Saturday, January 07, 2006
Weekend Movie Round-up (Open Letter to Spielberg)
Hostel (aka Porky's the Horror Movie) - the previews cover only the last 30 minutes of what could have been an interesting movie. Instead, it plays like an overblown (and underwritten) episode of the brilliant Tales from the Crypt. Skip it until it comes on where it belongs: Cinemax.
Wolf Creek - I am through watching foreign horror movies that are supposedly "scary as hell". I am also through with watching movies in which the protagonist decides not to finish off the bad guy only because there's still an hour left of the movie. These two things have gone hand-in-hand for 2005 (High Tension being the other example).
Munich - I will never be able to have sex again without thinking of Palestinian terrorists gunning down 9 Israeli Olympians and a strobe light. Thank you very much, Mr. Spielberg. I am officially done with seeing your new movies. They used to be 30 minutes too long, now they are 2 hours too long and are full of stuff that would get other filmmakers fired.
It's been 12 years since you wowed anyone, and I think if you took the entertaining bits from every movie since then, you might have a two-hour movie: the first thirty minutes of Private Ryan + half of Catch Me If You Can (60 min.) + the first twenty minutes of The Terminal + fifteen-odd minutes scattered about Minority Report - 15 minutes for A.I. (and that's being generous) + another ten for the beginning of War of the Worlds = 120 minutes.
I had such high hopes for your new movie and it turned out to be so empty, boring and trivial. There are, to your credit, two very good scenes close to the end that manage to say more than every other scene in the film combined (add seven minutes to your total, subtract five for your ludicrous sex scene). Of course, you didn't choose to end the movie on either of these strong notes, mainly because you wanted to show off that you digitally reinsterted the Twin Towers into the New York skyline (subtract two minutes). And don't say that you weren't showing off because you pointlessly panned left so we could see it.
Wolf Creek - I am through watching foreign horror movies that are supposedly "scary as hell". I am also through with watching movies in which the protagonist decides not to finish off the bad guy only because there's still an hour left of the movie. These two things have gone hand-in-hand for 2005 (High Tension being the other example).
Munich - I will never be able to have sex again without thinking of Palestinian terrorists gunning down 9 Israeli Olympians and a strobe light. Thank you very much, Mr. Spielberg. I am officially done with seeing your new movies. They used to be 30 minutes too long, now they are 2 hours too long and are full of stuff that would get other filmmakers fired.
It's been 12 years since you wowed anyone, and I think if you took the entertaining bits from every movie since then, you might have a two-hour movie: the first thirty minutes of Private Ryan + half of Catch Me If You Can (60 min.) + the first twenty minutes of The Terminal + fifteen-odd minutes scattered about Minority Report - 15 minutes for A.I. (and that's being generous) + another ten for the beginning of War of the Worlds = 120 minutes.
I had such high hopes for your new movie and it turned out to be so empty, boring and trivial. There are, to your credit, two very good scenes close to the end that manage to say more than every other scene in the film combined (add seven minutes to your total, subtract five for your ludicrous sex scene). Of course, you didn't choose to end the movie on either of these strong notes, mainly because you wanted to show off that you digitally reinsterted the Twin Towers into the New York skyline (subtract two minutes). And don't say that you weren't showing off because you pointlessly panned left so we could see it.
