Movie Review

Chronicles of Narnia
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
IMDB Link for Narnia

My rating: ****
Movie Ratings explained

Okay, so I saw this movie on opening night, and I’m clearly a little behind on posting a review over it. I start with this film, simply because it’s the easiest one for me to review after discussing it a number of times. First and foremost, I want to say that I enjoyed the movie. It was fun, for the most part well done, and I recommend you go see it.

That said, I wanted it to be better. It took me a little while to be able to put into words just what it was that frustrated me but I finally figured it out. It was too much of a fairy tale and not enough of an epic. It’s tough to explain what I mean by this, but suffice it to say there was a general lack of grand vision for the film. It was too narrow, and way too heavy handed. Andrew Adamson, the director, was the guy who did Shrek, and it shows. C.S. Lewis was a master at imagery and subtleties, and I feel that that was lost on the film. It is my sincerest hope that Disney decides not to make the next in the series such a Disney style film, and goes with a director that has a little more vision.

Movie Reviews

Okay, so I’ve decided that since I have a tendency to be fairly opinionated I might start to throw in a movie review on this blog from time to time. I will use a rating system as follows:

* = Seeing this movie once was more than I should have, I in no way, shape, or form recommend this film and honestly wish that it had never been made. What a disgrace.

** = Not a great movie, probably won’t see it again, but if I got stuck watching it, it wouldn’t bother me that much. Don’t recommend it, but your taste might just be different than mine.

*** = Good movie. I enjoyed it. Not particularly incredible, moving, or touching, but, for the most part enjoyable.

**** = Dang good movie. I recommend that you go see it, or at the very least rent it when you get a chance.

***** = Awesome. The kind of movie that makes me want to make films. This will be a rare rating that I reserve for movies that go beyond the realms of merely enjoyable and have some further impact, insight, or do something that hasn’t been done before. The kind of movie that I’m likely to buy and force you to watch if I find out that you haven’t seen it yet.

Spitfire

Well, it’s no small understatement to say that I’ve been a little on the busy side lately. It’s been a long semester, and I am looking forward to Christmas break whole-heartedly. I still have three more days of final exams before I can look to that though. Ironically enough, finals week has ushered in a much more relaxing schedule for me. I have this week off of work, there are no more TV shows filming, and all of my intensive edit projects are done. I’m actually sitting here, watching the History channel taking a break in studying trying to remember the last time I just sat down in the middle of the day and watched a little TV. So, I thought I would take this chance to deliver some good news for those of you who haven’t already heard.

Next semester I will be interning at Spitfire Media. They are a postproduction house in Santa Monica that has been in operation for a 19 months now. They do some incredible work and I expect to have some good stories to tell next semester.