So I watched a bunch of films this week, and here’s a quick overview.
The Crazies- Based on an early film by George Romero, I quite enjoyed this. Starring Timothy Olyphant and Rahda Mitchell, I’m a little surprised this didn’t get a theatrical release here. They obviously spent money on it, it had good production values and it was made professionally, but I guess they didn’t think they had a market. Too bad, I would’ve liked to have see Timothy’s duck walk striding across the big screen. He fits the role quite well, fitting into that familiar role of a lawman. I enjoyed this a lot more than the original, I thought there was plenty of tension and some good scares and blood gags. I liked it.
Hot Tub Time Machine-I missed this at the cinema, because it looked kind of stupid, but it’s not too bad. If you don’t see it, you’re not really missing out on that much, but I don’t think you need to go out of your way to avoid it. I do wonder though, and it’s not something I usually do, but I did this time, about the “voice” of the film. It just seemed to be aimed at a male audience, I wondered if a woman would appreciate it as much, then I thought well she probably has had to deal with that all her life, and she’s probably just used to it, and I thought that’s a pity.
The Tournament-Another straight to video release, so maybe expectations are low, but then you’ve got a pretty good cast, like Robert Carlyle and Ving Rhames, so it’s got that going for it. So I have a couple problems with this movie, but nothing that actually got in the way of my enjoyment. The movie tells the story of a high stakes game where every 7 years, assassins from around the globe gather in one town for last man standing competition. This is where I have the first problem, that it’s such a stupid idea. If you’re going to have a competition that wipes out most of the talent in that field, to me that seems pretty stupid. But once you get past that, you end up with a situation where lots of people are trying to kill each other, so there’s action a plenty, and there’s an innocent man stuck in the middle, so you’ve got enough of a story to keep it moving along, so it worked pretty well for me. The other problem was, that supposedly the organisers have hacked into the CCTV systems to keep watch on the game, and yet it seems to me that there are cameras available to them which seems to me cameras wouldn’t be available. And then later in the movie, there’s a church which no cameras are in, yet earlier there was church with cameras in. C’mon, really? Anyway. Blood flies, cars blow up, all that kind of stuff, and it was pretty well done, so I quite enjoyed it. I think it was better than I was expecting.
So I Married An Axe Murderer-The return of a classic with some friends, and their first time. Early work from Mike Myers, but still funny. The treat was to see Alan Arkin again, as the Police Captain. I love Alan Arkin, he just seems to have that dryness to all his roles, that understated quiet manner, it’s gold. Also, “That boy’s got a head as big as sputnik”.
Mama Mia-There was really only a very limited chance I would ever watch this, and this weekend seemed to be the optimum confluence of events to do so. I kind of wanted to see it, because it looks like Meryl Streep is having a such a good time in it, but I didn’t want to because, well, look at it. But it was kind of ok, mainly because of the cast. Pierce Bronsan is an incredibly good looking man, though he really can’t sing. I started to imagine Stellan Skarsgard’s character was the same character from Ronin, and was waiting for him to pull out a gun and shoot people. And at the end when a crack appeared in the ground, I was actually excited because I thought the cliff might actually fall off, causing half the cast to fall into the ocean. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, but it was the most excited I got. Abba is fun, but this actually isn’t Abba. Maybe if I had more to drink, and we played it with the sing-a-long pop-ups, it might’ve been more fun, but I’d rather watch High School Musical again.
