Leatherheads

For a movie obstentially about the kind of hijinks football players got up to back in the 20s before there were rules or proper helmets or anything, there were very little hijinks in this movie. 

Cue 20s announcer voice: You know who had time for hijinks?  The Kaiser, that’s who!  And you know where the Kaiser is now?  He’s dead, that’s where! 

And as not funny as my old timey announcers voice is, the movie is less funny.  And much, much longer.  (True story, Carrie found this movie so boring, she actually got depressed for the rest of the day by it.)

Run Fat Boy Run

So you know how Shaun of the Dead and Spaced with Simon Pegg in them are really, really excellent?  And you know how generally, most romantic comedies that don’t star an older Hugh Grant are really all the same and nothing special?  Well this movie is more the latter, less the former.

Oceans 13

More of the same, though what this one lacked was an opponent that posed a challenge or a point in the movie at any time in which I thought they would fail.  I mean honestly, with these resources, why do the 13 ever fail at anything ever?  They are basically superheroes.  That said, better than the second one, less plausible than the first one.

30 Days of Night

Great concept, great art directing.  Especially that shot from overhead where the vampires go through the entire town.  As I mentioned in the Alien Vs. Predator – Requiem review, I like it when a movie takes the time to make the protagonist truly scary, truly a force to reckoned with.  And this movie has that in spades, with vampires that have a plan and follow it through.  They fact that some of our heroes simply survive does not make them the winners.  Far from it.  All of that said, almost all of the characters were a bit dull, honestly.

Smart People

This is another in a long line of vaguely dark comedies/dramas about unsocial cold people thawing a bit.  If you liked The Squid and the Whale, The Royal Tennenbaums, and Broken Flowers, you will probably know how you feel about this one at least.  These quirky comedies are becoming more common, which is good because it is a different, less dumbed down kind of humor and more people are being exposed to it.  It is also a bad thing, because the more they make of it, the more chances they have of getting them wrong, or we have of getting bored with the formula.  Also, Juno is in this, playing again a smart and witty girl, though this time, not at all hip or cool.  Or pregnant.

(Lest this whole post seem too depressing, Smart People and Run Fatboy were funny, and 30 Days of Night was kinda scary and Oceans 13 was filled with lots of famous actors. Leatherheads was very boring though.)