The Mummy Returns. Oh, yes he does. The second film in this Mummy Franchise. After the popularity of the first film they pulled out all the stops for this one. Special effects galore, and it still managed to capture the same humour and action without the usual decline in story line and quality that often happens when a 'one-off' film becomes a series (think The Matrix here). As usual, a lot of back story to try to set a plausible situation for the film to follow, and the development of the characters a bit more. It's an enjoyable film...
In order to complete the trilogy, we watched the last film in the series. OK, it's starting to get a bit tired now. They've gone from Egyptian mummies to Chinese mummies, with lots of supernatural happenings. Rachel Weisz didn't return for this one, and for anyone who has been following the series, and has enjoyed the interactions between her and Brendan Fraser, it's a sad event. There was good chemistry between them, and while Maria Bello is good in her role as Evelyn O'Connell, she's just not Rachel Weisz. Alas... Also, Alex is grown up now, and the parents haven't seemed to age at all. A small thing, but I don't find Alex to be a character who can hold my attention for long. Double alas... Time to put the franchise to bed before it goes on even more too long...
This is a documentary of Jimi Hendrix that was filmed with the approval of the family. There have been a number of films about him, but none (that I've seen) have had approval of the family, consequently they were unable to use any musical recordings, interviews with family and they generally had to tip-toe around things that could cause legal problems. This one didn't have to worry about that and it showed. A good, sympathetic film. A little to sympathetic perhaps in that it portrays him in a completely good light, with very little critical comments. No one is perfect. Still, a good film...
Well, a martial arts film like most of the rest. A little bit of martial arts, a little bit of Chinese mysticism and supernatural and an out-of-his-depth-and-league young Caucasian who fantasizes about being a martial artist. Interesting in some ways, and quite humorous at times. It stars both Jet Li and Jackie Chan, so you know the sock-pow-crunch factor is going to be pretty high, but at least it's really good quality sock-pow-crunch...
OK, we're on a downward slide now. I bought this DVD for a couple of dollars and so I thought it would at least be worth that. It was. Just. Unlike some of Stephen King's better films made from his books (I'm thinking of The Shining and Salem's Lot here) you could see that the production values just weren't at the same level. Some of the acting was a bit wooden, the characters were a bit two-dimensional and it just couldn't hold my attention long enough to spook me a bit. The concept was ok, it just didn't come across very well. It was still entertaining though, at least enough that I didn't shut it off and go do something else. The rats were cool, though...
Good Guys Wear Black. They do, apparently. However, they also seem to make bad films. Bad, close to bad enough that I almost didn't finish watching it. the one thing about Chuck Norris is that he's make his career doing the karate vigilante on the side of right thing, and all people want to do is see him beat up bad guys. He's pretty up front about it. His acting improved as his experience grew, but this was an earlier film, he's quite a young man, and, well, suffice to say that it might collect dust on the shelf for a while before I watch it again. Thank goodness for DVDs that only cost a couple of dollars...
The last one. Consider it one to cleanse the palate after the last one. I was fortunate enough to find a new collection of Hercule Poirot episodes starring David Suchet. I'm a little put out at Acorn Media for the way they've released these. They have so many different sets and collections that it's almost impossible to get a representative set, or a complete set, without duplicating episodes. There were a few collections I could have gotten but this was the only one that had all episodes that we didn't have already and haven't seen multiple times. Since I last listed what we watched, this was the last one that we watched an episode of just last night. Great entertainment, those little grey cells...
There you have it. A list of things a person who has no friends, hobbies or social life does with his spare time. Keep watching for the next episode of 'What the heck was idj watching this week' coming soon to a blog near you!
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