Mini movie review: Centurion

I'm a fan of some of Neil Marshall's movies - new(ish) horror classics The Descent and Dog Soldiers - and I like brutal period hack-and-slash movies.  But somehow, Marshall's Centurion just didn't quite work.  I guess there needs to be more than just disembowlings and head-crushings to make a battle/survival flick work.

More's the pity, because Centurion had an above-average cast, including Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones's Davos Seaworth), Imogen Poots and Noel Clark (Mickey Smith, Rose's boyfriend from Doctor Who).  The nutshell story follows a small cohort of Roman soldiers, stranded on the northern frontier of the Empire after bloodthirsty Picts decimate their legion.  It is up to Fassbender's centurion to lead the remaining men through rough country to the safety of the Roman garrison to the south.  The Picts send revenge-obsessed tracker Etain (Kurylenko) after them with a group of warriors and the Romans' safe return is anything but guaranteed.

Marshall has a deft hand with action sequences - that's not in question.  But Centurion's characters are thinly drawn and there's just nothing special about the story unfolding on the screen.  The Descent was also about a group of people in challenging terrain trying to get away from relentless, chasing killers and that is a much, much better movie.

Mini movie review: Prometheus

I wanted to love Prometheus.  Really, I did, because I love Alien and Aliens so much.  And Prometheus is big and beautiful (I didn't see it in 3D, just regular 2D on my home television), and with a great cast: Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, etc.  But I thought it was slow, and not in a creepy, tense way, and not scary, and I was underwhelmed by the aliens.  I didn't really care about any of the characters because the movie took more time being slow and beautiful and didn't spend any time with the people so you could get to know them before they got killed off.  Beautiful, yes, but boring - and an Alien movie should NOT be boring.

Also, what the hell sort of biologist would look at that rearing, hissing, alien snake thing and want to cuddle it?  What a moron.  It's an angry alien cobra, for chrissakes.  I kind of had a hard time taking the rest of the movie seriously after that.

Bad Haiku about: Superhero Movies (IV)

This is the last superhero movie for a little while, I promise.  X-Men: First Class.  Here's the thing: when this came out, in June 2011, everyone was all "Ooooooh! It's a good X-Men movie!"  But then we got to see Captain America, and we'd already seen Thor and IM2, and I just don't think XM:FC holds up.  Despite the strong cast (Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmichael Fassbender), and the sleek retro-60s setting, it's too origin-y, jumping around the world for little short scenes and never giving the audience much time to connect with anyone.  Yes, it was TONS better than the more recent X-Men fare - and I loved the Wolverine cameo, with the one f-bomb of the whole movie - but I'm thinking the Avengers line is stronger.

if fassbender was

really in charge i'd go with

magneto for sure