Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The 2010 Summer Screen Review

For Sonya, I'll comment briefly on my film and DVD viewing this year as well. Don't worry, rest of the world, I'll keep it brief.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Toy Story 3 and was pleasantly surprised. Don't get me wrong -- it's not that I expected it to be bad, but I was a bit wary of returning to the characters after such a long hiatus and possibly feeling like it was a purely cash-grabbing move to produce the movie at all. (I'd recently watched a very interesting documentary about Pixar.) What I got was a story that took into account that hiatus and had some decent heart along with its fun, adventuresome story. But man, that baby doll is creepy. Ha!

That covers my trips to the movies, to be honest, but I have been active with DVD, particularly with television on DVD.

Being a fan of Veronica Mars and working my way through its third and final season on DVD (and might I say that, had the show been on a stronger network, it might have lasted longer), I picked up Pulse, since it starred Kristen Bell and was seriously cheap. Hmm. Yeah, it's also really, really bad.

Yesterday, Betsy at long last had a long-overdue movie night and watched two movies. Drag Me to Hell was an enjoyable little romp from Sam Raimi, the brains behind The Evil Dead, which pretty much showcases what he does with a budget. It has a lot of the fun and schlock-horror elements but with some money behind the effects. Not brain-busting, but fun.

Then it was time for Let the Right One In, an unconventional vampire film from Sweden. So unlike the movie that would have been made in America, it is graciously calm in its storytelling, not really qualifying as horror so much as supernatural drama, I suppose. It is generous with stillness and silences, with a score I'd love to get on CD. Perhaps not everybody's cup of proverbial tea (and probably not for the teenaged gore-crowd), but a fine film.

1 comment:

Sonya said...

Hooray! Movie/DVD reviews are soooo much more fun than books!!!