Category: movies

I watched Payback last night on TiVo, recorded earlier from TNT. Well, it sucked. Here’s the basic plot, spoilers included:

• Porter, Mel Gibson’s character, teams up with another guy, Val, to rob an Asian gang.
• The robbery goes well and they get a briefcase full of money. But, Val double-crosses Porter and takes all the money.
• Then, Val uses that money to bribe his way into a crime syndicate. And, for the rest of the movie, Porter chases after the syndicate people to get back his “share” of the money (that he stole in the first place).

Oh, and the director apparently thought it’d be cute to have the movie set in the 70s. So, all the cars and limos are 70s-vintage (though you can occasionally see modern cars in the background). And, all the characters use rotary phones, which is supposed to be cool or something (yes, even the car-phones are rotary).

I saw Minority Report yesterday, and it was generally quite enjoyable. I still hold that “PG-13” and “good action movie” are two mutually exclusive concepts, and this was no exception. The key here, of course, is that Minority Report was more of a sci-fi flick than a pure action movie.

Favorite bit: the cereal box. In some ways, it reminded me of Eddie Valiant’s reaction after he hits the fire hydrant in Toon Town.

Least favorite bit: the snot. As Americans like to say, that was “uncalled for”. I thought it was unfortunate that the film used the “gross is funny” philosophy of humor from time to time. See also: the scene with the floor grate.

Overall, it was a good movie, and I’d recommend it. The story is intriguing, and the effects are impressive. At many points, the CG cars looked like models to me, in the way that they accurately reflected ambient light. And, for CG, I can think of no higher compliment.

Some bloggers are going to see Minority Report this evening, the new Tom Cruise / Steven Spielberg flick. It was well received by critics, and it'd be kinda tempting to go.

Chicago Sun-Times / Roger Ebert:
This film is such a virtuoso high-wire act, daring so much, achieving it with such grace and skill. Minority Report reminds us why we go to the movies in the first place.

Film Threat / Clint Morris:
Where Minority Report succeeds is by dishing up a little bit of everything � to see no one leaves the theater disgruntled. There are helpings of science fiction marvel, there�s some interminable tension and a real human story underneath it all. The specials effects are damn impressive to boot.

Salon.com / Andrew O’Hehir:
It's a dark and dazzling spectacle.

And, I’m not just cherry-picking the reviews, either — those are all reviewers that I feel I can trust. However, my long-standing boycott against the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is still intact.

The reason for my boycott is that, under pressure from the MPAA, the Norwegian government earlier this year indicted teenager Jon Johansen for writing software to enable DVD playback on Linux.

In exemplary cases over the past few months (Lord of the Rings, Episode II, and the like), I would make donations to Johansen’s legal defense fund. However, I'm now in a bit of a moral quandary. Up until now, my procedure has been to avoid MPAA films if possible, and make matching defense-fund donations if I do attend a movie.

Thinking it over, I could tweak the “boycott” such that I would instead be a “matching-funds consumer” (or something). That is, under this new idea, I would attend movies as if I had no “boycott”, but continue making the matching donations. That would allow for the entertainment value of the movies, of course, but it may also mean net-positive monies towards The Good Guys. That is, though I would pay (say) $8 for the movie and $8 to the EFF, the money would act as $8 gross revenue for the movie industry but $8 net revenue for the defense. Hmm, not bad.

Man, principals can be tough.

So, I recorded Beverly Hills Cop II on the TiVO about a week ago. And, I watched it last night. Or, shall I say, I tried to watch it. I got about an hour into it, but I couldn’t get much further. For those not aware, let me summarize the plot for you:

for (time==1; time <= movie.theEnd(); time ++) {
if ((time mod 20) == 0) axelFoley.impersonateNewCharacter();
}

Yeah, over and over, Axel Foley impersonates different characters in order to deceive other characters. It was cute the first time or two, but quickly became repetitive after that.

And, what’s up with all the enormous sunglasses in the 80s? Man, it was if those guys had translucent saucers tied to their heads with wire. Of course, in the noughts, tiny sunglasses are all the rage. Is this like the thin-tie/thick-tie thing where the fashion of it swings between the two extremes?