Well, looks like we've all seen the Watchmen movie now, judging from the different blogs out there.
I apologize for the late post, considering that I saw it Friday night at 7. didn't have access to the Internet before now...
I showed up pretty early before the show, a good twenty-five minutes, and went into Theater 15 at South Barrington. Now, I like South Barrington AMC - mainly because it's 30 theaters and that's it. No arcades, restaurants, or other distractions to cause the kids to hang out. If you go out to South Barrington, there's NOTHING there but movie theaters (yes, Brass the bar/restaurant is closed). It just attracts a different sort of crowd - the kind that comes out to see MOVIES, dammit! :)
So. I've been out here a lot in the past several years, but I never had the opportunity to go into Theater 15. It was freaking HUGE. Took up most of the middle part of the building, probably.I got into the front row of the "angled" seats (there were still eight rows in front of me, but they were "flat" on the ground - I was up high right in the middle, and happily waited with my F&%$#! expensive popcorn and drink combo (the ONLY thing I don't like about the AMC) for the movie to begin.
Wow.
Just... wow.
The opening sequence alone was worth it (kinda makes you wonder why Rorshach was all over the Comedian's murder, but Silhouette gets killed and nobody seems to care?).
I loved the movie. Never felt the time drag (except when Dr. Manhattan was talking :) ). I had been a little nervous, considering the Chicago Tribune gave it only 1 1/2 stars - and for the reasons the critic had offered. Bad martial arts in the fight scenes (really?! I thought they were terrificly brutal and had a style all their own!), Silk Spectre's lack of acting skills (didn't notice, but that might have been the latex costume), "confusing" timeline (What? I followed it, and hadn't read the graphic novel for twenty years! Give us some credit!) and constant references to the novel (supposed to be too confusing for normals, seeing as they didn't know what to look for, but hey, I followed it just fine!).
All in all, I found it to be a brutal (oh, I am SO sorry for those kids the grown-ups dragged to the movie in Jim McClain's report - didn't notice any in South Barrington) and honest film, with its own internal logic that it seemed always to follow. I found the story pretty much straightforward and even a little predictable (since I am a fan after all) but they really pulled it off - from the Gunga Diner to the newstand to the Comedian's weapons locker to Mars to Veidt's Antarctic hangout, the sets were absolutely spot on. PER-fection.
The actors were pretty good. Manhattan was New-Age-Pontificatingly-Annoying, Rorshach was a genuinely frightening sociopath (but I loved his apology to Nightowl!), Nightowl was sufficiently nerdy but could get the job done, Silk Spectre was sexy and a badass fighter too... Comedian was perfect, just the big jerk I had expected but with some heroism behind his attitude.
No one's going to win an Oscar for this thing (I don't think Rorshach was THAT much of a stretch or THAT good of an acting job - sorry, Jimbo). But then again, no one HAS to.
To play off what Jim McClain wrote yesterday, we saw the Watchmen and it was good. It would be nice to have everyone ooh and ahh about it, but probably not with that amount of blood and sex (people seem to be funny about blood and sex and making it with a superhero in their super-vehicle).
Still.
WELL done, sirs! WELL done!
KC
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
That wasn't me who saw the movie with kids in the audience. That was Mike. I went at 12:10 on a weekday, so the only kids that would have been in the theaters are probably going to grow up to be Rorschach anyway. Hurm.
Oh.
My error. ;)
KC
Post a Comment