About a Boy: Very British, very good. Hugh Grant gets to play an overgrown man-child (in other words, himself), and decimate all the idiots around him (everyone, from his point of view) with the best sort of dry, sarcastic wit. He is not a nice dude, but it's oh so entertaining. Even if he does inevitably soften up, it's believably gradual and does not impede the movie's sense of humor in the slightest. Good script, good cast, all anglophiles should be clubbed into viewing it.
Conan the Barbarian: Woo. Now, this was fun. Doesn't waste dialogue when it doesn't need it (could the scene where his mother dies really have been improved by words?), which is coincidentally the best way to use Arnold Schwarzeneger in a movie. James Earl Jones definitely makes an impact as the charismatic demogogue despite not actually having that many scenes in which to shine. Movie does a good job of building its setting as a barren wilderness where Kill Or Be Killed is the golden rule (despite setting not being its primary concern), and everything else flows naturally from that. Also, the soundtrack fits it note-perfect from beginning to end. (There is additionally a badass swordgirl; it says something that this was the last good point that occurred to me, doesn't it?) Really have no complaints about this one. Definitely one of the best action movies around.
I'm aware that the sequels are dreadful (I vaguely recall seeing Conan the Destroyer sometime as a kid), but I'm probably going to watch them anyway. Hopefully there will at least be unintentional comic relief. Seriously, following up this gorefest with a PG sequel? That can't work out well.
Superbad: Had its moments. The relentlessly sexual humor is not exactly my style (I wanted to smack Seth after about five minutes), but the cast plays it well--no shock since Michael Cera's in it. McLovin is awesome just for being McLovin. Also...Worst. Cops. Ever. Jesus, Chief Wiggum looks competent in comparison. So yeah, not something I need to see again, but kinda fun. American Pie, but not a horrible failure? Yeah, that works.
Transformers: I was prepared for a certain level of badness here. I mean, it's a Michael Bay movie. I was not, however, prepared for what I truly believe to be some of the most offensively bad dialogue ever put on film. Let me reiterate: I didn't expect the movie to be ]good at anything but giant robots beating the crap out of each other. I could've dealt with bland dialogue! But no, the writer had to try and be clever. There's a fine line between clever and stupid, and Transformers shits all over it. LOL teenagers are horny, asinine pop culture references that wouldn't have been funny three years ago, strained attempts to make us care about the half-dimensional human characters, ARGH. It's like the product of an eighth-grader setting out to write what he's sure will be a totally spot-on satire of human stupidity. It just winds up wallowing in it instead.
This movie needed to not have human beings in it. At all. It needed to be two hours of giant robots beating the crap out of each other. Seriously, could we be expected to care about anything else here? But it burns an hour setting up the obligatory teenage male lead as the ultimate Awkward Underdog you must identify with or die, the stupid government officials which can't be trusted to do anything right at all, oh no, when push comes to shove you have to depend on the ethnically representative group of photogenic youngsters and does anyone actually think world-class hackers look like that? Dear god. What did John Turturro do to deserve that? Who's blackmailing him? Ugh.
The robots were badass. I admit this and I enjoyed the hot mech-on-mech action! It's just that the other 75% of the movie made me feel as though I were being struck in the forehead with a sledgehammer, only without the entertainment value.
