pres.umptuo.us

A trio of movie reviews before I get into my favorites of 2005.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

I read the book back in Junior High and remembered liking it. Simple, easy-to-read, straightforward. It wasn’t until later that one of my friends mentioned the parallels with the story of Christ, and I just sort of went, “Hmm. That’s interesting.

Regardless, Christianity undertones or not, I still didn’t think the movie was all that great.

It somehow managed a PG rating, yet had a lot of scenes that I thought were rather shocking for children, and I’m sure someone got paid off to give Narnia the PG.

The CG effects I felt were very lackluster, with one shot of the children standing on a mountain top in particular looking especially bad. The huge battle at the end was neat, but eh. I don’t know if I’d call this a flaw in the story or in the directing, but just seeing children leading warriors into battle left me in a lot more disbelief than seeing giant minotaurs and talking beavers.

Big thanks to Justin for the free tickets though =)

King Kong

What’s that? Wake you up when they finally reach the island? ZZzzz…

Alright seriously, this movie is friggin’ long, and it feels it too. I have to give Peter Jackson a lot of credit though, cause he’s damn good at what he does, and I admire him for not caving in to what I assume was a lot of pressure to trim the running time of the film. He appreciates the build-up of the story and he deserves respect for that.

Gorgeous visuals in King Kong, as opposed to those in Narnia, and boy is there a lot of action once they reach the island. It got a little ridiculous at some points, but very enjoyable.

However, I didn’t enjoy this movie as much as everyone else did. Nothing about it really stuck out to me, yet nothing was poorly done.

Let me put it this way: It was a very well-done typical film, in that it didn’t have the creativeness of Amelie or even The Matrix, or just anything to truly make it stand out, but it was very solid on all points.

Definitely recommended to see in the theater, just cause the visuals and action are all really fun.

Munich

A good movie, just like a good book, should make you think about things you hadn’t thought about before. “Provoking” would be the word, and that would describe Munich very well.

I loved the visual style of this movie. Ever since A.I., Spielberg has been playing with lighting a lot, and especially in this movie he uses a haloing effect throughout. Plus it’s got that sweet 1960s and ’70s vibe to it.

Munich also showed a lot of violence much like Saving Private Ryan, which I must say is a very good thing. One scene showed someone being stabbed with a kitchen knife, and just the rawness of the action left me feeling shocked. This wasn’t like Kill Bill or Sin City where the knife goes in with a *squish* and blood starts oozing out everywhere; instead the knife barely goes into head maybe an inch, and the victim slowly slumps over, and he dies. Just like that.

I don’t want to get into plot details about this film because the movie is more enjoyable that way, but I feel that this is a movie that everyone should see. The way the characters all become further and further detached from their morals, and the end when the realization comes that right and wrong have become arbitrary.

I saw this movie with Tim, and afterwards we had a fairly interesting conversation about the entire Israel-Palestine conflict and whether the message of the movie was conveyed or not.

Definitely recommended that everyone see this movie, one way or another