Considering how crazy busy I’ve been this week, I really don’t know how the heck I got so much viewing and even reading lately. My day job is taking up more of my time these days. We’ll see how dorky I can make next week.
The Mummy: “Had to! Science you know.” The classic horror movie may be a touch old timey for many modern viewers, with its almost 20s style and sometimes stiff acting, but it’s got some pretty cool sequences and great lines.
Doctor Who: Colony in Space: The Doctor finally gets free of Earth for an adventure, taking Jo on her first offworld jaunt. And what they find is a pretty interesting situation, with colonists and a mining corporation at odds over a planet, and some natives creeping about. The problem, as with so many Pertwee era stories is that it’s too long. There’s a bout a four part story here, but it’s a six part arc. This sadly invites the writers to bring in the extremely over-used and one note Master, for no good reason. The final episode kind of breaks down a bit with his dastardly doings. Still, it’s a fairly cool story overall, even with the faults. The costumes on the natives look terrible, but the rest of it is pretty good.
The Ides of March: Clooney sure knows how to direct a film. He makes good movies, and each one is very different from the last. Unfortunately, this one is kind of a misfire. The cast is good and the movie looks great. However, it’s simply not all that interesting. It’s not bad. It’s timely. But, it’s not exciting at all. And I don’t just mean because there’s no action. I mean that it’s really not very interesting. Ah well, his previous work as director is plenty strong enough for me to look forward to his next.
The Mummy’s Hand: A kind of goofy misadventure, this film finds two luckless guys hanging out in North Africa, looking to find their fortunes. When they team up with a stage magician and his lovely daughter, they may be in far over their head. It’s an OK, light hearted mummy movie this time around.
The Mummy’s Tomb: All the lightheartedness of the previous film is extinguished rather quickly with a brutal murder. The tone is totally different as the horror is brought to America and people start getting picked off rather quickly. As with the previous entry in the series, it’s OK, but not great. It’s certainly more violent. And there is something oddly fun about torch bearing peasants in suburban America.
Bellflower: Argh! A cast of absolutely infuriating jerk-offs doing lots of stupid crap. But don’t worry, they take forever to do it. Hipster crap. Infuriating hipster crap. I felt like screaming in rage for most of the film (at the film).
The Mummy’s Ghost: The Mummy is back, and still (un)living in the States. Not especially interesting, though it does play out in an interesting way during the very finale. Life in the swamp, man.
The Mummy’s Curse: I think the problem with the last three Mummy movies is that they’re pretty much the same movie with some slight variations and cast changes. Well, that, and if you pay attention to the time that’s supposed to have past between each film, Curse should be taking place in the latter days of the 20th century, but things still look pretty 40s to me. Like the previous film, it’s OK, but forgettable.
Doctor Who: The Mawdryn Undead: This episode really uses the time travel aspects of the show a bit more than usual, with events playing out in parallel timelines. It’s an interesting episode, one of the better Davison I’ve seen. It’s always good to see the Brigadier, too.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Touch of Satan: “This is where the fish lives.” An extremely crappy Satan based horror movie from the 70s is typically blah. However, Mike and the lads are quite funny. A good episode, with thankfully little (no) Pearl.
Bunraku: Extremely stylistic, with lots and lots of fun little homages to various classic genre films (especially Westerns and Martial Arts movies), this could have very easily been a total mess. However, though it drags a bit in the third act, it’s actually quite entertaining. Not for everyone, surely. But, for those who want a little fun with their action, give this one a look. Probably Hartnett’s best work to date.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Unearthly: A boring Dr. Frankenstein type story is made more watchable by Joel and the Bots. And this episode features two shorts. The one about posture is extremely awkward and creepy. Good stuff.
Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons: The introduction of two characters I’m not especially fond of, Jo and The Master. And it’s squarely set in the era when the Doctor was stuck on Earth, battling alien invasion after alien invasion. All that aside, it’s not a bad story. Jon Pertwee sure has grown on me on my re-watching of the classic episodes. But, man, I wish he had more interesting stories and better companions/villains.
On Sunday, Ben and I watched some more episodes of From the Earth to the Moon, which continues to be an excellent series. I also caught another batch of Fringe episodes, which is continuing to be very cool, occasionally funny, and is making me curious to see where it goes. And I decided to finally pick Stargate SG-1 back up. I got side-tracked last holiday season at the halfway point of season 10. So close to the end. So, I watched a few episodes of that. The show has its flaws, but is surprisingly good more often than not.
And the Clone Wars series continues to impress. It’s so, so, so much better than the prequel trilogy. It does so much to remind me of all the things I loved about the originals. It’s classic space opera, high science fantasy, and rip-roaring fun.
I read volume two of the comic Orbital, which finished up the first story. The art is excellent and the setting quite cool. The writing isn’t amazing, but it’s passable. I’m enjoying it enough to be excited about reading the next volume.
And on cineAWESOME! this week, I took a look at some of my favorite movie chases.
-Matt
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