A Couple Of Movie Reviews Sept 05

Now that I’ll be writing here a lot more often, I’ll probably review a few movies every month. Recently I saw a couple of pretty good ones.

The Brothers Grimm. I went and saw this in the theatre last week, and I really liked this movie. It’s an action-packed, adventurous, suspenseful, funny, and magical film, not to mention the cast was pretty solid (minus a couple of the supporting actors). The Brothers Grimm is a story that sheds light on a good number of our childhood fairy tales. Although this movie is a fairy tale itself, it creates a humorous, adventurous nature to the Grimms tales, giving the viewer a visually stimulating tale of fantasy that is a pleasure to watch.

One aspect that I really didn’t care for in the movie was the stupid French character that was assigned to accompany the brothers on their task. I realize he wasn’t meant to be a likable character, but he certainly didn’t make a very good villain either. He was more of an annoyance. Most of the time I couldn’t even understand what he was saying. When he wasn’t talking he was acting retarded. The part was played by Peter Stormare, who you may remember from Armageddon, in which he played the Russian cosmonaut. In The Brothers Grimm his character will grate on you like a sour lemon or fingernails on a chalkboard, and not in any kind of good way, but in a bad movie you don’t want to watch kind of way.

Aside from that, the story was ultimately pretty well laid out. Special effects were handled wonderfully with technical expertise, but not so much that you were beaten to death with them. Some of the scenes, particularly in the forest, were not lit very well. The occasional dark scene can add suspense to a film, but too much leaves you wondering “Who was just in that scene?”

Ultimately, it was a pretty good movie and worth an afternoon’s diversion.

Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. This just came out on video recently and I wasn’t planning on seeing it, but Lizzie borrowed it and so I figured what the heck, might as well check it out. I had never really heard of The Hitchhiker’s Guide before this movie came out, and I’m glad I hadn’t. All the old school cult-followers of the book, the radio show, the tv show, and the older version of the film seem to be pretty unhappy with this film. I usually never enjoy a movie after having read the book either, and that’s obviously the case with those that didn’t enjoy this film. Having nothing to taint my experience I found this to be very enjoyable. It’s cute, funny and very weird in a Monty Python meets Star Trek kind of way. It was a really nice change of pace from what I’ve been watching the past few years.