Welcome to Cinema Bits!

Welcome to my blog, Cinema Bits, my thoughts about movies that I’ve seen lately, both on the big screen and here at home on my Blu-Ray player. I watch movies constantly and drive my wife and co-workers crazy when I talk about them after viewing. So I figured creating a blog would be the best outlet for me.

My life’s goal is to watch as many movies as I can during my time here on earth, including my favorite genres (horror movies and sci-fi) and award winners. Although I have this goal, I really can’t bring myself to sit down and watch a foreign film with subtitles. Enjoying an actor’s performance during a movie is a must for me so if I have to read what they’re saying at the bottom of the screen, I’ll miss the show and it’ll bum me out. If I wanted to read, I’d just sit and enjoy a novel.

I had always thought I’ve watched a lot of movies in my time, but I recently glanced at my Netflix queue and realized I’ve only scratched the surface: I’ve got over three hundred movies to watch.

Anyway, throughout my posts I can touch a little bit more on my likes and dislikes. But for now, let me give my first review on Cinema Bits.

The other day, I had some time to myself and decided to drive over to the local movie theatre to see Watchmen.

Now, I love a good comic book movie and I think I’ve seen them all, from Richard Donner’s original Superman to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Additionally, I’ve seen and enjoyed the critically bombed Spawn, Batman & Robin, even Superman III & IV. I always go into these films knowing it’s a superhero film and that all logic goes out the door.

Watchmen, I understand, was a twelve-part comic book series by DC Comics released a while back. It’s since been printed into a graphic novel and is available at your local bookstore, but I didn’t think to pick it up before deciding to watch the film. So going into this movie, I had no prior knowledge of these characters or their story. I didn’t think it would matter because I heard critics, both conversant and unacquainted with the comic book/graphic novel, give this a great review so I went in with high hopes.

First off, throughout the opening credits, it establishes that the group of crime fighters was put together a long time ago as the Minutemen. I didn’t catch the names of the heroes, but I recognized there were Night Owl, Silk Spectre and The Comedian. The opening is actually pretty cool, the way they have the stopped and slowed down action shots, ascertaining the characters and what they’ve done.

The off-putting part of the film was how it takes place in the mid-eighties, with the eighties’ music tracks playing throughout. But right as a understand that it’s a period piece, albeit only a mere twenty years ago, it takes a turn for the strange as it displays our president at the time as President Nixon. But even this eighties alternate universe aside, I really thought the story lagged and took forever to get anywhere. The only redeeming quality of this film was the character of Rorschach played by Jackie Earle Haley (he’s the hoodlum punk homerun hitter from the original The Bad News Bears film).

In a nutshell, the story was a long drawn out who-done-it story as Rorschach investigates who kills the retired Comedian at the beginning of the film, during which we get an origin story of each character.

Maybe I needed to read the comic book before going in, but to me, this was a boring tale of a pish-posh, mixed bag of superheroes who really don’t seem to get along or that it was ever possible they were a team. And really, can they be called superheroes? The only one of them that had any super powers was Dr. Manhattan…all the others had skills which unfortunately they didn’t cover how they acquired them in their origin flashbacks.

The surprising thing about this comic book film was the fact it was rated R. You’d think that Warner Bros. would balk at this since comic book movies usually attract children as the going audience. I’m really shocked that they allowed the parts to be in the film because they could’ve been easily edited out. Mainly it was the cussing and sex scenes that gave it the R rating. And speaking of the sex scenes, why is it that every film I see Malin Akerman in (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, The Heartbreak Kid) she gets naked?

My final "bit" on Watchmen? I’ve seen enough blue penis to last me a lifetime. If you watch this movie, you’ll understand what I mean by that.