1. I loved it. The three hours went by like it was a half hour.
2. The changes made perfect and very reasonable sense.

You cannot translate a book to film in its entirety. If you did this with any book, the resulting movie would be 100 hours long, and frankly would make it suck. Who wants to visually consume the minutia detail of the written word? For once and for all, they are completely different mediums, and should be handled differently. Apples and oranges, yadda yadda yadda.

Lord of the Rings was brilliant. Watchmen, though having its faults, was great.

Zach Synder did a great job. Period. Fanboys should try to think just how hard it is to bring anything to the silver screen. To keep any original idea intact, much less, wholly intact, is nearly impossible. Too much money involved.

Soooooo for all the reviews out there that beat the movie up over this or over that, whatever. It doesn’t make it any less of the film that it is.

And it is great.

I laughed hard enough to cry twice.

Totally going to end up in my dvd collection.

1. I can no longer drink a diet coke and expect to make it through a 2.5 hour long movie.
2. Characterization is far more important than action.

While watching the Dark Knight, both realizations hit me roughly at the same time. And while my bladder was on the verge of detonating in my gut, I realized just how much better the Dark Knights was than it’s predecessor.

It was not anywhere near as frantic in pace (which kept Batman Begins clipping along and enjoyable), and that is not a bad thing! The slower feel to the overall picture delivers a stand-up punch for the characterization. It gives a sense of delivery and growth to all the characters.

And Joker.

That was an awesome interpretation. Not manic, and not crazy. Just a little bit of both. That edge that gives gravitas to the entire interpretation of madness versus genius.

Remember, in the comics, Joker was a smart guy. Just not a thug with a smile. And the force of nature aspect of his “being” really drives this film.

Stellar. Smart. And Real.

1) Edward Norton was not happy with the final studio cut of the film.
2) The director admitted that Norton’s draft of the film was shot at 3 hours.
3) That there is talk about rolling the uncut version to DVD.

Knowing this, Hulk was ok. Not super, but better than the last iteration.

Knowing this, I EXPECT to see Norton’s version of the film. I could tell there were parts missing… some scenes cut to other scenes without much relationship. Perhaps if I had not known about the Norton/Studio thing, I would not think that there was anything missing. Perhaps.

And if that was the case, I think the film drops a notch. My expectations are that I hope to see a better film in six months when it comes to DVD.

Oh, and the end credits teaser? Not at the end of the credits like Iron Man. Nope they tacked it on the tail of the movie.

STUPID, STUPID, STUPID.

Made the end feel way weird.

It was different, it was new. It pushed the boundaries of what “Indy” is. I think that is why I liked it so much.

And that is exactly why my wife did not like it. She was expecting another religious romp, not a scifi experience.

It was a tad hokey here and there. And some of the fight/chase scenes were a bit long, but compared to the other Indy movies, nothing was too far out of whack.

So did I like it? Yes.

Will I buy it on DVD? Yes.

Best movie of the summer? No.

…

That would still be Iron Man.

“FUCKING SWEET (PERIOD)”

I will have to see it again. Probably the best Marvel movie to date by far… perhaps even better than Spidey 2.

(Side note: Imagine a young John Wayne replacing Keanu Reeves as the young everyman in the Matrix. Discuss.)

I watched 3:10 to Yuma over the weekend. And while it was a tragic and brutal and full of unbridled amounts of tension, it also did something I was not really expecting from a remake.

It made me think.

3:10 to Yuma has bad guys, but the not bad guys you expect. It has good guys, but not the good guys that make you want to cheer. The tension is well done, well paced, and overall the movie just sucks you in. It addresses moral issues as a very real, accessible level for all of us. It doesn’t give us villains and heroes in the traditional sense (plenty of the side characters do fulfill those traditional roles), but it does give us men who seem to think, characters that actually transcend the situation they are in.

They portray more than just a western, they portray a conflict of perhaps real people and real questions about what it is to be hero and what it is to be a villain.

It all depends on the circumstances… the world is just shades of gray.

And for that alone, it was a great movie. But there was so much more that made it even better.

Russell Crowe and Christian Bale both deliver great performances, the cinematography is killer, and the climatic payoff at the end is so worth the lost fingernails chewed off through the movie.

But its not a movie I could watch twice. Just because it is brutal. And the effects team definitely shows it off with lavish.