Over the course of the year, some of you (you know who you are) inundated me with phrases like “Really, you haven’t seen that movie?” “_____ was totally awesome! You have to see it!” and so on. And so, in an effort to build up my pop-culture copiousness, I have started watching some of these movies that have been so highly esteemed by my fellow students. It hasn’t been easy. I don’t own any of the movies, and I don’t really have enough money to rent them all. And so I have made the perilous trek to my local library (which is a whole five minute bike ride from my house) and checked out the first wave of DVDs. This journey has not been without perils, however. Getting movies out from the library is like walking on a sparsely distributed minefield. Most of the time you’re okay, but when things go wrong, they go wrong spectacularly. For example, I only made it an hour into Hot Fuzz before it refused to play any further, the victim of the inept ministrations of library patrons before me. Of course, it stopped working right in the middle of a key scene, and now I have to wait until another libraries copy comes in to finish the movie. And when I compare this to walking through a minefield, I am exaggerating to the point where my poetic license is in danger of being revoked.
But that’s enough tales of my misfortune. My real purpose in creating this post is to give you some of my impressions of the movies that I did make it through. (Aren’t you lucky.)(Remember, all ratings are from this post)
• The Bourne Identity. I wish I hadn’t read the book before watching this movie. I probably would have enjoyed it more. As it was, it was still a good movie, but I knew what I was missing and so I knew how much better it could have been. They didn’t even mention the main villain of the book... Rating: 3/4
• The Bourne Supremacy. I thought this was a much better movie than The Bourne Identity, partially because I was more prepared for the changes in the story, and partly because I haven’t read the book upon which it is based. I enjoyed watching it and it never lost me, which is really all I ask. Rating: 1
• 28 Days Later. My first reaction after watching this movie was ‘Huh?’ It suffered from schizophrenic writing and a really strange final act. You know, the bit with the soldiers. Everything was mostly making sense up until about the halfway point, when they killed the most likable character and the plot went on a crazy detour. How am I supposed to believe that a group of soldiers went that crazy in just 28 days? I mean, if it had been a year or more I could understand, but under a month? Really? That entire sequence broke the immersion for me, and lowered my enjoyment of the film as a whole. Not to mention the fact that lazy screenwriting meant that everyone got less and less careful about infection as the movie went on. Overall, though, it was an okay zombie film. With not enough zombies or likable characters. Rating: ½
• Shaun of the Dead. This is easily my favorite of the first batch of movies I’ve watched this summer. It’s a zombie film with likable characters, actual character development, and really funny bits as well. The makers of the film describe it as a ‘Rom-Zom-Com’ (that is, Romantic Zombie Comedy) and although that doesn’t sound like a recipe for success, it works surprisingly well. It never quite devolves into a spoof of zombie movies or romantic comedies, but definitely has some fun with the basic assumptions of its source genres. Rating: 1 3/4
Well, that’s all I have for now. As I watch movies and have spare time I’ll probably do more posts of this nature. And if you’ve got recommendations of movies for me to watch, post them in the comments. That is, if anyone is still reading this blog.
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