'Harm's Way'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Tilda Swinton is an absolute delight in that movie, Amy. I liked it. It's a bit odd, and all the comics fans familiar with Constantine as a character objected to Keanu's casting.
I happen to like Keanu in everything but Dracula. I even liked him as Don John in Much Ado. And I don't read the comics, so his miscasting didn't bother me. I liked the movie. It wasn't what I'd call a good movie, but it was diverting, and odd enough to provoke a few thoughts. I wouldn't send it back unwatched.
and Constantine arrived yesterday. Is it any good?
I really liked it. Keanu was nobody's idea of John Constantine, but if you just watch the movie as its own entity, it works very well as a supernatural action flick. The effects are great, the story is interesting, the acting is good. There are some really strong, iconic visuals.
Yay! I am completely unfamiliar with the comic (as I was with Hellboy, and I really enjoyed that movie), so that's a win, I bet. I love Tilda Swinton and I have a huge, hopeless girlcrush on Rachel Weisz, so ... yay!
Keanu in Dracula is just ... wooden.
I haven't been paying attention to my NetFlix queue and Constantine arrived yesterday. Is it any good? I'm trying to remember why I added it.
We just read the first Hellblazer collection in my bookclub (we're doing all first volumes of series this year). And my friends who'd read and loved the comics before and saw the movie when it came out said it was surprisingly good. They had very low expectations going in, given the casting and the reworking of the story but they really enjoyed it. And made me promise to put it at the top of my queue.
I thought it was kinda weird...half "Angel", half "Aliens"
The trick is to put the comic book John Constantine out of your mind if you're familiar with him. As an adaptation it's a horrible failure, but in its own right the movie is pretty good, just like David said above.
Well, Shia Lebeouf as Chas is abominable whether you're familiar or not, but he's more than made up for by Djimon Honsau and Tilda Swinton.
Djimon Honsau
Oh! I LOVE him. (And I know this will sound weird, but I've always thought he looks just like Brad Pitt. Or maybe Brad Pitt looks like him.)
Keanu was nobody's idea of John Constantine, but if you just watch the movie as its own entity, it works very well as a supernatural action flick. The effects are great, the story is interesting, the acting is good. There are some really strong, iconic visuals.
nods
As long as you keep telling yourself it has nothing to do with the comic, it's a fun movie. Plus, Tilda Swinton! Being menacing and bad-ass!
Or maybe Brad Pitt looks like him.
They share a certain wolfish stance and stare.
edit (nevermind that was Taye Diggs)
Saw Ratatouille, and Pixar could easily have gone lighter with the versimilitude, because I did find myself shuddering at the rat idea, and even at times where I think I was supposed to be buying the anthropomorphism instead.
Even with that, though, I have to rank it as an incredibly charming movie. Which makes two charming movies in two weeks (Waitress being last week's movie), and I need to see shit blow up next weekend.
I hope that doesn't mean Transformers. Or Die Hard IV.