Harold & Kumar, Running with Scissors, Death Note, Indy 4

I may or may not write about these at greater length, but here are the capsules.

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
Loved it. It’s a slight drag that the quest in this one is for two (specific) girls instead of a shitload of little hamburgers, but it allows for some cute scenes and the whole thing is pretty funny. And yes, the giant bag of weed returns.

Running with Scissors (the book)
Creepy, depressing, bizarre. It’s hard to read it without the ever-lurking suspicion that this guy did, as he repeatedly suspects, inherit some crazy from his batshit mom. I can understand why his foster family wanted to take him to court, though if half the book is true they’re still a buncha fruitcakes. I can’t imagine how they turned it into a movie, but I know how I can find out.

Death Note (the live action movie)
Fucking awesome. It felt a little goofy at first, especially since they showed it with an English dub, but it got really good. The actor playing L is perfect and his voice is just as good, provided in the English dub by none other than Alessandro “Gaeta” Juliani. Can’t wait to see part 2!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
It’s just okay. Ford is 65 now and looks it. The action is more cartoonish than ever, to the point of being so silly it’s hard to enjoy. The plot is slight and never really explained, relationships are established and wasted, and once again insects and aboriginal peoples are made out to be far more villainous than they ought to be. Still, it’s reasonably entertaining, and rarely embarrassing. Cate Blanchett’s not nearly as much fun as she ought to be; her Russian is kind of a robot, though she strikes some dashing poses. Shia LaBoeuf’s already scant charisma has completely worn off for me; I find him agreeable but not spectacular here, and the prospect of him donning the hat and taking up the whip for future installments is even more depressing than the idea of a fifth movie where Indy hurtles off a cliff in a wheelchair with a blanket over his lap, surviving unscathed. Luckily I’ve never been this franchise’s biggest fan, so I could be pleased without needing to be impressed.

3 comments

  1. Thelrin · May 23, 2008

    I’ll have to check out the Death Note movie. The anime just kept getting better and more intense until . . . well, now it sucks. Now it feels like watching the remaining episodes is a chore.

  2. encyclops · May 23, 2008

    I wonder where you are in the anime. In the manga I’m on book 6 and this part of it is kind of a drag — they’re investigating that corporation and I’m just not interested in that variation on the theme. In the film, Misa is just entering the picture, and I think the second film deals with her up to the point where the two Kiras are arrested. So I think they cover the best parts.

  3. Thelrin · May 23, 2008

    I’m ahead of you. In the anime, I thought they kept the corporation investigation pretty tight – enough to take a break from the main action, but they wrapped it up before it got boring. Shortly after the corporation story wraps up, it’ll get really interesting.