Month: June 2008

Char and I went out to see the Incredible Hulk on Monday night, and while it’s definitely a better overall movie than the first film version of the Hulk was, this was still a fairly weak comic book adaptation.

Hulk is a pretty easy concept to get right, and the whole “man on the run” part of the story was done perfectly. What didn’t work as much was the Jeckyl and Hyde aspects of the story.

Donnie Darko is one of my top ten favourite films of all time. Director Richard Kelly managed to tell a story that had several layers, plenty of intrigue, and just enough science to make the fiction believable. His director’s cut was a little ham fisted, with unnecessary exposition and extra bloat that makes it weaker than the original, but the flick stands up as a great ride. Donnie Darko also stands out as one of the first movies that had a web site which really built upon the movie and created a backstory which made the movie better, which may have just been a product of the particular moment in time that gave us the Blair Witch Project, and Center of the Earth (which had one of the most amazing Flash applications I’ve ever seen).

Unfortunately Kelly’s sophomore effort, Southland Tales, doesn’t fare nearly as well as his debut.

George Lucas once again proves how lucky he was with the first three Star Wars movies, and Steven Spielberg proves how bi-polar he is with their latest collaboration Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

George Lucas was the man who once upon a time brought us American Graffiti. Steven Spielberg is the same man who brought us Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan. These are two guys who between them know how to tell a story. They know how to create relationships, they know how to craft a good story, they know how to harness the spirit of the Saturday matinée adventure film, and most importantly, they know how to get across the idea of peril.

So why does the latest installment of Indiana Jones have none of these?