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Ok, so I haven't blogged for a while... I'm losing my five readers to apathy! But I have had a couple requests for new movie reviews, so here goes:
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
After passing up a chance to see the movie two days early at the local theatre in favor of watching Part 2 of the extended Fellowship of the Rings DVD with Lori, I finally caught this movie the following Saturday.
Where as Fellowship was a more leisurely pace allowing the audience to get to know the characters of Middle Earth, Two Towers hits the floor with all wheels turning. It's nice to see a sequel (of sorts) NOT waste a lot of time rehashing who the characters are to appease those who haven't seen the previous movies. I think much of this comes from the fact that the entire trilogy were filmed as one MASSIVE movie.
The battle scenes were exciting and filled with amazing shots of Saruman's army (over 10000 computer generated characters at once!), and it really felt like the fantasy aspects of Middle Earth were more pronounced with the introduction of the Ents, wargs, oliphants and fell beasts.
And despite grumblings from some, I feel that the humor elements played through Gimli were appropriate, making me notice the character who I had always considered somewhat boring by comparison to the others before. It was good that they didn't go over the top, though, and make him total comic relief.
Gollum was well played, definitely not Gollum Binks, though I did try and scare some people into thinking he might be. I was expecting some of the filmed Smeagol/Deagol and their finding of the ring in this movie, but I suppose that's in Return of the King.
As an aside, there was this parent who took his probably three year old kid to the movie which was somewhat inappropriate. We were sitting in the next to back row, and he's in the very back and over a bit, and his kid keeps alternating between crying loudly, running up and down the stairs, and running down our aisle, standing next to Lori and crinkling this pop-tart or potato-chip-like foil package. Parents - if you can't get a babysitter, just stay home...
Catch Me If You Can
It surprises me that Steven Spielberg made this film. Any more, it's easy to think of Spielberg as a kind of specialty filmmaker concentrating on larger than life subjects. Dinosaurs. The Holocaust. Androids and the future. And then this movie comes out.
The movie centers around the true-life exploits of Frank Abagnale, Jr, in the 1960s. When Abagnale was a junior in high school, his parents got a divorce. As a form of escapism, he ran away from home and started making a new life built on fiction - pretending to be airline pilots, a doctor, even a lawyer - all through a series of creative forgeries and lies. Tom Hanks plays the counterbalance to DiCaprio's Abagnale as FBI Agent Handratty, the man who pursued, caught, and in time even befriended Abagnale.
Catch Me If You Can is very entertaining, tightly paced, and is a great story. It also reminds me that Steven Spielberg can be a great director even with a relatively (for him lately) down-to-earth subject. |
