The Golden Compass

After working a 11 hour day doing inventory I was called in the next day (my day off) to finish it up. The only foreseeable solution to such a frustrating injustice was to go see a movie afterward. The problem was: which movie?
The obvious choices for the day were Juno, and The Golden Compass. Juno was starting about a half an hour later, so even though I haven't even though about reading the book yet I was going to see The Golden Compass due to me being on a tight schedule.

The Golden Compass
Probably the best thing about not reading the book before hand is you enter the theater with no expectations whatsoever, and expectations on a movie this scale with the following it has could be a potentially dangerous thing.
The movie overall is a visually stunning experiment in retro-futurism. Every single shot is filled with glittery eye candy, so much so you almost get disappointed when the director switches to the overused 1940's technique of shaking the camera to make the room look like it's shaking. From the top of the mountains to everyone's personal "demon" everything looks to be finely crafted and fits round peg to round peg perfectly the world constructed from the imagination of the author Philip Pullman.

The director does a pretty good job of white washing some of the book's unsavory elements, but it's not hard to see through and dig out a lot the original meaning. The authority of the land is called Magisterium which is directly mirrored by the the Catholic Church. (spoiler)The Magisterium's general goal in the movie is to eliminate all that doesn't hold by their doctrine and "truths".(/spoiler) It all basically boils down to Christians hates witches, "demons", and giant talking polar bears.

Staring in this movie is a new comer by name of Dakota Blue Richards. Although she is young and has no prior acting experience I can find; she is bright, very motivated, and can lead a scene better than most actresses three times her age. I can safely say we can be expecting big things from her in the future.
Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman are by no means new comers and really dominate their realms within the movie. Craig is the noble scholar/explorer of Richards' character Lyra, and there is almost a feeling of calm and warmth whenever he is on the screen. Kidman's character at first comes off as evil and underhanded, but as the movie progresses you notice that she is extremely layered and conflicted; even though she's still a bad guy you can't help but understand her.

The movie was extremely well done and I really enjoyed it. I recommend it to the very literary minded, and anybody who likes flashy, character driven, well acted movies. For god sakes it had a POLAR BEAR FIGHT!.

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8 1/2 stars out of 10

Resident Evil: Extinction, or Just plain evil?

(Reposted from Vintage Caveman October 8, 2007)

I went to go see Resident Evil: Extinction on Sunday, and oh my god the PAIN! I was really hoping that this movie was going to redeem the franchise like Ocean’s 13, but instead it pulled a goddamn Godfather 3.
The movie is so bad that it pulls one of the oldest Hollywood tricks: The movie gets you to almost care for the quirky cast of characters, then kills 90% of them off just to get you personally invested in how it ends.
Don’t even try watching this movie if you haven’t seen the first two movies, because it insists on continuity and everything (absolutely everything) is tied up in the first two.
It telegraphs every remotely scary part, so you’ll know what is going to happen, and the only thing worse then all of the above is that the plot sets it up so there will be a sequel, not could be, there will be.
Finally, the movie just plain sucks in every horror/gore/bloody/zombie department.
This movie is definitely a rent, and should only be watched in the theaters if you can’t wait for gorier and more worthwhile movies like: 30 Days of Night (Oct. 19), and Saw IV (Oct. 26)
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2 points out of 10