The Summer Movie Season Begins!

So we’ve reached the first weekend of May, and the beginning of the summer blockbuster season (does anyone but me remember back when the summer season didn’t start until Memorial Day Weekend???). The first movie of the year hoping to achieve summer stardom is Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven. On the surface, this movie has everything going for it (at least from my perspective): Ridley Scott is a phenomenal director, star Orlando Bloom is always good, and it’s a historical epic (very much one of my favorite types of movies). It even has the critics on its side; most of them gave it pretty positive reviews. So does it make the grade? In my not-so-humble opinion, the answer is sadly, no. While visually compelling and filled with some wonderful battle scenes and some great scenic shots, the story is sadly lacking.

I think my biggest complaint would have to be lack a real character development. As the story unfolds, we never really get close enough to the characters to understand their motivations, Orlando Bloom’s character especially. He has the opportunity to marry a woman that he clearly has feelings for (and in the process save thousands of innocent lives by preventing a European tyrant from taking control of Jerusalem), and he inexplicably turns it down. I’m sorry, but that’s a win-win situation any way you look at it. Supposedly his loyalty to his dead wife has something to do with his decision, but you really don’t get to know his character well enough to find this believable. Especially when he ends up with the woman at the end of the movie anyways. It just doesn’t come across as believable or compelling – Orlando simply comes across as weak-willed and pathetic in my view. But of course this is then contradicted by the way he puts himself in harm’s way to defend Jerusalemwhen it is attacked by the natives (which is sadly ironic considering that he could have prevented the entire attack simply by getting married to a really hot woman that he'd already fooled around with).

I don’t know if this is caused by Orlando Bloom not delivering a solid enough performance (a number of critics very much criticized his performance and questioned his ability to pull off this sort of role, but I have a hard time believing that considering how good a job he’s done in previous films), or simply the result of a poorly written script that didn’t leave him with much to work with, but the end result is a disappointing movie that you just don’t feel drawn into. When I go to see a movie (especially an epic film like this), I want to feel like I’m being pulled into the story, like I’m a part of it all along with the characters in the film. With Kingdom of Heaven, I really felt like I was just a spectator, watching events unfold in front of me without really feeling a part of them. And I think having that connection to the characters, and to the events they are a part of, is what makes a really great film. So while Kingdom of Heaven was enjoyable to watch, I just didn’t feel drawn into it enough to consider it to be a great movie (but it certainly did a better job than a certain highly-anticipated blockbuster that followed it – but I’ll go into that in a later entry).

The other movie opening wide that first weekend in May (well, the other one that I saw, anyways), was far, far from having any sort of blockbuster potential, but was still quite a bit of fun to watch. And that movie would be the remake of House of Wax. Okay, let me get this out of the way first and foremost, since it seemed to be the main topic of conversation for anyone discussing the film – Paris Hilton doesn’t do that bad a job in the movie (none of the critics seemed to have watched any part of the movie except for the scene where Paris gets killed, since that this is about the only thing they talk about in their reviews of the movie – which is pretty pathetic considering she’s not even the main character of the movie, but that’s movie critics for you. Of course, to be completely fair, the only movie reviews I generally read are on imdb, and they simply pull comments from various critics into one overall review, so it could simply be a case that imdb only grabbed comments about Paris's role, and the critics really did have other things to say about the movie). Admittedly, the role Paris is playing (slutty blonde girl) is hardly a stretch for her, but considering how badly I’ve seen this clichéd role overdone in numerous B horror movies, I have to say that she actually did a very believable job with the character. And watching her run around in lacy red bra and panties certainly wasn’t a bad thing. :-)

I have to say, I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie. While hardly Shakespeare, it was actually pretty well done for what it was. Now I’ll be the first to say that the original was enough of a classic that it certainly didn’t need a remake, but the creators of the new version did a pretty good job. Most importantly, I think they were successful in not taking themselves too seriously, and kept the movie from becoming too much of a cliché (of course, these types of movies are by their very nature pretty cliche, but this one is certainly no worse than any others in this genre). All the performances were pretty good, and there weren’t too many places where the story was glaringly unbelievable. The only problem I had when watching it wasn’t actually the movie’s fault – at the crappy theatre I saw it in (there are times I so hate Carmike Cinemas), the damned projector bulb went out right at the start of the climactic final scene, and by the time they got it fixed, we’d missed about two-thirds of the big fight with the bad guy (and of course the geniuses running the theatre couldn’t be bothered to back the film up so we could see what we’d missed. They already had our money, so what did they care?).

So if you’re a fan of cheesy B horror movies, I’d say that House of Wax is a must-see. And if you’re not, well then don’t waste your time with it, as it’s not your type of movie (unless of course you really just want to see Paris Hilton die in gruesome (and I do mean gruesome) fashion). I don't know that I'll buy it (unless I can get it for $5 or something), but I'm tempted to rent it, if for no other reason than to see the part of the climax that I missed at the theatre.

The second weekend of May brought us four new releases, but I only got around to seeing one of them (I really wanted to see MindHunters, but sadly it wasn't given a wide enough release to reach Montana, so I'm going to have to catch it on DVD). The one movie I did see was the Jet Li action/crime movie Unleashed. Admittedly, the concept of a man raised as an attack dog is a little over-the-top, but this movie was just fun to watch. The fight scenes are great, the entire cast does a phenomenal job (I especially loved Bob Hoskins' performance, but that's not surprising because he's just such a good actor), and for what it is, the story is actually pretty well written. The critics, naturally, hated this movie, but that's why I have basically zero respect for movie critics (you really have to wonder what sort of qualifications a person has to have in order to be a newspaper film critic).

Well, that's it for this entry. Next up, we have the review that you've all been waiting for (okay, it's probably the review you've all been dreading, but watcha gonna do?)– Star Wars: Episode III. And if you haven't guessed by now from various comments I've made in previous entries, faithful readers, I've got a pretty scathing review lined up for this particular gem of a film (feel free to start writing those hate e-mails– I know they're coming). But you're going to have to wait until next time, boys and girls. Until then!!