Movies Schmovies!

Well, thank goodness Kevin got to see Iron Man this week. (His review is now posted.)

 ’Cause me? I got nothing for Friday.

 A little surgery can take the steam out of a person, and that’s been the case for me. I had a simple procedure done last Friday, and it took a bit out of me. So I’ve just been in neutral all of this week. Not to worry, next week I’ll be back up and running, and will kick into review mode as solidly as ever, with a review of Speed Racer, for one.

Meanwhile look to see more design improvements here at Movies Schmovies! And please let us know how we’re doing.

Well, as you may have noticed, we sort of launched 8 days ago, on Friday, March 14th. I do mean “sort of.” Our designing and such has taken a lot longer than we hoped, and so we’ve decided to get the main element of the site - the comics - on the tracks a little “early.” That is, earlier than some of the other [secondary] stuff.

So the comics are up and running, and over the next month you’ll definitely be seeing design refinements showing up now and again. Let’s call what you see now Movies Schmovies 1.0.

Also, I want to point out, in case you’re annoyed with the load time of the comic pages, we’re annoyed too. In using Javascript to load the speech bubbles of the comics, we’ve stumbled. But we’ve found a way to fix it, so that Javascript won’t be utilized at all. We’ve tested this alternative method, and it works very nicely. We’re happy about this new CSS-only method, and it will go into effect soon (perhaps as early as Monday) - we just need to pound in the nails.

Also, soon we’ll be adding another feature. We’re going to have a weekly crossword puzzle (which will require Javascript, unfortunately). The idea is that every Monday you’ll find a different puzzle, dominated by clues/answers related to the movies that have opened in the previous weekend. For example, the weekend after I Am Legend opened, a clue might be “I Am Legend creatures (two words),” and the answer would be “DARKSEEKERS.” People who saw the movie over the weekend would be best equipped to get the answer, see. We think it’ll be fun.

Anyway, that’s all to report for now. Come back soon, y’hear?

Here’s the problem I’ve had with Indiana Jones ever since the tail credits rolled in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Prior to those credits, Indy never blinked, and he never winked.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the guy was tough and dependable. The job needed done, and he was ready to spit sand to get it so. Covered with sweat, the man was reluctant as hell, but ready to put off crying to step into the path of the world’s worst flying gravel to put things to right. And he had fists that had seen some down-n-dirty back-alley fisticuffs.

But… ever since, he’s been a cartoon.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom caught some of the fascinating adventurous action of it all, but threw the dirty gravel out the window.

And Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Forget about it. What a piece of worthless nonsense. Spielberg and Lucas had by then decided that their gorgeous statue was so shiny it deserved to be laughed at.

WHAT?!!!!!

At this point - and the years that have passed are part of the fuel of the problem - I assume Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be as unwieldy as the title itself. As much as I want to revisit the glorious source, I have no faith that we’ll even touch the goodness that whooped our asses in 1981. If the course of history is any clue, this new movie will be as silly as can be.

I’m betting there will be in-jokes galore, referring to all three of the previous entries in the franchise. I bet Indy will have some chemistry with Cate Blanchett’s bad-ass soldier woman, but that such will be reduced to laughs based on the difference in their ages - e.g. she’ll hit on him, with some mention of how they might have hit it off 20 years ago, and he’ll make some jokey comment that makes fun of her youth and inexperience. I bet Short Round and/or Willie Scott makes an appearance, if only as an aside. There’ll be a couple of jokes that reflect Indy’s experiences in the previous episodes (e.g. the painfully obvious reference to the Ark of the Covenant in The Last Crusade). And this will not only corrupt the dramatic oomph of Raiders, it’ll all assume that Indiana Jones is the set-up for joke… after joke… after joke. Age will be the springboard for the punchline of almost every gag. And action and adventure will be secondary elements of the story, rather than in-your-face necessity.

You know, saving the world shouldn’t be funny. Raiders knew that. The spirit of adventure in that first movie was secondary to the seriousness of humanity’s relationship to the supernatural (that is, oh, say, GOD!), and anything that was funny along the way happened in the wake of the drama, rather than riding a surfboard at its head.

When I sit down in the theater to watch Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it will be with an open mind - with a “give me what you got” attitude - but man oh man, if I’m being honest, I gotta tell you, I don’t think it’s going to touch Raiders of the Lost Ark, even so much as to ask it for the time of day.

Our launch is delayed, as you may have suspected. We hope that sometime next week we can offer up an at-least-tentative date for when we’ll go all official and stuff.

You’ll notice that we’ve initiated our regular movie-review database, at www.movies-schmovies.com. If you found your way here via a link to this blog, please update your Favorites/Bookmarks to get you to the main URL. Since that’s been our intended location all along, that is where we’ll be uploading our reviews now, rather than continue to upload such to two different databases. Please note that those new pages are not the completed design that we’ll be using. And you’ll probably notice little changes and enhancements as the days go by.

And whoops! We had a bit of a meltdown two days ago, when we somehow accidentally deleted an important folder from our server. As a result, the blog went down altogether, and we lost the great bulk of our images. So, as you’ll notice, images - particularly those in this blog section - are gone. We’ll be reloading them when we have the opportunity.

Please visit the blog again soon, as this is where we’ll make any announcements.

How She Move follows Raya Green (Rutina Wesley), a young girl who must return to her lower-class roots when her parents can’t afford her prep school tuition anymore, due to the drug-related death of her younger sister. Raya copes with the upheavals in her life by joining up in a group of step-dancers, bouncing back and forth between the rough girl she’s trying to help, Michelle (Trey Armstrong), and the charming mechanic who’s trying to win her heart, Bishop (Dwain Murphy).

Unfortunately, nobody informed the filmmakers here that being able to photograph step-dancing competitions in a relatively engrossing fashion isn’t enough to justify a feature-length film. The dance-offs, which are undoubtedly the most interesting thing about the movie, even manage to grow monotonous and repetitive by the film’s finale. I found myself thinking of the jousting in A Knight’s Tale – some moderately slick, MTV-style editing can’t make up for poor form in just about every other aspect of the movie.

Whether because of a low budget, an attempt at an “indie” feel, or a need to cast actors who could actually dance, almost everyone in the film is an unknown. This isn’t necessarily a problem, except that nobody involved in this one could act their way out of a wet paper bag. There are so many scenes here that are supposed to be “serious”, so many points for actors to shine (particularly in the instances involving the death of Raya’s sister and the subsequent decline of her parents’ marriage), but nearly all of them came off as wooden, stiff, and completely uninvolving. (more…)

I’m always a bit wary of any film that bills itself as “achingly romantic”, the best new epic, sweeping romance to come along in years.

And while Atonement does deliver well on the romantic front, it’s its confusion and submersion into other genres that ultimately undoes the film.

Atonement follows the romance between Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), from its beginnings in upper-class, early 1930’s England to its rocky course through the second World War. The tale is told from the perspective of Cecilia’s 13-year-old sister, Briony (Saoirse Ronan), a mature girl with a near-fatal sense of curiosity.

The narrative isn’t exactly linear. There are several temporal jumps, most of which only go back in time a short amount. This doesn’t necessarily distract from the story – since it begins as a nuanced study in upper-class dysfunction, there are often many things going on at the same time – but I found it to be kind of unnecessary. In a film that’s heralding itself as a romantic masterpiece, why not tell the story straight and let the characters keep the audience involved? (more…)

In Mad Money, three women who all work low-status jobs at the Kansas City branch of the Federal Reserve decide to rob the bank. Bridget Cardigan (Diane Keaton), a yuppie extraordinaire who took the job because her husband, Don, is unemployed, is the ringleader. Single mother of two Nina Brewster (Queen Latifah) and indie-rocker/weirdo Jackie Truman (Katie Holmes) help her pull off her scheme, with some unexpected results.

Mad Money isn’t offensive, and it’s not terrible, either. For a movie about three women, geared mostly towards women, and directed by a woman, it’d be pretty easy for me to make a pun about this one being too broad. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what it is.

The people behind the film (the director and producers, notably) said that they loved heist films, but were turned off by violence, so they decided to make a crime flick that wasn’t violent or off-putting. I can understand that some people are turned off by violence, but the problem with eliminating the edgy elements from a movie is that you end up with a faceless, hollow, totally bland film that doesn’t do anything new and has some pretty weak moments. (more…)