summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2011-12-28 12:44 am
summercomfort) wrote2011-12-28 12:44 am
2 movies
Watched the Muppets movie in Chicago over Christmas, and it was lots of fun: lots of self-aware humor, fun songs, and of course, the muppet bounce (which is as iconic as the Gainax bounce). I'd never seen a Muppet movie before, so it was pretty exciting and it did not disappoint!
Tonight I dragged Jono to go see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. I liked all of the bromance and banter and the various gags (naked Stephen Fry! "Sherly" riding a pony! The costumes!) But the directing was pretty mediocre. I could have done without all of the slow-motion Holmes "brain cam" stuff, especially when he was anticipating a fight. Also, there were a lot of cerebral stuff going on in the movie, but the director tried to make it all action. I know that the costumes and the fighting are all canon, and I enjoy that stuff, but the deducing and investigating is equally canon, and I really wanted to see more of that. The first Matrix was able to do a good blend of the philosophizing with the fighting, but the sequels turned into plot/action soup. I felt like both Sherlock Holmes movies are too plot/action centric, and there aren't enough moments of down time, but the sequel is worse. Jude Law and RDJ make a good use of the down time that they do get (the wedding, the boat ride to Paris, on the train after the completely unnecessary run through the forest) and manage to squeeze in some very nice glances, but I'd have liked more of that and less of the flashy camera-work.
Recently I also watched the 3 episode British Sherlock mini-series on Netflix. For that, I really liked the first episode, the second episode was horrible, and the 3rd was mediocre. My problem with the 2nd and 3rd episodes was that the show became about Holmes doing it solo and Watson kind of the bumbling guy who tags along, always 10 steps behind, whereas the 1st episode had good character development for both, and showed Holmes and Watson on par with each other: Holmes with the brains, and Watson with his loyalty and his doctor/soldier skills. What made the 2nd episode particularly horrible was that it was about Chinese Triads, but done in pretty much the worst way possible.
Tonight I dragged Jono to go see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. I liked all of the bromance and banter and the various gags (naked Stephen Fry! "Sherly" riding a pony! The costumes!) But the directing was pretty mediocre. I could have done without all of the slow-motion Holmes "brain cam" stuff, especially when he was anticipating a fight. Also, there were a lot of cerebral stuff going on in the movie, but the director tried to make it all action. I know that the costumes and the fighting are all canon, and I enjoy that stuff, but the deducing and investigating is equally canon, and I really wanted to see more of that. The first Matrix was able to do a good blend of the philosophizing with the fighting, but the sequels turned into plot/action soup. I felt like both Sherlock Holmes movies are too plot/action centric, and there aren't enough moments of down time, but the sequel is worse. Jude Law and RDJ make a good use of the down time that they do get (the wedding, the boat ride to Paris, on the train after the completely unnecessary run through the forest) and manage to squeeze in some very nice glances, but I'd have liked more of that and less of the flashy camera-work.
Recently I also watched the 3 episode British Sherlock mini-series on Netflix. For that, I really liked the first episode, the second episode was horrible, and the 3rd was mediocre. My problem with the 2nd and 3rd episodes was that the show became about Holmes doing it solo and Watson kind of the bumbling guy who tags along, always 10 steps behind, whereas the 1st episode had good character development for both, and showed Holmes and Watson on par with each other: Holmes with the brains, and Watson with his loyalty and his doctor/soldier skills. What made the 2nd episode particularly horrible was that it was about Chinese Triads, but done in pretty much the worst way possible.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2011-12-28 05:28 pm (UTC)(link)The Muppets was decent. It was cute, had some good jokes*, but it leaned on nostalgia a little too hard and the story took too long to get going so the beginning kind of dragged. But the ending was good, and it had sincerity.
* - My favorite was Scooter's first line in the movie: "Bye guys, I'm off to the TED conference" he says as he leaves the Google office.
I found Sherlock Holmes (or as it should have been called, "Steampunk James Bond and the Unresolved Homoerotic Tension") extremely tedious. We know Moriarty is behind everything and Sherlock is going to beat him at the end, but there's 2 hours to fill so bring on the padding in the form of pointless fight scenes with lots of stop-go slo-mo, confusing fast cuts, hyperactive camera work, splintering wood, etc. In an attempt to make deduction visually exciting they did this thing where the camera (from Sherlock's POV) would zoom in and freeze on three or four random clues in the room. But there's no real logic to any of it. It's just like ZOOM IN on bloodstain ZOOM IN on scrap of fabric ZOOM IN on bullet hole and then Sherlock yells "German munitions factory! Let's go!" and they're off to the next action scene.
But then, I'm a much harsher critic of movies than Sushu is, which is why I mostly only see them when she drags me to one.