Dear NG,
Go see "Wallace and Gromit". It's clean and a laugh out loud movie with some, but not alot of PC. The Passion was a great movie.
I have always loved W&G. Consider it done. I will even take my family (I wouldn't let my children see the Passion but plan to take them when the are old enough and after we review the gospel stories of Christ's death).
agreed, there were some good movies out this year, any year a few good movies come out.. the problem is, Hollywood is banking on these rediculous mega dollar blockbusters.. There is no reason a move that makes $40 Million should be a flop, except for the fact that they spent way to damn much making the thing.
A good movie doesn't need to have a huge budget.. yes big budget special effect movies are a nice offering, but the fact that a lot of movies are topping 100 Million on production cost is rediculous.
The shooting time for a movie is typically 3-4 months.. then editing... Then of course you do have marketing and distribution expenses, and the actual cost of purchasing the script... but there is no reason that should costs multiple 10s of millions of dollars.
Reality is, much of the product pumped out was absolute crap. Its sad that one of the better movies of the year, in terms of having a plot, and character development etc etc.. was Batman Begins.
I saw Narnia, and Harry Potter.. HP was definately much better of a movie than the last Harry Potter film... and Narnia was a good film as well, even though you could definately tell it was a book adaptation... the character interactions and developments weak to non existance, but it was still a good story/movie.. not great, but good.
Wallace and Grommit are always great, and their move to the big screen was exemplary.
Madagascar was funny and entertaining.. not on par with a classic disney film, but good.
Chicken Little was a fun film as well.
Robots was visually stunning, but the plot was incredibly weak.
Herbie was harmless fair.
Sky High was entertaining.
Fantastic Four, nice special effects... ok story, but never developed DOOM into a serious enough bad guy to take seriously... (Huge plot problem).
Star Wars... Decent enough, not stellar, but entertaining.
(Can you tell I have a child???)
Those are the movies I went to see this year at the theater. When wife and I get a rare night out, going to a Movie is hardly what we choose to do... we rent movies every weekend when we stay in... no reason to do that when we go out.
When we do go out we hit the theater, or go out to the bar, or some other sort of entertainment. In fact, I'm having a hard time recalling the last time the Mrs and I decided on a free night, that there was a movie out we wanted to see.
Now I know as a mid 30s white couple we aren't the target market for most stuff being released to theaters... but hey, that's what we are.