Sucker Punch AAR and Other Crap

So I went to see "Sucker Punch," and I'm really not sure how to evaluate it. It's a film that tells a sad, bitter, complex story wrapped within a loud, dumb story structured like an 8-bit Nintendo videogame. And there's a tension between those two things that keeps me from fully embracing either side. It's like "Brazil" without the satire, in some ways, but with sequences of awesome action punctuated by some really excellent music.

Although I still get irritated at director Zack Snyder in the way he cannot let an action sequence go by without slowing or stopping time every two seconds. It's like watching a football or basketball game where the refs are continuously calling penalties and stopping the action. At some point in the third or fourth action sequence, I was going, "Just let them play, already."

So anyway, it's not as dumb as the people who can't get past the surface dismiss it as, but I can't embrace it the way some folks I know have. And maybe that's just because I find the message disturbing, which seems to be, '"You can't ever win, but you can find happiness in illusions." Because though I'd like to, I can't.

But at this point, I should count myself lucky that I actually did see the right movie. Because when the trailers started, I wasn't sure I was in the right theater. First, there was a trailer for what was apparently supposed to be a romantic comedy starring Russell Brand. Never mind the fact that I still don't know what Russell Brand's supposed to be famous for, other than hosting the MTV Movie Awards that time or something. The few times I've had to endure him on TV, I found him to be fully as appealing and talented as Tom Green (Who? Exactly...). So I'm watching this trailer where British Lurch is trying to be all cute and appealing, and where they've actually cast Jennifer Garner as the villain (what's that about?), and then imagine my horror to discover that this is actually supposed to be a remake of the 1981 Dudley Moore comedy, "Arthur." No.

This was followed by a trailer for "The Hangover II," the sequel to another comedy I've never seen, and I actually had to turn to Sargon and ask if we were in the right theater, because the trailers seemed to have no common thread with the film we were there to watch, and certainly didn't appeal to me in any way. The next few trailers included "Fast Five," the fifth "Fast and Furious" movie, so at least we were in the right theater, although still not appealing.

And then there was a trailer for a new remake of "The Three Musketeers." I know this, because the trailer mentions musketeers, and that there are three of them, and also names D'Artagnan. But my God, the story hinted at in the clips was completely unrecognizable. There were explosions and bullet-time kung fu-type stuff and a flying airship and some kind of arrangement of dozens of muskets firing in sequence like a machine gun, and I think there may have been some kind of robot casting magic spells, I don't know. I do know that when they finally showed that the title was indeed "Three Musketeers," I turned to Sargon and said something to the effect of, "What the hell?" Which, by the way, let me clarify. What I meant was, "What the HELL?"