2012
What can I say? This movie was exactly what we expected, so it’s kind of hard to rag on it after the fact. Sara picked it up basically because we wanted a very special effects-focused movie to show off our new Blu-Ray player, and for that, this film most certainly delivered because I think I can count the number of non-exploding scenes on one hand! Sure, some of them were just absolutely ridiculous (i.e. the flying subway cars, racing through a collapsing skyscraper, umpteen different literal cliffhangers), but at the end of the day, it was still pretty entertaining … at least as far as bad movies are concerned!
All About Steve
This one was a rental from Netflix that Sara had picked out and all I can basically say is that, well … it was weird. I didn’t really find Sandra Bullock’s quirkiness as appealing so much as just bizarre, which is odd because I’m normally a big fan. Anyways, wouldn’t recommend this one – no need to go any further than that.
Clash of the Titans
A perfect example of why 3d shouldn’t be used for everything. We actually saw this both in 3d and on the Sony Giant Screen (formerly IMAX) downtown, and I suppose it was probably best that we were nearing the end of the weekend, so our expectations were pretty low to boot. Now I’ve never seen the original and after watching this one, I’m not so sure that I actually want to, but to me this was basically a very high-budget, B-movie. Some of the special effects were cool, including the battle scene against the giant scorpion(s), but there were times when it almost felt like the action was going too fast to keep track of everything on the screen, and as for the 3d … well, that was simply horrible. I learned later that this is one of those films that wasn’t actually shot in 3d, but was converted from 2d to 3d in a very short period of time basically because Avatar had done so well in 3d.
Stupid move, and I’ve heard a lot of complaints about how the 3d made the movie unwatchable, so here’s hoping that Hollywood actually listens and stops using 3d as the cookie cutter solution to high box office numbers…
How to Train Your Dragon
For some reason I keep referring to this one as How to Date Your Dragon … not sure what that’s all about, but nonetheless, this movie actually ended up being really cute and I found myself liking it a whole lot. The voices are almost all fairly new actors (pretty much the entire cast of She’s Out of My League), and frankly I think that’s part of why I enjoyed it because they relied more on the characters themselves than the big name actors playing the voices for a change (a huge DreamWorks critique of mine, as compared to Pixar). But this one was both funny and endearing, it looked beautiful visually, and they actually made very good use of the 3d throughout the movie. Maybe that’s it – 3d is worthwhile in cartoon-style movies, but not so much in action movies … I don’t know.
Either way, I’d definitely be willing to go see Dragon again – a welcome change in my recent theatrical repertoire!