Summer movie season is finally in full swing! (Gene Shalit, eat your heart out.) I’ve been out of review writing for a while and it’s not really my bag, but this year’s summer movie blog will be more of the “Notes on …” format I originally pictured. It’s just a record of my thoughts on films as I see them, without trying to sand down the edges and make the pieces fit too nicely. Essentially, you’ll be looking at an unstructured rough draft of a review that will never be written.
Spiderman 2 ripped off Superman 2 with the whole “Hero turns his back on herodom to get the girl only to return to the tights to save the day in the end,” so it seems fitting that Spiderman 3 had a little too much comedy and a corrupted dark version of our hero. I was waiting for Thomas Hayden Church to ski down the side of a sky scraper or black suited Spidey to straighten out the Leaning Tower of Pisa. (more…)
Note: As with most items on ReelChange.com, there is a spoiler risk, and this is primarily intended for consumption after viewing the film in question.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which follows the franchise naming conventions of the last couple of decades by adopting a colon early and eschewing numbers or, god forbid, roman numerals, opens with a shot that sets up my main question for these notes: Do these filmmakers really know what they are doing?
This isn’t a question of blockbuster filmmaking competence. Obviously, these are savvy summer blockbuster, audience-testing, demographic-targeting, opening-weekend-box-office-ruling, advertising tie-in, franchise-stroking business people, but are they filmmakers who are consciously aware of what they are doing? (more…)
I’d like to start these overwhelmingly positive notes with a negative thought that only cursorily involves Superman Returns. If I read one more “There’s no more originality in Hollywood” ramble by some under-watched film journalist hack, I will make it my life’s work to get that “writer” fired and returned to the Detroit Free Press or some other lame media outlet faster than the proverbial speeding bullet.
There’s nothing original in Hollywood? Everything is either a remake, or a sequel, or an adaptation of something popular?
I have three things to say to you.
- How can you bitch about originality while writing the same lame piece as bunch of other junket whores who know less about film than the guys at the sports desk?
- Yes, and that’s how it’s always been.
And finally, bringing us to the subject at hand:
- That doesn’t mean it has to be bad.
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Perfunctory sequel. X-Men 3: The Last Stand, under the frat boy level supervision of Brett Ratner, does everything that fans feared would happen back when Bryan Singer started the franchise. It would be an Electra of a failure if it weren’t built on the at least competent foundation that the previous two films laid down. For the most part it’s a styleless exercise in plot that skips from point to point with no concern for developing the substance needed to fill the picture’s empty epic scope.
It’s not that X3 crashes and burns, but it doesn’t soar like it should, either. The script sets some interesting ideas into motion, but it all feels hollow. Scenes seem to be missing. The action moves along, but not in any organic or satisfying way. Ratner seems like that guy who corners you in a film conversation and keeps coming back to how ‘cool’ The Rock was; seemingly to prove this, he sets X3’s final showdown on Alcatraz for little reason other than to use the Golden Gate Bridge and, I suspect, to kiss the demonic shoes of Bay. (more…)