The Chronicles of Riddick

TNT ruined my day yesterday. Beginning with the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy they sucked me away from my life and then, in the evening, kept me up at night with more flicks I had to stop and watch even if they weren't particularly good.

The first 'not particularly good' movie was The Chronicles of Riddick. Despite the fact that I have seen this movie three times its plotline still seems a little confusing, if only perhaps because I saw and liked the movie's prequel Pitch Black as a good sci-fi horror cross breed that used many classic techniques and used them well. Therefore I cannot watch this movie without it occuring to me over and over again how the cast from that movie moves into this widescale sci-fi epic which has tinges of Star Trek and Star Wars in it at times. That dampens the entire movie because then, despite their weak premise, it continues to feel like an entirely seperate unrelated work.

But that aside the film has more pressing issues with it. The main being how ridiculous the necromangers are, the entire plot concept is poorly done but more so ill-defined. That are brought into the fold and the watcher learns almost nothing about them. Much of the film still confuses me, though I've watched it closely. They opened up too many threads and never closed any of them. As far as their bad guys go, well, they only showed you what was neccessary to set up the fighting and action but you understand nothing about them. They open up races and planets who are also left undefined.

The poor character work could possibly be overlooked if it were not for this. But really, its no good. Riddick only shows emotion when its necessary, and the film never adequately shows why he cares for the people he does. More than anything is the fact that there is no depth or inner conflict in any of these characters, even the "inner turmoil" of the Necromanger Lord whose wife is coaxing him into killing the Lord Marshall, is petty and shallow, completely one dimensional.

But in the end all that can be overlooked if you are not a movie critic who by nature of their job ruins the movie for themselves, which I am not thankfully. Therefore I can still watch the movie for lack of anything better to do and enjoy it thanks to the impressive backdrop and interesting settings, but its just not anything that sticks with you and you are left more confused in the end by the things it brought into the fold and never answered or explained and the Religion it introduced and never defined, but hey, just sit back and enjoy the scenery and try to just let the chaos enfold you. That's my take anyway.

The Darjeeling Limited

Wes Anderson, Wes Anderson. That sums up this film, which maintains a five out of 10 rating merely because of an interesting backdrop and the great performances of Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman in the films central characters. But then again Wes Anderson always somehow gets these great casts and always has an interesting backdrop.

I will give him this; it wasn't as bad as his last film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which managed to be bad even with a cast of Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Owen Wilson and Jeff Goldblum. But its Wes Anderson and that's an insult in my book.

I'm sorry if I seem I'm ready to rip his head off but I'm as tired of him doing the same thing over and over and over and over again as I am with Jennifer Aniston, Ben Stiller, and Will Ferrell. In Wes Anderson's case I never liked the way he shot his films and they've only grown more grating over the years. I was truly disapointed with both The Darjeeling Limited and The Life Aquatic. I'll say that honestly because it makes me all the more bitter than if I had expected them to be bad from the beginning.

Let me just describe this film in generic terms so you wouldn't be able to figure out which Wes Anderson film I was talking about if I hadn't told you: dry, listless, empty, and meaningless. Now I will give him this, (because I hate to completely pan things and I won't ignore the positive traits in movies I dislike), like his other films it has a great soundtrack. I love the musical score for it, and its sets and shooting are well done. Its just not funny, involving, or deep in any way. Not to mention the inclusion, on the DVD version, of the seperately shot and unrelated short film by Schwartzman "The Hotal Chevalier", and its incoproration into the movie was unneccessary and poorly done. It was very amateurish, and proved to be quite non sequitor.

Now I get Wes Anderson's kind of a dark, melancholic comedy, I like the type, Anderson just does in a way that's lifeless and stale. If he wants to improve he should take a feather out of movies like Little Miss Sunshine's book, or the Cohen brothers in their better movies like The Big Lebowski and Fargo. Maybe he could learn something from other users. He needs to learn how to lighten it up a little bit. What I'm saying is don't pound the watcher and then grind him against the pavement for an hour and a half. Another tip, please try something new, quit using your rich, F. Scott Fitzgerald stock characters and go for a different approach. And I say all this because I try to give legitimate movies constructive criticism instead of just panning them many critics.

Is It Just Me?

Recently I had the great misfortune to watch several movies, Little Man and Stepbrothers. While watching these with other people and seeing them bent over with laughter and evidently highly amused one has to ask oneself, "Is it just me?" I'm hardly a movie critic or a snub, in fact my whole basis on criticizing movie mainly consists on trying to take a fair approach to watching a movie and telling people my honest to god feelings about it.

So what does it speak about our culture that we've been raised to find stuff like Little Man funny? (That's not even mentioning Stepbrothers). You have an hour and a half of implausible and idiotic humor. I know one is supposed to suspend ones disbelief but that is impossible while watching truly imbecilic behavior on the TV screen. Little Man is staked with cliched characters, stereotypes, and one dimensional characters. There is no real character in the movie and all you succeed in seeing is one ill definied one dimensional character undergo a 'touching' change in perspective.

Its humor however is mystifying. From rubbing cookies on asses, to a ridiculously adult looking little person pretending to be a child, to, yes of course, the classic humor of people getting beat up and hit in the nuts. Oh yes. Nutcrackers are especially popular. I am simply, (and this may just be something wrong with me), not amused by men getting hit in the nuts, keelings over, making faces, and falling to the ground. Nope, nothing. Not even a chuckle.

To hear people say this is a good movie makes me sick. You get nothing out of this movie, nothing. Not even a chuckle. Shoddy script-writing, no, make that god awful script packed with stereotypes and one dimensional characters and no good humor. This is not even good slapstick as I saw in the first Home Alone, one of the few movies to be able to use the technique effectively without destroying their movies. What more can I say?

Stepbrothers, excuse me while I shudder, has got to be the most asinine of Wil Ferrells movies, and he has made some asinine movies. To see two 40 year old men act like 10 year olds is not funny. Its worse than watching Jethro Bodine on the Beverly Hillbillies. Most of the time all they succeed in doing is being creepy and wierd to put it blunt and succinctly. I can't even begin to describe how much I hate this film.

But the people I was with enjoyed both films, and that's what truly makes me wonder. As for any of you loyal readers, if I have any, please don't watch these movies, they've killed enough brain cells already, don't waste yours.