Big Recap

So I've been on the road and don't feel like writing anything in depth so here's the run down:

Another Earth

Nice little Sci-Fi film that actually has very little special effects or, indeed, science fiction. The film just uses the discovery of another planet identical to earth as a framing device for a story about two people brought together as the result of a tragedy (but not in the way you might expect). I liked how the film dealt with the relationship honestly, and the resolution felt real and unforced. Its not a big film, but one worth checking out.

Water for Elephants

This was a plane viewing (I guess its too much to ask that United have the individual entertainment consoles in the seats), and I just found it kind of boring. It basically has the same framing device (and really story) as Titanic (replace gloria stuart with Hal Holbrook...sexy), except it takes place at a depression era circus and doesn't have the guts to at least kill one of the main characters like the former film did. Its not horrible, just overwhelmingly perfunctory and unnecessary.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Any film that a features a monkey in pants is going to be on my good side (its like he thinks he's people), so Planet of Apes automatically gets a couple of points from me. Also I saw it in Hong Kong where it was 60% humidity and 90 degrees, so I think the respite of the theatre air conditioning would have made me feel good about whatever I was watching (side note: At hong Kong theatres you buy pre assigned seats, and they don't open the theatre until five minutes before the start time. Everybody then crams their way in. I just thought it was interesting). That said, this reboot is generally entertaining, even if the human villians are drawn so broadly its laughable (though I guess they felt it was necessary so people would actually root for the monkeys). My biggest problem is that in a matter of hours, the main primate is able to round up hundreds of large simians from just the south san francisco bay area, Being a resident of that general vicinity I refuse to believe there are that many giant ape-sized primates just hanging out waiting to be liberated. On the other hand pants-wearing super smart monkey's presented no problems for me.

The X-Files: I want to Believe

Really disappointing. I've seen pretty much the entire run of the original TV show, and consider it one of my favorites. This film just comes off as a pale imitation, and they completely ruin the Scully character making her Adrian Balboa to Mulder's Rocky. She was always skeptical in the show to be sure, but would never just hang him out to dry like she does in this film. Just a weak effort all the way around.

The Lincoln Lawyer

Another plane viewing, but one that was surprisingly entertaining. I avoided this one in the theatre's because even though I do love me some McConaghy, the trailers made it look like another Grisham-lite-lawyer-on-a-mission film, which I'm almost as tired of as emo vampires. The Lincoln Lawyer actually ended up being a pretty well-executed reasonably intelligent thriller, with a plot that generally made sense. I'd dare say this is even McConaghy's best lawyer role since Amistad (you forgot he was in that didn't you?). Boom, double punctuation.

Captain America

Captain America manages to be the most straightforward unironic of the Marvel film adaptations and it works much better than I would have expected. The Captain doesn't have any of the angst or recklessness of most other superheroes, he just wants to go out and kill some Nazis. I think this is the right approach, because when you're main character is named after a country and runs around with a shield its going to be difficult to sell that he's secretly tortured. Anyway, even though I'm getting tired of origin stories the film was generally well executed, and had a nice sense of humor about itself to go along with the lack of irony. The Cap isn't as compelling as Iron Man, but he's way more interesting than the Hulk, and I'll be interested to see what Joss Whedon does with all these characters in the Avengers.

All that said, and possible spoilers ahead (actually definite spoilers ahead), the action scenes don't always hold up to scrutiny, and the ending in particular lacks any semblance of sense it almost serves to derail the whole operation. Dig This. So if you're flying a bomb loaded plane that's hurtling out of control for NYC and you don't have time to find a safe landing area, where do you think you'd end up crashing the plane? Somewhere in the Atlantic? Possibly Maine? Boston? I mean, you literally only have seconds to make a decision so obviously you must be super close to new york? Right? Wrong. Apparently the Captain didn't have time to find a corn field, but he did have time to fly to the freaking North Pole to crash and then be frozen for the next sixty years. Right, if you're trying to convince us that he doesn't have enough time to even finish a radio conversation with his girlfriend but he does have time to fly 5,000 miles out of the way then you should probably rethink your story execution. Whatever, shut up brain.