Avatar Sucks

No, really. It does.

OK, well, maybe it doesn't completely and all-encompassingly suck. (All-encompassingly is totally a word, right?) But I turned it on last night as background noise while I was falling asleep, and I realized something-when you're over the awesome effects and the guilty feeling you get for thinking Zoe Saldana is hot even when she's blue, the movie kinda sucks. Of course the effects are great and the production design is beautiful and blah blah blah, but let's be realistic-any reasonably intelligent person with half a billion dollars is capable of hiring incredibly talented people for obscene amounts of money to make their movie pretty. The plot itself? I think South Park got it right-it's Dances with Smurfs.

Moral of this post: if you want to see a story about high-tech outsiders coming in and taking over the natives' land but one of the outsiders learns that the way of the natives is better and decides to fight against his own people to defend their honor, rent Last of the Mohicans instead. The acting is better. (No offense meant to Zoe Saldana, of course.)

-Posted by Colleen

Date Night

Ah, date night. A time to relax, spend some time with your loved one, and get caught up in life-threatening blackmail drama. Such is the night for the Foster's, wittingly portrayed by Steve Carell and Tina Fey. This movie takes an ordinary, boring couple from New Jersey and takes them around New York, fighting criminals, District Attornies, and other various bad guys, all by accident. With a strong supporting cast (who doesn't want Marky Mark on their side in a battle against New York City crime?), Date Night manages to take a rather stock plot and make it hysterically funny. The visual comedy, witty one-liners, and obvious chemistry between Fey and Carell are what make this film work. I will say this-there is almost nothing in this film that you haven't seen before. But Fey and Carell manage to pull off a seen-it-before plot in a way that is fresh, witty, and new. As far as the story goes, it is thoroughly pedestrian. But be careful with beverages during this film, because your milk might very well end up coming out your nose. Great film to bring home and veg to after a stressful work day!

-Posted by Colleen

Survival of the Dead

Another entry in George A. Romero's zombie oeuvre.  After the zombie outbreak, a group of mercenaries encounter a small island where two warring patriarchs have very different solutions to the undead problem.  In Survival of the Dead a zombie shot with a flare gun internally combusts, and another has an eye-popping moment (literally) eating the business end of a fire extinguisher.  Yet on the island a spectral undead beauty on horseback rides eternally through the fall leaves.  And this is the ultimate problem with the film.  Survival doesn't know if it's a jokey, shoot-em-up zombie movie, or an introspective, thought-provoking zombie movie, and in the end it's neither.  We have the requisite Romero disembowelment scene, and some entertaining zombie deaths.  The beautiful scenery of the island, which was filmed in Ontario, is a refreshing change from the cityscapes and empty shopping malls we've come to expect. But the plot is confused, the dialogue is utilitarian at best, and even gore-lovers will be disappointed by the lack of real action.  Few if any of the characters are sympathetic, and I was decidedly unmoved by their various deaths.  The lush scenery is barely able to make up for the film's overall blandness.  In short, if you want to watch a zombie gore-fest, watch Dead Alive.  If you want a contemplative movie with zombies, watch 28 Days Later.  But leave Survival on the shelf.

-Posted by Liz