|
Three Days, Four Movie Reviews
Composed by Mike O'Leary(muchsarcasm@interactive.net)
With my current work schedule, I've managed to see 4 matinees in 3 days, and now all of these movies are currently swimming in my head. To remedy the situation I offer four quick reviews on: "Dick", "The Blair Witch Project", "Mystery Men", "The Iron Giant".
If you don't care, please delete this waste of bandwith now. If so, come see what 7 hours and $20 will get you.
Note that I won't be giving away any plot points, in case you want to see these movies.
"Dick"
A very mildly entertaining film about how two moronic teenage girls bring down the Nixon administration. Basically the humor falls under one of three categories:
- Fitting the girls into the Watergate mythos.
- Nixon and staff try to come up with explanation for money laundering, document shreeding, etc.
- Using the double meaning of the word "Dick" in a sentence (e.g. "You can't let Dick run your life!" [Passersby laugh])
It doesn't hurt to know the various details of watergate. There's a pretty funny part about the tape recorder, but it makes more sense when you realize that a portion of the tape was never heard in real life. All in all, ** out of 4
"Blair Witch Project" (or How I Got Swallowed By the Hype Machine)
If only I had a thesaurus on hand so I could come up with a better description than "disappointing". Supposedly, the movie was to make the viewer imagine most of the horror that was occuring off-screen. Hitchcock did this very well (although I must admit I'm not overly fond of his work). He would show you enough so that the viewer could visualize the result. Unfortunately, this movie ("The Curse of the People Who Have To Watch the Blair Witch") decides to build and build and then deliver and very weak ending. The acting was fine, the mood was fine, the fear factor wasn't. Throughout the whole movie people were steeling themselves because they knew that scene that wasn't going to let them sleep at night was coming. All in all, the movie had exactly three images that gave off a creepy feel. * out of 4.
"Mystery Men" (or "The Mocking of Joel Schumacker")
Basic premise: 7 loser superheroes band together when the city's only real superhero gets captured. Don't go in expecting some kind of parody movie like "Airplane!". There's actual plot, with actual rounded sympathetic characters. It's a fun movie that you don't have to be a comic geek to see (but it doesn't hurt). The acting's great, even if Paul Reubens' accent gets old after a while. *** out of 4
"The Iron Giant"
Thank goodness. Well animated, intelligent and fun characters (both adult and kid), it delivers a message without being preachy, and NO DAMN MUSICAL NUMBERS!!! This is a really touching story (and most of you know that I'm not much on emotions and feelings and other crap like that). GO SEE IT. [Warning about taking kids: There is a reason why this movie is rated PG and not G.] I give it ***3/4 out of 4, since there's one question I had throughout the whole movie that never got answered.
 Back To Rants and Commentary
|
