We saw a few movies over the holiday:
I Am Legend was actually pretty darn good, despite all-but abandoning the very core — dare I say ‘point’ — of the story. In its place they wedged a peculiar new type of ‘Legend:’ namely the Bob Marley album of the same name. Perplexing and stupid. Still it was pretty awesome despite this and the many MANY things I found to complain about. (Seriously, why would he hunt from a Mustang GT? How would he haul the carcass home?) Lots of funny little “future” tidbits like the Batman vs. Superman movie billboard in Times Square. Bottom line: even taking into account the major deviations from the much-loved source, I really liked it.
Sweeney Todd: I need to preface my review with this: as a rule, I dislike Broadway musicals on principle; that goes double for Hollywoodified Broadway musicals. That said, I couldn’t have loved Sweeney Todd any more than I did. Simply put: the story is great, the film is visually great, Depp, Rickmann, and Bonham-Carter are great, many of the songs are great — and, most awesomely, the quantities of blood are VERY great. I don’t have much knowledge of the source material, so I can’t vouch for its faithfulness (all I knew about the musical I learned from Jersey Girl) but I can say that it was very engaging, and very enjoyable. This is my surprise hit of the year. Oh: this time around Depp apparently decided to pick David Bowie for his character inspiration. What’s his deal with rock stars? My biggest complaint with the film? The titular character is a barber who is very handy with a straight-razor, but throughout the film he bangs and scrapes his various razors on the ground and objects, throws them around, etc. As one who actually shaves with a straight-razor, I know that they’re very sensitive, fragile things, and that a true master shaver would NEVER treat his instruments even remotely as badly as Todd does.
Alien vs Predator: Colonated Title: The first AvP was so ludicrously bad, both in performance and in critical/internet review, that the mere emergence of a sequel suggested to me that someone had come up with a brilliant-enough concept to sell the fickle studio heads on it and get it green-lit. I was wrong. From the look of things they got 5 different writers to come up with ingenious-yet-different concepts, then smooshed all 5 together into one script. And then removed the ingenious altogether. What was left was a mish-mash of potential heroes, all with hinted-at complicated back-stories and demons for each to overcome. None of these ever goes anywhere. This movie sucked all manner of ass, but not in an even remotely good way.
Juno: I really, really, liked this movie. It has been touted as “this year’s Little Miss Sunshine,” and I have to say the comparison is somewhat apt. If I had to describe it, I’d say it’s like Knocked Up with all of the Superbad sucked out of it. You know, in a good way. With characters out of a funnier, makes-sensier version of Garden State. A really refreshing and interesting look at teenage pregnancy and how it sometimes can go “right.”
