Monday, June 19, 2006

5 Mini Movie Reviews

Well It's been a while so I thought I'd post some mini-reviews on some movies I've seen lately. So with out further preamble.

The Man Who Fell to Earth


I was really disappointed with this movie. The premise seems promising enough, alien falls to earth, gets stranded, uses advanced technology to create a huge company to fund a project to build a spaceship home. That has great potential. Unfortunately it doesn't really live up to it. It falls very short. It has one or two interesting moments but overall its hard to follow and blah.

Anyway I think the whole movie is best summed up by Richard Scheib who wrote, "The Man Who Fell to Earth could almost be a version of E.T. where instead of returning home E.T. just gives up, becomes disillusioned and turns into a wasted lush." And while that's pretty accurate it makes the movie sound a lot more entertaining that it really is. I wouldn't recommend it, with so many other movies I'm sure you can find something better.

The Man Who Fell to Earth on IMDB

RENT


Now this was an enjoyable movie. It is a bit strange and I'm probably a bit biased. I listened to the music some with my brother before I ever watched the movie. Some of the music is really awesome. The characters are interesting and it has a pretty decent message too.

I'm really not sure how to sum it up very well. The movie is really more character based than plot based. But basically a independent film uh... person makes a documentary about his life for one year.
In any case, if you like musicals, RENT is an enjoyable movie, go ahead watch it or not.

Rent on the IMDB

X-Men: The Last Stand


This is a new movie and based on the last two you would expect it to be really good. And in a way it was, it confused me at first. I left having enjoyed it but feeling vaguely disappointed. I really had to read a couple different reviews to figure why it didn't seem like a good movie. The thing is its got lots of good elements, cool characters with various powers, impressive special effects, a decent premise. Of course part of the problem is too many characters, you barely have time enough to really care at all what happens to them and others just seem to disappear. Basically just to much going on so why it was interesting it wasn't terribly engaging. There are much better reviews that go into more depths around but my advice is go ahead and watch it for special effects just don't expect much in the way of character development.

X-Men: The Last Stand on the IMDB

The Shaggy Dog (2006)


It really is amusing that in some ways I liked this movie more than the X-Men one. Mainly this is because I went in expecting it to be fairly corny and stupid. So when it turned out to be so that was Ok. Also I was pleased that they seemed to be able to put a few new ideas, the changing was a genetic mutagen or something and he could turn back by meditating. But in retrospect the movie was pretty juvenile and as it is a rehash of something that his done before. So if your not expecting anything classy and are amused by someone running around and making an utter fool of himself by acting like a dog you might get a few laughs.

The Shaggy Dog on the IMDB

Doctor Zhivago


This movie is not really something I would normally watch. But just because of that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. Although enjoy is a rather strong word, more of entertained or intrigued. The tale itself is rather bleak at moments. And understandably so considering the material it covers. Some of the cinematography was really well done and the acting was very good. If X-Men had no character development this had more than enough to make up for it. It is a really long move and while it does go places and has a plot it left me wanting more resolution. Still I think if you have a few hours available instead of watching one of The Extended Lord of the Rings you could watch this and expand your horizons.

Doctor Zhivago on the IMDB

In closing I would probably rank them in this order.
1 Rent
2 Doctor Zhivago
3 X-Men
4 The Shaggy Dog
7 The Man Who Fell to Earth

Yes I did skip 5 and 6 but I'm sure I could easily find two more movies much much better. In any case have fun and such.