Category: Movies

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone’s talking about the remake of Clash of the Titans now that a trailer is out.

But the only remake you’ll be lining up to watch next year is Piranha*. That remake will star Ving Rhames, Christopher Lloyd, Eli Roth, Elisabeth Shue, Dina Meyer and Paul Scheer.

Oh, and Richard Dreyfus.

The pity here is that they’re not remaking Piranha* Two: The Spawning, in which the piranha* have been genetically modified into FLYING piranha as part of a military experiment GONE HORRIBLY WRONG. Then again, perhaps they were afraid to mess with a movie that was directed by James Cameron. (Go on, click on the link if you don’t believe me.)

*To get the full effect, you should be pronouncing piranha in faux Spanish/Portuguese Pee-ron-ya. Even better if you use Beavis’ Cornholio voice.

So last night I watched Terminator: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation (you know it’s deep because they purposely left out the colon … from the title, I mean. I don’t know if they bothered putting colons in the robots. It didn’t come up).

I predict that if you sat through the first two Terminators and enjoyed them, you’ll enjoy these enough. T4 and T3 were pretty much equal in terms of quality. If however you thought the first two were some sort of achievement in cinema and feel vaguely about them the way some people feel about Star Wars, then you’ll likely be gravely disappointed. As with the original Star Wars, I believe there’s a bit of nostalgia-tinged critical inflation for the first two. They were good, yes, but they’re much better in our memories than they were in reality.

And I didn’t find T3 or T4 anywhere near as awful as Lucas’ attempt to revive Star Wars.

Spoiler alert a couple grafs below.

What the critics have said about T4 is mostly true: humorless, dark, noisy and silly. Of course, all of these movies were silly. Giant robots from the future! Further, Christian Bale and McG need to quit taking themselves so damn seriously. They both did a passable job, but Bale should lose some of his auteur points after all these press interviews in which he admits he forced them to rewrite the movie to make the role of John Connor bigger. And McG? Well, McG should perhaps shouldn’t set his sights in higher than Fastest and Furiosest or some such.

All of that said, I enjoyed both movies fine. I like seeing how these things unfold–even if they are silly. And I appreciated all of the little reverse Terminator touches in T4. For example: We sent a robot from the past! That robot may be more human than the humans! John Connor ain’t anything like the leader of the resistance.

Anyway. I didn’t hate it. And that’s all I gotta say about that.

That’s right, I watched the Watchmen … so that you don’t have to. I read the book only three weeks ago and, coming at it as a 35-year-old who never was really into comic books, I’m going to call a spade a spade. It was an interesting pastiche of adolescent philosophy, misanthropy and half-hearted America-bashing done as only a bitter, shaggy Brit could. I enjoyed the book for what it was. And the movie?

I don’t know what to say. It’s an interesting spectacle for those who read the book. For those who didn’t read it? I can’t imagine them caring enough to get it. Listen, the flashbacks and plotting aren’t nearly as intricate as comic book geeks make it out to be. Lost is about sixteen trillion times more complicated. The movie–like the book–plods alone slowly, complete with the hackneyed writing and teenage deep-thinking you’d expect from the stoners you went to college with.

Oh, and graphic violence. Plenty of that. Indeed, while I don’t mind blowing 11 bucks to sit through three hours of pop culture dross, I found myself getting pissed off during the extremely graphic and gory fight (and torture and rape) scenes not because of the movie itself, but because of the mothers of the year who’d dragged their babies and kids into this movie. I saw one woman walk in with six kids under 12. I’m sure they’ll be having nightmares tonight about arms getting sawed off, people exploding, dogs chewing on a little girl’s leg, giant blue penises and whatever it is Silk Specter and Night Owl were doing when they took their clothes off and wrestled. Even better? When the lights went up, I noticed a stroller in one of the aisles. I’m sure three hours of mega-decibel explosions, screaming and cursing do wonders for an infants hearing and development.

Anyway, if you liked the book, you’ll probably like the movie. If you didn’t read the book, you’d probably be better off seeing Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

Dead Serious says he won’t be watching the Academy Awards this year. What does it matter? Dead Serious watches movies like other people breathe air. Dude LOVES movies. But he doesn’t love crap. And he doesn’t love to see crap being rewarded. I’d bet a hundred bucks that if the Academy had gone with Dead Serious’ picks over the years they wouldn’t see a huge erosion in ratings — and they wouldn’t have had to sacrifice artistic integrity either.