For the first time since I don’t know when, Kate and I have gone to see movies in a theater on two consecutive weekends. I’m pretty sure this hasn’t happened in at least two years.<\/p>\n
Anyway, before my general (spoiler-free) movie comments, some trailers:<\/p>\n
You Don’t Mess With the Zohan<\/cite>. Seriously, this is a movie? I thought it was just a fake commercial slapped together for SNL that had somehow come unmoored from the show and started turning up on other channels.<\/p>\n The Love Guru<\/cite>. Mike Myers has outdone himself: I hate this character already.<\/p>\n Australia<\/cite>. For everyone who has been dying to see a movie in which Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman don’t have to fake their accents. I’m not sure I see the attraction other than that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hancock<\/cite>. Enh. The concept sounds interesting, but the trailer didn’t look that great. It’s possible that it was just cut in a way that appeals to people other than me.<\/p>\n The Dark Knight<\/cite>. Looks terrific, actually. I liked Batman Begins<\/cite> in spite of the dopey plot, because Batman is the one superhero whose origin story is the interesting part, but Heath Ledger looks wonderfully creepy.<\/p>\n The Incredible Hulk<\/cite>. Edward Norton as David Banner… Tim Roth as a psycho… It has possibilities.<\/p>\n And now, comments on the feature presentations:<\/p>\n Robert Downey Jr. vs. The League of Evil Bald Guys<\/cite>— er, I mean, Iron Man<\/cite>. I came to this blissfully unencumbered by actual knowledge of the comic book character, so I can’t speak to the authenticity of the adaptation. It was an enjoyable comic-book movie, though. Downey did a terrific job, and Jeff Bridges did a great cross between Lex Luthor and the Dude.<\/p>\n There are a few subtextual elements that are a little icky if you stop to think about them for too long (mostly involving the idea that poor people in other countries exist only as a means of bringing rich white Americans to epiphanies), and the science is utter nonsense even by the standards of comic book adaptations. It does look pretty, though, and there are some great little moments, like Downey’s interaction with the robots.<\/p>\n Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull<\/cite>. Was really about as good as you could hope for from a 20-year-later sequel. I’ve seen some complaints that the plot was daft and formulaic, but so are the plots of the first three. If you’re going into this movie expecting coherence and nuanced character development, you’re doing it all wrong.<\/p>\n The only real complaint I have is that it got to be a bit much before the end. There were probably two big setpieces too many, and the movie would’ve been better if they’d been trimmed out. The ending was a little too pat, but it’s not like they can really do another sequel in 2018, so they might as well wrap the whole thing up.<\/p>\n Short version: Not as good as the first and third, but better than the second.<\/p>\n If you want to see spoiler-y comments, Kate has them: Iron Man<\/cite><\/a> and Indiana Jones<\/cite><\/a>. And that’s where we stand movie-wise, here in Chateau Steelypips.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the first time since I don’t know when, Kate and I have gone to see movies in a theater on two consecutive weekends. I’m pretty sure this hasn’t happened in at least two years. Anyway, before my general (spoiler-free) movie comments, some trailers: You Don’t Mess With the Zohan. Seriously, this is a movie?… Continue reading Recent Movie Round-Up<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}