Watched a few movies over the past week or so. A real mixed bag.
Pitch Black: I saw this and Chronicles of Riddick years ago, and at the time I really loved them. Pitch Black mostly holds up, aside from some really awful editing. It's a decent monster movie, with the Riddick element adding a nice twist to the formula. The cast of characters is also not too bad, with distinct personalities and motivations. I think I'd give this a 6/10. It's a little derivative, but mostly stands on its own.
Chronicles of Riddick: Man, where do I start with this? This is one movie I kind of wish I hadn't rewatched. It was so much better in my memory, and I think the video game Escape From Butcher Bay gave me rose-tinted glasses regarding it. The story is kind of a mess of disparate ideas. There's the bounty hunter/prison aspect, the space sorcery garbage, "chosen one" plot line, and the zombie space army... There's like 4 different aspects to the movie that could (and probably should) have been fleshed out into other movies. I really don't think it needs to be said that all these ideas don't work well together. It's kind of a shame, because I think they had a good opportunity to really flesh out the whole prison punk motif. But no. We got space sorcery and chosen one nonsense.
I will say, I do kind of like the visual design of the movie. It's very clearly inspired by H R Giger. There's also some kind of fun dialogue, and some decent action scenes, but man, this movie is about as low-brow as it gets. I guess I'd say I didn't hate it, but boy is it rough. 4/10.
Riddick: This was kind of a breath of fresh air, coming off of Chronicles. It's far more focused in the story its telling, and is made all the stronger for it. The sorcery and chosen one stuff from the second movie are entirely gone, and the Necromonger aspect has taken a back seat. The sole focus of this is Riddick, and his interaction with the mercenaries chasing him, as well as going back to the series's roots as a monster movie. (Him playing the part of the monster for the first half).
Once again, there's some decent action, with some fun dialogue (with some occasional god-awful dialogue). There's a good cast of characters, and once again some great visual design. I think I'd rate this 6/10.
If I didn't know better, I would honestly think this series was a vanity project by Vin Diesel, and I think that's why it never really caught on as an iconic sci-fi series. There's some solid ideas here, but they really only seem to exist for Riddick himself.
Tenet: This one genuinely took me by surprise. Christopher Nolan's non-Batman movies have been extremely hit or miss for me. I loved Interstellar and regard it as one of my favorite movies of all time. Dunkirk, I wasn't really a big fan of, and Inception is maybe the stupidest movie of all time. I wasn't really sure if I'd enjoy this that much, as I was really expecting it to be an overly convoluted mess. Thankfully, I didn't feel that was the case at all. Some of the minutia of the time travel was lost on me, so I might need to give it a rewatch, but on the whole it was very straight forward. Someone in the future is causing trouble, plans to end all life, time travel shenanigans happen. Easy peasy. It's funny because early in the movie a character tells the protagonist not to overthink the time mechanics, kind of a fun wink to the audience, and good advice to boot.
I'm actually a little surprised the time travel stuff didn't really enter the picture until about half way through. Aside from mentioning the inversion, it was a fairly straightforward espionage movie up until the turnstiles are introduced. Once they are brought in, I feel like they were used in clever ways, and did a good job of adding a fun twist of the espionage formula.
If I had to knock the movie, I'd say I didn't especially care for the protagonist, and the movie could be somewhat dull at times, but those are minor gripes to me. 8/10.
Love and Monsters: Another pleasant surprise, this one. I approached this with basically no expectations about how good it would be. Pretty much the only thing I knew about it was that it was a post-apocalyptic monster movie. With any kind of post-apocalyptic movie you'd expect to see the worst that humanity has to offer: violence, cruelty, the desire to survive at all costs; basically a world without morals. This movie kind of flips that on its head: it's genuinely wholesome, and loving, and considerate.
I'm really not the biggest fan of the lead actor, but I like the character he's playing. He's maybe a little too jokey without actually being funny, but he's generally pretty relatable, and it's nice to see he has a solid character arch. I feel like too many movies these days don't see the protagonist grow in any meaningful way, so I appreciated seeing it here. I think I'll give it a 9/10.
