Thursday

Movies

I have a confession. Even though now that I've gone to college and I like to think I have good taste and only read good books and appreciate film, I still love action movies. Blockbusters. When I go to a theater, I want to see somethin' explode. I want to see over-the-top unbelievable fight scenes where thousands of bullets are fired and no one dies and there's not a drop of blood but the good guys are the only ones left standing. I want to see well coreographed fight scenes where some guy in a plastic suit or a cool dark jacket fights off impossible numbers of faceless ninjas or evil monsters, all the while flipping and throwing things and doing all kinds of cool things I can't do.

I don't care that Jackie Chan is a lousy actor, have you seen him fight off 30 bad guys with a shopping cart? I don't care that the "science" in Spiderman doesn't make any sense whatsoever, as long as Spiderman keeps swinging around fighting crime while dispensing clever one liners. I've heard it said that you don't go to action movies for the dialogue, and that's mostly true, but the dialogue is still crucial. I mean, bad dialogue can ruin a perfectly reasonable action movie. Just look at Star Wars, Episode I. And II. A great action movie must have great one liners, and a Vin Diesel of a Will Smith to deliver them while kicking a guy off his speedboat and shooting a helicopter out of the sky with a pistol. It can't take itself too seriously, which is why I dont' understand the problem with what critics call "juvenile" one-liners . Don't diss those juvenile one liners, 'cuase I like those juvenile one liners. I mean, you spend some time at our apartment, and all you'll hear are juvenile one liners.

Now, I can appreciate movies like Sideways and, you know, other stuff that movie critics rave about, but I'll do that at home. I don't really need to see a 10 foot tall Paul Giamatti get real drunk and be annoying and sad and stuff. I do need to see a 10 foot tall Batman drive a huge tank over a police car.