Friday Movie Reviews

Last friday Firefly and I headed into the depths of downtown Vancouver to hang out with my buddy Shawn and watched a couple of movies. Other than getting home at half past 2am, it was a nice relaxing night. We watched a couple of movies, one I saw before, one I hadn’t.

Æon Flux
I saw this in the theatre when it came out, and wasn’t hugely impressed. This time was about the same (of course, it was also 2am so I was a bit out of it). The characters were pretty flat, the special effects were pretty funky, but compared things like the costume in the movie to the costume in the comic book…. well, I say that Charlize Theron is a prude! 🙂

Also the “feel” of the movie was a bit too serious for what it really was. I think that this moview really should have been Ultraviolet, which I haven’t actually seen yet, but based on the trailers looks a bit more comic-book like.

A History of Violence
This was the story of when Aragorn returns home to his wife and child, and takes on the life of a non-killing ranger. Well, ok, not quite correct, kinda close though.

The story goes something like this. Dude is a small town guy with a wife and kids and leads a boring small town life running a diner. One day, Bad Dudes(tm) show up and cause bad trouble. Aragorn Dude kills said bad dudes. Dude (actual name Tom) becomes a hero and is on every channel. Shortly therafter, other Bad Dudes(tm) from the mafia show up, claiming that Tom is someone else. That’s about what you get from the trailers, and I won’t spoil the ending, but you can probably draw some of your own conclusions as to what is going on and whether or not the Bad Dude mafia guys are right or just have really bad eyesight 🙂

I was impressed with how brutal the movie was. It doesn’t pull any punches with the special effects, so if you’ve got a quesy stomach, might not be a good idea to watch this one right after dinner. Another component that you don’t see in movies that often is people killing characters you have a relationship with. Normally the good guy will send hundreds of no-name baddies (the red shirted ensigns) to their deaths without a second thought, and leave the big bad boss till the end for some sort of big shootout or really spectactular ending involving a helicopter or volcano. In A History of Violence, you don’t get any of that, which was both cool and shocking. A few of my “that guy will get it next” predictions were thrown way off because of this.

I wasn’t so hot on the actual ending, it seemed a bit of a let down pace wise, however that might be because as I said earlier, I’m more used to the big shootout at the very end of the movie, with the last scene being the hero emerging from the volcano or helicopter crash unscathed or at least, not completedly dead.