Posted by shaun You're right--MOON is real science fiction. My favorite science fiction movie of 2009, just edging in over District 9 (which is saying something). I don't even know where AVATAR fits in there--it kind of stands in a league of its own. Probably deserves the blue ribbon. Now for the not-so-good: Sherlock Holmes. A real mixed bag. I really, really thought this would be among the greatest movies of 2009--due to the alluring trailers:
on 1/5/2010, 6:02 am, in reply to "Re: Good flix?"
Message modified by user shaun 1/5/2010, 6:09 am
I want to see AVATAR again.
They sold me on it.
If the movie were an hour shorter, I might never have had the opportunity to notice it wasn't all that. But halfway through it (which must've been the 90 min mark) it really began to drag me down. There were a few too many "chummy" scenes between Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr; then the plot (which I liked, at first) started to convolute beyond itself into parody-land. I began wondering "When is this thing gunna end?"... Don't get me wrong, there are entertaining aspects and sequences. The first couple of times Holmes expounds his thinking with a voice-over intercut with slo-mo fight scenes, it was awesome, then it was pretty cool, then you started realizing how retarded the whole attempt at disregarding the disparity between Brain vs. Brawn actually is. No, Guy Ritchie: you can't have yer cake'n'eat it, too.
Conclusion: Had Ritchie disregarded the entire A.Conan Doyle character in favor of having created his own brawny detective that had a certain Holmes-like quality, I may have given the movie two-and-a-half or even three stars. But he has attempted to appropriate a classic, complex character for his own nefarious purposes, and in my estimation, has fallen short of the potential for mindblowing mental gymnastics that a detective with a genius for deduction would naturally possess in the absence of brawn. i.e, I just don't buy it. This is not Sherlock Holmes.
He should've called the movie BARNEY McFLY, and put a dedication to A.Conan Doyle at the beginning, as a sort of homage--if you ask me. We are going to have to wait again until an actually brilliant director can handle Doyle's material appropriately. Hell, catch it at the dollar flicks, if you're really curious. There's some cool plot twists and action scenes and jaunty dialogue, but on the whole . . . no.
"Paranoia is a skill"
~...
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