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Fourth time's the charm.
When Shrek first came out, I had my reservations, but thought it was actually a pretty fun movie; however, I didn't care too much for the last two sequels. Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third saw the title character get married and become a father.
MacGruber!
If I really wanted to pick this movie apart I could. So in the interests of being objective I'll have a go at it.
Problem #1 -- The movie lacks heart.
White man gets sent to spy on the savage enemies. He earns their trust and falls in love with the chief's daughter. White man's army attacks the savages. The savages, and the chief's daughter feel betrayed, and want nothing to do with the white man.
Through the heart of Miami's Little Havana, SW 8th street unfolds--a paved corridor narrowed by a strip of the twenty-odd pay-by-the-hour motels stacked side by side. Fortress-like with their high walls and discrete private entrances, these motels are the ideal locale for a clandestine encounter.
Earlier this month a little known German film opened quietly in Toronto theaters. Undoubtedly most cinemagoers felt little more than passing curiosity upon spotting its title advertised on the marquis--just another foreign film scrabbling for a foothold in the North American market. Intrinsically, The Red Baron deserves little attention.
Somewhere around mid-February a wire in my brain fried, temporarily disabling my recognition of subtleties, the nuances of bad and good -- the mechanism commonly known as taste. Eventually the coils will mend and the neurons will resume firing but for the moment I am imprisoned in a world of absolutes. Our Family Wedding is bad, unconditionally, irrefutably bad. I know that much.
Despite a Best Director Oscar and numerous accolades, the last decade hasn't been Martin Scorsese's best: his films either lumbering behemoths or modest retreads. Gangs of New York was uneven, The Aviator overstuffed (in the way biopics habitually are), and The Departed a throwback to the mob genre which made him a household name.
In the post-Twilight Era it is difficult to take werewolves, vampires, and their ilk seriously; and even more difficult to find them scary. The Monster Movie, while it sputters in anemic existence by coupling itself with romances, comedies and action flicks, is, in the purist sense, dead.
For several days now I have been deliberating how to write this review. I considered an ironic approach (e.g.
Alice Sebold's best-selling novel, The Lovely Bones, is many things: a sentimental ghost story, a literate crime novel, and, in its best moments, an intimate character study set in 1970s American suburbia. Director Peter Jackson's adaptation grasps the first two aspects but, unfortunately, fails to capture the third.
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