Reviews: Week of Nov 06, 2007

A couple things to point out: I rarely spend more than $5 on any given movie; it's difficult but possible. I suggest to everyone, do the same. Only [Die For] movies are worth whatever it takes, and very rarely does a [Buy] exceed $10 in my mind. A [Rent] should be rented with an online service to offset the cost. [Watch] means don't pay for it yourself, and [Skip] means... well if your not sure, then a movie with this rating might be for you.

Spiderman 3
Toby Maguire returns in Sam Raimi's third installment of the blockbuster live-action adaptation of everyone's favorite arachnid/man. And that's probably the most praise you'll hear from me on the subject; this is the third one, so you should watch it simply because it's the third one... which is actually pretty bad advice. I found Peter Parker [Maguire] to be very unconvincing as a 'good-guy-finding-his-dark-side'; he seemed to sort of just turn into a mean emo kid. The villains are far less engrossing this time around, and splitting the fights up between what seems like FOUR villains (Sandman, Green Goblin, Spidey as Venom, and Venom itself) makes for a film without direction. Much of the movie felt as though I were watching someone play an exciting video game, or maybe like the amusement park rides where you sit in a large platform in front of a movie screen: it's a ride that is interesting at first but grows tiresome after a bit. Couple this non-stop 'action' with some pretty poor excuses for character development, and Spidey 3 is one bug I'd like to flush. I'm still hoping for the franchise to continue though, as I'd love to see Carnage someday hit the big screen.
I'm still giving it a [Rent]; it's getting by on it's good looks at this point though.
[Rent]

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
For a comedy about two men pretending to be gay, I actually found this a lot less offensive than I expected. Sure it goes for some obvious stuff, and perhaps since I'm not gay I don't notice stuff that would make a gay man queasy. But I must say, I was expecting this film to really pull some homophobia-laden-punches, and, to my surprise, it rarely seemed to go there.
But, that's not to say where it did go was all that funny. I think what grated me most about this film was Sandler's character, a womanizing fireman that apparently is the sexiest man alive. Huh. Perhaps this is the hetero talking again, but I never imagined Sandler as being all that attractive. Am I supposed to simply believe he's good looking because he's a fireman? Or perhaps because that's simply the premise the movie sets forth? I just couldn't buy it.
But getting past something that, ultimately, is pretty insignificant, the movie does deliver a few good laughs., and by the end I was warming up to it. I also feel like Kevin James has been placed time and time again into roles that are sort of lackluster. If you've ever seen his stand up "Sweat the Small Stuff", perhaps you feel the same as I that James can really deliver. I just never seem to get to see him really shine.
[Watch]

Ratatouille
I keep expecting Pixar to slip up. I didn't care for Cars much, but ultimately I enjoyed it. The Incredibles seemed to miss a few notes, but overall, I still bought it. Toy Story 2 was, as Dimitri Martin puts it, 'okay', although I still had to have the Ultimate Toy Box. So I went into one more Pixar movie, looking forward to seeing the mighty empires' downfall: here's a movie about a CGI French Rat that wants to be a chef. WTF?
It works. My God, how it doth work. Brad Bird (creative genius behind some Simpsons stuff along with The Incredibles) sets his master touch to yet another strangely endearing Pixar film. The story is creative, engrossing, and touching. The characters are like-able but not too over the top all the time to seem out of place. And some of the jokes are so well done, timed just right and out of nowhere, you remember once again why you end up buying everything Pixar makes.
[Die For]

A few releases this week caught my eye, although I haven't had a chance to watch most of them:

Seinfeld - Season 9
Seinfeld - The Complete Series
James Bond Ultimate Collector' Set
Twin Peaks Gold Box
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair
The X-Files: The Ultimate Collection
And as I said last week, Flight of the Conchords is a [Buy].