Spoiler disclaimer: I don’t think there are any “spoilers” in these but, as with any review, read at your own risk.
Twilight: I like vampire movies and with all the buzz around this one, I figured it couldn’t be as bad as other people were saying. I was wrong. It was worse. Kat at Just Another Pretty Farce pretty much right when she said it was like “watching the therapeutic writing of an eleven year old girl.” Indeed, I think any tween girl would find this movie fantastic, but if you’re not in that particular demographic, it is painful to watch. For the record, eating only animals does not make one a “vegetarian” even if one is a vampire; and when vampires are exposed to sunlight they burst into flames, or skip the flames and change directly to ash. In some cases, just severe surface burns may also be acceptable, but under no circumstances do they begin to shimmer like some tweaked out raver boi with more glitter lotion than sense.
Burn After Reading: This one actually came recommended. More specifically I was told, “Brad Pitt is so funny in this.” I should have paid closer attention to the way she worded it, because it’s true that Brad Pitt managed to have a reasonably good time with his character (though I think “so funny” may have been overselling it). I like Brad Pitt (and no just because he’s nice to look at, though there is that), but, while he did what he could, one actor can’t carry a bad movie. I think this movie was supposed to be some kind of spoof of all the CIA movies that have been appearing recently. But when you can’t tell for sure, the writers haven’t done their jobs.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Another Brad Pitt movie, this one an Academy Award nominee (I don’t think it won anything but I could be wrong). I hate to make it three for three thumbs down reviews, but seeing as these are the three movies I’ve seen recently, I don’t really have a choice. Basically, the move is that Benjamin Button ages backwards. That’s it. That isn’t really a bad starting point for a plot line, but when it IS the plot line, it makes for a dull movie. Turns out that a live lived backwards isn’t really all that different from a live lived forwards. The only reason to watch a movie about somebody else’s life is because somethign rare and exciting happened to them. Just starting out old and getting younger doesn’t cut it. To make matters worse the movie is almost 3 hours long. They never say why he ages backwards (though it’s apparently somehow connected to some fancy clock that runs backwards). By the time the movie was over I was wishing I had some magical clock that could make time go backwards for me to (about 2 hours and 45 min backward to be exact).