(Movies)^4

I have some movies from the past few weeks to review. I haven't really been in the mood to write lengthy, separate entries for movies lately, so this will have to do. There can also be additional discussion in the comments section if anyone is interested.

Spiderman 3: The movie started off with Hamiltonian mechanics on a chalkboard, which is a good way to draw me in. (I know; I'm not exactly a typical audience member --- or as one of my Georgia Tech colleagues once told me, "You're not a typical anything!") The movie was fun and pretty good, but it wasn't anything special. Peter Parker was a punk and annoyed me on several occasions. He's really not likable at all (though his turning in the other photographer was completely justified, despite how it was seemingly portrayed in the film). The line I liked the best was when Spidey mentioned something like "Where do they all come from?" when referring to supervillians.

Chalk: You can teach if you want to! You can leave no child behind! (The reference to "Safety Dance" was awesome!) This movie, a fake documentary about new high school teachers, was good but not great. The "spelling hornet", in which teachers try to spell student slang, was a truly fantastic part of the film --- especially the clarification in one case about whether a word is a certain one (apparently) used in Atlanta or some other one. This one also had an extremely unlikable character who pissed me off.

Shrek the Third: It was decent but not great. It was not as good as the second film, which was in turn not quite as good as the first one. It also suffers from being more of the same. I did appreciate the reference to Harry Chapin and (of course) the company.

Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End: My ordering of film quality in this series is 1 > 3 > 2. There were moments in 2 I really liked, but overall the third film was definitely better than the second. The first film had the advantage of newness over the others.


Coming soon (i.e., eventually): additional vignettes from the conference I attended in Snowbird