300: Rise of an Empire

It's like watching the most overblown episode of Xena: Warrior Princess ever. Surprisingly, it also contains a fair amount of legitimate history, though at first glance you'd be forgiven if you chose not to believe it; a quick bit of research verifies a number of the details. (Thanks, Wikipedia.) Nevertheless, this is mostly about sheer spectacle--often spectacle somewhat ostentatiously covered in splatter and gore, so let's not put it in the curriculum just yet. All in all, I expected this to be much worse than it is; in fact, the film is ultimately fairly entertaining and mostly well done. I guess I’m a sucker for swords and sandals epics. Like those Greeks, you can watch this one and claim it as a victory, if the gods so direct you.

The Golden Compass

If you read His Dark Materials, you know why this movie was made. If you saw this movie, you know why none of its intended sequels ever got greenlighted. Given all the inventiveness of Philip Pullman's clever story--which made the books so compelling and entertaining--the same characteristic works against a movie retelling, especially considering the need to account for audiences unfamiliar with the source. Thus, we get a lot of expository dialogue in this flick, which is always a burden for a script that's trying to move and make sense at the same time. There is good stuff in here that came over intact from the book--Dakota Blue Richards makes a fine Lyra, and Iorek's battle remains a highlight--but it's also easy to see how a lot of this movie left non-fans scratching their heads. It seems this film was destined to be an orphaned curiosity; that may be the best Pullman fans can ever hope for.

Dark Shadows

I don’t know; this Depp-Burton thing may have run its course. Not to say that this is a bad movie, but at certain points in this picture you get the impression that maybe someone else, singly or in a pair, could have brought something better to this revision of the old TV show. There are good moments here, some nice satire of the period (a good idea not to set the action in current times), but by the end the filmmakers have gone overboard; a little too much trying, not enough just leaving it alone and letting it be. You want to applaud effort, but not so much effort that it gets in the way.