I‘ve had a bit of time on my hands lately, so I’ve been watching a couple movies.
When I decided to finally give Netflix the boot, I was left without easy access to new releases (if I didn’t want to buy them, which I don’t.) At first I thought of giving Blockbuster a go and gave the local store my first, and only, visit and it was a fricking ghost town.
A week or so ago, though, I was in the local supermarket when I noticed they had installed a Redbox. I have to say I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the service and have been using them quite a bit.
Thor – I wrote about it when it first came out, but I really enjoyed it the second time around. Just a fun, silly movie that knows not to take itself too seriously.
Batman: Year One – I’m old enough to have read the original comic mini-series when it was initially published, and I have to say that:
- It’s probably the best of the DC animated movies. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
- The source material has lost its impact and grittiness because it’s basically set the tone for everything Batman since.
- If you’re not aware that the comic mini-series predated Batman Begins by decades, you’re likely to be bored because you’ll think it’s just a rehash of stretches of the Nolan movie rather than the other way around.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – Please stop making these movies. I really enjoyed the first Pirates, thought the second and third could have been good but were hamstrung by bad scripts and overly complex stories, but the fourth one is just plain stupid. Bad I could take, overly complex I could understand, but this one was just lazy and uninspired. Add to that the fact that Jack Sparrow is absolutely a one-trick pony of a character and the whole movie is a mess.
