Itagi

So, having not really been able to type, my stated intention of going to the movies, that being to write about it here, has kind of fallen by the wayside. However, I have seen many of Summer 07’s bounteous offerings of threequels and blockbusters, and its one potential entry to the pantheon of the greatest movies of all time, and so I thought I might do a quick mini review thing of everything I’ve seen since Spidey 3.

Oceans 13

So, just so everyone’s on the same page, original Rat Pack Oceans 11, a bit rubbish, remake brilliant apart from Don Cheadle’s accent (but he beat Phil Ivey heads up, so let’s cut him some slack), Oceans 12 only OK at best, expectations for Oceans 13 lowered. It certainly exceeded those expectations for me - funny, clever, set around one caper, meaning that the lack of focus that 12 really suffered from was nowhere in evidence.

The Good:

Matt Damon and his false nose, and his father’s insistence that it’s an unnecessary prop, and his insistence that it “plays”.

Brad Pitt’s Don’t You Want Me Baby ringtone.

The fact that the audience is just expected to play along with all the jargon and terminology, and pick it up as it goes along.

All the stuff in the Mexican dice factory, where the two brothers organise a worker’s revolt.

Eddie Izzard

The Only Ok:

Clooney and Pitt finishing each other’s sentences felt a little forced to me this time around.

Pacino underused question mark…

Was there ever the slightest iota of doubt that they’d pull off the caper?

The Bad:

COR LUV A DUCK GEEZAH OI’M A COCKERNEY SO I AM.

Die Hard 4.0

DIE HARD!!!! The greatest action movie franchise of all time comes back in its fifties…Well, OK, the franchise isn’t in its fifties but its star is, and he’s still kicking bottom and taking names. Die Hard 4 Pointless, as some unkind critics have dubbed it, was some of the most fun its possible to have watching a middle age man run around, and it had Kevin Smith in it which can only be a good thing.

The Good:

Bruce Willis, obv…

Justin Long as the hacker finding his inner hero, whilst worrying about losing his inhaler.

The tunnel set piece, ending with the ingenious use of car to take out helicopter. They really shouldn’t have put the “You killed a helicopter with a car.” “I was out of bullets.” bit in the trailer though.

Bad guys doing parkour is still cool in my book.

Kevin Smith

Excellent dialogue writing, I thought.

The one use of the Yipeekayay was thoroughly effective, and worth the wait.

The Only Ok:

The CG heavy jet fighter vs Articulated Lorry fight. I was pulled out of the movie by the change in textures brought on by the CG.

Now I’m not an advocate of swearing by any means, but this is a DIE HARD movie, for goodness sake. In the quest for a PG13 rating, much of the dialogue was toned down.

The bad guys that didn’t do parkour.

I don’t think viruses normally say “uploading virus” when you’re uploading them. And also, you can’t actually put bombs in viruses yet. Well, maybe the CIA can… (See also, Transformers).

The Bad:

This is related to the PG13 thing, but there’s a scene in the power plant where Justin Long is in soft focus at the back of the frame, and is clearly not saying the same words as we are hearing.

Transformers

The film I was the second most excited about all summer long. The kurkuhkuhkerkuh noise in the trailer when Shia LaBeouf meets
Optimus Prime for the first time quite literally gave me goosebumps. There was also the massive potential for it to be a completely rubbish action movie. But I don’t think it was.

The Good:

Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Jazz, Oh hang on, wait, this isn’t just supposed to be a list of who’s an Autobot and who’s a Decepticon.

Optimus Prime. He’s great. And they used the real voice from the cartoon. And he’s great. I like noble self sacrificing heroes.

The CG. Or rather, the fact that they abandoned CG in favour of just filming robots fighting, as far as I could tell.

The comedy. I really did find this genuinely funny - especially all the stuff with the autobots getting Shia LaBoeuf in trouble with his parents by stepping on their lawn.

The little spy decepticon.

The Only Ok:

The plot. But, you know, who cares, right? They’re ROBOTS THAT TURN INTO THINGS, that’s all you need to know.

I couldn’t quite tell which were autobots and which were decepticons in the climactic battle scenes. Is that a spoiler? Or did you already guess there’d be climactic battle scenes?

The Decepticons apart from the little spy one.

The Bad:

Only that no one said “Mormons be decepticons.” But you can’t have everything.

Hairspray
Movie turns broadway musical turns movie of the broadway musical. Since it worked so well with The Producers, why not try it again? NB, this is sarcasm. The movie of the musical of the Producers was terrible. This, on the other hand, had me grinning from ear to ear from start to finish. I went to see it with people who were not particularly keen, but I think they were both converted by the sheer joy of the thing.

The Good:

Christopher Walken, John Travolta, best married couple eva.

The songs! The joyous songs!

The dancing! The joyous dancing!

Once again Queen Latifa is back. And this time not in a really terrible movie.

Civil Rights

Alison Janey as crazy evil lady.

Michelle Pfeiffer as other crazy evil lady.

The Michelle Pfieffer tries to seduce Christopher Walken in a joke shop to no avail sequence.

The Only OK:

The lead character’s perfomance left a couple of people I know a bit cold. I thought she was fine though.

The Bad:

So long as you don’t hate musicals, nothing!

The Simpsons Movie
I honestly don’t even know where to begin with this. Surely some of the best joke writing in the whole history of cinema. Like a really long, brilliant episode of the Simpsons, written by all the people who wrote it at its finest. Wil Wheaton described it as being “like an above average episode from season seven.” and I know what he means but I’d definitely elevate it above above average. (Maybe I should have rewritten that sentence a bit.)

The Good:

The quality of the jokes. All of them. But especially; Spider Pig, the Bart’s willy joke, Rock and a Hard Place, “What does a rich man do at my time of life, he wants to give back. Not the money, no, not the money…” and many many more. The jokes are sometimes just jokes, but sometimes they’re more than that, sometimes they are an insight into societies views and values and hypocracies, and tendencies both helpful and unhelpful. So much comedy makes fun of humanities weakness, but the Simpsons have always combined that with a dose of glorifying humanities goodness…

The density of the jokes. Surely the most really brilliant jokes in one film in the history of cinema?

The quality of the animation direction. Not so much the big set pieces as the smaller more intimate scenes.

The quality of the voice acting. Goes without saying, but these guys are the best in the business…

The opening sequence. From the moment Ralph Wiggum appears in the 20th Century Fox logo, to the moment Green Day sink into Lake Springfield. Just absolute perfection.

More. Lots more.

The Only OK

The plot. But I cared even less about that than I did about the plot of the transformers. You’re not made to think by the plots in the Simpsons. Even though the plot was a bit of an allegory, the real subtext is in the jokes.

The Bad

Nothing. At all.

So that’s it, the movie summer so far, as I’ve seen it. It’s been entertaing fare, fluffy and pointless for the most part, incredible and profound in the case of the Simpsons. Plans are afoot to see the Bourne Ultimatum, and I’m super excited about Surf’s Up - CG animated Penguin Surfing Mockumentary! Now THAT’S high concept, and hopefully I’ll be writing about that. I’m also planning to do some tv writing. I’ve been watching The Wire, and it’s unbelievably good, so I’d like to do some analysis of that. I’d love to hear from folks about what they thought about these films…