Guh, where do I begin. This movie is a mess. The begin is so inefficiently scripted, ineffectively shot, and the last third of a film is a mess plot-wise, as well as the basic premise for the villain and the power they have in the film being inconsistent. Yeah it's got 3 'in's against it. The acting is okay enough. Michelle Monaghan and Shia LaBeouf do what they can with this poorly scripted blackhole. This film tries to create an atmosphere similar to Hitchcock's film North by Northwest in that it's character doesn't know why anything is happening to him, why he keeps being targeted. But the suspense is no where near that caliber, and part of the problem is that I didn't really care about the characters. The film tries to clip along quickly so as to not give the audience time to keep up or realize some of it's conventions don't make sense or are highly improbable. And although the film had it's far shares of nice explosions I found a lot of the film mediocre. It was kind of like sleeping for a bit and then suddenly loud loud LOUD! It tries to evoke some thoughts on issues of 'Big Brother' and how far that can and probably is going but the only commentary I heard from people around me is 'what?' 'that doesn't make any sense' 'how does that work?' There are other films it borrows from but I can't really say without giving away a 'major'? spoiler. This film isn't really entertaining apart from the problems so I can't even recommend this as a no brainer film to see when it's at the cheap seats.
Speed Racer 7/10
By now you've probably all heard about this film to death, but I figured I'd toss my two cents in there. Before I start I'd like to say that I've never seen a substantial amount of this film. I've maybe seen 10 minutes collectively of the anime and knew about the spoiler in the film from what I saw of the anime. I was never interested. Cars, racing, I don't really understand the allure of watching it other than wipe-outs and car explosions, and if that's you than shame on you for enjoying other's pains
. Thusly I didn't bother watching this film in theaters, and from the sounds of other friends it was a good choice.Having said all that, I was delightfully surprised by this movie on the small screen, and after having seen it I can understand people not liking it because of how overwhelming and hard to make out the racing scenes are. It probably would've annoyed me as much as the mecha fights in transformers mixed with Ang Lee's scene change technique in his Hulk movie combined. But I liked the basic premise of the film. Family. -- A family I wish was without Chim Chim and Speed's younger brother. Gah, I understand it's a partially a kids movie but man are they annoying as hell. They break up nice moments with stupid side commentary, like "Hey kids, I'm just like you, like me! like this movie!"GAH. The car-fu is hilarious and entertaining... the sequences you can make out, and the fighting is funny old school like in those old 70's films karate.
In the end I enjoyed it, now I shall go buy Iron Man.
Edited by chouzu_tao, 29 September 2008 - 06:21 PM.
You'd better not say that to The Rock!
