It’s been such a lazy week, a great lazy week… Not often I get a week off to be lazy without packing up house or going camping, but this week has just been fabulously lazy…
All we’ve done is watch movies, play Halo 2, eat and sleep. Does life get much better than that? I mean really…
I’ve also been playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas religeously as well as new additions of ESPN NBA 2K5, ESPN College Hoops 2K5 and WWE Smackdown vs. Raw. So all of these new found addictions are time consuming as you could imagine.
Anyways, I’ve decided to do mini reviews of the films we have watched recently.
The Incredibles
First of all we have The Incredibles, which Phil and I saw at the cinema while everyone finished up Christmas shopping at the Mall of Georgia, and it’s a pretty funny, if a slight bit overly long, movie. It’s a Pixar movie, and the novelty of computer animated films is starting to wear a bit thin, in my opinion, we also watched “Aladdin” on DVD prior to Christmas and sometimes you can’t beat a “traditional” hand-drawn animated film (even if most of the modern hand-drawn films were done by computer anyways).
Anyways, it’s the story of a family of superhero’s who are forced to live a normal life until a new supervillan tries to take over. Highly enjoyable, very funny and full of enough silly references to keep everyone happy…
Collateral
Next up we have Tom Cruise’s latest effort, Collateral. It’s funny to see Tom (aka The Tom) as a bad guy (no, I refuse to acknowledge “Interview with the Vampire”) but he does it so well, and Jamie Foxx is a great foil for him as the cab driver taken on a ride and a half.
It’s surprisingly good, but the only minor complaint I’d have is it’s a Michael Mann film, therefore it’s full of swirling hand held camera scenes that left me feeling dizzy, plus there is a scene in a nightclub that made no sense whatsoever. That aside, it’s a good rental movie, and not as predictable as you think it might be.
And onto todays batch, which was a definate mixed bag as Erika had control for most of it, and her choices have a tendancy to be hit or miss.
The Way We Were
It opened with the classic Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford movie, The Way We Were. This was the first time I’d seen this as it’s not really my kind of movie, but I gave it a chance after Erika’s last choice of Streisand film, “Funny Girl,” was surprisingly enjoyable, unfortunately I didn’t enjoy this at all, it just jumped about too much with a flashback at the start, then they are together, then not, then they get back together and are married then split up and then they meet up at the end, both in different releationships. It was hard to keep up really.
Plus I’m also not really one for mushy romantic films in the first place, don’t get me wrong, it was good in points, just too much throughout. But if you like that kind of thing then you’ll most likely enjoy it.
I’ll Be There
Another Erika choice was british comedy I’ll Be There, starring Craig Ferguson as a washed up 80’s rock star and Charlotte Church as the daughter he never knew he had. Yes, it’s one of those movies which is highly predictable but kind of entertaining regardless, but if it wasn’t for the performance of Ferguson this would probably be a really boring film. Charlotte Church doesn’t really bring much to the screen apart from her singing voice, which isn’t suited for some of the pop/motown songs she sings in this.
But I can say I’ve seen it, therefore I don’t need to see it ever again, take from that what you will…
I, Robot
Speaking of will, it’s Big Will time as we rounded off today with the recently released I, Robot, set in the not-too distant future where humans have become lazy and rely on robots for just about everything, enter Will Smith as a detective investigating a suicide/murder that has a robot as the main suspect. Although the name suggests a close tie with Isaac Asimov’s books and when I first saw the trailer I was slightly saddened by what I saw but it’s actually really enjoyable, if slightly contrived, basically it’s your typical summer blockbuster.
The special effects are really well done, with the robots moving with great fluidity and there are two scenes in particular that really lift this up, those being the car chase in the tunnel and the fight at the end. Again this is a good rental movie (though I’m sure it would have kicked ass on the big screen) and if you want a mindless couple of hours, you could do a lot worse than this…
And coming soon, the day we watch all three extended editions of the Lord of the Rings films… And the Star Wars trilogy… Looking forward to those.