Movies & Film

Often during the course of conversation, the subject of film comes up. People will quote or reference a movie, and more often than not, I'm left with a blank expression and shrug of the shoulders. Because you see, unlike some people that have extended video catalogs, I own very few DVDs....and ultimately I see relatively few movies. I'm not sure why it is, I don't have any sort of secret disdain for movie theaters or for film in general, it's just that somewhere between juggling forms of entertainment (games, conversation, music, TV, internet, going out, etc.) the poor movie seems to get left out. I've come to accept that about myself, that I will always be a few steps behind most everyone else in the movie category (example: i just now got a copy of 'There Will Be Blood' to watch) and willingly accept the mockery it often heaps upon me from the movie snobs we all know and love. And hey, if they want to movie-bully me, I can TV-bully them, because I highly doubt they've watch the entirety of 'The West Wing' or 'ER' or 'Oz.'
The flip side to this coin, is that often I will see bad movies before I see good ones. Sure I might not have seen 'No Country For Old Men,' but I bet you haven't seen the entire 'Rush Hour' or 'The Mummy' franchise, have you? I didn't think so. So while my knowledge of classic or "popular" movies might be lacking, my knowledge of "bad" movies tends to be alright. Anyone can appreciate a thoughtful and meaningful cinematic masterpiece, but it takes a certain type of person to also be able to appreciate a movie that offers nothing but a thin plot, a hot chick, and lots of explosions. I am that person, although even I will willingly admit that 'The Transporter: 2' was absolutely terrible.
With that in mind, I've watched 3 movies in the past few days since returning from Portland. 'Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee' was a good movie. Enjoyed it, but then again we all know I'm a sucker for historical movies. That said, they did Sitting Bull justice...it was alright, not groundbreaking, but a good watch.
Then I finally watched Doom, based off the groundbreaking video game series of the same name and starring The Rock. Yes, I admit, I like The Rock as an actor (and no, I've never watched wrestling)....he's no Tom Hanks, but there's a place in this world for movies with The Rock. Now Doom was predictably cheesy and mindless, but eh, so was the video game....
To cap it off though, yesterday I finally got to see the movie I've been waiting ages to see. I don't know why I didn't go see it in theaters, I don't know why I didn't just buy it a month ago, but I finally rented......Hitman. I absolutely love the video game franchise of the same name, think it's one of the best ever...so when I had an afternoon to kill and saw it available on-demand, I jumped at the chance to finally watch it.
It was freaking awesome. This Timothy Olyphant fellow didn't have the voice, and the script took a few detours from the videogame persona of the character, but overall it was a pretty damn good Agent 47. Lots of great (and creative!) violence, lots of great fight scenes, and of course....a super hot chick.
I had never heard of Olga Kurylenko before yesterday, although apparently she's going to be in the next Bond movie and has been in some award winning movie called 'Paris: Je l'aime' which I think movie snob Adrienne has seen, apparently without informing me of this incredibly hot Ukrainian woman. If nothing else, make sure you see Hitman just to make sure that you get to see all of Olga Kurylenko.
But really, it was better than I thought it was going to be.....I really enjoyed it, and there aren't many movies made about things I like that I say that about....normally they bastardize things when they move them to film. So go see Hitman, and then do yourself a favor, and buy the video games....which are awesome. You can prolly skip the first one, they re-do it in the third.
And finally in closing, this has me wondering if there's going to be a Grand Theft Auto movie....and if there was, how wildly successful could it be if they stuck to the grit of the game? I'd be interested, that's for sure.