Night of the Living Dead

The game Left 4 Dead was actually the reason I watched this movie; I bought the game a few months ago, and it sparked my interest in zombie-stuff. I figured watching one of the classic zombie films would be a Good Thing.

I was rather let down by it, really. There were a few scenes that were shockers (such as when the zombies are shown eating body parts), but overall, I was mostly bored by it. There just wasn’t much suspense. The zombies looked bored, not bloodthirsty, and their super-slow movements made it seem as if the heroes could easily take out all of them with baseball bats and crowbars.

It didn’t help that I was actually wanting half of the survivors to not make it. The blonde woman particularly got on my nerves; I realize they were trying to portray her fear and panic, but after a while, I felt like the other folks should have been throwing her out the door. The guy who was holed up in the basement and was trying to boss everyone around also deserved to be tossed to the horde.

Favorite line from the movie, coming from the sheriff on a news broadcast: “They’re dead, they’re all messed up.”

28 Weeks Later

Again, I watched this one mostly because I’ve been playing Left 4 Dead. I did however see the original movie, 28 Days Later, and liked it a lot.

While I enjoyed the sequel, I didn’t think it was as good as the first one. Perhaps I’ve simply forgotten, but I don’t remember the infected from 28 Days Later regularly throwing up blood in the faces of their victims. They did this constantly in this movie, and after once or twice, it basically came across for what it really is: hey, look, a way to get more blood and gore into the scene, wow!

It’s also not clear what function it has. I felt that it was implied that some of the infected were eating victims, but it’s also pretty clear that the infected don’t attack / eat one another (for whatever reason). To go out of one’s way to infect victims by spewing blood at them seems rather counterproductive.

Then again, it’s a zombie flick, and I’m overthinking things. For a zombie flick, it was decent.

The Hunt for Red October

Not a whole lot to say about this one. I quite enjoyed it, and smiled a lot at the fact that a Lithuanian, Russian-speaking skipper (Sean Connery) had a thick Scottish accent. I wonder, has any director ever asked him to lose the accent for a role?

Star Trek

I’ve never been much of a trekkie, but I figured I would give this a go. It was a fun two hours, but… wow, it had problems.

Black holes do not equal time travel. You don’t sky dive onto a planet from space. What is red matter, exactly, and why does it make black holes? If it just takes one drop, why do you need 50 gallons of the stuff? If a black hole has just formed in the middle of a ship, why in the world would you feel the need to zap it with photons? Wait, did Nimoy just say that a supernova threatened to destroy the galaxy? Also, did I mention that black holes do not equal time travel?

Okay, so perhaps I was bothered by a lot more in Star Trek than I initially thought. I can think of more things that irked me, but I’ll leave it at that. Hey, at least William Shatner wasn’t in it…

Bourne Supremacy

After really liking Bourne Identity, I was quite looking forward to this. I ended up not liking Supremacy nearly as much, though, partly because I felt as if I’d been misled. The blurb for Supremacy said that Franka Potente returned more or less as Bourne’s sidekick. However, considering that she was dead within 20 minutes from the start of the movie, her “return” felt more like a way to just slap her name on the movie.

Her being killed so early in the movie also irked me because I’d really liked the interplay being Marie and Bourne. In Identity, she’d kept him in line to some extent, and Marie was someone Bourne could talk to. Marie being killed so early in Supremacy led to Bourne going solo the rest of the movie, which I didn’t find nearly as interesting. There were lots (and lots) of shots of him walking quickly and looking serious, but little dialogue between him and anyone else, besides him consistently asking “Why are you trying to kill me?” and saying “This ends now!” (Didn’t you say that in the first one, Bourne?)

What the movie lacked in dialogue, they tried to make up for with perhaps one of the longest car chase scenes I’ve ever watched. So long, in fact that, despite cars being smashed, guns being fired, and other such things, I became bored. Yes, yes, Bourne has just pulled off some amazing stunts with an old busted up taxi; movie along, please. 5 minutes later: oh, we’re still doing the car chase? Wake me up when it’s over.

My biggest problem with Supremacy is that it just felt like more of the same. I obviously expected Supremacy to be a continuation of Identity – it’s a sequel, after all – but not to such an extent. It felt like they’d taken Identity, swapped out a few characters, and left the plot more or less the same. Bourne’s a badass, someone’s trying to kill him, and he’s pissed. More, please.

Kudos to the makers, however, for continuing the coolness of including multiple languages in the movie; Russian makes the list this time. My Russian was woefully inadequate to understand what they were saying, but the actors’ pronunciation seemed pretty good, at least far better than I’ve heard elsewhere (Stargate SG-1 comes to mind). I didn’t even recognize Karl Urban, who played the Russian killer Kirill, as the same fellow who played Eomer in The Two Towers and The Return of the King.

The Kite Runner

I have very little to say about this one other than that it was an excellent movie. I don’t want to say much about it because its greatness lies solely in the story, and if I go blathering about it, I’ll spoil all sorts of things. Suffice to say, even if you’re not crazy about moies which are largely subtitled, you should watch this movie. I’m usually not one to get all emotional over movies, but there were a few bits in this one that made me really sad and really happy. The ending is awesome. If you’ve not seen it, I strongly recommend you do so.

Next to be watched via Netflix: Hotel Rwanda and Changeling.

Last week was a good week to sign up, as I had plenty of time to watch movies while laying around on hydrocodone. Things we’ve watched so far:

Lawrence of Arabia

I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this at first, but I ended up loving it. Lawrence is a really interesting character, and watching the film actually prompted me to throw a biography of his on my “to read” list. I also got a kick seeing Obi Wan, er, Alec Guinness, in the role of Prince Faisal.

I also thought the scenery was amazing. I can’t imagine how difficult it was filming all of that in the desert (I didn’t get around to watching the Making Of stuff on the DVD). It was doubly impressive because I knew none of it was CGI.

Citizen Kane

I again wondered whether I’d like this or not, but I ended up enjoying it. I talked to my friend Joshua about it beforehand, and he commented that it didn’t really feel that old considering it was made in ’41. I agree; other than the black and white factor and a few give-aways (like the fuzzy lighting on closeups of female characters), it felt very modern. The plot was great, and I thought Welles was excellent. I can certainly see why it’s hailed as one of the greatest movies ever. I’ll probably go back and watch this again to see if I can pick up anymore from it.

The one negative for me: before watching it, I accidentally stumbled onto what “Rosebud” was, so I knew how the movie ended before even getting settled into my chair.

Bourne Identity

Looking this movie up on IMDB really showed me how out of it I am in regards to movies. I thought hat it had come out “a few years ago”, when in reality it came out seven years ago. Okay, so I’m a little behind…

I liked this one as well, even though there were a few silly things. For example – since when do you go to a high security bank and gain access to an account by just giving the account number, with no I.D.? I need to book a flight to Switzerland…

Bonus points to the makers for having people in foreign countries actually speaking foreign languages (French, German, etc.). As I’m into languages, I thought it was a really nice touch.

If you’ve got any favorite movies, drop ‘em in the comments, and I’ll add them to my list of movies to check out. It just might take me a year or two to get to it.