VH Corner

During the Great Depression, a shifty movie producer tells his cast and crew that he is making a moving picture on a ship heading to Singapore, but he really wants to find the mysterious Skull Island where they find King Kong and other really big beasts and bugs.

This movie is long and you feel it. Sometimes you get so lost in a movie that you cannot even tell that it is long. You can feel this movie being long. It feels like three movies in one, but I did find the entire movie enjoyable. There were some scenes that could have been cut out to make it shorter, but all of it was fun to watch so I don’t mind it all being in there. You just need to set yourself up for settling in and watching an epic, romantic adventure, then you’ll be fine.

There is a lot of back story and setup for all the main characters in the movie, and even some minor ones, while in New York City. I think it is important to keep all the back story in because it does play a part in the storyline later on. If you didn’t know certain things about Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), then things she says and does later on wouldn’t make much sense. There needs to be a build up of emotion between Watts and Adrian Brody’s writer character or else it makes no sense that he goes running through the island trying to save her from King Kong. It is a really long build-up before they ever get to the island or you get to see King Kong, but I think it all needed to be there.

Naomi Watts did a great job acting when she didn’t actually have that many lines. She spends a good deal of the movie interacting with Kong so she doesn’t need to talk a lot since he doesn’t know what she is saying. You always know what is going on and I never felt like she was acting against a green screen. The guy who played Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies played the stand-in for Kong during the filming of this movie. He also acted all of Kong’s facial expressions which were then turned into computer animation. He did an excellent job. You always know what Kong is thinking and he makes you very sad at the end, even though you know how it is going to end.

Adrian Brody did a good job as the writer who ends up falling in love with Watts’ character. You believe that he actually falls in love with her fairly quickly and they have good chemistry. He seems to have good chemistry with anyone though, since he had good chemistry kissing Halle Berry at the Oscars a few years back. Jack Black does an excellent job being the smarmy movie producer who is really out for himself, but he doesn’t play it over the top. He really makes you root and hate the character at the same time.

There are fifty million chase and fight scenes on the island between the film and boat crew, trying to find Ann Darrow after King Kong takes her, and the very large beasts on the island. There are also tons of chase and fight scenes between Kong and other large beasts on the island. Then there are the fight scenes between Kong and the film and boat crew. If the movie could have been trimmed anywhere, it could have been there. We really didn’t need that many chase and fight scenes, but they were all highly entertaining and fun to watch.

When they were done with the island, you felt like the movie could have ended, but I knew that we needed to see King Kong on the Empire State Building so that meant they were going back to New York City. That part of the movie isn’t as long as the island part, but it wasn’t super short either.

Even though the movie had all these great chase and fight scenes, my favorite ones were with Watts and Kong. They were the best and saddest scenes and that’s what I remember the most about the movie.

Rating: A-

Kirsten Dunst plays head cheerleader in high school when she finds out that her former leader stole cheers that gave them five state championships.

I recently rewatched this movie during Thanksgiving break. I usually have no interest in watching a movie about cheerleading, but I think I watched it the first time because I heard it was surprisingly a good movie. When I watched it the first time, I remembered liking it and thought I’d see if I still did.

It stars Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku who are likeable. The storyline is pretty fluffy, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It knows it is goofy. Eliza’s character helps that along. Kirsten’s character is way serious about her cheerleading, but Eliza only does it because the high school she just moved to doesn’t have a gymnastics team. She is the cynical person of all cheerleaders for the movie and is won over by the goofiness of it.

It also has the awesome “spirit fingers”. Everyone should see it just to know what that means and use it from time to time when making any comment about choreographed dancing.

Rating: B+

So the Friday before Christmas, I had the day off and my mom and I decided to have pedicures and go to a movie and lunch. This was mom’s movie choice, I wanted to see Wallace and Gromit - Wererabbit!

Anyways, Clive Owen is in this movie and I thought he was very good - I really believed his character. He didn’t look as sexy as he has before, so that was a little sad.
Jennifer Anniston is also in this movie and thought she was good as well.

I don’t want to give away too much because there is a plot twist, but basically Clive and Jennifer meet on a train going to work and hook up and then mucho trouble starts. Moral of the story - don’t talk to people on the train.

Five scientists get caught in some ball of light thingy that changes their DNA. The good ones become the Fantastic 4 while the bad one becomes Dr. Doom.

Another comic book movie where I really know nothing about the comic books, so all the characters are new to me and I can’t compare if the movie did a good job with the translation or not. I can only judge it on its pure entertainment value.

Continue reading “Fantastic Four”

Middle Eastern thriller about oil drilling and American big business.

While watching this movie, it reminded me a lot of Traffic. There were a lot of storylines going on that were all related to the overall plot of the movie, but not all the characters interacted with one another. After I watched it, I found out it was made by the same guy that made Traffic. I think if you enjoyed that movie, which I did even though I never felt the need to watch it again, I think you would enjoy this movie. I actually wouldn’t mind watching this one again, but mostly because I had to go to the bathroom during it and also fell asleep during one part of it. That’s what happens when I go to happy hour before the movie starts.

George Clooney plays a CIA field agent who wants out of what he’s doing, but he seems to be the best guy for any job in the Middle East because he speaks Arabic and Farsi. He’s jerked around a lot by the CIA. They like to blame things on him and leave him out to dry quite a bit because he’s not used to office poltics, but things in the field.

Matt Damon works for an energy company that is trying to pitch its company to the Emir of a Middle Eastern gulf coast country that is selling its oil to other superpower countries. He ends up becoming friends with one of the Emir’s son who hopes to be announced as the next Emir since his father is so sick. He is competing with his younger brother who also wants to be Emir and has ideals closer to his father’s.

There is also a corporate lawyer that is procting the interests of two oil companies in a merger, but also looking out for himself in the process since he’s really ambitious. He uncovers some corruption and makes sure that he comes out clean in the end while making sure the merger goes through.

Finally, there is a storyline about how the various countries (U.S., Russia and China) come into various Middle Eastern countries to set up their oil rigs and employ local workers. As mergers happen, and various areas change hands, local workers are put out of work at a moment’s notice. It shows how some Middle Eastern men still manage to dream while they can barely find anything to eat, while others get frustrated by the entire situation in general.

The merger is tied into the two princes wanting to be Emir of the Middle Eastern country, which is tied into George Clooney’s CIA agent’s last assignment in the Middle East and the frustrated kids play into all of it too.

Tons of storylines going on. I think I would have liked the movie better if it focused on certain storylines more. The mergers were important for the overall story, but weren’t too exciting to watch. It also isn’t a big surprise to me that oil companies and executives are corrupt to some extent. The storyline with the two princes wanting to be Emir and Matt Damon’s storyline were the most interesting to me. The frustrated kids just made me sad overall, especially at the end. The entire movie ended up making me sad because most of what it is saying is true to some extent and the world is just messed up. This is not an uplifting movie.

Rating: B+

Elektra from Daredevil is back and doing more martial arts stuff.

This movie is very predictable, silly and induces much eye rolling. It explains Elektra coming back from the dead since she was killed in Daredevil. The explanation is very silly. Her character has now become obsessive-compulsive in order to hide her identity. She is a clean freak and is always making sure none of her DNA gets on anything, but I’m not sure how that is possible since she doesn’t wear gloves all the time. It doesn’t do a very good job of suspending any disbelief.

She goes out on random assassination jobs, but then gets one that everyone sees is coming and you know she suddenly will decide to grow a conscience and not want to finish the job. That sends bad guys after her with super powers. Elektra seems to have some super powers now too. I ended up laughing at all the martial arts and super power stuff going on. The fight scenes weren’t really exciting to watch. I kept feeling like I’d rather watch Jennifer Garner in Alias since there is a better storyline involved with better fight scenes.

One of her super powers was the ability to concentrate and know what was about to happen. She didn’t seem to use this for most of her fight scenes though since one fight scene involved a bunch of flying white sheets and that confused her greatly. She just couldn’t find the guy with all the sheets. It didn’t look super cool, like something you would see in Hero or House of Flying Daggers. It just ended up looking dumb.

Rating: D

Ron Perlman is a demon conjured up by the Nazis during WWII, but ends up working as an agent of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense kinda sorta fighting bad guys when he feels like it.

I know nothing about the comic book. I was not even familiar with the comic even existing before the movie came out. I thought it looked pretty bad from the trailers, but they can lie.

It started out with an interesting premise with some crazy Nazi/WWII/supernatural spin on the entire thing and how Hellboy was created. It was even okay when a new guy was brought into the Bureau in the present day to meet an older Hellboy and the guy who raised him to be a good guy instead of evil.

Then Selma Blair comes into the picture and brings everything down. I really hate her. She annoys me in every movie she is in. I don’t think she can act, but I think her worst acting is in this movie. She is so monotone the entire movie. She’s very distracting and, of course, Hellboy is fascinated with her pyro character. There’s also a brilliant scene where she is in a hospital that knows she can start fires with her mind, and she has a nightmare that makes her entire body burst into flames. Do they have her in a fireproof room? Of course not. She burns the entire hospital down. SMRT.

The main plot of the story is some big, bad guy that originally pulled Hellboy out of whatever dimension he came from and come back to finish up the job and needs Hellboy to start the apocolypse. The bad guys are not scary at all. They make these creatures that look like the monster from predator, which is just not very creative at all. Hellboy calls the creatures Stinky, which is pretty funny. Hellboy makes lots of one-liners that sound like they are trying too hard, hoping that one will catch on with all the kiddies watching the movie.

The entire movie seemed like it was trying too hard to be cool rather than concentrate on something that is fun and entertaining like a comic book movie should be on the lowest level. Anything above that would be cool, like Spiderman or Batman Begins, but I’d be happy with fun. This wasn’t too much fun.

Rating: C

Based on the first book in the C.S. Lewis children series, four English children stumbled across a wardrobe that takes them into the magical land of Narnia where the evil White Witch has turned the land into a never ending winter.

I read the books when I was younger and bought a recent edition of the series a few years back. I didn’t start rereading them though until recently, and only because I knew a new movie was being made of series. I think I might have watched some old television movie of the books too, but it was all a vague memory. I remembered the book being bigger than it was and more things happening to it, but that could be the tv movie that I am remembering since it isn’t the other books. I remember them even less.

Anyway, I reread the book only a couple weeks ago, so it was very fresh in my mind when Jer and I went to see this movie. We received free movie passes to an advanced screening so we saw it two days before it came out in a completely packed theater. Everyone behaved though so I think even Jer had an enjoyable movie-watching experience.

As for the movie, I thought it was highly enjoyable. It was two-and-a-half hours long and extended a lot that was very brief in the book. There was a brief introduction of why the children were in the house to begin with in the book while the movie goes into more details about the air raids happening in Britain during the war.

The children’s personalities were only vaguely mentioned in the book, with most of it centered on Lucy and Edmund. I never really could describe much of Peter or Susan, other than they were older. In the movie, they all have distinct personalities and it felt more natural when the story turned to Peter heading up a fight. In the book, it seemed like Peter was leading just because he was the oldest. They still didn’t do much with Susan though. I found her to be more annoying in the movie than the book, but then she was barely mentioned in the book to begin with.

Finally, the big fight scene between the witch’s evil forces and good things of Narnia were mentioned in passing in the book, but were actually shown in the movie. The actual fight scenes weren’t all that exciting though. This could have been the movie or it could have been that I had a concert to go to, and I knew that the movie was going on longer than I planned and I needed for it to be over soon.

The animation in the movie was really good. You could tell parts of it was animated, instead of parts of Lord of the Rings movies where I forget that I’m not watching something real. It wasn’t distracting though. The movement of the animated creatures was natural and the lion was very cool. It is very much a kid’s movie, but something that adults can watch because they loved the books as kids themselves. I hope they make movies out of the other books.

Rating: B+