summer's movies, part deux

a nerd examines the movies released (or viewed by me and my wife) in the second half of the summer:

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army -
I have been involved in a commenting feast over on The Rabbit Room, particularly regarding this post on Hellboy. and, i must say, i had never imagined a blog that would talk about great music, Buechner, and Hellboy in the course of a week... but i digress...
Being a reader of, and subsequent fan of, Mignola's Hellboy, i already came to this movie knowing the characters, knowing their kinds of interaction, and also knowing how touted Del Toro's imagination is among friends and fellow moviegoers.
From that context, i have to say that this is one of my favorite movies of the summer, and i'm very excited about the DVD and any special features it may have. Mignola has placed Hellboy in Del Toro's capable hands, and the imaginative monsters and creatures that Del Toro has fashioned fit snugly into the existing Hellboy canon. the dialogue is well-written (which may sound like a silly thing to comment on, but wait until you keep reading...), the effects shots are integrated well, and overall this movie has a great pace and fun mood to it. I imagine that every comic book sequel will exceed its predecessor as long as the first movie MUST tell the origin story... once that's out of the way, the director and cast can really tell the story they want to.
If you've seen Hellboy or read any of the work, you should check out this film. it's definitely a theatre movie, too, unless you have a 'home theatre' you should check it out on a big screen.

The Dark Knight -
i have no creative way of saying that this was absolutely the best movie of the summer. i cannot hype the movie anymore than it has already been hyped. i cannot laud enough posthumous praises on the late Ledger's role. i can't even hold it against Bale for yelling at his mom and sister in London, since he handled Bruce so well.
I'm not quick to praise Batman Begins... i had many qualms with the movie and how it abused otherwise great characters and how Nolan created Dawes ex nihilo... but i'll be slapped if Nolan didn't redeem the Dawes character's worthlessness by having her serve as such a crucial pivot in almost all the relationships in this movie.
SPOILER ALERT
if you haven't seen this movie yet, you need to borrow 1.50 and see it as SOON as it is in the Blue Ridge Theatre (Iron Man is already there, btw). I regret the fact that Dent is killed at the end of the movie... but i'm so HAPPY that i feel regret! After Batman Begins, i was hesitant that i would feel anything regarding the Batman characters in Nolan's universe, but he crafted a wonderful version of Two-Face and i really wanted to see more of him. But alas, that may not happen... 'may' not...
SPOILER OVER
My friend and ex-roomie Matt has had a great philosophical interaction with another friend of his on facebook, and it prompted me to really examine the fact that there are a LOT of worldview and relational philosophy issues under the surface of TDK. that makes me happy - i like when a movie has more to unwrap, so that when i see it for the 5th time on DVD, i can continue to see/learn new things. my friend Adam English, professor of philosophy at CU, has written a great article about the movie here, and if you've got time you should definitely read it.
go watch Batman Begins (and don't judge its bad pace or misuses of characters), then GO WATCH THIS MOVIE.
AGAIN, if you have already seen it :-)

Wall-E -
Credit goes to my wifey for getting me to see this movie in the theatre. i was going to wait until the 1.50 for this one, but again my friends in the Rabbit Room reflected on the greatness that is Pixar movies and Wall-E specifically. after reading their thoughts and the comments there, i was a little more susceptible to my wife's prompting. finally, as a way to show her i love her and value the things she values, we went to see Wall-E in the big theatre.
i don't think that i'll go see a chick-flick in the theatre ever, or at least until i've been married for a long time and she's worn down my resolve. or they beam movies straight into your brain while you sit in a large room with other people, and i can't make it stop.
anyways, Wall-E is beautiful. it's another opportunity for Pixar to blur the lines between real and created-from-scratch cinematic beauty - there are a few times where you can almost forget that you're watching something "animated." the pace is great... very laid back, and even when things get hectic and there's a lot of quick, small movements on-screen, you're not forced to the edge of your seat - you're still invited to sit back and soak in all that's happening.
which is ironic, given that part of the appropriate satire in the film is aimed squarely at consuming, lazy, Americans sitting back and relaxing.
Sarah loved the movie, i really enjoyed it, and it's worth seeing on the big screen - so catch it soon if you haven't already, and it could actually make a decent date movie! and so far, Pixar hasn't screwed up a theatrical release...

The X-Files: I Want to Believe -
this movie got shafted critically (i'm a fan of RottenTomatoes and their scale of determining freshness or rottenness), but that did not deter me. I love Mulder and Scully, and part of my formative teenage years were spent watching them not-kiss and avoid the black oil while almost-solving lots of imaginative cases. so what if the last season was crap - the X-Files series will stand the test of time as one of television's best.
the X-Files movies, however... not so much. i watched 'Fight the Future' with my wife the night before we went to see this one, and i was disappointed with how MUCH i needed to explain to her as the movie went along. and how little was resolved, and basically how weakly that movie stood on its own.
I Want to Believe falls into a similar trap - theres a lot of background needed to really get into the movie and its characters, there's very little resolved, and it doesn't really stand on its own. this is a movie for X-Files fans, and that's about it. box office numbers should relfect that.
all that said, i actually enjoyed this one. my wife didn't. but back to me - i loved seeing Duchovny and Anderson together again. it was satisfying to see them interact, and to see them working through aspects of the case in this movie. the faith/doubt, science/paranormal paradoces are alive and well in this film, and the film feels like a longer episode of the show - one of the episodes that stood alone without delving into black oil and alien abductions (which were often the better episodes).
this is probably a DVD movie, though, since none of the scenes really take advantage of being in a theatre setting. and, i still don't know why it was released in the summer, since the majority of the movie takes place in snowy locales.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
i'm not really sure what happened here. the scripts for the previous two Mummy movies (i refuse to count Scorpion King as one) were tongue-in-cheek B-movies. the special effects were appropriately creepy, visceral, and well-done. the dialogue was snappy and sarcastic, and Fraser does that well. Weiss had a great transformation from the first movie to the second, and her character had actual chemistry with Fraser's character.
but seriously, what happened?
I loved those movies so much that i went and bought two DVDs that came with "free" tickets to this movie... and i bought them at the beginning of the summer, before the reviews started to roll in regarding this Mummy. and slowly but surely, reviews did indeed roll in - and 9 out of 10 were negative. not to be deterred, i vowed to still use my free tickets. my brother saw the film and gave me at least 1 positive comment, so i still almost felt justified in wasting my gas money driving up to see this Mummy...
and throughout the entire film, i was haunted by the question: "what happened?"
The dialogue was absolutely horrible. i mean literal trash - i am shocked that this version of the script evaded the garbage can or at least the recycle bin of someone's desktop. Maria Bello, except for her voice-over in the beginning where she eerily sounds like Weiss, looked completely out of place in this film, and there was 0% chemistry with Fraser.
here's what's so weird - i liked the premise of the film, and the villian, better than the premise and villian of the new Indy movie! the terra cotta warriors were a nice touch, although everyone was very vocal about how they are not technically mummies. in fact, the movie was aware of this fact, and there were several overt attempts to convince the viewer that these were actually some sort of mummy in the form of really crappy one-liners from the main characters - "i hate mummies," in reference to the terra cotta warriors.
The design of the villian, the Dragon Emperor, was really clever. i enjoyed every scene that the Emperor was in, because of how visually interesting his character was. if Indy had had to battle this guy instead of ambiguous aliens and commies, Indy would have been a better movie.
basically, there are only about 15 minutes of film that make this movie worth viewing in the theatre. maybe less than that. it's a DVD view for people who really liked the Mummy series, but i even hesitate to recommend this for a rental. the dialogue and plot pacing are THAT bad.
what happened?

Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Lucas is a money whore.
there is really no other way to look at it. i mean, George Lucas said that he would NEVER, EVER, EVER release the original, theatrical editions of the Star Wars trilogy on DVD. he hated them, and disavowed their flawed yet beautiful existence. Then... last september... JUST KIDDING! Here ya go, all you nerds (like me) who want to see Han shoot first, hear the original Jabba's Palace song, and NOT see Hayden "i was terribly mis-cast" Christensen at the end of RotJ. there was NO reason for Lucas to go back on his vows, except that he realized he could make some more money on morons like me who love Star Wars.
and here comes The Clone Wars TV show on Cartoon Network.
The animated shorts by Tartakovsky on which this new CGI series is based are amazing. they are a breath of fresh air into a rather stale Star Wars universe post-Episode I, II, III...
but it seems that Lucas' desire to beat a practically dead horse, or milk the proverbial cow dry, has wrought this new, CGI movie and series that has capable voice actors but only cameos from Jackson, Lee, and the ubiquitous Anthony Daniels. Actually, i think that Daniels needs some credit for being available for EVERY incarnation of C3PO that i can think of...
This movie can't stand on its own... if you are not already a Star Wars fan, there's basically no reason to see this in the theatres. it did have some great action sequences, and some stunning visuals, but the dialogue was largely forced, the digital acting was weak, and there really isn't any new ground covered except to give Anakin a precedent for an 'apprentice,' so there is some more interconnectedness for the new console game The Force Unleased, in which Vader has another apprentice... ironically, this whole movie felt kinda like a video game, but not one that i would play.



my brother tells me i should see Tropic Thunder... so i'll add to this post if i do indeed make it out to that one soon!