The Fountain and The Pick of Destiny

You may have noticed that I've been allowing some movies to share space in my reviews. Sometimes movies deserve a stand alone review, but more often than not, they can share.

I went to see "The Fountain" with my friend Rob. He gave it the review rating of 3 yawns, which was better than Soderbergh's "Solaris" which recieved his 4 yawn rating. We pretty much agreed that there were some amazing visuals, and the story was interesting, but once you've seen 20 seconds of a cool visual, you don't really need 25 more minutes of the same exact thing. Also, once you get a point the film is making, like that the main character is obsessed with finding a cure, we don't really need 10 more scenes to drive that point home. I had talked recently about Darren Aronofsky (the director of "The Fountain") being a anti-Hollywood director. He was rumored to be in line to direct a gritty Batman movie, but got bumped because he wasn't going to sell enough lunch boxes and action figures. Well, I'm not going to go back on my enthusiasm about his Batman project, but he should avoid stories about people who live forever, because it kind of felt like we were along for the ride. Maybe that's what he was going for, just like Ridley Scott was trying to make us all feel the fustration in "Black Hawk Down". There just are certain things you don't want to feel in a movie theater, and for me bored and fustrated are at the top of the list.

"The Pick of Destiny" starts out with Jack Black as a kid in a Chistian home playing a metal song for his family. As Edwardo would say, it was smurfing funny. This film falls into the category of "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back". Personally I though Jack Black was best in the film "High Fidelity", he was a side character who was well written and full of enthusiasm. Since then his roles have been funny (mostly) but usually shallow and missing great oppurtunities. I would say that this movie comes closest to breaking that trend, but not quite. Black is on a quest to write and perform his "masterpiece" yet the film never delivers. Perhaps that is part of the joke. Black and his partner are stoned so much that the believe they have made their masterpiece, but unfortunately can not remember how it went. Wouldn't it be better for the audience if they actually performed their masterpiece, yet because they were stoned didn't realize it themselves. Tenacious D. is a cool concept and a funny band, but they are no Led Zeppelin, which with Jack Black as the lead singer would be really cool and funny and great.