Few movies

May 12, 2009 by John    8 Comments    Posted under: movies

The Princess Bride regularly seems to pop up as a people’s favourite. I’ve been hearing how good it is for so long that I was all prepared to be disappointed – but I still expected a bit more. Thought it might be a bit more like Big Fish… y’know just a teeny little bit more depth to it. But it’s a bog standard fantasy kid’s movie, nothing more. I guess it’d be different if you first watched it as a kid. But it didn’t do much for me watching it for the first time all grown up and grumpy. In that vein, I think I’d prefer The Never Ending story, or Time Bandits. Actually give me Jason and the Argonauts any day. You can’t beat claymotion monsters.

Harold and Maude is another one I’ve been meaning to watch for a while – and I loved it. You couldn’t write about this film without using the phrase ‘an unlikely friendship’ and that it is, between a boy and a woman in her eighties – but on paper that still could be some flimsy whimsey exploring the relationships, barf. It’s a real outsider movie, celebrating individuality, and that too is obvious – but there’s never a dull moment, it’s an eventful flick and very funny in places. Thumbs up from me.

Also went to see Star Trek last night and it’s a jolly good space romp! My eyes quite often glaze over during actions sequences. I’m a bit sick of hearing people bigging up the latest action movie as if it transcends it’s genre – only to find out it’s the same old two dimensional shite with some cars blowing up*. Yes Ledger was good but there was an awful load of rubbish in Dark Night – I didn’t watch it until the end – I just got completely bored with the action. So I’m very suspicious of highly recommended action movies lately. But Star Trek was just good fun, a bit tongue in cheek, and the action seemed more necessary and involved, and yeah it looks great, but that’s a given. Yes it’s disappointingly good.

*Paul Greengrass might be an exception.