Nightwatch, or Not to be negative, but

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this movie sucked.

Saw it last night, spurred on against myself by all the hype and good reviews. Well, bad decision:

It made no sense.
It was pretty, but empty.
The characters were hardly defined at all.
The world they lived in made next to no sense.
It was a mishmash of a bunch of other things, and not well-synthesized.
It was surprisingly slow in some places.
It did hardly anything new.
I missed all the alleged social commentary (though that may be a result of bad English subtitles).
It’s the first part of a trilogy; it’s learned the wrong lessons from The Matrix trilogy.

It was so pedestrian that I can’t even write a full review of it. I just don’t care enough. That’s not good.

I realized, after leaving the thing and debriefing it with my friend Lee who I saw it with, I haven’t seen a movie that I really loved in about two years (probably not since The Grudge almost made me cry with glee). I mean I movie that I was head-over-heels, embarrassingly passionate about. Or if I did, I can’t remember it.

Strange thing is: I’ve felt that way about more than one TV show in that same period.

Which has led me to this slightly heretical opinion which may make me look like a jackass, but hey it’s what I currently believe: the best current TV series are better than almost every current movie.

10 Comments

  • Sizemore says:

    Hey Sam, the current Fox release has nifty subtitles, but they cut about thirty minutes of sub plot and at least one character out of the damn thing too. That said, you may not like the full version much anyway.

    I just saw the sequel, Daywatch, and think the whole thing hangs together quite nicely.

    Then again I also think that Night of the Lepus is the scariest movie ever made.

  • Novice says:

    Wow. Not like your usual shredding. Your sarcastic anger is funny. That you couldn’t muster any for this review means this movie must have been truly bad.

    There are times when total medicority is worse that spectacular suckage.

  • The Retropolitan says:

    I’m still confused by you liking The Grudge. I thought that was pretty boring and pointless, much like The Ring, which I also didn’t like. I guess I’m not cut out for the Japanese version of terror! As far as I’m concerned, if you’ve seen one oddly-green-tinted movie about ghostly teen girls (sometimes wet and usually with too much hair), you’ve pretty much seen them all.

  • Anthony J. Rapino says:

    Well, I haven’t seen the movie, and after reading your review, I’m not gonna. Though I did begin to question it once you mentioned your strange love for The Grudge. Sure, it was an okay movie, but the best you’ve seen in two years?

    I personally dug The Skeleton Key. That one had just about everything I could ask for, plus it was shot well. Not to mention, whenever you said to yourself, “oh geez, she better not pretend nothing strange is going on,” the main character would blurt out what she saw. Nice. And yes, I realize I’m going to get reamed for liking that movie. But that’s okay.

  • harmonyfb says:

    The last movie that made me jump up with glee and force all my friends and family to watch it with me was Shaun of the Dead. But then, I don’t get out much.

  • John says:

    Saw Night Watch last night, and maybe the uncut version is better (it was very choppy, narrative-wise) but boy did I find it tedious. Cut or uncut, it doesn’t excuse the nu-metal guitar scissor fight sequence. …yeeesh. Lots of ideas flying around, but all of them unfinished. My friend said the entire film felt like a brainstorming session, which I thought was pretty succinct.

    Cool blog you guys have here, btw.

  • Sam Costello says:

    Oh, man, I’m gettin’ killed here! And I’m too sick to defend myself. But I’ll try.

    Retro – My interest in the Grudge/Ring has waned a bit, spurred on by the poor quality of the Ring 2, but I think I liked those movies due to their atmosphere, their sensibilities, the inevtiablity of their horror, and newness (at least to American audiences), and that they were legitimately creepy. Or at least I found them to be. Probably has to do with personal taste a bit, but I felt like they were trying harder to actually scare me than most other horror movies going. Something about them just felt so much like a nightmare that it was hard for me not to be pulled in.

    Anthony – the Grudge wasn’t my favorite movie of the last two years, it’s just the one that I remember getting most excited about. It’s a solid movie, but I’m sure I’ve seen better in the intervening time. Picnic at Hanging Rock, for instance, or Croupier, or A Tale of Two Sister, but none of them got my quite as excited as The Grudge. And it wasn’t just because of SM Gellar!

    John – I’m with you, man! And thanks for the kind words.

  • Sam Costello says:

    Sizemore – Night of the Lepus? Seriously? Tell me more.

  • Anthony J. Rapino says:

    Sam,

    I’ll def check out those other movies you mentioned.

  • Sizemore says:

    Night of the Lepus: Killer rabbits. Giant mutant killer rabbits. The terror is mostly rendered through actors reacting in horror to cut scenes of regular sized cute-as-the-dickens bunnies being pushed off camera onto tiny sets of farms and roads. And one of the people being terrorised is Bones McCoy sporting a moustache.

    The last screening I had round here, three people fell asleep and everyone else laughed and got slowly drunk while I quivered in the corner at the horror of messing with nature…

    Based on the novel ‘Year of the Angry Rabbit’.

    Oh and there’s more Russian shape shifting on the way WOLFHOUND!