Brief Movie Reviews

On Saturday I watched some DVDs and then went with Sumiko to Nikaho. We went to the 100 yen shop and the supermarket (oh, so interesting) and then we cooked Chinese food at Sumiko’s house.

Yesterday I finished watching the DVDs I rented last week. The Polar Express was really good. I wish they had Christmas movies that good when I was a child, rather than that old Santa movie that I was subjected to every year, which was always followed up by Back To The Future (which is such a Christmas movie). Unfortunately, the DVD was a bit broken and a couple of chapters did not play properly. How irritating.

The Producers was really good. How come I never watched it before?

Hellboy was crap, but I wasn’t expecting it to be good. I only rented it on a whim, because I have seen several other comic-related movies recently so I thought I would add one more to the list. I should be a bit more specific. There were some bits of Hellboy that were very, very good but then there were these other bits that were so bad that they cancelled out the good parts. I get the feeling that if I were familiar with the comic I would like the movie much more. What was missing was character dimension and if I already knew the characters then that wouldn't be an issue.

The last DVD I rented for the same reason I rented Hellboy. I was expecting it to be kind of crap too, but I got a pleasant surprise. I loved the Superman movies when I was a kid, but I thought by now I would have grown out of them. I mean, he wears his underpants on the outside for crying out loud. He looks like an idiot! But either I am going through a second childhood or Superman Returns is really good because I really quite enjoyed it. Really, despite the outfit and despite something occurring in the movie that I had hoped would never ever occur in the Superman franchise because it is just too gimmicky. All of the silliness seemed to have a gentle ‘tongue-in-cheek’-ness to it which meant that I didn’t feel pressured to accept it at face value. There were some solid serious themes dealt with that worked well: even Superman has to deal with the consequences of his actions, and even Superman can’t stop change. The huge gap since the last movie while other media worked with the characters means the live-action branch of the franchise has had a long time to mature well. Like a cheese. Yes. Just like a cheese. Apparently the new movie follows after the first movie and to a lesser extent the second one, not the third or the fourth which seem to have been dropped out of the timeline. I need to go back and watch number two at some stage because I can’t remember anything about what happened in it.

Wow, I feel kind of embarrassed admitting that I enjoyed watching a Superman movie. I ought to find the time to go see Spiderman 3, because then I’d be really cool.

Here is a cool link for you: Comix Worst To Best from RottenTomatoes.com. It's a list of all movies adapted from comics that have ever been reviewed at the site in order from worst to best. It's really interesting so go have a look.