It's OK, I'm taking it back

Clearly I had to see Clerks 2. I mean, my frickin website is named after a line in Clerks! I had a goal to see it opening weekend, and it was tough (busy weekend) but I made it happen.

I was not disappointed.

This movie was fantastic. Yes, it's also a bit raw, and incredibly offensive. But I was laughing pretty much the whole way though. I love comedic dialog, and as far as I'm concerned there's not one better at it than Kevin Smith. That earns him a spot as one of my favorite filmmakers.

Clearly the best barometer for if you'll like this movie is if you liked the first one. They have a lot of key similarities (dialog focused, outrageous.) This one is more polished, and much more outrageous, but it's the same style.

While there were many great scenes, I have to give it up for the Lord of the Rings/Star Wars debate that happens midway through. That one segment was worth the price of admission all by itself. I'll own this DVD, and will likely watch the movie many more times.

My dear, those clothes don't flatter you at all. It should be a dress or nothing, and I happen to have 'no dress' in my cabin.

Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest isn't just based on an amusement park ride, it gets its essence from an amusement park ride. It feels like the whole thing is on rails, but nothing very interesting that happens, but lots of fun to be had on the way.

Some people like this. I had a great time. Of course, when my Mom saw it last week she turned to Dad after an hour and asked "Is there really an hour more of this?" Dad's reply: "actually, there's another hour and a half." Mom walked out (the had seperate cars...)

Johnny Depp's crazy gay Keith Richard's pirate continues to be fun, and everyone else sort of hamms it up so we know not to take any of the ridiculousness seriously. Sure, it dragged a bit, and had no ending at all (I mean it, none at all) but it was still fun to watch. This is just about the definition of a popcorn movie.

Important disclosure: I saw it when my whole team at work took the afternoon off to go to the movies. So not only was the movie free, the time was free too since I was technically "at work." If I'd paid my own money and time for this one I might have felt differently.

Gods are selfish beings who fly around in little red capes and don't share their power with mankind.

I saw Superman Returns at a kind of late show on opening night, which I initially blamed for part of my displeasure with it, but on further reflection I've just decided that it really isn't a good movie after all.

I have lots of complaints. Yeah, it's too long, and kind of slow. But that's ok, I've liked lots of movies in the past that were too long and some of them have even been ridiculously slow (think Unbreakable.) The key problem is that nothing really happens and none of the characters are interesting. Sure, at 2.5 hours the movie drags on too long. But even at 1.5 hours I'm not sure I would have liked it. It just would have been more fun to watch the neat action and effects without sitting for as long.

I could be a big geek and go off about all the ways this movie doesn't measure up. I could talk about all the various different characters and how they could have been better or more interesting. But that doesn't turn out to be helpful, because I'd just be enumerating all the parts of the movie. This movie really hit a bad chord with me, and when I start going on it it's hard to stop.

I think it's best if I just avoid getting going on it.

For the record, there are some good things. I thought the introductory action sequence where Superman rescues the plane was pretty good (minus that Lois should have multiple fractures and head traumas by the end.) I especially liked the scene where Lois first sees Superman racing by the airplane window. Also, the movie is gorgeous, but that's also one of it's downfalls. There's only so many times you can show a pretty shot of superman hovering up in the sky before it gets old and stale, and this movie passes that point early on.

Don't let it control you.

I've had lots of discussion about X-Men 3 with my boss. He's a big X-Men fan and has followed all the comics, knows the characters, and is familiar with the world events and storylines. I've read at most half a dozen of the comic books and just have a casual understanding of the characters (for the main characters I know their powers, the basics of their personality archtypes, and if any of them are related to eachother.) He absolutely hated this movie, I thought it was pretty good.

To be clear, it wasn't as good as either of the first two. This movie misses the direction of Bryan Singer and loses it's way a bit. Some of the transitions are a bit harsh and the set pieces a little overdone. But for this is one of those "fun ride" kinds of summer movies, and it succeeds at that goal.

However, according to my boss, it doesn't at all stick to X-Men cannon. A selection of complaints: it botches the phoenix force stuff, it's casual about killing off important characters, it doesn't properly display the motivations for several characters (most notably, Collosus), and it uses more characters than it needs just to use them (I sort of agree with this point.) Essentially what's going on here is the movie just took what it wanted of the X-Men world and didn't really worry about being consistent or true to the rest of it. This means that for very casual X-Men fans like myself they ended up making a pretty good movie. But for more serious fans like my boss they made something he can't enjoy because it's so far from the stories.

This is where Singer is missed the most. He was such a comic book fan that he was able to make a movie that varied a little from the cannon (in order to make a good movie) but not so much as to piss off the hard core fans.

Aside from all that the biggest take away I had from X-Men 3 is that special effects have really turned the corner. Not too long ago (think Jurassic Park) we'd think effects were remarkable when we'd watch fully effect generated creatures or scenes and think they looked believable. Now the mark of excellent effects is when you don't even notice that they're effects. There was only one time in this movie where I was reminded that effects were going on (when Wolverine grabs Cyclop's glasses while they're floating in mid air.) The rest of the time I just watched and enjoyed. Things like Jean transforming into the Phoenix force and dissentigrating people just looked *natural*. Like they had actually managed to make that happen and film it. The whole thing just flowed seamlessly.

Yay for the power of computing and the skill of talented artists...

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