Inception- Was it really 12 hours long?

Continuing a recent trend of ripping into movies, here is my take on Inception starring Leo DeCaprio and written/directed by Chris Nolan.

I don't know where to begin with this movie. Tons of people loved it, but I'm not sure why. It drags on for 2 hours and 28 minutes that feels much longer than that. The plot doesn't make a ton of sense and wastes tons of time on things that don't actually matter.

Character development is non-existent except for Leo's character to a degree. But, since from the start of the movie you realize the "development" about him you end up wondering how his partner hasn't noticed it before.

A good 3 hours (ok, maybe 20 minutes? it seemed like forever) is spent explaining how they develop the "dream" they are going to be using to go into someone's head. The problem is, they more they explain it, the less sense it makes. This whole process needed to be skipped as it didn't add anything but confusion to a plot that was already hanging by a thread.

Basically, this movie could have been great, it just tried too hard. If Nolan had cut 45 minutes from it, cut out plot development that went nowhere interesting, and focused on making a movie that actually moved faster than molasses, it could have been wonderful. Instead....you got what you got.

The CGI special effects were gorgeous and I give their team full credit for that.

Also, why Ellen Page was cast for her role I don't understand. I liked her in Juno and I think she can do certain roles well, but she seemed horribly miscast for this role. Especially since her character was sort of "forced" in my mind. Of course, most of the plot seemed to exist only to justify other points of the plot existing. You might think that's how all plots are, but...if you watch this movie, it feels very very very contrived and not cohesive or flowing in the least.

I'll give it a 2.5/5 as it wasn't awful, but man, it sure wasn't good.

Salt- WTF?

So, I remembered seeing previews for this movie and then hearing how most of the critics hated it. Ok, I thought, that must mean its a decent action movie. They usually hate those.

Well......

If you go into it wanting to watch an action movie with a nonsensical plot, this is it. To fully enjoy the movie, don't read the box/netflix blurb as it isn't really what the movie is about exactly.

I won't spoil it for you, but prepare to say "what the heck is going on" and "why did they do that?" and "this makes no sense at all" and "come on, really?" a lot.

The action is, well, modern action. Its enjoyable enough. The normal hilarity of 120lb Angelina Jolie (hun, get back up to Tomb Raider size please) being able to go toe to toe with 200lb men. The regular "everyone can hit a bullseye with a pistol while sprinting/leaping through the air" gunplay. Just normal action movie fare. The plot is what did this movie in for me.

Honestly, the movie had lots of potential to be a fun action movie. Instead, someone decided they needed to make the plot ridiculously convoluted and bad instead. Why? I don't know. Its like Hollywood has decided that action movies need lots of plot. No, they don't. More plot just gives a higher probability the movie will suck as the inherent plot problems of action movies come more and more to the forefront.

By the end, the movie I could most compare it to plot-wise was Mission Impossible II. Now, it wasn't as bad as that travesty of a movie (seriously, few movies are) but if you watch Salt and have seen MI II, you'll know exactly what I mean.

So, I'll give it a 2/5, but say that for 99 minutes of your time, there are far worse movies you could waste it on.

Black Swan

So, Katrina and I watched Black Swan this weekend. Since it won best picture I had certain prejudices against it from the get go. (To me, about 50% of "best picture" movies are utterly and completely crap, even if well made.)

I'd love to say that Black Swan transcended that, but really it didn't. It was a well made movie with good acting and phenomenal dancing by Portman who purportedly did about 85% of her own dance scenes.

PSEUDO-SPOILER ALERT:

The problem was if you've seen any movie, EVER, involving someone with paranoid schizophrenia, A Beautiful Mind, American Psycho, then you've seen this movie. Oh sure, it had its own unique aspects, but ultimately, you knew what was going on and the movie lost any real suspense for you.

Also, reflecting on the movie, the plot just sort of happens. You never get stuff fleshed out, which is sort of annoying because I, personally, LIKE things fleshed out more.

So, ultimately, it was an ok movie, that was well acted and directed but the plot was the weak point. I'd give it a 3.75 out of 5 I guess. Definately not "Best Picture" quality in my mind.

Edit: Upon reading this "review" I realize I will never be a critic.

Movies: A Mini Rant

I think about movies too much. This is strange, since I don't watch all that many movies, and most of the ones I do are silly fun action movies, but really I do.

I suppose I do because I expect certain things out of different sorts of movies. Action movies I just want fun entertainment. Sci-fi/fantasy, coherent plot and a decent story.

Drama, well, I don't watch much drama and here's why: Real life has enough drama for me!

What brings on this hatred (not really) of all things dramatic? Well, Katrina rented Revolutionary Road last night. It was critically acclaimed which I'm starting to decide is a real strike against a movie being watchable.

The premise is this. Leonardo Decaprio and Kate Winslet are married with 2 young kids in the suburbs in the 1950s. They hate their lives as Leo works as an ad-man for Knox Business Machines (IBM) and Kate is a housewife who is in community theater.

The movie starts with a huge fight between them and it really goes down from there. Its a litany of 1950s stereotypes, questioning of life, bad behavior and just painful things to watch on screen.
A list of the issues "dealt with (brought up I should say): Consumeristic life in the suburbs, the pointlessness of many corporate jobs, the housewife's lament, the having more kids to prove you wanted the first, abortion, greed, dreams of a different life.

The movie doesn't so much deal with these issues as chronicle them. The life of Leo and Kate is miserable, unhappy, and all too common in America of the 1950s or today.

Which brings me to my point. Why would I want to watch a movie about this? I know people who's lives are like this. This isn't raising my awareness to anything. This isn't making me "deal with" or "confront" any issues.

Its merely a sad depressing tale of two people who's lives didn't turn out as they wanted and who don't seem to really want to work on themselves.

The movie might end great. About 90 minutes into it give or take Katrina hated it enough to give up as well. Or she just wanted to shut my sarcastic comments up. Either way.

Avoid this piece of trash at all costs. Unless you like reveling in other people's misery.

edit- Thinking about this a bit more, I'm not sure the movie was even well made. Its set in the period very well. But, the flashbacks are few, far between and seem sort of an after thought. It, I dunno. Just avoid it.

Transformers

"A needle in the eye." Yes, that is a bad play on their slogan. It is also what would be more pleasant than watching this movie.

Well, to be fair, I didn't actually see the whole movie because a little after an hour into it, and nothing of real importance to the plot happening, my wife and I gave up. Whoever signed off on this poorly written, poorly directed hunk of crap should be beaten with a stick.

I'll start with the big problem that my wife summed up best. The movie and its makers couldn't decide if they wanted to be a young adult/adult movie at PG-13 or a kids movie. So, they wrote a script for a kids movie and peppered it with swearing. The writing was awful. Painful even. And the poor actors, I just couldn't care about them. It wasn't their fault, there was nothing likeable about any of them. I just wanted them to die. Really. It would have been better had the evil cop car robot had killed the main kid and the movie ended.

They needed to make the movie PG. Clean up the swearing, drop the little bit of blood and make it a kids movie.

I don't remember the cartoon much. I remember enjoying it, but I don't want to go back and watch them and have childhood memories destroyed. But, they were after the kid because his great-grandfather's glasses still held the image or something? WHAT!?!? I mean, I wanted to watch this movie for fun, not because it was a good movie, but because it would be fun. And it wasn't fun. It was bad and dumb.

Lets get to the CGI right. Ok, the Transformers looked pretty. But, the action sequences were so fast, that I couldn't see what was going on. Maybe I'm getting old. I don't know, but I wanted big epic robot fighting (maybe it came later) not blazing fast ninja robot action.

And a final BLEAH on this movie. Why did the evil transformers transform? I mean, 1 of them took out a military base. So....if you're an evil powerful robot, why hide? Why not just blow the crap out of everything in sight? Details I suppose.

Sorry, but I hated this movie. Hated it. And am sad I rented it.