Movies I saw yesterday
Jul. 6th, 2003 02:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasYesterday, on the Fourth, Lis and I went to the Mendon Twin drive-in. Fifteen bucks per car for a double feature -- $3.75/movie is about what Lis and I like to pay for first-run movies, so, if there's a double feature out there in which we want to see both features, we go out there. This week, Screen 2 had Terminator 3 and Hulk -- which wouldn't have been bad, but neither of us particularly wanted to see T3, so we went to Screen 1 instead, which was Sinbad paired with Charlies' Angels 2: Full Throttle.
Sinbad is one of those movies that's easier to watch if you either don't know mythology, or if you can shut your brain off during it. I admit that, around the beginning, I found myself trying to figure out exactly why an Arabian Muslim sailor was heading off to Syracuse, and, for that matter, why a Greek goddess was taking an interest in him, but eventually, I managed to stifle that, and accept that this was clearly a DIFFERENT Sinbad who was a sailor. And a pirate.
(The stories of the OTHER Sinbad the Sailor, of course, show up in 1001 Arabian Nights. While both the movie Sinbad and the original Sinbad do encounter a giant fish which they mistake for an island, there is no other point of similarity between the adventures of the one and the other. I wonder if it's the same giant fish?)
Having Eris as your adversary in a movie has certain advantages. One of the main ones is that the adversary's plot really doesn't have to make sense, if the adversary is the goddess of chaos. For that matter, the plot of the movie doesn't really have to be all that linear or coherent. I mean, it's Eris -- are YOU going to tell her that she should be doing things differently?
And it's got advantages for dramatic pacing. Like, for instance, there's this long backgroundy-expositiony section where two of the characters have a heart-to-heart discussion which explains lots about their motivations and personalities, and they really start bonding. . . Eris, who is watching over the whole ship is clearly bored with this. "Less talking," she says, summoning a monster to attack the ship, "More screaming!"
Charlie's Angels II was a fun movie. It had absolutely nothing in it even remotely resembling a plot. Some review I read stated that, if you took the eventual DVD version of this movie, and had it play the scenes in the movie in random order, it would probably make exactly as much sense as it does now, and be just about as enjoyable.
Stanley Yelnats is in the movie for no discernable reason that I can see. (That is, the actor who played Stanley Yelnats in Holes is also in this one.) Can't remember what Shia LaBeouf's character's name is in this one, which shows you what a gripping character he's given to work with.
The plot, such as it is, serves the same purpose as the plot in a porn film. Instead of sex scenes, you have fight scenes, or dance numbers. No, really. That's basically the movie -- fight scenes and dance numbers. It's hard to say which are better, but I tend to give the nod to the dance numbers, because they are more likely to have Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz, and Drew Barrymore in, say, fishnet stockings and garter belts, doing striptease numbers.
There are cute touches: Alex and Dylan are helping Natalie and Pete move in together, and "Hammer Time" starts playing on a TV which happens to be plugged in and set up, and the Angels start dancing -- at one point, the three of them, side by side, run up to a yellow sofa, stand on the back, and it tilts over, a la Gene Kelly, Donald O'Conner, and Debbie Reynolds singing "Good Mornin'" in "Singin' In the Rain." Pete's ten year high school reunion is coming up -- he gets the notice from Rydell High. The Angels are posing as welders, and the soundtrack starts playing "Flashdance". A funny Olsen Twins joke. Stuff like that.
The action sequences are so over-the-top that they stop being impressive. They take the laws of physics so cavalierly that it's clear that these fight scenes and "stunts" were done in CGI, and, well, there's no thrill in that. Sinbad has more realistic movement and physics than Charlie's Angels -- and when your animation looks more realistic than your live-action, there's a problem.
There's a running gag, such as it is, throughout the movie that Alex's (Liu's) father now believes that his beloved daughter and her friends are actually call girls: as it is, I'm not sure her father is wrong. If they want to have the next movie co-star Asia Carrera, I think that would work. . .
Sinbad is one of those movies that's easier to watch if you either don't know mythology, or if you can shut your brain off during it. I admit that, around the beginning, I found myself trying to figure out exactly why an Arabian Muslim sailor was heading off to Syracuse, and, for that matter, why a Greek goddess was taking an interest in him, but eventually, I managed to stifle that, and accept that this was clearly a DIFFERENT Sinbad who was a sailor. And a pirate.
(The stories of the OTHER Sinbad the Sailor, of course, show up in 1001 Arabian Nights. While both the movie Sinbad and the original Sinbad do encounter a giant fish which they mistake for an island, there is no other point of similarity between the adventures of the one and the other. I wonder if it's the same giant fish?)
Having Eris as your adversary in a movie has certain advantages. One of the main ones is that the adversary's plot really doesn't have to make sense, if the adversary is the goddess of chaos. For that matter, the plot of the movie doesn't really have to be all that linear or coherent. I mean, it's Eris -- are YOU going to tell her that she should be doing things differently?
And it's got advantages for dramatic pacing. Like, for instance, there's this long backgroundy-expositiony section where two of the characters have a heart-to-heart discussion which explains lots about their motivations and personalities, and they really start bonding. . . Eris, who is watching over the whole ship is clearly bored with this. "Less talking," she says, summoning a monster to attack the ship, "More screaming!"
Charlie's Angels II was a fun movie. It had absolutely nothing in it even remotely resembling a plot. Some review I read stated that, if you took the eventual DVD version of this movie, and had it play the scenes in the movie in random order, it would probably make exactly as much sense as it does now, and be just about as enjoyable.
Stanley Yelnats is in the movie for no discernable reason that I can see. (That is, the actor who played Stanley Yelnats in Holes is also in this one.) Can't remember what Shia LaBeouf's character's name is in this one, which shows you what a gripping character he's given to work with.
The plot, such as it is, serves the same purpose as the plot in a porn film. Instead of sex scenes, you have fight scenes, or dance numbers. No, really. That's basically the movie -- fight scenes and dance numbers. It's hard to say which are better, but I tend to give the nod to the dance numbers, because they are more likely to have Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz, and Drew Barrymore in, say, fishnet stockings and garter belts, doing striptease numbers.
There are cute touches: Alex and Dylan are helping Natalie and Pete move in together, and "Hammer Time" starts playing on a TV which happens to be plugged in and set up, and the Angels start dancing -- at one point, the three of them, side by side, run up to a yellow sofa, stand on the back, and it tilts over, a la Gene Kelly, Donald O'Conner, and Debbie Reynolds singing "Good Mornin'" in "Singin' In the Rain." Pete's ten year high school reunion is coming up -- he gets the notice from Rydell High. The Angels are posing as welders, and the soundtrack starts playing "Flashdance". A funny Olsen Twins joke. Stuff like that.
The action sequences are so over-the-top that they stop being impressive. They take the laws of physics so cavalierly that it's clear that these fight scenes and "stunts" were done in CGI, and, well, there's no thrill in that. Sinbad has more realistic movement and physics than Charlie's Angels -- and when your animation looks more realistic than your live-action, there's a problem.
There's a running gag, such as it is, throughout the movie that Alex's (Liu's) father now believes that his beloved daughter and her friends are actually call girls: as it is, I'm not sure her father is wrong. If they want to have the next movie co-star Asia Carrera, I think that would work. . .
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-06 07:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-06 08:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-06 10:58 am (UTC)Charlie's Angels
Date: 2003-07-07 12:00 am (UTC)and you expect a plot? or even G-d forbid intelligence.
I once read a learned review of the entire James Bond phenomena, and the author felt that it was merely a more modern form of Roman Gladiator blood-fests, coated over with a pretension of culture - after all it wasn't pointless mayhem - Bond is killing Bad-Guys [Tm], so it must be OK to watch and enjoy. The author's term for Bond films was "the Cultured Choreography of Death". Basically saying that we too seek the thrill of pain and death, but gloss it over.
So what Charlie's Angels has done it put the actual dance moves back in :-) and of course titillate us at the same time.