The fact that I couldn't even make an attempt at a witty/smarmy headline should tell you everything you need to know. It wasn't the most inspiring weekend at the movies.
That's not to say that the selections I caught up with were that bad - just nothing to, pardon the expression, write home about.
"Total Recall" was a perfectly serviceable - but inspiration lacking - remake of the superior 1990 film by Paul Verhoeven, which was, in turn, based on a Philip K. Dick story. The new version has some decent action sequences and a helluva lot of chase scenes. But it's sort of unnecessary.
Fernando Meiralles's "360" is a bit better than his last outing - "Blindness" - but is still a far cry from his early work - "City of God" and "The Constant Gardener." It's one of those multiple character films in which stories occasionally intersect. That's fine for a setup, but the problem here is that there does not appear to be a unifying theme. Or, at least, a very weak one. The picture has some solid performances, but it's lacking a certain something.
Here are my reviews.
I'm still catching up on some of the films I missed in the theater this year. I recently saw "Peace, Love and Misunderstanding," which dabbles in cliche but is just charming enough. Then, there's "ATM," a micro-indie thriller that is compelling enough until it completely ceases to have any point whatsoever in its final moments. I'm not going to even get into "Detention," which aims to be a "Cabin in the Woods" and falls way short. No, seriously - way short.
This coming weekend, I'll be seeing Spike Lee's "Red Hook Summer," "The Bourne Legacy," "Hope Springs" and "The Campaign."
No comments:
Post a Comment