Pirates Of The Caribbean: Curse Of The Black Pearl - Movie

My summer of movie watching hadn't really yielded that one "really very fun" movie that I guess Spider-Man had been for me last year. T3 came close I guess, just ahead of Bruce Almighty and The Hulk, but Pirates has taken the top spot. It's a camp, enjoyable pirates romp starring the excellent Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom (who thankfully comes across as a different character to Legolas, always a worry for someone who plays an iconic character in a series of films) and a young lady whose name unfortunately escapes me. Depp is a very amusing, quite wonderfully camp and insane pirate - think of his performance in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (or don't, as nobody went to see that) and fit it into a pirate and you'd be about halfway there. The action is more well worked traditional fights than big explosions, which is a very welcome break. The plot is solid and thankfully never builds you up to expect a huge payoff, climatic & epic fight or anything - it has a good structure to it. The acting is all good, the script providing lots of chucklesome moments amongst the more serious plot aspects. Basically it's a really good, fun watch.

8/10


American Pie 3: The Wedding - Movie

To be honest I'm not really aware of what most people think of the American Pie films. Personally I really enjoyed the first and had a good time watching the second (at least the first couple of times). The third, sadly, continues the downward trend. With the second movie I found it took me about twenty or thirty minutes to really start laughing again after the initial "funny moment". With Pie 3 the initial moment is funnier but it takes a good thirty or forty minutes to get back into it after that. Which is unfortunate. There are numerous amusing and very amusing moments, with some classic (in a teen-humour kind of way) skits. That's what it feels like though, a few skits connected by far too much footage that either fails to be as funny as it thinks it is or doesn't even try in the first place. The sentimental moments are fine - as the film lacks much structure it can't ruin the flow, and they made me empathise as intended, I guess. If the rest of the film had at least been amusing then it would have surpassed the second outing. As it is, Pie 3 is the worst of the bunch - worth seeing once (probably best to be drunk) if you really enjoyed 1 & 2 but that's really it.

6/10

Written to Gundam - Ai Senshi