Desert Island Discs, OR: How I Spent My Winter Vacation

The bride and I just returned home from a holiday in Phoenix where we saw Roger Waters perform "The Wall" (which was amazing) and the hotel we stayed in just happened to be across the street from an AMC theatre. Because of this (and because he had no car and cabs in Phoenix are absurdly expensive) we found ourselves in the (extremely comfortable) theatre on 3 of our 5 nights away! Here are some very quick thoughts about the three films we saw. I doubt I'll bother with full reviews of any of them (especially since everyone in the universe has already reviewed the one which ended up being the best of the three).




"Tangled" - Directed by Nathan Greno & Bryon Howard

Of all the films in the Disney Princesses catalogue, this is surely the most recent. It was fine. I would have preferred traditional 2D animation, but the CG animation was fairly good (though not Pixar good) the supporting cast was more entertaining than the main characters (which is usually the case in Disney fairy tales) and the jokes were pretty funny. Ok, some of them. Quite often a good way to gauge a Disney movie is by how good the music is. This one's music falls somewhere in the middle of the hierarchy of Disney's films. Which is what I'd say about the movie as well.







"Unstoppable" - Directed by Tony Scott

I usually like Tony Scott's movies but HATE the way he shoots and edits them. This movie is no exception. It is in fact better than the majority of Scott's output, but it features his trademark kinetic camera and uber-hip music video style editing. Of all of his films this one might suit that style the best (and it's the least distracting here.) Having said that, I still found myself frustrated sometimes by the way everything spun around and cut so insanely fast. If you like Tony Scott's style it won't bother you here, if you don't like his style it will probably still bother you here. Only real complaints I have are with an unnecessary subplot involving the hero's marriage (which is very tacked on and the stakes are high enough without it) and the overuse of "news reports", once was fine, twice was ok, 4007 times was overkill. But when Tony Scott likes something (like say spinning the camera around someone and then suddenly zooming in VERY VERY fast before cutting away to blurry speed lines like a Speed Racer cartoon) then overkill is usually what he seems to aim for.



"Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 1" - Directed by David Yates

This was my favorite of the three movies we saw and also the one about which I'll say the least. I thought Yates did an excellent job of setting the tone for the film (spoiler: It's DARK) and setting up for what I am sure will be a hell of a lot of payoff in the next. He does all this without having this film drag, which is surprising given it's 2 hr and 37 min run time. I felt it flew by! How very very lucky we are that these kids grew up to be pretty decent actors! This is definately the best Potter film in the series so far.





So that's it. I saw a few other things on HBO (we had EIGHT channels worth of HBO... it was what I imagine heaven would be like.) but they were all either things I'd seen before or things that came out a while ago so I doubt anyone wants to read about (but if you're curious what I thought of "Whip It" I thought it was alright but not nearly as good as I'd been led to believe. B- ) Tomorrow is the start of December which marks the beginning of my December marathon. I'll be posting about the films in it as I watch them. Feel free to follow along and leave your thoughts in the comments if you're so inclined.