American Dissent

American Dissent is about the Ideals America stands for. "Truth, Justice and The American Way" as Superman would put it. It will also be about other random things that come up and how they relate. It will also include the occasional "puff piece" like movie reviews or good meals because those too are part of America.

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Location: Iowa, United States

Proud to be Liberal. Question everything.

Friday, May 12, 2006

Sinking Ship

Surprise! It's not about politics this time! That would be an easy target and appropriate to the title, but no, it's time for a puff piece.

I just got back from Poseiden, the new Wolfgang Petersen movie. I'm not quite sure how to grade this one. First, the theater was largely empty (at 10pm on Thursday night I can see that) so that whole "crowd experience" thing was missing. The movie itself though isn't bad. It's well paced, reasonably quick, if a bit predictable, has one specific plot hole you can drive a truck through (I'll not say what it is because it would be a big spoiler) and overall, it's decent enough.

The problem is it's also sort of, well, boring in that sense. The effects are cool, it's well done, but you don't really care about any of these people. So when one of them gets bumped off it's just sort of, "nothing to see here, move along." If you want to see a decent enough popcorn movie, I can think of worse ways to blow an afternoon, but there are also a couple other movies in the same vein that might be better (MI:3? I've been told it's decent enough, it may be next).

Overall, I give it a C+. Maybe good for an afternoon, and it'll be just fine for DVD, but it misses the interest marker than would push it over the hump into ready for prime time.

Oh, one thing that is worth it if you're into that sort of thing. The opening sequence to the first cut is 100% CGI around Josh Lucas. I only noticed one thing I thought seemed a bit off, the wake of the ship, but holy crap, they nailed every other part. The water looks real, the boat looks real, they have other people in the shot (all CGI'd) and they look real. They nailed everything in that shot, they just forgot what a boat does as it moves through the water. Oh well, it's still better that the $10million hair in Final Fantasy.