Movies 2007, part 4 of 5

Adaptation
Heh. Jokes within jokes. I woke M up later that night to explain to her my theories about this movie. And, this, friends, is why she’s a keeper: Because she actually listened to me before going back to sleep.

Six-String Samurai
Four strings for style, two for substance.

Yi Yi
A Chinese film about people living life. It was quite good.

Ong-Bak
A Thai film about a dude kicking other dudes in awesome ways. It was quite good for different reasons.

The Shipping News
Bleah. I liked the book, whereas the movie was not just a different story, but an inferior one. A weak movie on its own.

The Atomic Brain (MST3K)
You know how this goes.

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
I can see now why this didn’t do well at the box office. It has all the elements of a Wallace & Gromit story you might like, but it’s... boringer somehow.

Ringers, Lord of the Fans
A limp, yay-rah documentary that leaves too many stones unturned. Not as wide-ranging, insightful, or heartening as Trekkies, not as actually informative as a straight info-dump Discovery Channel doc. LotR just doesn't (yet) inspire the same mania that similar sci-fi/fantasy franchises do. It's deep, but not loud. The people in Jedi robes talking about it on camera indicate its place as part of a constellation, not as its own star. Which is a shame, because it's awful bright. They just didn't talk to the right people to do the subject matter justice, I suspect.

The Unearthly (MST3K)
MST3K movies are funner to watch in groups. I watched this one alone, but then I discovered that reading the Internet at the same time is a good semi-tasking substitute.

Night at the Museum
For some reason, I didn’t know this was a children’s movie, and dumber than it needed to be. Ricky Gervais was great as the guy Ricky Gervais always plays. Owen Wilson played the character Owen Wilson always plays well. Ben Stiller... I just keep rooting for Ben Stiller, but he keeps playing the character he always plays. I want better for him.