Movie Review: Spider-Man 3

Rating: 5.0 out of 10

Review: I saw Spider-Man back in the day and liked it. It wasn’t the greatest superhero movie ever, but it was pretty good. It had realistic character development, great graphics, and was just fun to watch. The second Spider-Man was definitely not as good as the first one, though. It just seemed a little bit cheesier and had a shallower plot. This seems to happen quite often in sequels. The third one had a chance to redeem itself and get Spider-Man back on top of the superhero movie chart. It has completely failed to do so, in my opinion.

Spider-Man 3 was cheesy, shallow, goofy, and insulting to my intelligence. It was poorly written and directed. The movie felt like it was written by a 12 year old. Or, it feels like it was written by a team of 50 people. Every scene is very explicit in the emotions that are taking place and how the audience is supposed to be feeling at the time. They do not leave anything to interpretation. If the scene is about romance, the writer and director would make damn well certain that you know the characters are feeling romantic in their exaggerated facial expressions and over acted roles. In one shot, Peter Parker is going to propose to Mary Jane. So, before he goes into the restaurant, the director makes sure to show you a 10 second long shot where Parker takes the ring out of his pocket, looks at it for a while, and then puts it back into his pocket. This is to tell the audience to get ready for the proposal part of the movie. We don’t need such obvious clues; just let the movie tell the story. The movie treats its audience like they are blathering idiots and need to have everything spelled out for them.

My second big complaint is about the goofiness. Why do we need goofy comedy in Spider-Man? I don’t get it. There are goofy characters in Spider-Man that are there to provide juvenile comedy relief; and there is goofy, Adam Sandler style, humor base. I like Adam Sandler, but I don’t want his humor and his goofy characters in my Spider-Man. The butler for GREEN GOBLIN was stupid and no place being in this movie. He was just there to act like a moron so we can laugh at him. Also, why would they spend one solid minute making fun of French accents? I would have thought that Spider-Man was above childish, schoolyard mockery. These are just a few of the goofy things in the movie. This humor style is below the intellectual level of what Spider-Man should be.

Lastly, what the hell is up with the flag? At some point, when Spider-Man is chasing down a criminal, he lands on top of a building where a ginormus American flag is waving in the background. Spider-Man pauses, strikes a slight pose, and then continues on his chase. What was the point of this? Yes, we all know the Spider-Man lives in the United States; do we need to be reminded with a flag as large as Texas? Stupid, pointless nationalism.

Things I did like about Spider-Man 3:
1. The Sandman character and the actor playing him.
2. The overall concept of Spider-Man.
3. The plot wasn’t bad, it was just poorly written.
4. Graphics are good (maybe a bit too much, though).
5. Venom was pretty good.

Movie Review: Semi-Pro

Summary: Another stupid Will Ferrel sports movie.

Rating: 4.0 out of 10

Review: Stupid Will Ferrel comedy about a semi-pro basketball team. This was a bad movie. I enjoy Will Ferrel movies, but this was scraping the bottom of the barrel, even for Ferrel. The plot was kind of stupid and the dialog was not as funny as it should have been. The acting was way over the top, as you would expect. But, it just didn’t work like it does in Old School. All in all, a failure. Don’t watch this unless it’s on cable late at night, you can’t find Star Trek on, you’ve surfed the internet all that you can for one night, your arm hurts from too much drumming on RockBand, your tired of sniping in Call of Duty 4, and you can’t find your Lord of the Rings DVDs.

Movie Review: Shooter

Summary: Sniper movie with a bit of a "who-done-it".

Rating: 5.0 out of 10

Review: Shooter is a movie that will appeal to people who like to watch snipers kill people. That’s it. Okay, I’ve being a little harsh, but I really think that was the only reason this movie was produced. It’s about big guns, a bit of a mystery, and lots of killing.

The first half of the movie will seem very familiar. You’ve seen the plot a hundred times. One innocent military guy gets shafted by the government because of some heartless politicians. This causes his life to get turned upside down. He spends the rest of the first half of the movie trying to figure out who the bad guys are. If the movie had continued with this theme, I probably would have liked it alright. But, the second half was very different.

The second half of the movie turns into a murderous rampage. This is where the viewer has to turn of the thinking part of their brain and just enjoy the blood splattering spectacle. If you can’t do this, you probably won’t enjoy part two of Shooter. I was very disappointed with the direction of the movie.

So, with a rehashed plot line in the first half and a weird transition in plot for the second half, I found this movie very inconsistent and downright distasteful. Not only that, but, thinking about it further, I’m not sure that the plot even made sense. I give the first half a 6 or 7 and the second half a 2 or 3.