Master and Commander

This movie is very good. It has fantastic music, engaging characters, beautiful photography of an awesome boat sailing around and a solid story to tie it all together. The most exciting thing for me, being a big old nerd, is that it is basically a Star Trek movie. As a matter of fact this review is an admission of nerd-guilt more than it is a valuable critique, but no one reads this blog so it's no big deal.

It's just like The Wrath of Khan or The Undiscovered Country or First Contact. One of the good (even-numbered) movies where the Enterprise goes up against a stronger foe, and has to use their brains to make up for missing brawn, reconciling their dedication to exploration and discovery with their commitment to defend their territory from the invading offenders. In the Star Treks, they're up against the Borg or the Klingons (or Ricardo Montalbon) and they use special sensors they had for documenting gaseous anomalies to let their missiles take out the invisible Klingon ship. Or something like that.

As the Enterprise often does, Russell Crowe's crew must choose between personal and professional loyalties. The Spock to Russell Crowe's Kirk is the ship's doctor. Like Kirk and Spock, these two share a close bond despite their difference in rank. They play delightful cello and violin duets and argue when the doctor wants to play Darwin and Russel Crowe needs to prepare the ship for battle.

The battles are exciting, gritty and carry a certain substance and weight that is missing from the ship battles in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The good guys defeat their foe through clever tricksy-ness that basically amounts to disguising their warp signature to make the Klingons think that they are something they are not.

Cost/Benefit Analysis: Definitely worth the cost of a rental. The sound and photography are so good that I would totally pay to price to see it on the big screen if I ever get the chance. The last little duet they play alone makes it worth while.

Bottle Rocket

Imagine yourself in a time gone past; a time when Bob Saget was the wholesome, forced host of a mail-in blooper show for family videos, back when Ellen Degeneres was straight and The Simpsons did more than ape Family Guy's style. It was the early ninties. Then, all of a sudden, something changed. A bright young screen writer teamed up with his brother and an ambitious filmmaker ready to make his mark on a movie industry intent on churning out indistinguishable action and comedy movies to make the most ground-breaking, convention-shattering movie in the history of American cinema. That movie was Bottle Rocket.

In a post-Bottle Rocket world, movies ceased to concern themselves with explosions and special effects. Instead, they piled quirk on top of Daddy issues, and spiced everything awkwardness and bad hair with soundtrack by David Bowie. It's true that Bottle Rocket feels a bit like "My First Movie" by Wes Anderson and the Wilson Brothers, but the casually paced story offers a lot, especially for those curious about the progenitors of modern Cinema.

Cost/Benefit: I paid nothing to see this movie, but I would have been ok paying rental/budget prices.

Watchmen

Watchmen is a pretty good movie. It is one that I would see again, anyway. Watchmen is based on a genre-defining and defying graphic novel, and as such had been declared "unfilmable." I imagine that it was largely a group of graphic novel apologists saying this, but I'm not sure that anything is actually "unfilmable." Maybe unfilmable as a traditional Hollywood-style/structured film, but when those limitations are removed, I think anything could work on film, even Watchmen.

The movie works pretty well despite a number of flaws, especially when you consider the especially dark and not-so-much fun source material, a director with a pretty dubious track record, and a cast that features Billy Crudup as its biggest star. The film's biggest success is its soundtrack, with its roots set deep in 60's folk rock. The movie is at its best when the action is covered completely by "The Sound of Silence" or "All Along the Watchtower." When these scenes end and the actors start flapping their mouths away, the quality of the film takes a big nose dive.

The acting is all over the place. Some of the characters are perfectly cast and some are so bad that I can't think of a proper metaphor right now to express it. When you cast a movie based on looks alone, that's what you get. Seems like they should have spent less time working on Dr. Manhattan's wiggler.

However, my biggest complaint is that the violence was way over the top. I know that this is a comic book movie and the characters are super heroes, but the whole point of the book is that all but one of the superheroes are(as they say in Us Weekly) regular people, just like us . When The Comedian's head breaks through his marble counter top just to keep on a-fightin', it takes away from that message.

The end of the movie is significantly different from the end of the book, but I thought that the book worked much better. Thematically the two endings are pretty much the same, but it is much less of a wtf moment than it is in the book.

Book vs. Movie: Book

Cost Benefit Analysis: I got into the movie using one of those discount tickets people buy through work, so I only paid $6.50. This was a pretty good price, and the all of the special effects razzle dazzle makes Watchmen worth seeing on the big screen. There were not many awesome moments, though, so it's probably worth seeing for 6 bucks or less.