Two more films...

It's been a few days since I've seen these couple of films, and I think that's probably enough time to let them digest before giving a swipe at reviewing I'll go ahead and start with the better film and go from there...

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest made for a nice evening's entertainment. The local Rave gave a midnight showing (filling three or four theaters), and I headed over there with my local step-family (the momma teaches with me - the hubby's in my wife's district - go ahead, try to guess). The initial cool part of the showing had nothing to do with the movie or the theater but rather with the fact that we were able to see a dozen of our students there. As a teacher of great students (admittedly, I get honors and AP chem all day long), I have such great feelings for lots of my students and really do enjoy seeing them outside of the school day (or even school year). Most of them are pretty spectacular young people, and I'm pretty much always thrilled to get to see them.

Now, to the movie. It's a fun but ultimately unsatisfying romp that suffers from hyperkinetic editing, an overly-full plot, and middle-movie syndrome but that still manages to provide a couple of hours of decently entertaining summer popcorn fare.

We rejoin the story with Cap'n Jack searching for the key to the titular Dead Man's Chest so he can weasel his way out of a debt that will enslave him to Davy Jones. The other two characters are thrown in jail and made to chase Cap'n Jack to regain their freedom (it doesn't really matter why, it's all just a McGuffin - as I've mentioned before).

From there they get captured by cannibals, attacked by the kraken, nearly taken by Davy Jones, and chucked around in a really big wheel. The effects are outstanding, providing thoroughly interesting and (for small kids, at least) pretty scary creations to people Jones's ship. The chases and fights are reasonably well staged, though the editing is so quick that it's often difficult to tell for certain what is happening, and (coupled with our close-to-the-screen seats) lead to a bit of motion sickness during a particularly rolly three-way swordfight that giant wheel.

The movie moves very quickly from one chase and capture and fight to the next with little room for viewers to relax, which I found okay but that some reviewers have found offputting suggesting that the film has no character development. I was okay with simple characters as the film never appears to show any pretenses toward being a great film rather than just an entertaining tentpole lark.

The end, however, is of the famous "then we'll have to go find 'im" school, pointing the characters toward the third film about as obviously as has any film in recent memory. Even that crappy midget movie did a better job of finding some resolution in its second chapter.

It's not a bad film. I'd suggest it for a mid-summer matinee..

The other film of that same day was Point Blank - Lee Marvin's original of the much more recent and better Payback with Mel Gibson in the lead, heatless, vengeful character.

I thought Point Blank stunk. I found its production incredibly dated, and not terribly entertaining with Marvin playing a truly bastardly character who kills his way up the chain of command from the man who stole his money and girl through to the top man from whom he hopes to eventually get his $93K.

I understand that for its time it was a good film, and supposedly Psycho and the original Italian Job were, too. Sadly, I can only view films like these from the present, and from here, they seem to be pretty lame.

An Inconvenient Truth seems a little too important to tuck here at the end of an already-long review post, so it'll come in a couple of days. Keep waiting, Beck...