Mad-City Wedge

Here’s the recap from my Friday night movie expedition… I watched a movie I had been waiting anxiously for, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Now let me preface my review by saying I am a fan of the book by Douglas Adams. I’m not fanatically about it or anything, but I did enjoy reading it and the other four books in the trilogy and I did a re-read of the book about a month ago to refresh my memory.

Going into the movie I wondered about how they were going to end the movie. Having read the book, I knew going in that if they stayed true to the book, it would have an ending that wouldn’t agree with a lot of people.

Having watched the movie now, I think they did a good job of adapting the book into a movie and did manage to stay pretty true to the book that I thought would be very hard to adapt into a movie. The character’s were pretty well cast. I was a little concerned about Mos Def as Ford, but he was alright. The rest were cast exceptionally well. Especially Marvin, the depressed robot.

Like I said, I thought this would be a very difficult book to adapt and I think they pulled it off. I’m hoping the rest of the books are also adapted. Was it worth my money? I would say it would be money well spent on a matinee movie. Not everyone will like this movie though. If you’ve read the book and enjoyed it, you’ll probably enjoy the movie. If you haven’t read the book, you may like or hate it. I saw a very mixed reaction of other’s coming out of the theatre, some very positive, other very negative, and that is what I thought going in and felt double so after watching it.

Watched another double feature last night and this time I picked two, yes two, entertaining movies.

Lets start with the first one I watched, Kung Fu Hustle. While thinking of a way to categorize this movie, I came up empty. It seems to fall into so many different categories that it almost defies categorization, except that at heart it truly is a “kung fu” movie. There is a little song and dance, there is comedy (lots of comedy), fighting, action, and shockingly, there is even a plot (something that way too many action movies forget to include). Now it isn’t’ a spectacular movie by any means, but for the 90 or so minutes, I was entertained completely. The plot isn’t overbearing and doesn’t get in the way, but there is a plot that develops the characters into people that you care about (something that Mission Impossible 2 didn’t do, more on that in another post). The action scenes are very well done and funny to boot. Definitely well worth the price of admission, but probably only a matinee ticket, unless you are a true kung fu movie fan. Also, the fact that it is subtitled, may scare off some people so it may not be a movie that everyone enjoys…

The second movie in the double feature was The Interpreter staring Nicole Kidman. Now Nicole Kidman isn’t typically an actress that will draw me to a movie, but I’ve been pretty hard up for a decent movie lately and this looked like one. And I wasn’t disappointed. Once again, this movie has a plot (I’ll get into my dislike of plot less movie when I gave my scathing review of MI2 sometime) and a plot is almost always a plus (I won’t say always a plus, because when I do, some movie will come out without a plot and it’ll work). 30 second overview… Kidman plays an interpreter from an African country, overhears a plan to assassinate a foreign leader, tells the “cops” and then it gets interesting. I won’t go into too many details because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. The movie was very entertaining and kept me guessing for most of it. Well worth an evening ticket and your date and you should both enjoy it. I just wish more were at least this good.

Coming in next week’s column, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’m very curious as to how they adapted this classic novel to the big screen.

I watched a couple of movies yesterday. One was enjoyable and one wasn’t…

Fever Pitch is a typical date movie. Jimmy Fallon always seems to play likeable character and it was it hard to believe it was a Farrelly Brothers’ Movie. No gross out comedy or anything. It was enjoyable to watch, but wasn’t anything special. In my movie rating system it would be a definate matinee, unless you’re taking a date.

The Amityville Horrors… where should I begin… Let’s start with what was good about the movie… it wasn’t even 90 minutes long and I was eating popcorn that was fresh out of the popper. Ok, now on to what wasn’t good. The whole premise of the movie just seemed bad. My current gripe with the movies that attempt to be horror movies is why do the try to explain things? Just let some maniac loose who kills people. Or there are ghosts that drive people mad and make them kill people. You don’t need a complicated backstory for a horror movie. They should just follow the rules that Scream brought to the attention of the world and leave it at that. My biggest gripe with this movie… the mom, can’t remember her name (and it doesn’t matter) goes to the church for help. The Father/Priest/Whatever realizes he’s heard this story before. He eventually goes to the house and then gets scared and runs off. You think, having the job he has, he would have the deceny to at least run off and take the family with him. It would have saved me about 20 minutes. Also, I don’t think I could get past the fact that lead actor (once again, don’t know his name and it doesn’t matter) use to be on the TV show 2 Guys, A Girl, And a Pizza Place (latter renamed 2 Guys and Girl) and I’m pretty sure that he has typecast himself, at least in my head, as the guy that he played in the TV show (Berg?). The verdict, when you’re flipping channels in 3 months and see this movie on TV, keep flipping. The informercial on the next channel may not be better, but it is very likely only going to waste 30 minutes of your life. Spoiler alert… Maybe it would have been better if he had played the same character as the guy he played in the TV show, who buys a house, moves into the basement and goes crazy. At least it would have been funnier to watch.

Interesting how I wrote more about the bad movie? Guess I felt more strongly about that movie being bad, than Fever being OK.

Here is a brief explanation of my movie rating system… It is based on when a movie will be worth the price of admission. It goes from Evening Price Tickets to Matinee to Budget, Rental, Pay TV (like HBO), TV (like NBC or TBS), to keep flipping the channels. I may come up with some other levels on this scale at times, but you should be able to figure it out.

Just watched Sahara tonight… Nothing really special, but I was entertained. It made for a good popcorn flick. It is something along the lines of The Mummy or National Treasure.

Watched another double feature last night and this time I picked two, yes two, entertaining movies.

Lets start with the first one I watched, Kung Fu Hustle. While thinking of a way to categorize this movie, I came up empty. It seems to fall into so many different categories that it almost defies categorization, except that at heart it truly is a “kung fu” movie. There is a little song and dance, there is comedy (lots of comedy), fighting, action, and shockingly, there is even a plot (something that way too many action movies forget to include). Now it isn’t’ a spectacular movie by any means, but for the 90 or so minutes, I was entertained completely. The plot isn’t overbearing and doesn’t get in the way, but there is a plot that develops the characters into people that you care about (something that Mission Impossible 2 didn’t do, more on that in another post). The action scenes are very well done and funny to boot. Definitely well worth the price of admission, but probably only a matinee ticket, unless you are a true kung fu movie fan. Also, the fact that it is subtitled, may scare off some people so it may not be a movie that everyone enjoys…

The second movie in the double feature was The Interpreter staring Nicole Kidman. Now Nicole Kidman isn’t typically an actress that will draw me to a movie, but I’ve been pretty hard up for a decent movie lately and this looked like one. And I wasn’t disappointed. Once again, this movie has a plot (I’ll get into my dislike of plot less movie when I gave my scathing review of MI2 sometime) and a plot is almost always a plus (I won’t say always a plus, because when I do, some movie will come out without a plot and it’ll work). 30 second overview… Kidman plays an interpreter from an African country, overhears a plan to assassinate a foreign leader, tells the “cops” and then it gets interesting. I won’t go into too many details because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. The movie was very entertaining and kept me guessing for most of it. Well worth an evening ticket and your date and you should both enjoy it. I just wish more were at least this good.

Coming in next week’s column, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’m very curious as to how they adapted this classic novel to the big screen.