Oh my god did this suck. I do plan to address how much it sucked in greater detail, I just can't be bothered right now.
28 Days Later
There was a fair bit of quality work that went into the original film, and I'll admit to liking Cillian Murphy, Christopher “don't call me Ian” Eccleston, and Brendan Gleeson quite a bit. It was a remarkable achievement to make a film like that for pennies, free from a lot of commercial restraints, and there were some flickering, brilliant moments, like Jim on his back catching sight of the plane, or wide-eyed Hannah's red dress disappearing into the dark. It was a bit too slow and this crashed me out of the film too often, which was full of long waits in between shit jumping out at you and too many endings, and the occasional homage to Romero felt more forced than meaningful. I have some reservations about continuing that into a new story with Robert Carlyle and some kid with a silly haircut, and wonder if Danny Boyle's really got anywhere farther to go with this story. On the other hand, Harold Perrineau was so fantastic as the narrator on “Oz”, and he so desperately tried to single-handedly lift Romeo + Juliet to be something worthwhile, so I may check it out at the dollar theater to see what he's up to in this movie.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
I don't care if I'm the only person who understood what was going on in Dead Man's Chest, I'm still claiming this movie is going to be an epic conclusion to the grandest tale ever based on a Disneyland ride. I will be running a review session for anybody who needs to catch up, reading list to be distributed later.
The Bourne Ultimatum
I was a big fan of The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy, which are both fabulous espionage thrillers. The first two films obviously strained the limits of the emotional maturity of the audiences I saw them with, but the fact that they were made for adults is another reason I'm excited about The Bourne Ultimatum. I really enjoy Matt Damon as the poker faced Jason Bourne, because he's able to capture this split identity of the amnesiac blank canvas with some essential sense of character pushing up from underneath in his eyes and the occasional grin he allows himself. Julie Meadows is back for this one again, and in her brief appearance in The Bourne Supremacy is part of what's so captivating about our protagonist, we follow the sympathetic, tender amnesiac Bourne, but Julie Meadows with just a brief appearance captures the crippling terror he inspires in the people who actually know what he's capable of, and Joan Allen showed enough as an antagonist that I really want to see what happens when Bourne comes back after her. There are other fabulously talented people joining the series as well, including David Strathairn and the always remarkable Paddy Considine, who I raved about at length in Dead Man's Shoes, and that's certainly more than enough reason to see it.
Live Free or Die Hard
While I can't claim to have high hopes for this film, which brings back John McClane after a decade in the wilderness and twenty years of imitators taking the genre so far into excess and teaming him up with the “I'm a Mac” guy, I will still see it. There is some charm to Bruce Willis as the poor guy having a rough day getting tangled in the multi-layer plot of a German mastermind. It's a simple story, the guy who really just wants to sleep off the jetlag and hang-over tries to wrap his head around a horrible situation, and yet part of the fun is that nothing is actually quite what it initially seems. It's worth a chance, even though the other Die Hard film with nobody of the caliber of Alan Rickman, or Jeremy Irons to be delightfully mischievous, or Samuel L. Jackson as an irritated sidekick, turned out to be somewhat forgettable. That's what I would predict for Die Hard 4.0, but of course I'll have further information when I succumb to curiosity and see it anyways.
Shrek the Third
I loved the original Shrek, and while the sequel was a bit pedestrian, I did find some things to really enjoy about it. Mainly Puss'n'Boots, because an ex-girlfriend used to accuse me of manipulating her by making big watery lil' lost puppy dog eyes at her. So I'll see it, even if I'm not too excited about it.
Day Watch
Ночной дозор came out three years ago and became the highest grossing film in Russian cinema history, which given the rapid change in Russia's fortunes may have put it up against the suspiciously high receipts reported by the Brezhnev era Ministry of Information for Happy Worker Crushes Moose and Squirrel for Glory of Supreme Soviet. To see something like Nightwatch from the balcony of The Uptown was pretty cool, to see a mainstream success aimed at the video game generation but out of a really different film culture, all filmed in the real Moscow instead of the usual establishing shot of the Kremlin followed by scenes filmed in back alleys of Toronto with discarded Molson cans everywhere, eh. I was absolutely hooked, and I have to know how this horror epic ends... actually Nightwatch had me when they animated the subtitles as part of the film's overall sense of visual style, which used CGI and effects expertly to create this shocking intrusion of the supernatural into the dirty grind of everyday Moscow, with none of the excess of certain tedious superhero movies. So yeah, I'll be at Day Watch, along with anybody I can drag with me.
Hostel II
Okay, I've been known to watch some serious crap, but the original Hostel was really a chore. The hour of girls taking their tops off was apparently supposed to give me time to bond with the horny victims, but it really didn't. Apparently the sequel won't take so much time exploring the countryside before getting to the torture, and Quentin Tarantino has promised us this film will “delve deeper into the organization”, which actually sort of has to be more interesting than three dumbasses wandering about Amsterdam looking to score cheap weed and work up their nerve to approach prostitutes. The first one was like what you always get when somebody tries to make a Tarantino movie, an incredibly long set-up that Tarantino sustains with sharp dialogue, and the amateurs try to sustain by waving breasts in the audience's face while hissing “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” I may wait for the unrated DVD so I have the luxury of the fast-forward button, but mainly to see if I can squeeze out a humorous rant about it for the teeming masses that read this blog.
Ocean's 13
I really loved both Ocean's 11 and Oceans 12, because of the overall festive sense of style Steven Soderbergh invested them with, and I'm really looking forward to this one as well. And while being in an ensemble cast like this is really a game of inches, I'm anxious to see the contribution of Al Pacino, because it's been eight years since Any Given Sunday with nothing but the strangely unambiguous remake of Insomnia he did with Robin Williams and that topless version of The Merchant of Venice to tide me over. (I'm not even going to mention S1m0ne.) And if that's not enough it's got Eddie Izzard returning as Nagel, and sumo wrestler Akebono stamping out evil spirits, hopefully in the same scene.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Oh god no. Just no, no more. Yuck.
Surf's Up
This isn't a sequel actually, but I heard an anecdote about the trailer for this movie that amused me. When the surfing penguins appeared, all the small children in the theater, with one voice, all began to groan and cry out “No! Not more penguins!” Even the target audience, who are about the least discriminating consumers of film I can think of besides whoever is renting those Crazy Husband of the Week movies Ashley Judd kept doing, are exasperated with an approach to film production that seems more appropriate to McDonald's... if it sells, supersize it and throw in a toy. And seriously, I saw one of those Ashley Judd movies, the one where it's a taut, courtroom drama and then at her moment of triumph her husband turns into a maniac and tries to kill her.
Evan Almighty
I thought Bruce Almighty was hilarious, and the underlying theme, which obviously echoed Jim Carrey's own decision to take pride in being a comedic actor and quit trying to be something he wasn't, was kind of touching without being too on the nose. Steve Carell's speaking in tongues scene was worth the price of admission, and there is a reminder in how far we've come as a society in the casting of Morgan Freeman: a black man born in the South of the 1930's growing up to play the face of God in a mainstream, commercial film. So for Morgan Freeman and Steve Carell I'll give it a chance.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
These books really crept up in length over the course of the series, and by number four became too unwieldy to make into one film without some serious decisions about what to cut and by doing so, in what direction this would take the film creatively. So of course nobody bothered, and it ended up a mess of snippets of every single thread of the book, and couldn't be pieced together without reference to the original text. I would guess there's plenty of room to trim this one into a manageable story, and while they're at it they could trim their leading lady's eyebrow, since those kids really didn't age well and it's weird to look back and see how cute and fluffy they used to be. Well, no rush on this, then, since despite a grand sort of setting and story, thus far Harry Potter has looked about the same on the small screen as on the big one.
The Simpsons Movie
The TV show jumped the shark so long ago, this movie should be a washed up, tired old joke. The other possibility is that free from the grind of cranking out season after season, maybe Matt Groenig will step back from tediously winking at the fans every minute with incestuous internal references to go with a theme ripped from the headlines and take his last chance to do something memorable as a last hurrah for his over-marketed characters. Maybe this show has one more Marge vs the Monorail left in it, and maybe it can sustain its comedic premise for two hours, but there's definitely no way I'm going the opening weekend to sit with the over-laughers who have to register their approval of every in-joke.
Daddy Day Camp
While I am easily amused, I got my fill of fart and poopy jokes back in 4th grade (and every time I go to Chicago) and I wouldn't be caught dead at this shit.
Rush Hour 3
It's been too long. I think Jackie Chan has an unbelievable talent for comedy, and he and Chris Tucker are hilarious together. And there's proof it was shot on location in Paris since Roman Polanksi's in it, and he can't enter the United States without being arrested over that whole drugging and raping a 13-year old thing. But really, they sold me with this joke from the trailer:
“Lee, what did he just say?”
“I don't know, I think he was speaking French.”
“What the-- you're Asian, man, stop embarrassing yourself!”
Mr. Bean's Holiday
With the right material, Rowan Atkinson is one of the funniest performers I've ever seen, but too often he's under-used or gets an easy paycheck for acting like a goof (exceptions include the irritating shop assistant in Love, Actually, which was hilarious). His best role was as the various incarnations of Edmund Blackadder, and watching Blackadder II now it's hard to believe the biting sarcasm is coming from same guy who's been reprising the same two roles in a series of commercial films: the nervous priest from Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Mr. Bean. There is something remarkable about Mr. Bean though, in that Mr Atkinson takes what should be tiresome slapstick and does manage to make it into something truly funny. So I'll give him a chance in a Bean sequel.
Halloween
According to my sources, it was time for a fresh take on the character behind the Halloween series. I'm not sure what was missing, since the whole point is his faceless expression, devoid of human empathy. The whole film comes from a previous era in American horror films, focused on dread rather than gore, so I'm not sure Rob Zombie is the guy to bring out subtle nuances of meaning in the continuing story of Michael Meyers. It's also had a few fresh takes, like the killer Halloween masks, the psychic niece technodruid angle (or whatever the hell was going on) and the underwater reboot. Halloween H2O actually worked, and has some serious scares, because the gimmick was getting actors who'd actually been in a movie before, and not Busta Rhymes and whoever was doing Josh Hartnett at the time. So of course they ruined that too... at least Katee Sackhoff went on to better things. And it had a topless redhead with a stupid name (Daisy McCrackin). So despite Mr. Zombie's success with the disturbing yet memorable Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, I may wait for the DVD on this one.
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
I loved the first one. Partly because I couldn't believe Nicholas Cage was in a movie that looked as stupid as National Treasure did, and I love pleasant surprises. This one's got everybody back, plus Helen Mirren, and will feature not one, but two Coppolas (no relation). I wouldn't hold out high hopes of capturing the fun of the first film again, but considering how shitty the first one looked at first glance, I think they've earned the benefit of the doubt, so I'll go see it. Hopefully with the Captain there to give me another sidebar on American history.
His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass
This is not a sequel, but unless it makes no money, gets picketed by Christian groups who are still stinging , and fails to move any happy meal toys to boot, there will be sequels. I read about half the book, and was intrigued by the mysterious, supernatural goings on but ultimately the characters left me cold enough that I neglected to pick it up again and finish it. Some people rave about the series, and there was a successful stage play of some sort, while others say it's one man's tiresome ranting against the Catholic church. Which is not exactly contradictory, so I guess we'll see how the film version goes.
Examining my own evaluations, apparently I'm willing to see any piece of crap that makes it to the theater, and what I love most about films are the actors. At least it will be a while before they cast Spider-Man 4 and I have to make a judgment call on seeing it.
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