David’s Ramblings

In the last few weeks, I’ve been subjected to a number of good movies. It is of course my humble duty to share my completely unbiased, objective observations of them with you, my reading audience. So, here goes: The Fountain is the best movie of 2006 and Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters is the best movie of 2007. End of story. Without question. If you think otherwise, you’re retarded.

Now that the objective part of the reviewing is out of the way, let’s get to my own opinions on the movies.

 The Fountain – 4.9π / 900º

Everything about The Fountain screams out “masterpiece.” Visually, it’s a feast for the eyes. The visual effects are top-notch and will remain so for a few years to come at least. The entire movie is just pretty, the golden color leaking in to almost every crack of the film. The acting is well done. They couldn’t have chosen a better man for the leading role than Hugh Jackman. Rachel Weisz makes an absolutely stunning leading actress. All of this pales in comparison to the story, however, which is absolutely brilliant in ways that will leave a more active mind turning over for days.

 It’s helpful to understand that the storyline is left intentionally vague and open to interpretation. This is part of the brilliance. The intention wasn’t to write a story that you passively follow while watching the film and throw away when you’re done. It was to write a film that makes you think for a while, makes you scratch your head. And while that might seem a bit pretentious to some, I think it makes up for it by really making you think.

The movie follows three stories, each somewhat distinct. There’s a story set during the Inquisition and Spain’s conquests in the New World. This story is the first introduced, and later we find it tying into a story set in our own time of a man trying to find a cure for cancer – hopefully in time to save his wife. Turns out that the story of the Conquistador is one being written by the man’s wife. Later we’re introduced to weird floating tree in space with Hugh Jackman living next to it. There are many possible interpretations of how this last story fits in, and I think that the line is intentionally blurry on this one. If you think your brain might explode reading just the explanation than you probably wouldn’t appreciate this movie to the fullest extent possible, but if it sounds intriguing to you, I highly recommend seeing the film.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters – 4.5π / 900º

If you’re not an Aqua Teen Hunger Force fan, you’ll probably be able to ignore pretty much everything I say, but I warn you that you are a horrible person for not liking Aqua Teen. Yes, I know that 2007 isn’t over yet, and that, as far as movies go, the year has just begun, but in my mind they might as well just start 2008 right now to make it fair for all of those other movies. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters is hands-down the best movie of 2007.

The story starts millions of years ago, in Egypt. 3 PM. Downtown New York. 1492. The humor continues from there. Actually, it starts before that. I could have walked in and sat down for everything up to the opening credits and been amused enough to have had my money’s worth. The rest – as in everything following the opening credits – was just a bonus. It was like watching an hour and half long ATHF episode, which is just awesome.

To everyone not understanding what I see in Aqua Teen, I know where you’re coming from. When my roommate subjected me to a season’s worth of it, I had no clue what he saw in it. After a while though, you start to see some really funny stuff. It just takes a certain taste (or lack thereof) to enjoy. It’s probably even better if you’re high when you watch it. In many ways, it is sort of a spiritual descendant of Beavis and Butthead. Brainless, but almost witty at the same time.

If you see one movie this year, make it 300. This movie is already, hands down, one of the best of 2007, and we’re only to March. If you see it, I’m sure you’ll have to agree.

300 is a historical film, based on 300 Spartan soldiers who stalled the entire Persian army for several days while the rest of the country prepared for war. More than a historical film, however, this film is also based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller. The same Frank Miller we should all know and love from Sin City.

We can see the wonderful style of Frank Miller come through from his graphic novel onto the screen in this movie as well as we do in Sin City. The shots throughout the movie are beautiful, and the fight scenes artistically embellished.

Fight scenes? Oh yes. This movie is two hours of violence and ass kicking. Spartans are historically known for their fighting skills, and this movie makes sure to touch on that fact. A lot. If you’re in the mood for some action, look no further.

Don’t let that turn you off if you’re not into the whole fighting thing. If you’re not into action, then you’re probably either a chick or gay, and in both cases, you’ll probably be pleased to note the fact that 75% of the movie is about near-naked, sweaty men. In fact, that’s probably the reason this movie only gets a 4.7π. It’s a pretty good movie otherwise.

Yesterday I had the good fortune of attending a pre-release screening of the new movie “Zodiac.” This movie is about the real life serial killer who called himself “Zodiac” in letters he taunted the police with. The movie seems to follow the real events of the case (though I’m no expert on these matters) and this makes it somewhat more interesting.

The actors in this movie all do a terrific job, especially Jake Gyllenhaal. The movie does a good job of helping you feel the panic that must have been about in San Francisco due to the Zodiac as well. I particularly liked how music was used to add to the setting.

Unfortunately, the movie follows real life far too well. Unless you want to feel like the detectives who had their lives sucked away trying to solve this case, you’ll find the movie lacks appropriate pacing. Zodiac follows the true life storyline so closely that we’re treated to 30 minutes of excitement and 2 hours of tension that eventually becomes boredom as we desparately hope for a break in the case, or at least for the Zodiac to do something new.

The movie can also be disorienting, jumping large spans of time almost randomly and without warning, but this is important since the killings were quite spread out. I wouldn’t pay money to see this movie, but if you have the chance to see it for free as I did, you might not be completely disappointed. I rate it at a measely 2.3π.

2.9π out of 900º

Superman Returns – Not so super.

I saw Superman the other day and I just have to say I wasn’t completely impressed. Sure, the special effects were amazing enough, but overall I didn’t find it quite as interesting as I would have liked.

First, I have to admit that I have not seen the old movies. I know they were trying to just pick up where that left off and I couldn’t expect to fully appreciate everything going on without seeing the older movies. Still, I think Superman Returns was lacking. It seemed more about showing what Superman could do with new special effect abilities than about a storyline.

Speaking of storyline, the ending seemed to me to have one glaring plot hole. (Spoiler follows:) If the island is Kryptonite-ish, how in the hell does he just pick it up and throw it into space? Sure, I get that he was really straining to do it, but does that mean he’s just being a pussy in the older movies when people are using a single little chunk of Kryptonite against him? I mean, if he can tough it out to lift an entire island made of it, why in the hell can’t he tough it out with a little chunk of the stuff?

I will say there was good casting in the guy they picked for Superman. He was definitely a good choice for someone to look like Christopher Reeve.

Really though, other than the special effects and the reminiscing for the people that saw the old ones, Superman Returns was just not that great. I know there was a need to cash in on the comic book movie craze, but they certainly could have done better. With the Superman name and legacy, I expected better of it.

I saw Silent Hill the other night with my roommate. For those of you that didn’t know, it’s a video game movie. And for those of you who realize that video game movie is equivalent to crappy movie: I’ve got news for you – you’re wrong. I think this is perhaps the first big Hollywood movie based on a video game that was actually worth the ticket price.

Silent Hill is a story about a little girl who has very vivid dreams and sleepwalking issues. They’re constantly getting worse, and her parents can’t really do anything about it. Sometimes she talks about Silent Hill in her sleep, and sometimes she ends up wandering off into dangerous situations involving cliffs or highways.

Since she can’t ever remember these occurrences when she wakes up, her mother, Rose, decides that perhaps the best thing to do is to find Silent Hill and take her there so little Sharon can remember. They figure it might have something to do with her birth parents, as Sharon is adopted. As is often the case in horror movies, this turns out to be a very dumb idea.

Rose and Sharon head into Silent Hill, and crash trying to avoid hitting a child crossing the street. When Rose wakes up, Sharon has once again disappeared. Rose tries to find her daughter in what seems to be a completely abandoned town. Occasionally she sees a girl darting around town, and she tries to catch her. After following what she hopes to be her daughters footsteps down a dark alley, sirens go off and she finds that Silent Hill is pretty much (in the literal sense) hell when that happens (with really awesome CG transition from foggy, ash covered Silent Hill to metallic, rusted, burning Silent Hill).

To go on would – of course – ruin the story, but the surprising thing about this movie is that there’s actually a story to ruin. Most video game movies are so horribly lacking on storyline I didn’t expect this one to be much more than a thinly veiled attempt to show lots of monsters killing things. Yet I was pleasantly surprised to find myself completely drawn into the very well written story that is very psychologically deep (almost as good as Donnie Darko).

For other important things in movies, soundtrack and acting, the movie was not at all lacking. The soundtrack was completely haunting and my roommate and I want to find it for sale somewhere so we can buy it. I thought the acting was very well done. The father character probably didn’t have a strong enough role for most people to fully connect to him.

I think the critics don’t give it enough credit because there’s a very healthy amount of nightmarish violence and gore, or because they’re unable to fully understand what is going on in the movie. This is the best video game movie ever made. My roommate and I both hope the DVD version has the full length cut, which was rumored at 3 hours+. This movie will definitely become part of our collection. 4.7π out of 900º.