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Pirates of the Caribbean: Trainwreck at World’s End

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
  • IMDB: link

“There was a time when a pirate was free to make his own way in the world, but our time is coming to an end.  Our enemies are united; they vow to destroy us.  The Pirate Lords from the four corners of the Earth must stand together.”

pirates-at-worlds-end-posterThe film begins, after a bizarre introduction about singing coins and eight pieces of nine (don’t ask) which is never satisfactorily explained, with Will (Orlando Bloom), Elizabeth (Keira Knightley), and Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) in Singapore.
Their visit has two purposes.  The first is to gain the maps and ship necessary to travel to Davy Jone’s Locker and rescue Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp).  The second involves a poorly thought out, and even worse explained, plotline about a meeting of pirate lords, mysterious artifacts, and a goddess which Barbossa wants to use to fight back against Norrington’s (Jack Davenport) control of the seas.

After making a deal with Captain Sao Fang (Chow Yun-Fat) the group sails to rescue Jack (who doesn’t make his first appearance until more than 20 minutes into the film) who is lost in a bizarre land where he is haunted by mirror images of himself and stones which turn into crabs.

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Y’arr, She Blows

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
  • IMDB: link

I stand by my assessment that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was better than The Curse of the Black Pearl, and now I can say it was the best of the three Pirates films.  At World’s End is so clumsily and half-assedly assembled that it loses all of the fun its predecessors had, and fails to come up with a single justifiable excuse for wasting two hours and forty minutes.

Things pick up in this film pretty quickly after the end of Dead Man’s Chest, with the whole gang suddenly in Singapore asking a piratificated Chow Yun-Fat for a ship and a crew so that they might sail to Davy Jones’ Locker to retrieve Johnny Depp‘s Jack Sparrow.  Which got me thinking – how did they get to Singapore without a ship and crew?  That place is pretty far from the Caribbean from what I understand, and starting the movie with a plot hole that big is a pretty awful way to begin a film.

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TMNT

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: TMNT
  • IMDb: link

tmnt-poster

What was your introduction to the turtles?  Was it the, best forgetten, live-action films?  Or was it the late 80’s cartoon with their jokes, and commercial and toy tie-ins?  Or the recent Fox cartoon relaunch?  Or was it the slew of arcade and Nintendo games?  Or were you, like me, introduced to the foursome through the original pages of a black and white comic book Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles?

I ask because whatever your vision of the turtles is will color how you view the film.  Fans of the games, the cartooons, and even the other films, may indeed be disappointed as the characters, for the most part, are stipped bare to more closely resemble the original creations.  It may surprise many, who keep refering to the “new look” of the film, which is anything but new.  It’s not a perfect film, but for a comic adaption to a series that had lost all credibility it’s as close to perfect as you can fit into a PG film.  The turtles have finally come home.

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Spider-Man 3

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Spider-Man 3
  • IMDb: link

The curse of three.  This is where all comic book movie franchises begin to break down.  Though Spider-Man 3 is much better than third installments of other super-hero movie franchises (Batman Forever, X-Men: The Lamest Stand, Superman III) it struggles mightily with an overambitious plot which contains enough storylines for at least three films. Sure, we get the alien symbiote, the Sandman, Gwen Stacy, a wedding proposal, a new Goblin, and Venom, but we get them all at once and all on top of each other.  The film would have been better served if the creators had been a little more selective and told a more in-depth, concise, and fleshed-out story, rather than rushing through a half-dozen tales all at once.

As the film opens Peter Parker’s (Tobey Maguire) life is golden.  He’s got a good job at the Daily Bugle, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) is acting on stage, the city has fallen in love with Spider-Man, and he has decided to ask MJ to marry him.

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The Worst Movie Ever?

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Rating: NO STARS
  • Title: The Condemned
  • IMDB: link

There is a moment, one moment, in the film where a reporter (Angie Miliken) balks at the atrocity of a duel to the death battle royal and blames not only the creators of the show but the worldwide audience for tuning in.  For a split second the film takes a stand against decaying morality and standards, and the ill-effects of violence on our world.  And then it goes back and celebrates the same type of mindless torture it wanted to condemn for another half-hour.  I’ve always said Vince McMahon would strangle babies on stage for quarters if you let him, and here’s the film that proves me right. The Condemned might not be the worst film ever made, but it’s definitely in the conversation.

The set-up, basically stolen from The Running Man (a much better flick in every way possible), involves an unscrupulous television producer (Robert Mammone) who buys up death row inmates from around the world and drops them off on an island to kill each other.  The victor wins freedom, a big cash prize, and a trip off the island.

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