Die Another Day – One of my favorite Bond films, this 20th
installment spectacular has a lot of homages to past installments, interesting
villains, and attractive Bond girls (including a pretty awesome Halle
Berry). It’s also got my favorite
Bond car, a semi-reasonable evil plan, and a number of swell action
sequences. It’s a great Bond film,
especially if you are not that much into Bond films.
Goldeneye – It took eight years for the Bond series to
recover from some wretched outings, but with Goldeneye, they did it
marvelously. Goldeneye isn’t the
greatest film in the series, but it is slick, comfortable, and Brosnan is
fantastic in the role. The biggest
drawback to this entry, in fact, is that it tries too hard to get back to
formula: Romantic entanglements are forced, Q’s lair is just plain silly, and
the action sequences are so far over the top, they’re technically out of this
world. That said, there are a lot
of action sequences, and its hard to fault the movie for being too Bond at this
stage. In fact, it’s a welcome
return to form, even if it overshoots it a bit.
Star Trek – In what was probably my favorite Abrams film to
date, J.J. takes the reins of a long since pigeon-holed property and truns it
into something really interesting.
The action sequences, with all their big bold strokes, are likely to
keep you entertained, but it’s the young actors that tend to run the gamut
between decent acting jobs and hilarious caricatures that will make you eagerly
await the next installment.
Tomorrow Never Dies – This fairly standard entry into the
Bond series boasts a big plus in Michelle Yeoh’s ass kicking peformance, but
still manages to suffer under the weight of a ludicrous, obvious, and overly
complicated sinister plot.
Jonathan Price is mildly entertaining enough to almost pull it off, but
it’s hard to take any of this seriously, and the rest of the film suffers for
it.
The World is Not Enough – Denise Richards is horribly
miscast as a rocket scientist in Brosnan’s third outing, but she’s kinda hot,
so it’s not that terrible. Of
course, the fact that villain Renard is impervious to pain is pretty awesome,
too, unfortunately, the movie makes a big mistake by also making him a totally
whiney wuss. Otherwise, the film
is fairly entertaining, including one really good sequence in a caviar factory
(with a giant saw wielding helicopters) and a great sunken, tilted sub. I suppose given the two character
flaws, coming out average is a pretty big accomplishment this time around.
Zack and Miri Make a Porno – It’s generally good for movie
fans when Kevin Smith leaves the Askewniverse, and Zack and Miri is no
exception. Occasionally hilarious,
and incredibly obscene (necessarily, I suppose), the film has a fairly
obligatory ending, and the final third suffers under the weight of it, but it’s
a jolly good time if you want to watch a mainstream comedy about porn.
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