Shallow Movie Reviews

I'm doing Shallow Book Reviews, so I might as well do Shallow Movie Reveiws since I rarely have anything deep to say about movies either. I took my son to see X-Men 3 yesterday. What surprised me, though in retrospect any fool could have seen it coming, was that there was an Entertainment Tonight-type show before the previews that had news about upcoming features, interviews with actors and directors, and advertisements. By the time the previews finally ended, I was pretty sick of being at the movies and wanted to go home. I know the past always seems so much better, but judging by the previews, movies really are getting alot worse, blockbuster-types at least. Of course normally I wouldn't be there early enough to see all that crap, but it was the big Memorial Day Blockbuster and we were going to the matinee, so we went way early.

Anyway, surprisingly, X-Men 3 was pretty good. X-Men was my favorite comic book when I was a kid, but I didn't like the first two movies and wasn't expecting much of this one. Of course anything with Ian McKellen in it can't be totally worthless. And although I enjoy echoing Rex Reed and muttering "Sir Ian McKellen as Magneto" I did enjoy the movie. It held my attention, had many real surprises, and a strong human element. One of the previews promised "Bow Wow as Twinkie," but somehow that actually sounds more like a threat than a promise.

The other movie I saw this weekend was Not on the Lips, a French movie that was recommended by the aforementioned Rex Reed. Rex Reed is my favorite film critic. I like his style and very much enjoy reading his reviews, but we have nothing whatsoever in common in our tastes in movies. If he likes it, I can pretty much be sure I will not, and vice versa. So Not on the Lips was predictably atocious. The only possible interest it could have for anyone would be to play the sport of analyzing the French. Perhaps I was missing the irony within the irony within the irony, which is always possible, but It struck me as a conservative ode to the good old days. If so, it's funny how the conservative good old days for the French differ from ours. "Fuck the imigrants" crosses all cultural boundaries, but the French conservative's longing for the days when all married people had lovers just doesn't play the same over here.