Movie Madness

It's been a wonderful summer (end-of-summer here in the Philippines) for movies. First, we get the movie adaptation of the musicale who took a lot of the songs of ABBA and weaved a story with them. Applause, applause! Meryl Streep did a wonderful job, as usual. I really like her. The movie was fun. And that's all. 3.25 stars out of 5. Crazy fun! But then the Dark Knight came. With the Joker in tow (May Heath Ledger rest in peace). And tons of box-office records shattered at his wake (pun) - fastest to $100 million, $150M, $200M, $250M, $300M, $350M, $400M, top day grosses, top July grosses, top weekends grosses, etc...
It's been embraced by moviegoers and critics alike, amassing generous reviews especially for Ledger's performance. I would easily give it a 4.75 stars rating. And I would go on to say that the movie has a shot at the Oscars; Ledger too. The following poster puts into a graphic how I see the movie as- to me, it's more of a suspense/thriller than an action/adventure-run-of-the-superhero-genre. And that's why it's so fresh. After the movie Wanted, Angelina Jolie would do very well as the Batman nemesis Catwoman, don't you think? And just a month into its screening life, the tills and buzz about the next movie are as active as ever. Go see it one more time. Cray-zee gooooood!
And now a not-so-good adventure: the third installment to the Mummy franchise. It was ok. I could've missed it and everything would still be alright. So like Indiana Jones, protagonist and wife now has a son who has to share in the adventure. And since the timeline is in the 1940's, son could grow up and find another mummy somewhere to wake up who would try to take over or destroy the world as we know it and time it in the 1960's and Brendan Fraser could play the son-all-grown-up role again. Of course there'll have to be pictures of original dad Brendan Fraser lying around the house for the audience to see and use to make the connection with. I think one of the very few amusing scenes was when this skeleton warrior holding a shovel turned around and accidentally hacked another skeleton warrior's head behind him off; then he tried to pick it up and put it back on his bones-y colleague. And then the ending with the dust forming into the faces of the ancient Chinese lovers together was like the stake-through-the-heart that killed it for me. 2.5 stars I think is enough. Crazy.