without_eyelids

If you're a fan of the original Fantastic Four, you already know more than I do about the source material. I haven't been weaned on them... I won't conceal that that I've always been drawn to the darker Marvel material such as the Punisher. In fact, "dark and morbid" are probably reserved for the Punisher, if we examine the origins of every major title to hit the news stands in the past 50 years.

But onto the film... where Spiderman revels in its altruistic to a fault pauper protagonist who can't reap his reward for fear of violating some nonexistent superhero code, Fantastic Four is about four heroes who are in the public spotlight. It's the opposite, and whereas I criticized Spiderman for playing the hardship card way too often, Fantastic Four is manufactured cool which is exactly like Ocean's Eleven/Twelve/Thirteen, it's so boring.

The plot about Silver Surfer coming to earth and whupping our foursome with his intergalactic powers... and then there are a few divergent story lines with say, Doom coming back, and Reed marrying Sue. The dialogue is truly groan-worthy... Reed is not a charismatic geek in the film, he just makes you want to bury your head in your lap. Sue hopelessly adores him and bitches when she finds out he is working on something to help out the US military, and the military's top brass engage in some of the stupidest banter I haven't seen committed to script. (At one point, a general tries to allude to Reed's non-participation in sports in high school... and acts 10 paygrades below his rank while doing so.) I didn't appreciate the obligatory disaster-happens-and-four-work-together-to-save-ppl scenes in the first movie and I don't appreciate them here... they're little more than filler, and they're not very creative in my opinion. X-Men did this with much more flair and suspense, in Fantastic Four it's another yawn-inducing crescendo that barely raises the pulse on this unplausible, unlikeable, mediocre movie. I give it 3. Because at the very least, Jessica Alba is very hot.

Very little is implausible in Disturbia if you think about it. Okay, maybe a chick won't fall for a stalker so easily, and maybe it's not likely a visually unobstructed car will be hit by another car going full speed on the highway, and a few other small goofs, but Disturbia packs a lot of thought into what it does and removes the questions from the audience. This is the way horror films should be and exactly the reason why I avoid the genre of horror... because they never stop and think about how ridiculous their situations are. Meanwhile, I'm squirming in my seat, unable to enjoy the ride because I'm thinking to myself... Jesus, this movie is so dumb.

Disturbia isn't like that. Everything that is done is done by believable characters... Shia LeBeouf and the girl are excellent in their roles, as is the Asian friend. Everyone's excellent! Shia's character never falls into an emotionally devastated lull and continually whine or bring up the death of his father, as many trite and unsincere movies are wont to do. Shia sets his friend up to break into his suspicious neighbor's car, which may seem like a stupid scene, until you see that he has a lookout trailing the neighbor at the store. This alleviates the false tension which comes from many movies who simply throw their characters into situations without considering the obvious consequence (If you venture into a dark house, someone's going to pop out and stab you.) What I enjoyed the most? When Shia is in danger, in every scene, the first thing he picks up... is a weapon. AMAZING. More horror films should be like that. When I see horror protagonists carrying around weapons instead of running around locked complexes with their heads chopped off, I will start to care. Shia fights like someone who is trying to survive and win, instead of someone who has given up himself to die and merely wants to make that death as entertaining and gory as possible.

It's just so strong, the performance that the primary cast gives. The mother, a good mix of caring and firmness, the girlfriend, the friend, and not to forget the villain... a neighbor who wears an amicable veneer with a savage rage underneath (at one point he piledrives a female victim into a doorsill, knocking her unconscious).

Another thing of note is how MacGuyverish the movie plays out... as a boy on house arrest, Shia finds the time to rig a transmitter to his video camera and find blueprints of his neighbor's house. A pursuit worthy of someone whose xbox and itunes have been canceled.

One of the best movies this year, and one of the best suspense/thrillers I've ever seen, period. I never thought it'd be this good, but it is.

300 probably won't win any awards for depth, but it's a very strong, entertaining film. Whatever criteria you use to separate the genre Action Films from The Rest, use it, because you won't be deriving something incredibly meaningful, deep, or layered from 300. It reinforces the ideas of responsibility, honor, courage, in a very old-fashioned and perhaps anachronistic method which may have you in fits of either indignation or triumph... depending how highly you crave a movie that mythologizes a historical event into a pitched battle between good and evil.

Leonidas and his 300 Spartans combat the oncoming hordes of Persians who have been turned into, well, flesh-eating mutants. Actually there is a mix of barbarian, exotic cultures represented as weirdly painted, antler-donning lemmings that wilt under the mighty defence of the Spartans, but their inclusion is welcome. It serves to highlight that 300 is historical fiction as traditionally was done by the Greeks - truths intertwined with dramatic license, a method necessitated by the limited media available to ancient Greeks.

The Spartans go to war in very little armor. If this bothers you, don't be alarmed. You're not gay because you're watching underwear model physiques fighting. There are many more sports done by men that are a million times gayer. What is very pleasant however about the fighting is that the cuts are very few and far between, the editing preserves the integrity of the continuous fight, and it slows down so we can watch in glee as spears rend flesh, or shields smash jaws. To a hardcore action film fan, this is very important. You don't want your fight scenes edited by ADD-afflicted crackheads.

There's just enough sex to remind you what the demographic is, which I think is 18 to 36 year old males. The green screens, surprisingly don't interrupt the believability of the picture and don't stunt the excitement of the fighting.

The one thing that I do enjoy VERY much and is why I gave this movie such a high rating is that the film was adapted for the screen. Unlike Sin City, which comes from the same writer/director team if I'm not mistaken, 300 does not follow the comic word for word. Even though 300 the comic, with its mute protagonist and straightforward, undramatized historical perspective would be perfect just for that kind of film... the movie adds just enough dramatic license to make things interesting for people who've read Frank Miller's work, over and over and over. A good adaptation in its own right - one of the best to hit the screens yet.