X-Men: The Last Stand
I saw this movie in Arctic Norway because a) I couldn't afford to get pissed, b) I couldn't get pissed anyway because I was going to run a marathon, and c) there had to be some way of getting away from the 24/7 sunshine.
The whole Norwegian cinema-going experience was pretty good. They even had amusing adverts for local businesses. But unfortunately, while X-Men: The Last Stand wasn't too bad for part three of something (it's a lot better than The Class of Nuke 'Em High 3: The Good, the Bad, and the Subhumanoid, for instance), it didn't actively refrain from being
shit. Presumably all the plot and character development got used up in the first two movies, leaving just a series of increasingly ponderous face-offs between men wearing risible helmets. And Wolverine is a rubbish superhero. From what I could make out, his main power is that he's excessively hairy, and if he ever forgot himself and picked his bum he'd be in big trouble.
Also, is it a rule that any movie with a colon in the title is ridiculous? Just reflect on the fact that Mission Impossible 3 has got two of the fuckers in there, and draw your own conclusions. But seriously, if you can think of a decent colonated movie, drop me a comment, and if you win, I'll send you an out of date horseracing tip or something
Harry Potter and the g of h
I knew this film was going to be
shit. To recap, the scores for the first three Harry Potters are as follows:
Harry Potter and the a of b:
shitHarry Potter and the c of d:
shitHarry Potter and the e of f:
goodEvidently, the Harry Potter studio execs thought something was a bit amiss with Harry Potter and the e of f, so they hired Mike Newell to revert to the hilarious formula of the first two pictures. Harry Potter and the g of h feels like it constantly has to shove amazing CGI images up your cortex, so it never gets round to telling the story. And then, after a while, you get tired of the CGI. It's like watching Super Mario Karts without being allowed to play it.
On the other hand, it employs every single British thespian
ever, which is nice for them, but J K Rowling's got more money than God, so I suppose she can afford it.
Down in the Valley
Poor old Ed Norton, he's not quite as
du jour as he used to be. One minute he's growing a comedy beard while rebuffing flattering comparisons with the young Brando, and the next he goes and makes some movies like The 25th Hour (
shit), The Italian Job (
shit) or Red Dragon (
shit). It's OK Eddie, it could happen to anyone. What happened next is that Ed's agent probably offered him second lead in a Shatner flick where The Shat gets dumped by the woman in Star Trek IV (they couldn't afford Rene Russo), and she goes off with Ed's character, but realises it was a terrible mistake when Ed gets her chocolate labrador drunk and then it chews up her orchid collection and Ed doesn't show a bit of remorse because it was the dog's fault not his, so she gets back with The Shat and then the credits roll to some jangly country music and everyone in the cinema wished they'd stayed at home and watched Green Card again on BBC9.
So maybe something like this never happened, but Ed did take a couple of years off after making all those
shit movies. Why I think he came back is that he was envious of Jake Gyllenhaal and his massive
du jour-ness. After Ed saw
Brokeback Mountain I think he had something to prove, so he decided he was going to make a cowboy movie too, but this one was going to be interesting and original, where Gyllenhaal's was just painted-on gay. So Ed made Down in the Valley, and everyone absolutely acts the living shit out of it.
It's a very interesting film, well shot, with a sense of humour and Hope Sandoval on the soundtrack. You really don't know what's going to happen next, and I did find the ending moving, apart from I couldn't help but think of a certain scene in The Big Lebowski which contaminated it a bit. But this film is
good anyway and it's nice to see Ed Norton back, with or without the funny wee facial hairstylings.
