Checksum Arcanius

I did, and it was very good.

Thanks to Bobby for giving me the opportunity!

I went to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last night. It is the sort of movie that works really well as a movie — telling an intriguing story with complete suspense of disbelief throughout. It explored the topic seriously without taking itself too seriously — it was very well done. It was also a long movie, but it didn’t ever feel like it was dragging. It reminded me in some ways of Forrest Gump — the story of the journey of a remarkable person through life. I rate it a solid 4/5.

After going for a run around Greenlake and feeling thoroughly gassed, Bobby and I watched Primer, one of my favorite movies of all time. Every time I watch it, I understand more and more. This visual timeline that Theo pointed me to certainly helped this time, but I also picked up on a lot of queues early in the movie that I didn’t notice the first three or four times through. Movies that can continue to produce newness after even a couple of viewings are rare; Primer in this regard is a true Gem.

A week ago I saw The Dark Knight, the second of the reinvented Batman series than began, appropriately, with Batman Begins. The movie was well done and enjoyable, but I feel that too much today a movie being excessively dark is a substitute for a stronger story. The Dark Knight was definitely pushing is this unfortunate direction. I think a lot of people think it was better than it was because it was so dark. But really what it needed to make it excellent was a slightly tighter, slightly better written story. Overall, a good movie, but not really a great movie, in my opinion.

The Dark Knight: 4/5

Last night, the plan was to finally watch WALL-E from Pixar, but a late plane arrival from Dallas spoiled those plans. Instead, we ended up watching Wanted, an insolent, unfortunate movie about superhuman assassins. I am as willing as the next guy to suspend my disbelief, but I really don’t like it when, once I have suspended my disbelief, the movie continues to rub my face in the fact that I was willing to do just that. And this movie did that incessantly, along with being overtly obnoxious just because. All that being said, some of the action scenes were fun, just not worth watching the rest of the movie for.

Wanted: 2/5

I went with the roommate Darren to see No Country For Old Men tonight. It was a well done thriller about a drug deal gone wrong, a protagonist who finds the drug money, and an antagonist killing machine who comes after the protagonist and everything good in the world.  Although very dark and a bit depressing, that was to be expected given the title and the nature of the film.

The Yahoo! Movies ranking showed normal people rating it lower than experts — usually a very big warning sign to me. The only reason I agreed to go see it, in fact, was that Sunshine, a movie that I did enjoy, met a similar Users vs. Experts fate. As in Sunshine, the differential for No Country was only one grade point (ie, B- to B), so I guessed that meant the movie wouldn’t be too bad. The guess turned out to be correct. I am no better off for having seen the movie, but it didn’t leave me worse off either. (In cases where audiences and critics disagree by two or more grade points, such as in the case for Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, you are almost always guaranteed a terrible movie.) I give it a 3.0/5.

Now that finals are over, I finally took the chance to relax a bit. I went with Shai, Dan, and Todd (and almost Courtney, Nic, and Natalie, but the movie sold out before they go there) to see I Am Legend. I have been pretty pumped about this movie since Dan let me know about it a while back. It seems that the premise is just too cool to screw up too badly. Of course, that didn’t stop the 1970s version with Charlton Heston, “Omega Man,” from attempting, but even that movie was not a complete bust. A modern version with Will Smith was a pretty sure-fire thing, right?

Right! This story actually has a happy ending. I did enjoy the movie — my first in quite a while to be honest. It had funny moments, intense moments, a few too few thoughtful moments, but overall it was a good ride and did enough right with the compelling premise to be a good way to get back into the movie-watching swing of things.

I Am Legend gets a 4 out of 5 on my movie scale.

After a week off of movies after seeing 13 at TIFF, I saw 3:10 to Yuma with Kunlun last week and I just got back from watching Stardust with Ananth, Todd, and Jason.

3:10 to Yuma was a disaster in my mind. By the time the movie reached its climax, I was so sick of the ridiculous decisions everyone was making that I didn’t really care to see an unreformed criminal tricking a kid into thinking his dad was great. Hopefully that doesn’t spoil it for anyone who wanted to watch it, but then what really can spoil a movie this ridiculous? I didn’t even find it funny, as one of my friends did. 2.0/5

Stardust, on the other hand, was hugely enjoyable. It immediately suspended disbelief (something that Yuma never tried to do — another failure, in my opinion), and everything happened just about as it should have, with just enough unpredictability to make it fun, but not so much to take away that smug feeling of figuring out whats about to happen before it happens. Definitely worthwhile. 4.0/5