I watched the Robert Greenwald documentary Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price last night. The only other film of his that I have seen is Outfoxed, which I basically liked. This one, on the other hand, exemplified one of my least favorite aspects of the Michael Moore brand of liberal activist film-making, namely, making a movie that is guaranteed to appeal to people who already agree with you, but is easily dismissed by not only those who actively disagree with you, but also by those who are on the fence.

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In case there is any confusion regarding the above statement, let me take a moment to explain what I mean. King Kong is a giant piece of shit. I was pretty excited to see this movie. I have enjoyed all of Peter Jackson’s films, I think the original movie is quite good (albeit rather dated), and as a friend of mine put it, “No movie with a giant monkey fighting a dinosaur can be bad.

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Much as with the first Lord of the Rings movie, I had no intention of going to the The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe. While I was never a big fan of Tolkien’s books, I read the Narnia books pretty obsessively when I was a kid, and the idea of seeing the whole story turned into a big-budget film put me off. Also, I was made rather nervous by the pre-release controversy about the film being marketed to Christians.

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“In a world where the dead are returning to life, the word ‘trouble’ loses much of its meaning.” Land of the Dead is out on DVD, and I’m currently watching it. I enjoyed it quite a bit when I saw it in the theater, and it remains to be seen whether it holds up upon repeated viewings. So far, it does. It’s not as good as Dawn of the Dead I don’t think, but it’s still pretty damn good.

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Went to see Serenity last night. To quote my friend James, “Again! Again!” It was really good. If you have already seen it, or if you don’t care about important plot-points being revealed, read on below the fold… (Sadly, the “below the fold” content was lost in buggy WordPress upgrade.)

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During a recent perusal of Apple.com’s movie trailer site, I was surprised to find that there’s a live-action movie based on Aeon Flux coming out this fall. For those of you who don’t remember, Aeon Flux was an animated miniseries about a female assasin in a futuristic totalitarian state. It ran on Liquid Television, MTV’s animation show from the early Nineties (where, among other things, Beavis & Butthead made its television debut) and featured disturbing animation and a disjointed, surreal storyline.

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We attempted to go see Grizzly Man at the Angelica yesterday, but sadly, after standing in line for fifteen minutes in what ended up becoming a torrential downpour, we discovered that it was sold out. Bummer, on account of it looks really good. With any luck, it will make its way upstate in the next few weeks. Saw March of the Penguins on Thursday. It was generally good, but certainly not the masterpiece that the glowing reviews are making it out to be.

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Went to see War of the Worlds yesterday, and I have to say—it was pretty damn cool. There were definitely some logic gaps in the background story line, but I didn’t really notice them until the movie was over. The main one (and I don’t think I’m really giving anything away here) is that there are number of references made to the giant Martian tripod vehicles having been buried underground for millions of years, which led me to wonder why, if the Martians came to Earth millions of years ago, why they didn’t just take possession then, rather than waiting until they have to waste a lot of time fighting humans.

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Land of the Dead comes out tomorrow. I. Am. So. There.

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Despite everything I have claimed for the last three years, I went to see Revenge of the Sith on Sunday. As regular visitors to this site may know, from the moment I walked out of the theater following the execrable Attack of the Clones until about two weeks ago, I have been loudly declaring to anyone within earshot that George Lucas would never again get any of my money. Then something funny happened—I’d like to say it was the surprising number of good reviews, but it probably had more to do with most of my childhood having been spent waiting for the next Star Wars movie.

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