What I Watched On My Spring Break

The week of college spring break coincided with my kids’ spring break so, with only a little grading to do, and one conference paper to fiddle with, there was plenty of time to rack up those Regal Crown Club points at the multiplex.

Race to Witch Mountain. Exactly what you would expect, and an inoffensive throw-back to wholesome Disney movies (of course, this is a remake of an much earlier Disney movie). It seems long at 95 minutes, and the instant bonding between alien children and helpful humans, Dwayne Johnson and Carla Gugino, rings false. But the movie is held together by Johnson’s considerable wise-cracking charm.

Knowing. OK, so it is preposterous, the meditations on determinism versus randomness are underdeveloped, and one wonders just how many of these identical anguished roles Nicolas Cage can play. As one child commented: there are more plot holes than plot. That said, a couple of the scenes are stunningly filmed, particularly a long single shot of a plane crash, and you do come out of the movie theater asking a lot of questions (admittedly, one of them is: why did I pay $20 for three matinee tickets to see that). There is this quasi-religious explanation, and what looks a lot like Eden at the end. Some interesting ideas but ultimately a failure. But did you know that both Carla Gugino and Nic Cage are astrophysicists?

Duplicity. This movie has received an awful lot of gushing praise, most of it deserved. An old-fashioned, highly competent caper movie/romantic comedy. The banter sparkles and the caper is genuinely well-crafted, with enough red herrings to keep you guessing. Also, a fine cast of supporting actors. This has the feel of an Ocean’s 11 in the sheer smoothness and ease with which its actors navigate the plot and each other. I must say that I was not convinced by the chemistry between Clive Owen and Julia Roberts. It seemed a little forced in the flashbacks that litter the film. And there is one really good line in the film, so good that the film-makers repeat it four times just to show us how clever they are.

The Resident Evil cycle. OK, so this was a not in movie theaters. But in honor of RE5’s appearance at video game stores everywhere, and the news that Brad Pitt’s production company has greenlit World War Z, ,my oldest and I watched all four Resident Evil movies: RE; RE: Apocalypse; RE: Extinction; and RE: Degeneration. They get better and less video game like a the series progresses, with the best being the last. Degeneration is CG and hews much more closely to the storyline of the video game thus displacing Alice (Milla Jovovich) from the center of attention.

Note: George Romero was originally hired to direct Resident Evil. There is a even a script out there on the web for his version.

Note 2: Michelle Rodriquez appears to be cloned from Lt. Vasquez in Aliens: the tough, wise-cracking Latina. Fast and the Furious, SWAT, Resident Evil, Girlfight. Talk about type cast.

Note 3: They are making a Fast and Furious 4 with the cast of the original (including Rodriquez). How poor old Vin Diesel has fallen from favor to be reduced to this. This should be a lesson to action heroes not to make dumb family-friendly movies: Schwarzenegger; The Rock (Dwayne Johnson); Ice Cube.

One thought on “What I Watched On My Spring Break”

  1. as good a place as any to leave a brief note on the latest in the unkillable resident evil series: resident evil: retribution. the best thing about it is the pre-credits sequence (cue wry observation about how the best thing about movies like this one has to be whatever happens before the movie begins) which starts with an image of alice sinking into the ocean and then rewinds in slow-motion all the way back to the post-credits sequence of the last entry in the franchise. no idea what the point of the gimmick is but it is beautiful to watch. and, as it happens, the first 24 minutes of the film proper are not bad either: in fact, it’s almost like an avant-garde film until the plot kicks in, at which point things get tedious fast. milla jovovich is great as usual (and getting more and more beautiful every year); everybody else is crap.

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