Present Tensed

Quick Reviews of Films (Nov 2009)

Quick reviews of the last month or so of movies that I’ve watched.

In the theater:

• The Men Who Stare at Goats — I really wanted this to be bet­ter than it was.  It was chalk-full of humor-potential and only deliv­ered in fits & starts.  Worth watch­ing on DVD cer­tainly, but maybe not worth run­ning out and buy­ing a movie ticket for.

On DVD / TV / Net­flix:

• Star Trek (2009) –  Good times!  It holds up to mul­ti­ple view­ings pretty well.  The space bat­tles are really well done.   As an old-time Star Trek fan, I have issues with some aspects of this film, but it’s still great.
• Lim­its of Con­trol — Slowly paced, even by Jar­musch standards.
• The Gospel Accord­ing to Judas –  The early Chris­tians are fas­ci­nat­ing to me, par­tic­u­larly the sto­ries about how the 4 gospels were cho­sen (and the related dis­cus­sions about why the oth­ers were left out)
• Under­world: Rise of the Lycans — not bad, by Under­world standards
• Fan­tas­tic Four & Fan­tas­tic Four: Rise of the Sil­ver Surfer – eh.
• Food Inc. — Cor­po­rate food is scary, yet we (myself included) do noth­ing to change our habits.
• Wolver­ine & the X-Men: Begin­ning of the End — These X-Men ani­mated comics are bet­ter than the X-Men live action films.
• Blue Gold: World Water Wars — Water is, and will con­tinue to be, a seri­ous resource issue.
• Crack­ing the Mayan Code — A lit­tle bit of Mayan his­tory, but mostly about the his­tory of the lin­guists’ efforts to fig­ure out the language.
• Deci­sions that Shook the World – Inter­est­ing looks at FDR, LBJ, and Rea­gan.  Focuses on one issue for each Pres­i­dent and sim­pli­fies every­thing else (in a way that will be mad­den­ing for you if you know any­thing about these his­to­ries).  I thought that mak­ing Reagan’s Star Wars pro­gram so cen­tral in the story about the fall of the Iron Cur­tain was a lit­tle over-done, but it does make me recon­sider the history.
• The Hunt for Lincoln’s Assas­sin – Solid National Geo­graphic doc­u­men­tary on John Wilkes Booth’s efforts to elude the law in the after­math of his assas­si­na­tion of Lincoln.
• Lost in La Man­cha — Nice look at a Direc­tor try­ing to over­come his demons (the Adven­tures of Baron Munch­hausen) and make an almost doomed film

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1%