Holiday Watching

A few movies I saw over the summer holidays.

Hart's War

A courtroom drama set in a Nazi P.O.W. camp. Starts out promisingly enough with some interesting characters and plenty of moral ambiguity, but rapidly devolves into typical Hollywood hocum complete with grand speeches about honour and Bruce Willis dying to atone for all our sins.

Walk the Line

It would be pretty hard for this movie to really fail, as it has the sure fire asset of Johnny Cash's awesomeness to rely on, but they've still managed to take his story and render it impressively bland and lifeless. It's a waste and a pity, but hopefully sometime in the future when a bit more time has passed since Cash's death someone will make a biopic about him with a bit more guts.

Silent Hill

I was prepared for this to be absolutely terrible and in most ways it was; bad directing, terrible pacing and actors that could benefit from coaching by the cast of Shortland Street. But it turned out to be worth the trouble both for the 'so bad it's good' factor and for its surprisingly good backstory.

Kung Fu Hustle

A perfectly decent martial arts comedy. Works great as a comedy, but not so well as a martial arts film save for one really cool fight scene involving a pair bad guys armed with a guzheng (Chinese harp) with deadly magical powers.