Spring 2007
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
I actually enjoyed the third Pirates movie. I went in after hearing a number of less than positive reviews, but despite that I thought it was pretty good. The movie begins with a plan to rescue Jack from Davey Jones' Locker and then focus switches to the assault on all pirates by The Man. The entire cast returns, though Jonathon Price has a much smaller role.
The story is fine, the action scenes are huge, the special effects were very good, and for the most part it did a good job of wrapping up the trilogy. Of course, that's a problem by itself. Disney is incapable of ending a successful run of movies when they should, and I expect this isn't the last time we'll see the moniker 'Pirates of the Caribbean' attached to something, if not a movie then a Saturday morning cartoon.
There are a few things I could nitpick, but it really isn't worth getting in to. I left the movie thinking it was pretty good, but at the same time feeling the entire experience was sort of shallow (no sea-pun intended). I really liked the first movie because it had a genuine feeling of fun about it. The sequel and its other half were well executed, but somehow it felt like everyone was there for their paycheck, from the writers to the actors to the special effects crew.
Shooter
Shooter is the story about a guy that the government takes advantage of, then because it can, takes advantage of him some more. As is expected, they underestimate him and he solves the problems that face him by killing lots of people, all of whom we can safely presume are heartless villains worthy of vigilante justice.
The movie has a feel not unlike the Bourne movies, which I'm fine with since I happen to like the Bourne movies. Marky Mark plays an ex-Special Forces (of course) sniper that the government sets up to take the fall for an assassination. The movie featured a lot of great action scenes, the first movie Danny Glover has been in that was worth seeing since The Royal Tenenbaums, Marky Mark of course, and the sort of corrupt-senator-gets-what-he-has-coming vibe that all Americans love to see. In short it's a typical action movie that while fairly formulaic and a little questionable in its moral footing, was still entertaining and worth seeing.
Spider-Man 3
The new Spider-Man movie has its ups and downs. There were a lot of things that wound up being better than I expected them to, and overall the movie was fairly good. The relationship with Harry was handled better than I expected it to be, the Sandman was really cool, and the rivalry with Eddie Brock played out nicely for the most of the movie. The action scenes were excellent, effects were on par with the previous two movies, and as always the best acting is by Rosemary Harris as Aunt May.
The weaker side of the movie was the way Peter behaves under the influence of the symbiote (the dancing, the music montage, and the emo-hair being the chief concerns) and the relationship with Mary Jane. Both of these were ham-handed and under developed. While many people complained the plot was too confusing, my complaint was that its complexity didn't leave enough time to fully develop any of the subplots. The largest failure of this over-packing was the melding of Eddie Brock into a Venom-like creature, and the too-quick dispatch of Venom in the end. The moment in the church is the worst of the movie, with Eddie coincidentally walking into the same church that Spider-Man is in and having the symbiote land on him.
In the end, I'm left feeling that this is the weakest of the three, and that they have declined in order. Because the first one was so good, this means that 3 is still pretty decent, and still entertaining.