 Days Later where the disease model was so preposterous I had trouble suspending disbelief.

There were pacing issues. The foreplay went on a bit too long. I would rather have had more time in the things going to hell stage instead of of long boring passages early on that could have been cut down.

The characters frequently did dumb things early on, but mostly realistically so. If you don't know what you are dealing with, you play be the book if you are a first responder. My problems were mostly with the decision process after the quarantine. At that point I have some serious problems with some of the things that happened, because I contend that first responders would be a little better with crisis than that. I think that in a world with movies and video games, at least one person in that situation would be able to think of basic elementary precautions that any eight year old could come up with. Yes, initial shock would be in play at first, but I think it's reasonable that people could start thinking intelligently after an hour or two. just saying.

I still enjoyed it despite the self consciousness and the occasional dumb. I liked a couple characters, I very much liked the disease model, and some of the images were clever. It was better than several horror movies I've seen recently, including the annoying Diary of the Dead by the great Romero himself, but it is forgettable shock for the most part. That's okay, but don't expect greatness.


If you plan on seeing this, avoid all advertising for this, especially the trailers. Leave the room so you can't see the images; sing lalala over the announcer. Seriously. I had a much better time than Squirrel because I knew nothing.

Rock and Rolla
If you liked Snatch, you'll likely enjoy this. I certainly did. It's a nice piece of ensemble acting and a pleasant little puzzle of a movie, all the bits fitting slowly together. I loved particularly how they rock and rolla looks like a stereotype at first, but as slowly illuminated in the source of the story so that one sees through the stereotype into some very cool depths.

I know there's rather a lot of controversy around the use of "poof" in this film, but it seems pretty fair use given context and for the most part I'm okay with the portrayal of the more important of the gay characters. My caveat is, I am not cool with the depiction of the gay dance club, which I felt was played for laughs in a mock the queers sort of way. this is a tiny part of the film, and I don't feel like it's enough of a complauint to prevent one seeing the film, but it may irritate people.

To sum up, it's a smart, face paced little thing with solid ensemble acting, and enough underlieing meat to chew on after. It's not high art, but it delivers on both tthe action and the characterization. I would have liked a better handle on motivation for a couple of characters, but given the size of the cast, I'm not sure how they could have squeezed it in and they mostly made up for it with the quality of acting which gave a sense that the back stories were their even if we didn't see them.

I do have one question though; "What in the world were those Russians doing in that one scene?" O.o

The Thing (John Carpenter's Version)
In my opinion, it holds up shockingly well after all this time. How many horror movies of the early 80s can one really say that of? This was made pre-CGI and the solidity of the effects is actually part of why it works, the visceral response one has to the biological realities helps the acting, I think. Certainly, the acting is shockingly good for what was at heart a B-Movie. I love the rising paranoia, the necessity for thought, the claustrophobic feel of all that white.

I love the ambiguous ending, which I much prefer to the original Campbell gung ho, humanity uber allas approach. I love that every scene of the movie, every performance shows how hard Carpenter and the cast thought about their characters and the implications. The back stories may be unspoken, but you can feel the work put into them. (The commentary track backs me up on this. McReady was meant to be a Vietnam vet, who couldn't readjust and went as far away from society as he could get and it still wasn't far enough. There he is in his shack, borderline alcoholic. Apparently they all had a reason to be in Antarctica like that. Similarly, they spent a lot of time off camera debating implications. This pleases me to no end). I love the facial expressions. I love that McCready is not some perfect fair haired hero like Kirk Douglas, unfailingly heroic.

Let the Right One In

This is a fascinating little Swedish movie. I loved the banality and grotesque realism of the violence. I loved how unromantic the vampirism was, an antidote to Twilight. I love the sweet surface covering unrelenting bleakness.

One warning, there were rather more pubescent boys in underwear than I'd wanted. (The proper number of nearly naked pubescent boys in my opinion is zero). There is also one image I wish I could scour from my mind, with steel wool if necessary.

Still it was worth it.

Frost/Nixon
They finally decided to screen it here. Still no sign of Milk.


I was not entirely convinced this would be good, but I was pleasantly surprised. I had worries about pacing for one thing, which were entirely unjustified. It was pretty darned suspenseful for a movie that was essentially about people talking, this despite me knowing how it would end. I had fun playing character actor bingo during the early set up, but was soon thoroughly absorbed in the actual plot. Langella was fricking stunning. he managed to be terrifying and vulnerable, often at once. He was once one of the prettiest men in America, and now in old age is really showing he was so much more than a pretty face. This is not to take away from any of the other performances, it's just he pretty much stole the show.

It was sad that while watching it I thought, "He only wire tapped seventeen people and ruined two countries. It was such an innocent time compared to now." The scale of evil was so much smaller. Clearly, he didn't think big enough on the scale of self agendaed Republican presidential evil. It's still pretty relevant. I'm sure any number of people would like to see Frost/Bush. Sigh. I want my war crimes trials.