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Reviews
Harmony Town (2009)
I'm going' to the heart of Harmony town ASAP!
This movie is awesome -- it has everything you could ever want mashed into 11 minutes of pure fun! Ryan Parma did an excellent job directing the film, and the choreography was great. Genaro Perez has an excellent eye and his frames pop right off the screen like cotton candy. And did I mention the acting? Chance, who is played by a relative newcomer AJ Gutierrez practically commands the screen every time he's on it, and the rest of the cast of characters are equally quirky and fitting! I don't remember the last time I saw so many bright colors in a movie that wasn't animated by Pixar. The short is a breath of fresh air from most other short films out there, because it is ultimately a refreshing and positive experience that stays true to itself and makes you smile. I want to see Harmony Town the feature film... and then a whole kids series!
Superman Returns (2006)
Pretty Good, but not super
This installment of Superman starts out very shaky, skipping time periods and playing catch up with an audience that either knows the old series or doesn't really need to.
Some might say that this was important to make the movie have weight and back story, but it's not like you need much besides Kryptonite, invincible body, and available alien technology that's able to be stolen.
After this 15 minutes at the beginning, though, the movie starts moving very well. There's a one liner after a plane sequence that is pretty amazing.
I really liked the atmosphere of the Daily Planet, and I thought Routh did a good job as Clark. What I don't understand is how the movie never felt like it gave either of his personalities distinct moments on screen.
Ebert commented that he seemed to be monosyllabic, and this is probably because when he had a real line to deliver (one in the opening and one at the end) they were VERY poorly said.
I had no problems with anyone in any particular role, and the effects were great. But the movie started shakily and ended a bit overlong as well.
I don't know... I liked it, but I didn't love it.
Poseidon (2006)
Poseidon psucks
Poseidon is the epitome of mediocrity, and the only surprises it has are ones that are unbelievably lame.
The end, in particular is pretty amazing. The remaining people are in a life boat...that came out of nowhere after they crawled through a propeller that they melted/destroyed/whatever with a what looked like a fire extinguisher, but I digress...and our hero Josh Lucas shoots a flare into the air, and as the flare fades, it morphs (with a cool sound effect) into two rescue helicopters, and then the survivors start cheering, and all is well.
Before that, we have severely underdeveloped characters, but the one that sticks out is Dreyfuss, who starts the movie's new years celebration almost-crying on a phone asking for his ex-wife or someone to call him back, for old time's sake. But then, nothing is ever made of this ever again, and he's basically just the old white guy with an earring who goes along for the adventure.
I guess Wolfgang has something against Hispanics, because one is kicked off of Dreyfuss' legs as an elevator is falling down a shaft, and another is electrocuted under water.
The gas tank pouring down through the middle of a room into a giant mass of water, and then catching on fire and making a ridiculous fire shoot was pretty intense, and when Josh Lucas did a swan dive into the fire so he could swim across with a fire hose to find a way to get Emmy Rossum united with her boyfriend, who had just proposed to her that night...it was almost too believable for words.
Besides all of that, the dialogue is completely stale, and Josh Lucas even says something to the extent of, "I'm going by myself, I work better alone" it pretty much defines his character because his actual character has none. But the best line has to be when they're in an area with a pressure valve, and there's a line like "That's a pressure valve. It needs a lot of pressure." Oh, and the kid they have along with them gets caught in some kind of cage at one point, and the mother finds him and asks how he got in there, and the kid says "I don't know, but the water is getting really high!" And it tries to raise the stakes without ever caring to explain how anything happens.
That's basically it, and I know my review is disjointed, but it's because I can't convey how bad it really is. It might be worth sneaking in at the end to see the flare morph into the helicopters, but that's only if you never want to stop laughing.
King Kong (2005)
Pretty Bad, implodes with excess and sloppy effects
I just got back from an advance screening of Kong, and I must say my mouth definitely tastes pretty sour. At three hours long, the "epic" tale of a gorilla and a woman goes for broke. I say "epic" because the story and scale of this tale shouldn't be. Most of the characters are incidental to the plot, but Jackson and Co. try to give them arcs and do so lackadaisically. The only thing the audience really cares about is the giant gorilla and his pretty blonde prize. We don't need what felt like 2 hours of forced exposition and development for characters that die off second-handedly in the movie.
There are only a few standout scenes in the movie, and the most touching was a scene where Naomi Watts entertains Kong and he gets happy and then she runs out of stuff to do and he goes crazy.
Other than this, the bond between Kong and Watts doesn't amount to much. It didn't in the original, but here it SHOULD since the purpose of expanding characters and relationships was at the foreground of this remake.
The special effects were very uneven. Kong looks awesome, but simpler things like green screening actors into a brontosaur stampede looks ridiculous when the light and color tone of the characters don't match the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were poorly conceived and pale to Spielberg's from 93. The TRex looks basically the same with a less vibrant palette, and more is more as far as Peter Jackson is concerned. Less is more---means nothing.
Too many times were creepy island creatures used solely for shock effect and to be unsettling. These scenes added nothing to the plot or to any character development or any bond of any kind. It's a story about survival, but we really shouldn't have to watch 10 minutes of people battling bugs in a cave.
My main gripe with this film is that Jackson's direction didn't fit the story. He tried to make an epic film out of a simple story. A story that should be brisk and fun, not forced emotionally and paced lazily. He tried to cut between stories like he did in Two Towers, but it doesn't fit. The movie seems more choppy, and since no one cares about these new characters, we never really care what's happening to who at what point in time.
I wanted more Kong. I didn't want so much Jack Black. The way Jackson re-characterized his leads doesn't work. Jack Black as an ambitious Orson Welles-type auteur doesn't fit his character. His overly serious delivery of mostly everything slows the movie down and makes for a painful viewing. He can't do drama, and in my opinion can't do comedy.
On the other hand, I thought Adrien Brody was really good in this. He worked well as a screenwriter who becomes smitten with Watts. He has a heroic arc that is the most fulfilling out of the bunch.
Cinematography. When Kong first gets ahold of Watts, it's hard not to laugh as he runs through the jungle and is filmed at awkward angles. The camera is stationary at an extreme angle above Kong at some points, and the extreme motion around him doesn't feel natural or exciting at all. It feels like, "well we had to put Naomi Watts in this place on the sound stage and we couldn't really move her a whole lot...we did it in post!" Jackson is good with fantasy where there are no limits to his creations, but in this movie he clashes with expectations of realism, to a point. Kong looks like a gorilla, but the original Kong had personality. This one just huffs and puffs and pouts and roars. He made Kong less of a badass and more of a whiny bitch.
If Peter Jackson's goal really was to give people the same feeling he had the first time he saw Kong, he has pretty much completely failed.
But there are some good parts, so I give it a 5 for being mediocre with a few moments of cool.