Friday, April 24, 2009

Film shorts

Since Mr. Mouse has been less than his usually healthy self of late (he contracted the overwhelmingly exhausting chest and head cold that I had last month - and totally blames me for it), I have managed to see a fair number of movies, having loads of extra free time since he's gone to bed at, like, 6:30 p.m. each night as opposed to his regular 8:00 p.m. bedtime. I don't really have enough to say about any of these flicks individually so here's the short and sweet of it:

I Love You, Man - Mr. Mouse and I actually saw this together when we needed to be out of the house for a showing. Wonders of wonders, we both liked it, laughing out loud a lot, and - bonus - Mr. Mouse stayed awake throughout! Of course, now my crush on Paul Rudd has reached exponential levels: he is totally adorkable in this movie, bordering on excruciatingly awkward when his character tries to say hip, funny things. Jason Segal is great too, and really really tall. Plus there's a puggle named Anwar Sadat and Jon Favreau makes a fantastic jerk. I've got that damn song from Rush stuck in my head now, though.

Spiderman 3 - This was just excruciating. I hated it, fast-forwarding through all the angsty-lovey stuff and generally being bored with all the CGI stunts. Were there any actual people in this movie at all? It was far too cluttered with characters - two love interests, two villains and a half villain/half BFF - so Spidey was spread a little thin. I liked Venom but he got so little screentime that he was all but pointless. Which is sort of what I thought of this movie: pointless. The best part was Bruce Campbell's scene-stealing cameo as the snooty French maitre-d'. Awesome.

Army of Darkness - Speaking of Bruce Campbell, I also knocked off Sam Raimi's third Evil Dead movie. Unfortunately, I liked this the least of the trilogy. I loved the original - a great little low-budget gorefest; I enjoyed the second but noted the tonal shift to a horror-comedy hybrid. This third installment? I pretty much felt like I was watching an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess. You know, except without Xena. I don't think AoD can be considered a horror film at all (even if it is a sequel), more like a fantasy/action flick with a heaping side of slapstick comedy. There's no gore to speak of, and no scary moments and while there's lots of violence, to be sure, it's mostly against skeletons, both stop-action animation and live-action puppets. Still, it's got Bruce Campbell, and thus can't be all bad. It's good to be the king, baby.


2 comments:

  1. ILUM: Adorkable...I've learned a new word! Rudd is the cinematic equivalent of bacon, mmm.

    S-M3: It did have way too much happening. I liked it, but they should've cut Venom's appearance until S-M4. Campbell is a scene stealer.

    AoD: Sacrilege! It's definitely not a horror flick, but it's chock full of one-liner goodness. It's Bruce Campbell's time to shine.

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  2. I wish I could take credit for "adorkable" but I can't - and can't remember where I heard it (Television Without Pity, maybe?).

    Excellent Rudd/bacon analogy: there's something for everyone with him - everyone likes Paul Rudd!

    AoD: I totally get how this launched BC into cult status, I just think I would have enjoyed the movie more if I hadn't brought all the "I looooved Evil Dead" baggage along with me and just took AoD as a standalone.

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