Three features, and a whole mess of creatures.

Last weekend I went to see a triple feature with my friend and his parents. The movies were 20 Million Miles To Earth, The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, and the kaiju movie Destroy All Monsters. It was my first time seeing all of them.



The first two were directed by Nathan Juran and featured stop-motion animation effects by Ray Harryhausen, who you may remember died earlier this year. I'm a pretty big fan of Harryhausen's work, but I have not seen everything he's done. Although they were enjoyable, I didn't love the two Juran/Harryhausen movies. They're far from being my favorite movies that Harryhausen has worked on. That being said, it was great seeing those old school stop-motion animation effects up on the big screen. Beautiful stuff.

I haven't seen many kaiju movies, so it was also interesting seeing Destroy All Monsters. It was somewhat of a unique experience for me for kind of a strange reason. Exposition time! An old friend of mine made a video several years ago consisting of the Men Without Hats song "Safety Dance" being played over clips of Gamera. He had said about the video, "The idea popped into my head one morning during breakfast to make this, so I did." I know that Gamera isn't even in Destroy All Monsters, but probably because of the similar visuals, "Safety Dance" was stuck in my head for pretty much the entirety of the movie. I think it's pretty safe to assume that my experience of watching the movie was quite different than that of anyone else in the theater. I really miss my friend.



Speaking of music, while we waited for the movies to start, they played various music videos. I must say, it was awesome seeing the music video for The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony" projected up onto a big screen. It's one of my favorite conceptual music videos.

Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity

When my friend and I saw Apollo 18, we ate some freeze-dried Neapolitan ice cream. I ended up enjoying the ice cream more than I enjoyed the movie. (I'm pretty good at reviewing movies.) We recently saw Gravity in IMAX 3D and we sneaked in some Tang and the some more of that delicious strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate freeze-dried astronaut ice cream. This time the whole experience was enjoyable, not just our snacks.

Gravity is different from what I was expecting. I thought most of it would be the main characters just floating out in space, completely isolated, and that it would deal with psychological and emotional consequences of that situation. Although the movie did deal with those consequences, there was a lot less floating in nothingness than I was expecting. There was actually quite a bit of action. I didn't count my false assumption against the movie though.

I was really looking forward to Gravity, since it just looked like it was going to be cool, and I am a big fan of director Alfonso Cuarón's previous movie Children Of Men. I think that movie is almost perfect, but I always had one minor complaint, which really just comes down to a difference in personal taste. Although I'm fascinated by the idea of embracing accidents in the creative process, I was never sold on the blood splatter on the screen during one of the "long shots" that Cuarón is known for. I just find that specific effect to be distracting. It takes me out of the movie, which, unless I'm mistaken, goes against the very reason for using those long shots. The same kind of thing happens with drops of water in Gravity.

I also feel that Gravity had some clunky, cheesy dialogue, and most of that was superfluous. Some of the time it seemed like a character was just saying out loud what they were doing as they were doing it. Other times it seemed like they were just speaking their thoughts to no one at all, just so the audience would know what they were thinking. It was very obvious to me that's what was happening, which takes me out of the movie as much as water splashing on the screen, and in most of these moments I just felt they could have been silent and the audience would have understood exactly what was going on. I guess dialogue maybe isn't one of the more important elements of this particular movie though. (I loved the dialogue in Children Of Men though!)

I've read a lot of complaints about the movie not being realistic, but who the hell expected it to be a science lesson? I didn't watch Gravity to learn about space, and even though I love sharks, I don't watch Jaws to learn about the behaviors of the Great White.

Oh, and I recognized the voice of Ed Harris right away. Is he being typecasted as mission control now?

In conclusion, Gravity wasn't perfect by any means, but I highly recommend it to everyone, even if just for the incredible visuals. It's a beautiful looking movie. I know that this recommendation is coming a bit late since the movie is probably out of theaters by now. Sorry about that.