John’s Movie Musings

Apocalyptic/Disaster movies are a cinematic staple. Human determination is pitted against the unstoppable forces of nature much like my own struggle against crappy movies. Knowing is half the battle.

When was the last good Nicolas Cage movie? The Rock?  Con Air?  Raising Arizona?  He’s obviously moved on to become to poster child of crap-ass cinema.  The good news for him is that disaster movies don’t need great acting.  None of them are ever going to be up for best picture, and exist only because train wrecks don’t offer up enough destruction.

Knowing has its share of problems.  Nick Cage is the least of them.  The basic plot goes like this: Back in 1959, a crazy schoolgirl writes a bunch of numbers for a time capsule assignment.  Fifty years later, the time capsule is opened.  Mr. Cage (obviously) gets the creepy numbers and proceeds to decrypt them with the help of Mr. Plot Convenience.  The numbers happen to reveal the location, date, and casualty count for every major disaster in the US.  Except for the last three.  And by last three, I mean last three ever.  Mr. Cage realizes that these numbers are a warning to humanity and goes to act confused the rest of the movie.

Now if your thinking caps are on, you may be asking why a warning message to humanity was buried for fifty years, only to be opened three days before the end of the world.  Knowing doesn’t know, or refuses to tell, so I had to add it to my long list of Things That Don’t Make Sense.

Like all Apocalyptic movies, there’s a religious element in play.  It’s pretty subtle up until the end where either your beliefs or your intelligence (or both) will be offended.  It’s pretty obvious what statement Alex Proyas is making, but it’s not exactly a good one.  But hey, at least it’s not political, so he gets a few points for being different.

Knowing is a stupid movie, but doesn’t know it.  I’d tell you to avoid it completely, but the ending is so unexpected and strange I can’t discount the whole thing.  If you’ve seen it, let me know what you thought.

Grade: C-

Amazing.

TRON:Legacy — Click me for HD QT

Most people look forward to the next Harry Potter movie with an excitement only equaled by the latest Lady Gaga hit.  One might say it’s electrifying.

I’ve never been that much of a Pot-head as I’ve only followed the story through the movies.  I have read Twilight and lived to tell the tale, but Harry Potter has become sort of an experiment for me.  It’s one of the few series that gets better with each chapter and I’ve been watching to see how well those stories translate onto the big screen.  The Order of the Phoenix was the first film I really noticed the shortcuts taken to squeeze the book into two hours. Not bad considering how thick the books get.

So how did The Half-Blood Prince do?  As a movie, it stands on its own quite well, except for one small point that I’ll get to in a bit.  I knew most people ranked HP6 as their favorite.  Now, I can see why.  It’s fantastic.  One note of full disclosure, however: I enjoyed a near-perfect Guinness with the movie (Cinebarre Theaters – check ‘em out).  While that makes life itself better, it had no bearing on my enjoyment of what was on screen.

One fascinating aspect of these “events” – we get to watch the actors grow up before us.  Like many child actors, it may all end in tragedy, but for now it’s great.  The kids are getting old enough to where love starts causing problems and the director uses those moments as comic relief in an otherwise dark story.  It all works and there are plenty of good laughs to be had.

On to what didn’t work.  They maybe mentioned the Half-Blood Prince maybe three times during the entire story, including the revelation at the end.  By that point, I was thinking, “Yeah.  So what?  Who cares?”  I figured he had to be important, being in the title and all, so I asked my friends what it all meant.  After they told me how the book played out, I realized the movie missed the whole point.  But that realization only came with the added knowledge.  Without it, the movie stood quite well on its own and had a great setup for the last chapter (actually last two since Book 7 will get split in half).  Other than an odd title, I didn’t feel anything was missing.  +1 for ignorance.

For those of you who did read Book 6, be sure to point out all those missing details to your clueless friends.  Or just tell them to read the books.  I’ll get to ‘em eventually.

Grade: A

You’ve probably noticed my reviews have been pretty slim these past few weeks.  That’s because I’ve been spending my time with Avatar: The Last Airbender.  If you’ve not heard of it, it’s an anime series first aired on Nickelodeon.  Obviously, I wouldn’t waste time with a kid’s cartoon, much less talk about it if I did, but Avatar is a fantastic series you should become aware of.

The series consists of three seasons (literally, Act I, II, and III) of 20 episodes each.  I wrapped up the series over the weekend and I came away very satisfied.  Not only does the main storyline have a distinct beginning, middle, and end – each and every character goes through a solid story arc.  There are episodes in season 3 that wrap up subplots from season 1 I had forgotten about. It is so great to watch such a wonderfully crafted story.  And so unfortunately rare.

Since this is a movie blog and not a one for kids TV shows, let me end with some movie news.  M. Night Shyamalan is adapting the story into a live action movie for next summer.  M. Night has a lot of crap for which he owes penance and I have no idea how he’s going to fit three seasons into two hours.  My doubts are understated.  Nonetheless, this one’s on my radar for next summer.

Check it out:

I need to stop watching sad movies.  All my jokes about having a cold, dead heart fall flat when I’m sniffling like a coke addict.  If this keeps up, I’ll be wiping snot and tears from daytime television.

When Seven Pounds came out in theaters, everyone made a big deal about not talking about it.  This is quite the feat considering the number of trailers every year that spoil the movie they’re promoting.  Kudos to whoever made that happen.  This is a movie no one should talk about.  Yes, Transformers is also a movie no one should speak of, but Seven Pounds is different.  In a good way.

My friend made the comparison to Sixth Sense.  After you saw that, you couldn’t say anything about it to your friends.  Same sort of deal with Seven Pounds.  There’s not really a big twist as there is a big revelation (I’ve discussed the difference before, I think).  Through most of the movie, you will be completely confused about what is going on.   Almost confused enough to give up on it.  But stay with it and things will come together.

In the Bible, Revelation brings war and pesilence.  In Seven Pounds, the big revelation brings snot and tears.  Be ready.

Grade: B+

I’m really hoping for good things out of District 9.  This and 9 could be my two favorites of the summer (Go number 9).

How do you know you’ve settled in for a second-tier thriller?  The dialog isn’t that great.  Characters sort of just appear out of nowhere.  The villain is weak.  Clairvoyance and Convenience make frequent cameos.  And the ending leaves you wanting.

However, you can’t say a second-tier thriller is crap.  It’s more like the minor leagues of cinema.  They have fans and still provide a decent amount of entertainment.

So goes The International.  It stars Clive Owen and Naomi Watts who travel the world in search of the perfect house of pancakes.  Actually, Clive is an “agent” with Interpol.  Naomi is with the NY District Attorney and somehow gets to travel to Italy, Germany, and Turkey.  It never really gets explained.

Clive’s role is even more confusing.  Early in the movie is boss tells him, “Clive, we’re Interpol.  We have no jurisdiction anywhere.  We just collect information.”  I think that’s an accurate statement, but The International Paper Pusher would make a really boring movie.  So we just go with it.

The villain here is not really a person.  It’s a bank.  Ooooooooh.  Yeah, there are actual people running said bank, but they’re the twirling mustache-types who secretly run the world.  If they fall, the entire world crumbles with them.  Ooooooooh.

If I recall correctly, they did a Bond movie like that and it was lame.   You even had MI6 agents and cool gadgets to help things along.  Now imagine The International.  You’ve got an Interpol agent and someone from the District Attorney’s office.  There’s a reason Bond was not an accountant.

So yeah, it’s not the best movie.  But it’s really hard to screw up a thriller.  If you happen to throw The International in your rental queue, you’ll probably say, “Meh. I’ve seen worse.”

Grade: C