Superman, Ex-Supergirlfriends, Pirates and Monsters

July 14-31-It's been so hot lately that we've been going out to see the movies, even when we're not that interested in the movies. Lack of AC will do that to you.

Here's the rundown:
SUPERMAN
I like Superman, I really do, but this movie was not exciting. The closest it came to exciting was a scene that didn't even involve Superman, but involved Lois sending a fax. Really. We both thought a good 45 minutes cut out of the movie would have helped things, because after you've seen Superman wrestle a jet to the ground, you don't really need to see him soar much after that. Yeah, we get it, he flies. Big whoop, we saw that in the first reel, show me something better. I was looking forward to seeing Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor and I think he had a ball making the movie, it just that Lex, in this movie, kinda sucked as a villian. I mean, make more real estate? That's your evil plan? Really? Why not world domination? The Presidency of the USA? (At least that's in the comics, and makes sense because Lex is supposed to be evil, power-hungry, and SMART.) I'll give you that Lex tries to kill Superman in a novel way, but he doesn't stop to check that he's well and truly dead. The character of Lois was good, she's a pain in the neck and she's pretty persistent about following up on a lead, but I'm sorry, Kate Bosworth? Why, oh why does Hollywood do this to me? She's way, way too young and she's not even a brunette! That dye job was awful. (Substitute "blond" for "brunette" in that sentence and it's exactly the same complaint I had of THE FANTASTIC FOUR. But at least Jessica Alba's hair looked good in that movie.) And she has a Pulitzer? But I guess it's the same thing as trying to believe that Jessica Alba has a PhD. It is beautifully shot, though and has some lovely photographic moments. But I can't get over various issues I had with not just messing with the comics canon, but completely introducing elements that even the creators decided not to do. They had good reasons, people. Trust me on this. It's a pretty movie, but not very exciting. At one point, Daryl even turned to me and said, "Ok, bored now." Not a good sign.

MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND
This was funnier than I thought and it was nice to see Anna Faris in something other than some iteration of SCARY MOVIE. It also had Eddie Izzard and Rainn Wilson, which alone makes it worth watching. (I love how the villian's lair is his house and how he keeps his secret weapon in his fridge.) Uma Thurman is very good as your typical crazy ex, but she got so tic-y and neurotic that I really couldn't see why anyone would want to date her. But then again, I'm a het girl and she's Uma Thurman. And my understanding of guys is that they'd pretty much date anyone as long as they were pretty. Which explains a lot of the ridiculous pairings I've seen in real life. Some of the best laughs are in the trailer, but the bedroom scenes were hilarious and the variety of ways Uma's character gets back at her former lover are imaginative and visually arresting. The fight scene at the end was fun, too, as was watching Uma's super-character save the world in a variety of fashionable outfits. Not a deep movie, but a fun one.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST
This movie doesn't really have a plot, per se, just a bunch of fun set pieces where Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow gets to show off his ability to cheat death in Mr. Magoo fashion. One reviewer I read called one of his favorite scenes, "The Hamster Ball of Death" and his other favorite scene, "The Hamster Wheel", which is strangely appropriate. People fence, not just on boats and on land, but on moving water wheels where the wood is rotten enough to walk through and get stuck halfway, but not rotten enough to fell three grown men jumping around on it while it was moving. That stunt alone was elegant and masterfully done, as well as being funny and I applaud the people involved in making it. They repeated a lot of the best stuff from the first movie which didn't do as well here, since we'd seen that already, but at least they made fun of Keira Knightley's character fainting to get attention. The problem now, though, is that everyone's pretty much a pirate in this one since everyone's after the same thing, Davy Jones's Locker, or really, what's in it. Bill Nighy as Davy Jones, like Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa from the first film, is the villain who makes you feel sorry for him. Even though Nighy is hidden behind an octopus head, you can still see the flinty defiance in his eyes when he says, "Life isn't fair, why should the afterlife be any different?!" and then sorrow as he recounts how he lost his heart in the first place. It's not easy to act behind a great mass of tentacles in your face and Nighy does an admirable job. Speaking of which, the special effects people, not content with creating believable moving skeletons in the first movie, went ahead and morphed human and sea creature body parts in various ways in this movie. It's not as ghoulishly fun as the skeletons in the moonlight, but the melding of man and shark, for instance, was fantastically done. There's a brief moment in the movie where a man who's been in servitude to Davy Jones so long that he's lost his body and is only a head, sticking, like a barnacle on the wall of the ship, wakes up and talks. It's sad and arresting, and for some reason, not at all surprising considering what had been going on before. The movie ends, sort of, and you get the feeling that the next movie is going to wrap it all up. POTC3 and this one should probably be watched together in order to get the full story. This movie was fun though. Can't wait til the next one.

MONSTER HOUSE
The animation here was done through motion capture and while it's better than the creepy POLAR EXPRESS, it's still not quite right. There's something wrong about the way some character's move, like when someone sits down on a bed, that motion capture gets only just so, but not completely right. But it's getting better, I suppose, I just don't know what's wrong with actual animation. It seems to me, that sufficiently talented animators do a wonderful job of capturing realistic human movement without motion capture (and had been doing so for many years) so why bother with motion capture at all? The story, on the other hand, seems right in all the ways that kids will appreciate. The kids in the movie seem like real kids, who are just trying to get by and grow up with the least amount of embarrassment and awkwardness. And it's a plus that there's no "message" that the movie is trying to convey. It's got a real story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, with believeable conflict and characters. Except for the fact that there's a house that's not just haunted, but possessed. The house itself is a masterpiece of devouring horror and I love the fact that the voice behind the house is Kathleen Turner. After we saw this movie, we found out that it's also going to come out in 3-D. I think it'll be even better in 3-D because there are some moments where you could feel the danger from the house and I only saw it in 2-D. I can only imagine how startling it'll be when shown in 3-D. Unfurling rugs, broken trees, and a lurching, moving, monster house has got to be an experience in 3-D.