Monday morning movie thread (03/30/09)…

Updated on March 30, 2009 By Ken Begg 10 Comments

Thought I’d start a weekly Monday movie thread so that people could spread the word on movies they’d seen the weekend.  Have at it below.

I saw Monsters vs. Aliens over the weekend, and it was pretty good.  I saw it in 2-D, but the 3-D is supposed to be amazing, and in fact the movie actually made the bulk of its money in 3-D theaters.  Expect to see a massive build-up in such screens over the next year or two.

The film had it’s clunker moments, such as naming its army guy W.R. Monger (get it?).  What’s especially weird is that he turns out to be a pretty good guy.  Just Hollywood reflex, I guess.  And the heroine’s empowerment theme is hit a tad too hard.  Kids aren’t that dense and don’t need a sledgehammer, folks.

On the good side, the animation is often eye-poppingly good.  There’s an army vs. aliens scene and some giant monster stuff that’s better than in 95% of ‘serious’ sci-fi films.  There are some funny nods to old sci-fiers like Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman and The Amazing Colossal Man, etc, and when the film hits San Francisco we get gags nods to other movies set in that city, ranging from It Came from Beneath the Sea to Vertigo.  The voice talent was fine across the board, including Seth Rogan as a friendly dumb blob, although I guess that what he plays in all him movies.

There’s really not a lot of movies I’m that excited about this year, but this was the biggie.  It wasn’t The Incredibles, but it was pretty darn good.  I might even see it again, if I get the chance to see it in 3-D.

What did you guys see?

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  • Danny

    Didn’t see anything over the weekend, but I saw Coraline and Watchmen recently.

    Watchmen was…really the best we could’ve gotten. It’s decent. I’m looking forward to the DVD release, which will hopefully be less choppy.

    Coraline was very good. Not Nightmare Before Christmas good, but one of the better movies I’ve seen in a while.

  • Danny, I agree with both those reviews, except that I’m not sure I’m interested in seeing Watchmen again, even on DVD.

  • Joe11

    I thought Watchmen was OK or around the 2 1/2 stars mark. The main problem I had with it was that most of the characters are just plain boring. Dr. Manhattan has all these God-like powers, but all I remembered from him was his monotonous voice. The critics were right about Malin Akerman’s “performance” (or lack of) as Silk Spectre II. Rorschach & The Comedian were the best parts & the only characters I gave a damn about.

    I never read the Watchmen novel but I heard the director wanted this film to be exactly like it. Judging by the box office, I wonder if this is an example of a flim pleasing the “geeks” but not the mainstream audience.

  • Plissken79

    Watchmen was not a major hit, but not a box office bomb either, Warner Bros should just break even. I loved the film, although I am a huge fan of the comic as well. It was about as good (and close) of a version as anyone could expect, a few weak performances aside (Malin Ackerman), but the Comedian, Rorschach, Nite Owl (and to a lesser extent) Ozymandias more than made up for it. I cannot wait to see Snyder’s director’s cut with the Black Freighter integrated into the story.

    Monsters vs. Aliens was kind of blah, but perhaps I have not have seen it right after viewing the brilliant Wall-E and the highly entertaining Bolt. Looking forward to seeing Adventureland tomorrow, especially since it is followup to Superbad, one of the best comedies in the last decade.

  • Hmm, Watchmen is pretty far in the red. The worldwide take is currently about $170m, of which the studio might get about 60%. The film’s budget was $150m, plus prints and advertising…as a very rough guess let’s say it cost $175m all together. That puts Watchman somewhere in the general neighborhood of about seventy million plus in the tank right now. There will be DVD monies, and it’s selling some more books, but it’s not like kids are going to be buying a lot of Watchman toys. I don’t see how Warners doesn’t eat some money on this.

  • The Rev. D.D.

    I had some interest in MvA, but I’ve seen a few reviews that say it gets by on spectacle (in 3-D, at lesat) and fun, lacking a gripping storyline. The nods to sci-fi sound nice, but I just can’t get too excited about it now (although since it’s Dreamworks, I wasn’t overly excited anyway…their animated output’s been pretty inferior to Pixar’s.)

  • Petoht

    No movies lately, but the first season of Freakazoid arrived the other day, and that’s been giving me plenty of entertainment, believe-you-me.

    As for Watchmen, I think it’ll make its bank in DVD, especially if they’re bastards about it. Release the movie, release the two disc special edition with the Black Freighter, release the 4 disc Uber-Edition with a gen-u-wine Doc Manhattan Underwear, etc. And release each of these about 6 months apart so the superfans buy all three, bemoaning the Evil Corporation the entire time.

  • Tongo Rad

    This past Saturday my son (11) and I watched The Blob (1958 version)- the choice wasn’t really inspired by having MvA in the theaters or anything, it was just up next on the docket. He enjoyed it, and thought it was more goofy than scary. Me too, though I just couldn’t help marveling at how mych older teenagers were in those days…Plus, now I’ve got that song in my head and can’t get it out.

    The last things we saw in the theater were an IMAX 3D thing called Under the Sea (I think)- the 3D effects were pretty amazing and I could bring myself to see MvA that way if the kids were really into it- and Bolt (I was surprised at how much I enjoyed that one.)

  • Blackadder

    I also saw both Watchmen and Coraline recently.

    Watchmen was okay. It started out pretty well, but when Snyder made changes in the original story (such as the senseless major change at the end) I could feel the movie run up on the curb. The dialogue that wasn’t taken directly from the graphic novel was also pretty bad, but fortunately there wasn’t that much of it. It was clear, especially considering what was changed, that Snyder didn’t really understand the graphic novel, so it’s a miracle the movie isn’t much, much worse. Two and a half stars, I guess. Not a bad movie, but not really Watchmen.

    Coraline is an excellent movie, especially in 3D. Much better than most of the live action movies I saw in the last year. I’ll definitely pick that one up on DVD. Watchmen… eh, maybe on sale.

  • I disagree, BA. The mechanism used to achieve the ending was different, but the ending was otherwise the exact same. And there were good reasons for it. First, comic fans pointed out back in the day that Moore’s scenario was the same as in an old Outer Limits episode (hence the funny Outer Limits gag in the movie). More to the point, it’s possible the moviemakers might have been sued by the makers of the Outer Limit show, as Terminator was successfully by Harlan Ellison, the author of two, yes, Outer Limit episodes The Terminator resembled. For myself, I thought the film was about as close to the book as you could reasonably get, going from one medium to the other.