GBlog

It seemed apropos to catch this at an opening midnight showing. Unfortunately, it was a disappointing experience overall.

The films have never been up to the quality of the books, which is understandable as the books have so much in them. The first four movies, however, were fun, and did a decent job as movies (even when they made Dementors look like Ringwraiths and have them start flying around).

The latest movie has much more of a slideshow feeling, sadly, a visual Coles Notes of the book rather than a proper story in its own right. (Perhaps they were inspired by An Inconvenient Truth.) Events fade into each other in ways that didn’t happen in the book (especially towards the end). The epic action sequence at the end of the book turns into a bit of flashy effects at the end (including effects that look thrown in simply to rip off Lord of the Rings). The emotional impact of the story is gone, and when the film is over you don’t have the satisfied feeling of a full story, you’re simply numb.

Thus, I would say The Order of the Phoenix (which is barely in the movie that bears its name) is better left to a DVD viewing rather than the theatre.

Less than meets the eye. I can see why Matt and Trey hate Michael Bay movies.

The movie was really funny at first. A lot of crazy banter, and robots in crazy situations – particularly the little Decepticon (Shockwave?). He had a lot of hilarious stuff.

But they should’ve kept it a comedy. The rest of the film got increasingly dull. By the major action sequences at the end of the film, I was wondering what time it was. I wasn’t particularly interested in most of the robots, since they hadn’t spent much time developing their characters. I cared less than I might have about the humans had the film not been about robots.

The cinematography was closeup and shaky, perhaps to make you “feel like you’re there”, but it made it hard to follow the action (and it made me dizzy.)

So I would give this a pass at theatres. I’m going to take a look at the comic book adaptation though, and pray that they did a better job with that.

You see a trailer talking about using “a car to kill a helicopter” due to being “out of bullets” often enough, you have to see the film.

In my case, I hadn’t seen any of the previous Die Hard films, so Dad and I powered through all three in the week before the new one arrived. I can’t believe we’d never watched them before – Bruce Willis’ Die Hard films are fantastic. Except the second… it was alright, but the “communication problems” didn’t make a lot of sense.

The 4th in the series is definitely worth seeing in theatres. With excellent acting, writing, cinematography, and pacing, it’s a film where you’re never bored or wondering what time it is. Even if you haven’t seen the first three, it’s worth checking out (the ongoing background of John McClane isn’t vital to appreciating the film). Tons of different kinds of action, with plenty of banter, makes for a great couple hours.

LFoDH also features Justin Long, famous from the “I’m a Mac” ads, in a hacker role. How ironic.