The week in film: Back in Action!

In the tradition of good sequels, I give you this follow-up post complete with different movies, reviewed during a different time, yet in a vaguely familiar fashion! Exciting isn't it.

This week's lineup included the following flicks: Minority Report, The Prestige, Whale Rider, The Iron Giant, and Zoom: Academy for Superheroes.

Now that we have the titles, I give you the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good.

Minority Report was a really fun sci-fi flick set in 2054, where an experiment in precognitive crime fighting is taking place. People are quite literally found and arrested before they get the chance to kill. A delightful plot line is woven into this scenario that takes some great twists and turns, making for a really good time at the movies. I'd recommend checking it out. Steven Spielberg does, as usual, an excellent job on this.

The Prestige is another magician flick that came out in eerie proximity to The Illusionist. It's truly amazing how often this sort of thing happens in Hollywood...two studios releasing oddly similar movies in a rather similar time frame. What a crazy original idea factory that place is! (Madagascar and The Wild anyone???) I digress... The Illusionist with Edward Norton was a really good story, and really well done. I'd recommend that one for sure. The Prestige was even better! A really well written and acted story, lots of suspense, and great twists. Give this one a rent for sure. As for the two mentioned animated flicks, go with Madagascar, forget about The Wild.

Whale Rider entered my mind as "that smallish foreign film that had great critical acclaim and I should think about watching sometime." That's pretty much where it stayed, occasionally surfacing in the back of my mind, but disappearing just as quickly. Then I moved to NZ, and at that point, it seemed more like a required viewing type of thing. I checked out and read the book (good stuff, give that a read if you can), and now I've seen the movie. The movie takes creative license with the book, but still, wonderful movie. It's a beautiful story, well acted, emotional, and powerful. I have to say, in my opinion, it helped me get more out of the story due to exposure I've had to Maori culture since moving here. I don't think this is a requirement for watching, but it didn't hurt either. Anyway, it's a really lovely film and I would strongly recommend this one.

On the animated front, we have The Iron Giant. This is one of the most tragic stories ever. No, not the movie, but the complete bungling of the promotion of the movie. This is a flick that most people likely ignore or maybe haven't even heard of, and it is FANTASTIC! Go, run, rent this now! Adults, kids, it doesn't matter...this is a wonderful story expertly brought to the screen by Brad Bird (The Incredibles, another must-see). It packs a few wonderful and powerful messages and is just a real treat.

Rounding up this bunch with a flick that very ably holds the fort for both "the bad" and "the ugly," we have Zoom: Academy for Superheroes. In some fairness, this did hold the attention of two young children. That said, they promptly forgot about it in a way I only wish I could. The acting was cheezy and the story, such that it was, was sort of coherent but spliced together in a really clunky, disjointed way. Revisiting the earlier commentary on originality, a similar-themed flick that came out was Sky High, and while that's not perfect either, it was all around more enjoyable than this turkey.

That concludes this week's roundup.