SUMMER MOVIE TIME

Hmmm, my movie-viewing this year so far is going at a sluggish pace. Halfway through the year, and I haven’t even hit 30? Time for an intervention…
Anyway, Steve and I caught another double-header at the General Cinema on Sunday. Actually that theater is now called “Kerasotes Showplace,” but since it was once General Cinema, it will always be General Cinema to me.



LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD
Yes, I liked the first three installments of this series, especially the third one with Jeremy Irons. They almost seem like indie films in comparison to this one – they were all cat-and-mouse games between an alluring Eurotrash Bad Guy and Bruce Willis’ lazy cop. This installment is more about pyrotechnics, endless car crashes, and Bruce Willis doing insane stunts that would have been impossible for his character in the previous three films. He’s basically a caricature of his former character. It’s weird, but as far as popcorn action flicks go, it’s decent. The rapport between Bruce and the Apple Guy is pretty fun, and the barrage of car/helicopter/airplane shootouts made me really want to spend more time playing Grand Theft Auto. This would be a good movie to see at the budget theater.


RATAOUILLE
I avoid animation as a rule, because movies made for children are usually completely retarded. For some reason I was excited about this movie, because it’s about rats, cooking, and France – three things which aren’t usually dealt with in American films, and three things which seem interesting to me. This movie more than met my expectations – it was entertaining throughout, it was intelligently made and funny, and the animation was quite frankly astounding. Steve and I kept turning to each other to remark how we couldn’t believe that certain sequences weren’t actually real – the foggy nightscape of the Seine, all of the water sequences, the red onions, the hairs on the rats, their little hearts beating through their chests – the hyper-realism was mind-boggling. Comparing this movie to last summer’s Happy Feet is like comparing the most exquisite dish from your favorite restaurant to a steaming turd.