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Copyright |
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©2005 Jason Cross
All Rights Reserved
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 Sunday, July 14, 2002 |
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Crikey! Did every movie come out at once this weekend or something? Yeesh! I haven't yet made it to Croc Hunter: Collision Course yet, but I did make it to two movies, both of which I will treat you, the faithful five, with a review of in my oh so special style.
Reign of Fire
Reign of Fire was a movie I had been looking forward to for a couple years, pretty much since it started production. I first heard about it a while back when I read somewhere the Alexander Siddig (formerly Siddig El Fadil) - Dr. Bashir of DS9 fame - was in it. As I read more, the concept of dragons in modern day against modern weaponry sounded cool. So now, years later, I have seen it.
I really liked the movie, more so in retrospect as I think about it. Ebert gave the movie a horrific review (1.5 stars) which had me scared, so I waited to read his take on it after seeing the movie for myself. I think he was WAY off base, nitpicking at the most minor details and in general acting like an elitist ass who made his decision to not like the movie from concept alone.
The dragon designs were cool, the action and concept had some originality, and it wasn't afraid to keep things dark and sacrifice the lives of characters for realism in the situation.
Road to Perdition
I don't envy Sam Mendes. His Freshman effort was American Beauty (for which he won an Oscar and forgot to thank the writer, Alan Ball) and now his Sophomore effort looks like it could pretty easily do the same. Now THAT is a tough act to follow up on. He and Tom Hanks probably get together and talk about this expectation of greatness that now hangs over their heads.
It's a sumptuous movie, unafraid of going slowly and letting people simple *act*. It's full of shades of grey characterwise, the blurred line between good and evil, and boils down to a father's acceptance of his own decisions in life yet not wanting his son to follow the same path.
Funny thing, it really pulled the old people into the theater. Hearing this old woman next to me say "get him!" before someone got shot was odd. I suppose maybe she lived in 1931. |
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