The post where I review movies I've seen

The last couple weeks I've seen two movies. Two movies in the theater. Yeah I know, it's kind of amazing. You should see the stack of comics I have to read, yet for whatever reason I left the house at least twice. The two movies I saw were Kevin Smith's super low budget/indie darling Red State and the much maligned Sucker Punch by Zack Snyder

Both Films are vanity projects from directors that I guess feel like they have something to prove. For Snyder it's that he's more Nolan than McG and for Smith it's that.. well for Smith it's just to prove that he's more than dick and pot jokes. Zack Snyder probably has more to lose with Sucker Punch. Smith admits he's near the end of his directing career. His ambitions never seem to have been that grand but Snyder, Snyder is obviously swinging for the fences with every project. Problem is you can't hit home runs by adapting other peoples work. We'll you can, but you're going to have Barry Bonds size asterisks next to all your records.

The best thing I can say about Red State is that it works, it's not the most ambitious movie in the world but the plot is tight the action is intense and the dialogue rings true. It's a good movie that I really enjoyed and would totally pay to see again. Smith describes it as a horror movie but I think action thriller is probably more accurate. The movie's a bit blunt in places ie. Religious people are wackos, the government can't be trusted, teen boys are horny, etc. The best compliment I think I can pay it is that it reminded me of an early John Carpenter movie.

Of course at the other end of the dial, Sucker Punch doesn't work on several thousand different levels. There are giant plot holes, really corny stilted dialogue, and several really bad performances. The action sequences are still really cool but every minute of movie surrounding those sequences actually makes you dumber. All Zack Snyder proved with Sucker Punch is that his inner 12 year old in still running the show, and not in a cool Edgar Wright kinda way. Which was too bad because between Red State and Sucker Punch only one of them had a schoolgirl fighting a robot samurai and it turns on that was the awful movie.