Movie Reviews

This past weekend, I helped the Timmermans move into their new house on Friday afternoon/evening and I helped an elderly couple that my dad knows move into their new apartment on Saturday morning. I also managed to fit in a couple of drive-in movies with my brother and the Korean kids that live with us.

The drive-in set started with The Dukes of Hazzard. That was a fun thrillbilly flick, exactly as advertised. There were many hijinks and even more car crashes. I had assumed that they would just be messing with Boss Hog and committing petty acts of vandalism against him or whatnot but the Dukes proceeded to commit a litany of crimes. Not to spoil things, but being chased by cops through modern-day Atlanta as a news helicopter follows you isn't so easy to explain away. In any case, the car chases were fun, the humour was southern and there was an actual plot. Excellent drive-in fare.

The second feature was The Corpse Bride by Tim Burton. In case you haven't heard, it's a cool stop-motion movie about a guy that accidentally marries a corpse. Hilarity ensues. While the K kids that were with me and my brother loved the first movie, they hated this movie and didn't understand the concepts at all. Their english is pretty good but this went right over their heads. For my part, it was exactly what I expected from Tim Burton. And since I like his stuff, I liked this movie. I thought that I would be annoyed by the fact that Johnny Depp shows up in yet another Burton film but actually, he suited the role very well and I enjoyed his performance.

As my final review, my brother and I also caught Transporter 2 at the movie theatre last week. The first Transporter was one of those B-level action movies that you watch in the hope that you luck out and it's actually good, and then you're quite surprised to find that it is good. This second movie followed the formula of the first but overly emphasized that this transporter of illegal goods actually has a heart of gold. Aw look, he loves the kid. Aw look, he's nice to the beleaguered mother. Aw look, he's risking his own life to save them.

Aside from that, the fighting was everything you wish Jackie Chan would do these days. The lead actor would repeatedly get caught fighting entire groups of bad guys and he would use equipment that he conveniantly found laying around to fight them off. There may be no purpose in using a fire hose as a weapon but it sure leads to entertaining tricks. Even so, there were two stunts that were too idiotic even for me. One involved a crashing plane and one involved a car flipping over a jump. The car thing, in particular, was so bad that I openly booed the movie at that point. The car stunts in the Dukes of Hazzrd were way better and more believeable, as far as cars go.

In the end, though, the action in this movie made up for sappy character points and a couple of Boo-urns stunts. Since I like almost every movie I see, I can't really give poor marks to any of them. I enjoyed 'em all and I got my money's worth, which is all that I ever ask.