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I saw two movies this extended weekend in theaters! One was an over-the-top spy-fi action flick, one was a war drama; one got a very high Rotten Tomatoes rating, one got a good-to-okay one; one was not very ambitious or meaningful and one was rather meant to be serious; the first one, of course, was Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, and the second War Horse. And in the end I have to agree with Rotten Tomatoes. They were both reasonably good, but MI:GP was much better.
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol: This was a movie where people climb like frogs on the sides of Dubai skyscrapers and use magical illusion screens to sneak down hallways in the Kremlin. It pretty much advertised that from the beginning, though, so if you accept that it's a Mission: Impossible flick it was successful and entertaining; it did a fine job of making sure something was always, and I do mean always happening, and at being funny, and at somehow making me like Tom Cruise again for a few hours. Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg were also in it and were adorable. I guess my main issue was that our intrepid heroes spent so much of the movie failing like D&D characters rolling a series of natural 1s that Rel dubbed it "Mission: Incompetent." It kind of was. It was still fun.
War Horse: Despite the fact that Tom Hiddleston is sexy, I don't think this could really decide what kind of movie this was, a Heartwarming Heroic Horse Movie or a War Sucks Movie, and the pacing dragged and the mood stagnated as a result. There were a lot of good moments and all, and Hiddles was sexy if I didn't mention, but it felt like a gritty war movie that didn't quite have the stomach to be gritty. Horse was cute, though.
Black Swan: The second time around, it's amazing how detailed this movie is and how much of it comes through even more on rewatch: the Rothbart's-forest green of Nina's apartment other than her room, which is the only green in the movie, how long it takes her to wear any black, the uncertainty of exactly when her psychosis unfolds, and as Rel pointed out, the brilliance of the emphasized end of the Swan Lake choreography where she's meant to look at Rothbart, Siegfried, and then the audience, and her final three glances in the movie are to her mother, to Thomas, and to the camera. So brilliant.
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol: This was a movie where people climb like frogs on the sides of Dubai skyscrapers and use magical illusion screens to sneak down hallways in the Kremlin. It pretty much advertised that from the beginning, though, so if you accept that it's a Mission: Impossible flick it was successful and entertaining; it did a fine job of making sure something was always, and I do mean always happening, and at being funny, and at somehow making me like Tom Cruise again for a few hours. Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg were also in it and were adorable. I guess my main issue was that our intrepid heroes spent so much of the movie failing like D&D characters rolling a series of natural 1s that Rel dubbed it "Mission: Incompetent." It kind of was. It was still fun.
War Horse: Despite the fact that Tom Hiddleston is sexy, I don't think this could really decide what kind of movie this was, a Heartwarming Heroic Horse Movie or a War Sucks Movie, and the pacing dragged and the mood stagnated as a result. There were a lot of good moments and all, and Hiddles was sexy if I didn't mention, but it felt like a gritty war movie that didn't quite have the stomach to be gritty. Horse was cute, though.
Black Swan: The second time around, it's amazing how detailed this movie is and how much of it comes through even more on rewatch: the Rothbart's-forest green of Nina's apartment other than her room, which is the only green in the movie, how long it takes her to wear any black, the uncertainty of exactly when her psychosis unfolds, and as Rel pointed out, the brilliance of the emphasized end of the Swan Lake choreography where she's meant to look at Rothbart, Siegfried, and then the audience, and her final three glances in the movie are to her mother, to Thomas, and to the camera. So brilliant.
