Mark's Blog

Saw a couple of movies recently. I've been going to the theatre a lot more recently, not sure exactly why, but there seem to have been some more watchable ones around these days.

Saw Syriana, which I rate a 7. Overall it was okay, but when you have a movie with intertwining stories, you need a bit more of a payoff that you get with this movie. I'm not too sure what the message of this movie was supposed to be, something along the lines of "the oil industry is very complex and important", and if that seems banal, well, that's what I got out of the movie. Also, I'm not sure I really figured out who I was supposed to be empathizing with in the movie. Some people seem to think the movie is apolitical, but I can't agree with that. It may not be exactly the usual tedious left/right politics, but it's got a fair amount to say about a significant political topic. There are a number of stereotypical American "fat cats", but it's not like anybody in the movie is really portrayed to be wholly good.

I learned one thing from playing Civilization III, which is that if your civilization doesn't have access to the Oil strategic resource, you do anything to get it. Maybe in a roundabout way, this is the message of the movie, that oil is so important that our actions are almost predestined because it's so crucial to our society. Who knows. Anyway, if you don't mind slower movies, and if watching George Clooney have a couple of his fingernails extracted with pliers doesn't bother you too much, it's worth a rental. Think Traffic-lite, except about oil not drugs.

Saw King Kong a couple of nights ago. Since I only rate movies on how much I personally enjoyed them (since I don't believe in "art", "artistic integrity" or any such thing), I gave this movie an 8. Frankly speaking, this movie is a total disaster. It's too long, there are a lot of unresolved subplots, there is a massive overuse of CGI effects, there are multitudinous completely implausible action sequences and about a zillion other problems (including an absurd ice skating scene with King Kong and Ann Darrow in a park in New York City in which I was fully expecting Kong to bust a Triple Salchow). I understand that there were dinosaurs in the original King Kong, but unfortunately, the middle third of this movie was nearly indistinguishable from Jurassic Park. I was inappropriately laughing numerous times in the movie because of the complete stupidity of the scenes, although, hey, laughter is laughter.

That all said, I just found it to be a fun movie to watch due to the cool 1930s' setting, manic action sequences and, of course, King Kong. If you want to see this, definitely catch it at the theatre and get a huge bag of popcorn (adding a cheesy topping would be appropriate) for this popcorn movie.