On the other hand, the return flight's movies were quite good—Return Flight:
A Beautiful Mind: This is the charming and bittersweet story of eccentric mathmetician John Nash, and his struggles with his unique intellect.As much as I am not a fan of Russell Crowe's personal antics, this is an absolutely wonderful movie with stellar performances throughout it.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The most common comment heard about this movie is that there was no need to remake the Gene Wilder film; however, this is not the same story as that movie. Tim Burton has a knack for stunning visuals and offsetting presentation of quirky, nuanced characters. In this, he shows Willy Wonka to be a troubled and imperfect ruler over his wondrous factory. The most common comparison is a rather grotesque and unfair one to Michael Jackson, which fails to notice the healing powers of a good-tempered innocent on a jaded adult, as well as tainting the movie's reputation with implied association with sexual abuse of children. This movie draws even more attention to the importantance of parenting in not only the resulting child, but how it will affect the entire family dynamic. And if that's not enough for you, Danny Elfman does all the vocals in the Oompah Loompah songs. Woot!
A Good Woman: gave it a miss
How the Grinch Stole Christmas: I had ZERO hope for this movie going into it, which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. Jim Carrey is an excellent Grinch, and the Whos are a lot less purile than they are in the original story. Plenty of comedy that happens beyond the slapstick level for the adults, as well as standard Carry mugging for the camera, spazzing out, and toilet humor for the kids. I'll probably rent it to watch with my kids during this winter break.
Ice Age: The channel for this was on the fritz for the entire trip; I wanted to see it, but couldn't deal with the audio and visual static.
The Island: (sigh) Ewan MacGregor. Scarlet Johannsen. Sean Bean. Steve Buscemi. That guy who played Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager. How can this have gone so far wrong as it manages to? Leave aside dropped plotlines that might have been ill-conceived red herrings. Don't touch the continuity errors that cause things to make even less sense. What we have is essentially a movie about kids trying to get home while being pursued by a Bad Guy. But they don't have a home, and there is no place to go, so director Michael Bay makes things explode, loudly, instead. This is another one of those movies that, though I saw it for free, and had little better to do with my time on the flight, I still felt like I had wasted a chance to do something, anything else.
Little Manhattan: gave it a miss
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: I am a BIG, big fan of W&G, and was very excited to see this movie. I laughed out loud repeatedly; there are a lot of good puns, some subtle, some not, some delayed-reaction gems as well. Still, I think the characters were better served in their short film incarnations; the humor and plot get a bit, er, long in the tooth.
A Beautiful Mind: This is the charming and bittersweet story of eccentric mathmetician John Nash, and his struggles with his unique intellect.As much as I am not a fan of Russell Crowe's personal antics, this is an absolutely wonderful movie with stellar performances throughout it.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The most common comment heard about this movie is that there was no need to remake the Gene Wilder film; however, this is not the same story as that movie. Tim Burton has a knack for stunning visuals and offsetting presentation of quirky, nuanced characters. In this, he shows Willy Wonka to be a troubled and imperfect ruler over his wondrous factory. The most common comparison is a rather grotesque and unfair one to Michael Jackson, which fails to notice the healing powers of a good-tempered innocent on a jaded adult, as well as tainting the movie's reputation with implied association with sexual abuse of children. This movie draws even more attention to the importantance of parenting in not only the resulting child, but how it will affect the entire family dynamic. And if that's not enough for you, Danny Elfman does all the vocals in the Oompah Loompah songs. Woot!
A Good Woman: gave it a miss
How the Grinch Stole Christmas: I had ZERO hope for this movie going into it, which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. Jim Carrey is an excellent Grinch, and the Whos are a lot less purile than they are in the original story. Plenty of comedy that happens beyond the slapstick level for the adults, as well as standard Carry mugging for the camera, spazzing out, and toilet humor for the kids. I'll probably rent it to watch with my kids during this winter break.
Ice Age: The channel for this was on the fritz for the entire trip; I wanted to see it, but couldn't deal with the audio and visual static.
The Island: (sigh) Ewan MacGregor. Scarlet Johannsen. Sean Bean. Steve Buscemi. That guy who played Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager. How can this have gone so far wrong as it manages to? Leave aside dropped plotlines that might have been ill-conceived red herrings. Don't touch the continuity errors that cause things to make even less sense. What we have is essentially a movie about kids trying to get home while being pursued by a Bad Guy. But they don't have a home, and there is no place to go, so director Michael Bay makes things explode, loudly, instead. This is another one of those movies that, though I saw it for free, and had little better to do with my time on the flight, I still felt like I had wasted a chance to do something, anything else.
Little Manhattan: gave it a miss
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: I am a BIG, big fan of W&G, and was very excited to see this movie. I laughed out loud repeatedly; there are a lot of good puns, some subtle, some not, some delayed-reaction gems as well. Still, I think the characters were better served in their short film incarnations; the humor and plot get a bit, er, long in the tooth.
I never understood what people liked about Ice Age. The landscape was just a little too blank and empty, and the story a bit too contrived and predictable.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the Wallace and Grommit movie. The sexual innuendo caught me off guard.
I'm going to xpost this to my LJ. Commenting system is more robust and there are more participants.
ReplyDelete