Summer "blockbusters"

Whilst movies may not precisely fit into my general books v. baking dialogue, I have in the last few weeks gone to see 3 movies, which is pretty amazing, considering in the last five months before that I'd only been to see one. First was Iron Man, which was fun, but nothing spectacular. My boss is bewitched by all things comic book-y, and obsessively loved Iron Man, even going so far as to say it had "no flaws". I quickly found a flaw: near the beginning there's a scene lauding Robert Downey Jr's character, and magazine covers praising him are spiralling across the screen. One says "He takes the REIGNS". So I went back to work, and pointed this out to my boss, in front of several people, so after a small argument about how maybe it was a pun and they meant to use the wrong reins/reigns, he conceded that ok, maybe the movie did have one small flaw. Then, to my chagrin, the very next week in the employee bulletin that I put out, I had not one, but two typos. :( It was immediately pointed out to me....by someone who had heard my mockery of Iron Man's editors....so with all due humility, I will admit that we all make typographical errors from time to time. Although I'd like to point out that I don't have a budget that exceeds $100 million dollars....

Then came Indiana Jones, which was also fun, but even less spectacular than Iron Man. I was never a huge fan of the old Indiana Jones though, we didn't watch a lot of movies growing up, and I apparently missed out on the Indy obsession that my husband suffered from. So maybe that's why I didn't feel the magic, I mean I liked the old ones, but I thought those were just ok, and then the new one didn't seem up to par with those, so my vote was less than ok. But to Noel and his sister, who adored the old ones, this one was still quite good. I guess it's all relative (ha-that was a pun!) Anyway, there were some nifty car chase scenes, and the prerequisite snake jokes [SPOILER ALERT: Why didn't Indy just use his whip to get out of the quicksand???? why was the snake necessary???] and Indy-is-so-old jokes, and the ever-fabulous Cate Blanchett made a hilariously awesome dominatrix-type KGB queen, which pretty much sums up the good points for me. All of that couldn't make up for the end of the movie, however, which I thought was DUMB.

In a change of pace from the action offerings, Nicole and I went to see Sex and the City for her birthday. Again, it was fun, actually laugh out loud funny in some spots, and the characters were as superbly costumed as they were in the show, but it just didn't have the same panache. I disagree with the critics who thought it was too long, I felt like really only Samantha's plot line dragged a bit, and I would actually liked to have seen more of Charlotte's story, I feel like she got shorted. So while I liked it, and it was totally fun to have a girls night for the first time in a looong time, I still wasn't totally satisfied.

I can't decide if the problem is me or the movies. Maybe the fact that I didn't go to the movies for several months means that I have lost some of my movie joy? Or maybe I'm expecting too much from summer movies, they're supposed to be disposable? Or perhaps movies really are that much dumber than they used to be? Sigh....je ne sais pas...I think I might stick to books.