Category: Three Sentence Movie Reviews

This was the movie that launched the Kenzie/Gennaro reading obsession–an obsession I have managed to spread to several people, Matt included. Matt has finished this book and so we got to watch the movie together and I must say that I was quite disappointed. One of the more interesting female characters I’ve read in years was chopped down to a wide-eyed smiling specter whose only reason for being in this film was to stare adoringly at her man; she didn’t even carry a gun, for chrissakes and in the book, she is the much better shot and saves Patrick Kenzie’s bacon on many an occasion.*

*I can’t rightfully be surprised. As I’ve observed more than once: the main thrust of the movie making industry seems to be assuring men that they are very manly, cool, interesting and women need them. This is at the same time that stories about women’s lives are incredibly interesting (I think) and women deserve to watch movies where the women (or mostly woman, singular) do something besides stand by her man. I watch movie after movie focusing on men and I enjoy many of them, but when will my self throw up her hands in despair and stop attending such–which means the vast majority of–movies? The movie machine could save me from this fate by rapidly increasing the percentage of movies that pass the Bechdel test. What will it take to make that happen?

Now David Yates is directing and things are happening. This was a first-view for this film and though it skipped some important parts of the novel I found it thankfully well paced and enjoyable. I think we’re through the worst of them–Chris Columbus, I’m looking at you!

I think the problem with this movie is that it wasn’t campy enough to be a campy send up and it was entirely too ridiculous to be accepted as an action flick. When your main character launches a dirt bike up over the drug cartel’s fence, pulls himself and the dirt bike into a horizontal position to avoid being skewered on the fence then pulls the dirt bike up and himself back on it to land with no injury even the most physics-adverse action fan must roll their eye. Still, I quite enjoyed it,* mostly because Vin Diesel smiled a lot, which he usually doesn’t get to do in his beefy, action flick rolls.

*indeed, I had been in a funk all week and after the movie was over I found myself in a surprisingly cheerful mood. Can XXX cure depression?

I had only seen the DVD extras to this movie, so this was a new experience for me. The acting was okay, though I most enjoyed the costumes of the Yule Ball, especially the Durmstrang uniforms. All in all, this was not a bad entry in the Harry Potter Movie marathon.

Watching it this time with Matt I could relax because I already knew what would happen. I had time to notice the spectacular cinematography and enjoy even more the acting. Matt really enjoyed this too, though he found it also a very tense experience.

Abandoning articles in the title altogether and using the more compact ampersand instead of the wordy word “and,” this movie sees the triumphant return of Vin Diesel, who calmly drives his car under a burning, rolling gas tanker in the first scene, and THAT is what I’ve been missing during the last two movies. The FBI apparently had trouble meeting their recruiting quota of blue-eyed blondes as Paul Walker–who has previously proved himself to be an unreliable agent–is now back working for the man. Maya’s back, Lettie’s back, everyone is back, including, in case you missed the bulletin up above, Vin Diesel, which is all you need to know about this movie.

The first thing that this movie asks you to believe is that the main character–who looks old enough to have done a stint in the army and then gotten his bachelor’s degree with the GI Bill*– is in high school. But it’s not like these movies are realistic in any way, anyway. Tokyo looks good, as usual, and it’s fun to watch the cars drift,** but this movie has really nothing to offer except for screen time with Sung Kang, who is fun to watch; overall this is a Fast and the Furious movie you can easily miss.***

*IMDB tells me he was 24 when the movie came out.
**IMDB also tells me that the stunt drivers did all the drifting in real life, it wasn’t created in CGI.
***”I don’t want to watch any of them!” I hear you thinking. I totally get it. I’m just going through a thing, please stand by for return to normal movie viewing habits.

I heard this was a pretty bad movie, and I don’t deny that is does not rank high on any measure of a movie, mostly because there is no Vin Diesel to perk up any scenes. However, it is not the worst movie I’ve seen this year—at least, I don’t think so–and there are some memorable scenes like the great car scramble. Though Tyrese Gibson’s Roman Pearce’s character is not super developed, he has some amusing lines and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges is always entertaining, so there are worse ways to spend two hours of your life.

The fact that I remembered absolutely nothing from the first time I saw this 10 years ago indicates that there isn’t much to this movie. However, that doesn’t make it an enjoyable wad of cotton-candy-viewing the second time around. Paul Walker is less wooden than Keanu Reeves in Point Break (another favorite) and Vin Diesel is Vin Diesel, which means that despite the fact I don’t have any interest in cars in general and illegal street racing in particular, I greatly enjoyed this movie.

Due to the fact that there is that whole time travel thing going on, this movie is also overly long. However, the dementors are suitably scary and they did an excellent job with the hippogriff. It struck me, as I was watching Hermione explain everything to Harry, that this may be one of the few places in the Hollywood cannon when the female character saves the day and makes no excuses for her smarts and also is not punished by the shunning of the male characters, drug use or eating disorder.