Joshua P. Simon - The Accidental Author

My wife and I decided to join Amazon Prime recently for various reasons (including the free 2 day shipping). One of the best reasons for us is that we have the chance to watch for a reasonable price (sometimes free) some of the movies we've missed at the theaters. Another benefit of this process is that by planning to watch a movie, we also have to set a few hours aside to spend together. That doesn’t sound like it should be much of a problem, but with our schedules it can be. Anyway, we’ve watched three movies since joining and I thought I’d share my thoughts on them.

1. Conan the Barbarian (2011 version) – Thankfully, we watched this for free on Amazon Prime because it was even worse than I expected (and I went into it with pretty low expectations). The script and shadow of a plot were awful. Direction and especially editing even worse. Special effects were lame. Even the action made me cringe (and not in a good way). I hated the fact that the filmmakers attempted to hide all these errors by basically sticking a topless woman in front of the camera every ten minutes. For me that just made it worse.

The one and only positive of the film was that Jason Mamoa was a great choice to play Conan. However, his one shot at the role was wasted because of everything else.

2. Expendables 2 –I love these sorts of action movies, but this one also disappointed me. I did like it, but the first one was just a much better film. The problem biggest problem for me was that too much was crammed into the film and everything came up short. The increased roles of Arnold and Bruce Willis only added to the campiness. Chuck Norris was completely unnecessary. Oddly enough, the two people who impressed me the most were Van Damme (great baddie) and Liam Hemsworth (best actor of the bunch). Let’s hope the third movie is better.

3. Amazing Spiderman – Very good movie. Solid script and great action. Really got the character right, and thankfully acknowledged his scientific background (i.e. giving him webshooters) throughout the film.

The casting was much better than the Rami movies, in my opinion. Garfield is exactly how Spiderman should be to me and Stone is a much more interesting love interest as Gwen than Dunst had been as Mary Jane.

Although the Lizard was handled well, I felt that he was a bit of a letdown as the antagonist. For me, Defoe’s Green Goblin is the best Spiderman villain on the big screen. The Lizard would probably work better as a secondary villain.

Only two things really bothered me. One, there is some serious cheesiness leading up to the climax involving cranes (that’s all I’ll say) that is unnecessary and ruins events leading up to that point in some ways. Two, I thought they downplayed Spiderman’s strength too much. Yes, he is fast and agile, but in the comics he’s also capable of throwing cars around when needed.

I think Warrior (Tom Hardy film) is next on our list to check out.

What have you been watching?