What you want to know is this: Is the new The Incredible Hulk movie better than Ang Lee’s Hulk movie from a few years back?
Not really.
But the good news is it’s not any worse. It’s just different.
For example, the story is much better, more focused, and more faithful to the comic book source material than Ang Lee’s daddy-issues epic was.
And the first two-thirds of this film are certainly more enjoyable than most of Ang Lee’s film was.
But that’s pretty much where the good stuff ends.
Watching Iron Man, it’s almost as if the movie’s not based on a comic book.
Sure, it’s about a guy in a suit who fights evil, but Iron Man deals with contemporary issues — like terrorism — in such a serious way that it’s not as hokey as most other films in the genre typically are.
Not that a film like Batman Begins is hokey, per se, but given that the villains in those movies are all disfigured or “special” in some kind of way, having a bad guy who’s simply a businessman and arms dealer is sort of, ahem, disarming. Continue reading
I guess I’ll cut right to the chase: Spider-Man 3 is the worst film in the series.
There’s just too much going on.
There’s too much hokey dialogue and stiff acting (even for a comic book movie).
There are too many attempts at easy laughs.
It’s too long.
And the finale just doesn’t have the same power as those in the other two films did.
But that’s not all. Continue reading
Went to see V for Vendetta last night with Amy and John. Good, solid entertainment. I’ll never hear the 1812 Overture without thinking of London exploding overhead (what an ending). And while I was a bit confused by some of the relationships, I’ll give V the benefit of the doubt and say my head was elsewhere and I missed the explanation. Oh, and of course, the movie has Natalie Portman, who I’ve become quite fond of in recent months.
V is a high-falutin’ comic book movie that aims to make grand political statements — “Behind this mask is a man, and behind this man is an idea. And ideas are bulletproof” is one line spoken by the masked terrorist, simply named V. “People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people” is another — but there’s so much of that kind of talk that it’s a bit amusing when such lines are spoken. Another curiosity is the fact that V has this ornate and rather large underground lair, and yet the government, which is supposedly this all-knowing dictatorship, has no idea where he’s hiding out. And it’s not nearly as grand or exciting a movie as, say, Batman Begins, but seeing V for Vendetta is certainly not a bad way to spend two hours. I give it a B for … well, not for bad but for um, bang.
Martin's Musings 