J.R. LeMar - 15 August 2006 11:20 PM
Superman Returns
I agree it was disappointing, but I wouldn’t go that far. I could definitely do without all of the overt messianic imagery.
I caught Underworld: Evolution the other day on DVD (I’ve got a 5 month old, so most of my experience lately are small screen). I thought it was pretty disappointing. True, there was Kate Beckinsale in fetish gear to get me through, but it just didn’t have the pacing and conceptual freshness of the first one.
Speaking of DVD disappointments, I also saw Aeon Flux. I wasn’t gearing up for Oscar-worthiness on this one, especially considering the reviews, but that could have been a much better movie. I could make it with the sparse dialogue, but It’d be hard to imagine a more miscast movie. Marton Csonkas wasn’t a very convincing Trevor Goodchild, who was a little more sinister in the cartoon. Sophie Okonedo made me want to cringe everytime she was on screen, and I can’t imagaine a bigger casting mistake than putting Francis McDormand in a futuristic utopia. With bad hair to boot.
Another recent DVD disappointment was Munich. Perhaps I should be clearer: the ending of Munich. After a fairly well paced, well told story, the ending was so incredibly flat and loose that it really put a damper on the whole thing for me. But, I’ve been disappointed with Spielberg as of late anyway. He really hasn’t done anything outstanding since Private Ryan. Minority Report was decent, but the absolutely dismal, muddled failure that is AI, frivolous Catch Me If You Can, the terminally boring The Terminal, and scientologists attack (again, for those who missed Battlefield Earth) in War of the Worlds were far inferior to many of his other works.