Movies

I have been meaning to write about the movies I have been watching the past few months, and my opinion of them. Without further ado, here is the list.

First off, the first Highlander movie. To be honest I can not possibly imagine what people liked about this movie. Its plot is transparent and an insult to the viewer's intelligence, its basic premise is ridiculous and results in more plot holes than there are holes in a gangster's body after a drive-by shooting. The whole concept of being immortal is being ridiculed, any hint as to its mechanisms or precise working left unexplained, instead using it as an excuse for silly plot twists which results in a movie which would struggle to reach the status of a B movie. In the end there's a reason why it became a cult movie, not because it's a particularly good movie, but because enough people got fooled by its premise.

Next I'd like to skip to a more recent movie, namely the new - and only - A-Team movie. There's been a lot of talk about it, whether it really paid homage to the original series, whether the new actors could equal the series', whether the movie wasn't too violent considering the rather non-violent nature of the series, and so on. In the end I am firmly convinced that the movie succeeded beautifully in bringing the A-Team to the 21st century, and keeping the spirit of the series alive. Right from the start I felt that it got all the tiny details right and aside from people actually getting hit by bullets, it could have been written back in the 80s as part of the series. Nothing but praise here.

Another recent movie which recently appeared in the cinemas around here is Clash of the Titans. It was exactly what I expected from it: very spiffy CGI, great CGI action scenes, and the brutal abuse of Greek mythology to prop up a storyline which kept limping along like a dog with all of its legs broken. In the end I barely remember the story except as a short three-line summary. It really is that uninteresting. I though that the US Army crew cut and dress of the main character (Perseus) was totally ridiculous as well. Still, a fun popcorn movie on a slow Sunday afternoon.

Closing in on rock-bottom again, we have Transformers 2. Whereas the first instance was pretty watchable, with pretty CGI and lots of interesting transforming robot action, the sequel manages to screw even that up. Worse, it manages to make the humans, who in the first movie were merely annoying, downright painful. They shouldn't just have cut all scenes with the main character, his retarded parents and slutty girlfriend, it is a requirement for surviving the bloody movie. The few cool scenes with the proper Transformers can't save the movie as more comic relief Transformers are introduced, pointless battles are fought and it is revealed that the script writer threw an ending together 30 minutes before the scenes got shot. All together, an aimlessly meandering trainwreck of a movie which can't even be saved by cool CGI like the first movie.

In another blast from the past, we have the Mortal Kombat movies, from the 1990s. Bad and aspiring yet painfully talentless actors generally end up in B movies, and these three movies have plenty of them. Sprinkled in are some proper actors, mostly in the first two movies which are the only two to actually involve the story of the game. These are cheap popcorn movies, but amusing to watch, especially if you know a bit about the Mortal Kombat games. The third movie was meant as the prequel to a TV series, and from all looks they cut the budget for acting lessons to about a tenth of that of the first two movies.

The villain you see in the first scenes of the movie is so ridiculous, with an ill-fitting skull mask, which is more comical than frightening due to the large front teeth of the upper jaw, combined with a slight speech impediment of the actor, which makes him as frightening as a pock-faced, bespectacled nerd in highschool. From that point onwards it's only downhill. We get the main guy who looks like he's drugged up on speed every time he's on stage, his girlfriend who defines 'blonde' and 'aspiring actress' and apparently a severe shortage of cloth for the manufacturing of women's clothes, as with every two scenes all females visible are wearing less and less. In my opinion this third movie and the resulting series are just a desperate attempt to appeal to immature, desperate (young) boys who have no concept of taste, especially not in women.

I'm still debating whether or not I should watch the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time movie. From all appearances it's another popcorn movie with more flashy stuff than substance, but it might be amusing.

On a side note, this week that interview for the Dutch Yes magazine got released in number 29. The site for the magazine is www.yes.nl where you can find an abbreviated version of the article. I haven't received a copy of the magazine myself yet, only a scan of the article from the journalist who apparently went on vacation without informing me. I'm still quite disappointed by how things went this time, especially with the Yes editor getting my site's address wrong two times, once in the print magazine, once on the site. I'll put a translated version of the article online soon.

Time to get back to finishing that fifth chapter of my Zelda OoT story. I'd like to have it done before Pieter arrives home from Italy tomorrow.


Maya