I've had a quiet weekend in Coventry so I've been doing lots of reading and catching up on some movies:
- Fast Times at Ridgemont HIgh was an OK high school movie, but with an impressive cast – three actors later won Best Actor at the Oscars. Apparently David Lynch turned down the chance to direct, which would have been quite a movie.
- Saw 2 was disappointing. I enjoyed the first Saw film because it was creepy and well designed. This one was convoluted and annoying.
- The most enjoyable thing about The Incredible Hulk was not the CGI fights (which were kind of tedious) but the aerial shots of the Brazilian Favelas. The Brazilian sequences were far more interesting than watching more monsters trash US cities.
- The DVD of Glengarry Glen Ross came free with the Daily Mail. It was fun wondering what their readership made of it.
The most interesting film of the weekend was the Happening. I love M. Night Shyamalan's films, even though he's not made a great one since Unbreakable. This film was similar to Cloverfield, in that you had normal people trying to survive a disaster but in Cloverfield it was obvious what they needed to do to survive. In The Happening the deaths seemed random to the characters, meaning there was little dramatic tension.
But Shyamalan makes wonderful films, and this one had incredible scenes such as the isolated old woman and the suburban Philadepheans forced into the country to survive. The rest of the film was so-so (the ending being particularly poor) but it was incredibly well made. So, definitely the best value for money film of the weekend.