Been Awhile

Holy crap, I can't believe it's been over a year since I posted on here. I guess I was more caught up in school and other life stuff than I thought. Can't remember every movie I've seen since last April so we'll just mention a couple of the more recent ones.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - Pretty decent for a video game turned into a movie. I've never played the game so I wasn't going into the movie from a gamers perspective. I thought the story was pretty good and the effects weren't too overdone. It was definitely worth seeing in theaters. And if you're into Jake Gyllenhaal it's worth seeing for his beefed up body.

Robin Hood - Interesting take on the Robin Hood story, coming at it from how he became the legend rather than the regular angle. The cast was good, but overall the movie wasn't as good as it could have been. I lay that squarely on Ridley Scott's shoulders. The movie was oddly slow in place and the fight sequences, especially the big battle at the end, were nowhere near as good as they normally are in a Ridley Scott film. Probably could have waited to see this one on DVD.

Sex and the City 2 - Of course we knew this was coming as soon as the first movie had such a great opening weekend. The biggest strength of this movie is that the ladies are together for most of it and they are more the focus as a group rather than individually. Having Samantha in the movie more this time was great. The weakest part of the story was having Aidan in it. I never liked him on the show (and I've never liked John Corbett) and bringing him back did not make me happy. I really enjoyed the scene when Charlotte and Miranda were venting the stresses of being a mom. I found that very funny and very true to Charlotte that she didn't want to say anything because she wasn't suppose to be having problems with being a mom. It was definitely worth it, but I hope they don't push it much farther because they will ruin it. If they come up with a really good story there is probably room for one more movie, but they should not go beyond 3 and really it would be fine if they just left it alone now.

Salt - Just saw this when it opened on Friday and probably should do a full review of it, but I'm not in the mood right now. If it weren't for Angelina Jolie I most likely wouldn't have any interest in this movie. I must say though the story was much more interesting and thought provoking than I thought it would be. The action sequences will absurd at times (as they always are) were very well shot and executed. A lot of times in action movies people have a tendency to go over the top with their acting, but that didn't happen much with this movie. And I have to say the final kill in the movie is quite ingenious and original. The only thing I really didn't like about it was the ending. I knew early on that the ending would contain some sort of set up for a possible sequel. However, they could have done that with a much different ending.

Letters To Juliet - Luckily I was able to catch this at our local discount theater. I would have been happy to see it at the regular theater, but it didn't work out that way. As always Amanda Seyfried was fantastic. The story was very good and romantic without being overly sappy. Since it was shot in Italy it is also a beautiful movie to watch. What I didn't like about the movie was the two main male characters. Neither of them were that great and to me neither was worthy of Amanda's character. They would have done better to have them just be learning tools for her, but I understand why they played the story out the way they did. Honestly there really never was anything that made you understand why she was with the character played by Gael Garcia Bernal, and I see nothing good about him as an actor. He was completely annoying and not the least bit charming or attractive. Every time he left the screen I hoped he would never come back. As for the other character, the actor Christopher Eagn was fine, but the character was just awful. I really found not redeeming value in him at all and he never had any true growth he was just suddenly different. Can't stand that. Vanessa Redgrave was spot on. I'm very glad I was able to see this movie in theaters.