Movies

Erik Bates | June 3, 2006
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Jackie Mason | June 4, 2006
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Scott Horowitz | June 5, 2006
So far I have been extremely disappointed in the summer movies. MI:III was alright. X-Men was a giant piece of crap. DaVinci was too much exposition and not enough action. I still have high hopes for Superman, Pirates and Clerks 2.

Kris Weberg | June 5, 2006
Here's a new SAT analogy answer for all of you:

Ratner : X-Men :: Schumacher : Batman

(Apologies to Conan O'Brien)

John E Gunter | June 5, 2006
I liked X-Men ok, but I went into it knowing that the story in the movie had nothing to do with the story in the comics. It was only sharing the name and the characters!

I'm pretty sure I'm going to like Superman, but it appears to me that this Superman is going to be a bit more brooding than previous ones. But even still, I'm still psyched about it.

Heard Poseidon is disappointing and am really considering waiting for cable. Hope to see Da Vinci this week, and have been avoiding reading the book till I've already seen the movie. Most stories where I see the movie then read the book work out better for me to enjoy both the movie and the book.

Scott Hardie | June 9, 2006
Ratner is disappointing, but let's not go comparing him so easily to Schumacher, who breaks the scale of awfulness and defies comparison. That's like people who call Bush Hitler. Batman & Robin ended the careers of O'Donnell and Silverstone, and the careers of Schwarzenegger and Thurman never recovered. ...Hmm, on second thought, maybe we should thank the guy.

X-Men 3 was the weakest of the series so far, but I can't get into detail without giving away the let-down of an ending, so I'll save it for a TMR sometime when I have a chance to write one. The superhero movie I'm not looking forward to is Superman Returns, mostly because I don't really care what his problems are. Oh, his girlfriend fell in love with some other guy? Boo fucking hoo. He's fucking Superman. He's always been the most boring of superheroes to me: Great if you want to fantasize about being him I suppose, but zero dramatic conflict in his stories, unless the villain cheats and uses a plot device, I mean an alien rock, to weaken him. Wake me when he faces a challenge he can't handle; oh wait, there isn't one.

Jackie Mason | June 9, 2006
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Lori Lancaster | June 9, 2006
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Lori Lancaster | June 9, 2006
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Michael Paul Cote | June 9, 2006
Saw Xmen - Liked it.
Saw DaVinci Code - Liked it
Another Tom Cruise I can do anything movie - I'll pass.
Looking at seeing Over the Hedge tonight - I'll let ya know.

Scott Hardie | June 10, 2006
Wait, that was a spoiler? Here I was being careful to avoid spoilers. Well, I guess the cat's out of the bag, so I may as well give away the ending: Lex Luthor succeeds in taking over the planet while Superman is eating a pint of rocky road and crying over Autumn in New York.

Kris Weberg | June 10, 2006
Erm, Scott...Uma Thurman's been in plenty of films since, including the much-hyped Kill Bill series.

My original comparison was simply meant to illustrate what I felt was the level of drop-off in quality in each franchise when the new director came on board. Remember, Schumacher started with Batman Forever, which was gaudy and cheesy but still entertaining, before the camp-fest of doom that was B + R.

I really do think Ratner blew it big-time, even at the level of basic direction. He simply can't pull off a "big moment" scene with any sense of scale, and from what I saw of the scenes where a certain character goes mad and wipes out other characters by, well, reducing them to pixels, as far as I could tell, he lacks a strong visual imagination.

He gave loads of screen time to Halle Berry, completely failed to give Daniel Cudmore's character anything to do, and wasted the talents of Aaron Stanford and Anna Paquin.

Give him another sequel, as they did for Joel Schumacher, and increased creative control thanks to his box-office success this time out -- again, see Joel S. -- and lord knows what sort of tripe we'd get.

As to Superman...hero/villain conflicts aren't the only kind there are, even in superhero stories, and I find the contrast between his physical omnicompetence and his screwy relationships to work just fine. But in the end, he's much more of a fantasy character than a Marvel-style angsty hero. Reduce his power level, and he's not Superman anymore; darken his personality, and he loses that as well. He's the big, sunny, do-anything heroic archetype, limited by his naivete and, paradoxically, his boundless optimism and determination to do the right thing. Moral dilemmas and heartbreak are his weaknesses, not glowing green chunks of rock.

Scott Hardie | June 21, 2006
Good points. You have me worried about Ratner if he goes on to do a fourth one, but at least Halle Berry won't be back again.

You have also convinced me that Superman can be written well, but I still don't care what his problems are. If something goes badly for him, he can spin the planet around backwards and reverse time to fix it, depending on whether you accept the sillier extremes of his canon. This is not a man who inspires my sympathy when he gets moody. We'll see if the movie can change that.

As for Uma Thurman, after suffering the double-whammy of Batman & Robin and The Avengers, she didn't star in another movie *until* Kill Bill five years later, which was written for her by her friend Quentin Tarantino to revive her failing career. I'd say his magic worked... Maybe he should take over the X-Men films? Hey, no one will complain they go by too fast.

Jackie Mason | June 21, 2006
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Michael Paul Cote | June 22, 2006
She's going to be in the upcoming film "My Super Ex Girlfriend" which looks interesting. It also has Wanda Sykes, Luke Wilson, Anna Faris and Eddie Izzard. Looks funny. Tag line: He broke her heart, she broke his everything.

Jackie Mason | June 22, 2006
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