Summer movies

I don't go to the cinema very often. I think the last time I went was to see Spiderman 3. Going to the theater is too expensive to risk seeing a movie I won't like. I generally only see a movie in the cinemas if I'm pretty sure I'm also going to buy the DVD. Although recently even that has changed -- I'm not buying any more DVDs and I don't have a Blue-ray player.

Food at cinemas are also way too expensive. The last time I bought cinema food was in grade school. Though I guess technically even that was a big fat "no" -- the food was purchased by the parents of the birthday boy.

Anywhoo, after having carped on how expensive cinemas are, I have to say that this spring/summer there are quite a few movies I'll most likely see in the theaters.

May 2nd: Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr.. I never read Iron Man comics like I did Spider-man and X-Men, but I do know the backstory. Why do I want to see this? Mostly because I'm a Marvel comic fan (with a few notable exceptions), the previews look good, and it's been a long while since I've seen anything with Downey in it.

May 16th: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. This movie is a maybe. I liked the first in this series, but I'm worried about whether the sequel will focus on the character of Prince Caspian or on the Pevensie children -- if the latter, good, if the former, bad. My worries are probably unfounded, but still significant enough to make me hesitant to see this one in the cinema.

May 22nd: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, starring Harrison Ford. This one is a definite YES. I'm a huge fan of the Indiana Jones movies, and I'm really looking forward to this latest (and last?) sequel. I was contemplating buying the DVD collection until Blue-ray/HD-DVD appeared.

June 20th: Get Smart, starring Steve Carell. I'm seeing this one for nostlagia. I liked the t.v. series with Don Adams in the title role -- my only regret is that I was never able to watch this show consistently. There are significantly fewer episodes I've seen than not.

July 18th: The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale. Why am I seeing this one? Because the first of this series was great. I can't decide which is better, the first Batman movie starring Michael Keaton, or Bale's first outing as Bruce Wayne. Nevertheless, The Dark Knight gets my nod because of the quality of the first.

July 25th: The X-Files: I Want to Believe, starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. Chalk this one as a movie that I thought would never materialize. I watched the first movie, Fight the Future, because I'm a HUGE fan of the X-Files t.v. series (maybe not so much after Duchovny left). It's been what, a decade since the series ended, but I'm still going to watch this one. Why? I guess nostalgia comes into play. I expect this movie to be average to above average, but not great.

There are other movies coming out this Spring/Summer that sound interesting, but they're more in the rental category rather than the spend my money at the cinema category.

Currently I'm debating whether to see Iron Man this weekend; if I do it would go against my rule of never watching films on opening weekends. Whenever I've decided to break this rule, I've always regretted it.

UPDATE: Whoops, the last movie I saw at the cinema was The Kingdom, October of last year, while Spider-man 3 was in May. Not really so long ago as I thought.

Movie Moments

I was flipping channels and by chance saw Spider-man 2 being broadcast. In the midst of my internal debate as to whether or not to watch the remainder of the movie, I sadly noted to myself -- not for the first time -- that each of the Spider-man sequels did not live up to the high bar set by the original.

I enjoyed all three Spider-man movies and would recommend all of them, but as implied above I give the sequels progressively lower ratings. In my original post regarding Spider-man 3 I gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars. With this as a marker, I'd give Spider-man 2 four stars, and the original Spider-man 5 out of 5 stars.

Anywhoo, as I sat waxing nostalgic about the excellence that was Spider-man, I recalled my favourite scene of the entire movie. The cemetery scene, where Peter Parker kisses, rejects and then walks away from Mary Jane is simply awesome. Throughout and afterwards all I could think was, 'wow'. The acting, music, setting, voice-over, everything in that scene just melded together in to one seamless, wondrous character-defining moment. They got it. Director Sam Raimi, the writers, everyone... all of them helped capture the essence of one of the all-time greatest comic book heroes, Peter Parker.

This is one of my Movie Moments. :o)

Spider-man 3

Today I watched Spider-man 3 starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. I've always been a fan of Spider-man and Peter Parker starting with collecting and reading Spiderman comics (Marvel) in junior high. Peter Parker is my all-time favourite comic book character.

However, years later I eventually made a conscious decision to stop collecting and reading the comics because the stories stopped appealing to me. They were becoming very soap opera-ish and the final straw was when Peter and MJ's daughter was kidnapped immediately after birth but presumed dead. Oh yeah, and that whole "Peter is a clone oops Ben is really the clone" plot was a whole bunch of stupid, too. Perhaps it's just the nature of a long running comic. The writers need to continually come up with ways to bump up sales and keep the drama going, but the result was my increasing frustration with tired, overdone stories, and the emotional roller coaster the writer's continuously put Peter through.

So when the original Spider-man movie was released I had mixed emotions. I was definitely looking forward to it, but after what happened with the latter Batman movies (after Tim Burton and Michael Keaton left) I was worried that justice wouldn't be done to Peter Parker/Spider-man. Happily, my worries were unfounded. Spider-man met and exceeded all of my hopes and expectations.

With Spider-man 2, again I was looking forward to it though I still worried, but my worry was mitigated by the knowledge that the original cast and Sam Raimi were still involved in the franchise.

So now we're at the 2nd sequel, Spider-man 3. I think this film ranks third among the movies, though it's still good and worth the ticket price. When I first saw/read the previews, I was not happy with it having three villains. I'm more interested in Peter Parker, not the bad guy du jour, so the necessity of introducing two new characters and reminding the audience of Peter-Harry history uses up time I feel could be better spent. But my fears for the most part were unrealized. They didn't spend too much time on the villains--just enough to get an idea of their motivations and how they gained their powers. Nevertheless, I think this movie would have been better served by having fewer antagonists. Save them for future movies!

As I said, I think this latest movie is the lesser of the three. It lacks the emotional punch the original had, and none of the action scenes came close to matching the train fight scene with Dr. Octopus in Spider-man 2.

So what is this movie about? I won't spoil it too much. Peter and Mary Jane's relationship is still maturing and is complicated by, in no particular order, Peter becoming a little too full of himself because of Spider-man's good press, MJ's career troubles, an alien symbiote, an ambitious and not very ethical photographer, Harry's thirst for vengeance for his father's death, and Peter's desire to avenge his Uncle Ben's murder.

You'd think with the success of the first three movies, I'd be happy Sony Pictures is talking about another 3 movies or more in the Spider-man franchise, but I'm not. On the one hand, it would be nice if there was another movie so that the series could end on a higher note. On the other hand, I think the movies have become progressively less entertaining, so if the trend continues further movies will only degrade the quality of the Spider-man franchise. I think any chance of future success for this franchise is dependent upon keeping the original cast and on Sam Raimi directing, or at least having a director with the same vision as Raimi.

3.5 stars out of 5