(no subject)

[green_queen]

:ALSKFJLSDKFJS:LDKFJS:DLFKJ THREEQUEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!?!?!?!

Screw Broadway, forget Comic-con, when I find out when this is, THAT'S when I'm going to America. I don't care if I have to sell organs, I will BE in that theatre.

AVPM as Glee. Hilarious!

The promised movie reviews:

August 24th

Green Lantern

I knew it would be bad going in. I thought the trailers were laughable, but there's like 30 seconds of Ryan Reynolds in his underwear, and Clare didn't want to see anything else, so I decided to go anyway.

This movie doesn't have a sense of its own style, like Captain America and Iron Man have, it doesn't have a memorable or interesting main character like Spider-Man, it's not going to reinvent the genre like Batman has over and over again. It's just. There. It is what it is, and it doesn't seem to be aspiring to be anything more than a generic comic book adaptation with a generic main character. The alien stuff is sort of brushed over, like they know how silly it's going to look and instead of really trying to sell it they'll just put it on the backburner. Peter Sarsgaard's story is much more compelling and sad than Ryan Reynolds', which leads to a Thor-like problem of the villain being more interesting than the hero. I was surprised by my lack of hatred for Blake Lively, but she did get around damseling for most of the movie. This is another area in which Cap has it all over these other movies.

There's honestly nothing else I really remember, except that I thought it was weird of Hal to make an ugly green necklace for Blake Lively and how dumb it was that emotions have colur powers associated with them (although Clare and I did joke about Hal using the power of love to kill the fear monster and wearing a candy pink outfit). So, whatever.

2 out of 5

Cowboys & Aliens

You know, for a movie starring Indiana Jones and James Bond as (really really hot) cowboys who fight aliens, this movie was surprisingly dull. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't as great as the premise had the potential to be, and here's my theory on why.

What this movie needed more than anything was a sense of humour about itself. It needed to acknowledge its own silliness and its own limitations and then tell the story from that point of view. It was so straight-forward and serious that when things got ridiculous (thanks to a silly turn with Olivia Wilde's character) it didn't have the ability to make that work. It was a Western by-the-numbers with various disparate groups - cowboys, honest folk, outlaws, Indians - banding together against the alien threat. The alien ships had a wicked cool design and there was this hilarious thing with the aliens' arms that made for one of the best death scenes in any movie I've seen recently, but it was INCREDIBLY predictable as to who would live and die. The thing is, that could have all worked to its advantage if they'd gone down the nudge-nudge-wink-wink route, but making it so serious means that it just felt a bit...like all they were giving you was what was in the title.

2.5 out of 5

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

You know what, this movie has no business being as good as it is. It should be an expensive, flimsy little action movie. Who the hell saw the original Planet of the Apes and went, hey, I know what to do, and wrote THAT? How did it get approved through all the production stages? This is a serious, thoughtful, sad and angry film. It's incredibly powerful.

Andy Serkis has the most incredible ability to act the fuck out of a scene without you ever getting to see him. Caesar is a work of art. The ape is so relatable and heartbreaking and real, your sympathies are with him the whole way. The film explores a culture clash between apes and humans, and the apes fighting back to protect themselves. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and according to this film, so is the road to our own destruction. It's perfectly constructed, so every step of the way it makes sense. It's also an INTELLIGENT movie, in that it expects you to understand what they're not explicitly telling or showing you. The bad guys are a bit too bad, but in most cases they give you reasoning for it (not so much Tom Felton, but Draco Malfoy is such a little shit, you know - AND he gets the Charlton Heston lines).

Freida Pinto feels a bit shoehorned in as the love interest, although their actual relationship is more organic and less forced than most Hollywood romances. John Lithgow KILLS it as James Franco's father and...Franco is Franco. I love him. It barely even matters, though, with Caesar just stealing every single scene with a look in his eyes or a sniff of his nose. Amazing work from Weta, honestly. It's also shot really beautifully, with a sense of foreboding so thick you can taste it, and metaphors for freedom and captivity in almost every frame.

So...ignore the trailers, throw out any preconceptions, and go see the damn thing.

5 out of 5



















Green Queen