Anoche ví John Carter. Re­cuer­do vaga­mente haber leí­do el li­bro en que es­tá basado, "Princess of Mars" cuan­do tenía un­os 8 años y era so­cio de la Bib­liote­ca Mar­i­ano Moreno, su­je­to a una di­eta es­tric­ta de Hardy Boys, Bom­ba el chico de la sel­va, y Bur­rough­s.

Me sor­prende mu­cho que haya si­do el fra­ca­so económi­co que fue. Es di­ver­tida, es­tá bi­en hecha, es un poco an­tigua en el sen­ti­do de que cuen­ta una his­to­ria de man­era di­rec­ta, sin vueltas. Hay que dar­le un pre­mio es­pe­cial al di­rec­tor porque ¡Las es­ce­nas de ac­ción se en­tien­den! Siem­pre sabés quién es­tá ha­cien­do qué cosa, y la relación es­pa­cial de la gente en las es­ce­nas tiene sen­ti­do.

Claro, la his­to­ria pasa rápi­do, hay mon­tones de per­son­ajes se­cun­dar­ios que no se de­sar­rol­lan porque no al­can­za el tiem­po, y es una pe­na que prob­a­ble­mente nun­ca veamos la se­gun­da parte.

That's the way those movies are meant to be seen.

On mon­day I had my first IMAX ex­pe­ri­ence (the first IMAX in Ar­genti­na opened not long ago).

The rum­ble in my guts in the first big ac­tion scene... hav­ing to move the head to fol­low the ac­tion on the last one... re­al­ly an in­tense cin­e­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence.

I liked the sec­ond movie bet­ter, and ev­ery­one seemed a bit tired of their roles, but a fun movie.

If you are go­ing to do pop­corn, you bet­ter do great pop­corn, and that's what Rai­mi does.

I was go­ing to write one, but there's ab­so­lute­ly no need when there is this one

Cu­ri­ous in­ter­net fac­t:

Since I post­ed my "re­view" of Crank I have had no less than 5 vis­i­tors dai­ly from google, search­ing for vari­a­tions on "haitian shit plant shit".

In fac­t, the re­view is al­most the top re­sult for that. Some­how I don't ex­pect this to atract any spon­sors, though ;-)

I have this agree­ment with Rosar­i­o: we will go to the movies to­geth­er. But not, un­der any cir­cun­stances, to see some­thing like Crank.

So, on wednes­days (cheap tick­et­s, yipee!) if I am down­town, I will go see that kind of things.

Two weeks ago, it was Rocky Bal­boa. Yes­ter­day it was Crank.

Crank

This is a spe­cial movie. It may seem on the sur­face to be an or­di­nary brain­less ac­tion/vi­o­lence/­sex spec­ta­cle, the kind many take for grant­ed nowa­days. How­ev­er, there are some things noone thinks about when watch­ing it.

When I was a kid, this movie's cin­e­matog­ra­phy would have been im­pos­si­ble. It shows how ac­tion films made 20 (maybe 10) years ago look cheap to­day, be­cause tech­ni­cal ad­vance has been mas­sive.

The script may be dum­b, and med­i­cal­ly in­com­pre­hen­si­ble (like the al­ter­na­tive us­es of ephedrine and ep­i­neph­rine for the same thing. They are not.), but you know what? It's an ex­cuse to have a guy that can't stop. The movie is about a bad guy that can't stop, not about "Haitian hard­core shit. Made of plant shit, man!". Come on, is ra­dioac­tive spi­der bite any bet­ter? Or brain cloud in Joe ver­sus the Vol­cano any bet­ter? (Ok, bad ex­am­ple there).

No one com­plains that Spidey makes no sense. Or that Kong is too large. And that's OK. Then why is the idea of a guy that needs con­stant adren­a­line stupid?

I think that this movie is seen as stupid speaks more about how many things we have al­ready seen. This is not even the first movie about a poi­soned char­ac­ter guar­an­teed to die look­ing for re­venge I saw (That would be D.O.A. which is ac­tu­al­ly a pret­ty de­cent movie).

Look at ac­tion movies like Die Hard. Is it any less stupid? Maybe (and maybe not). But it was there first.

And at least Crank does­n't take it­self too se­ri­ous­ly.

As a bonus, it con­tains the best spo­ken-­por­trait-that-look­s-just-­like-the-guy-scene ev­er.

BTW: it's re­al­ly not a good movie.

Rocky Bal­boa

Warn­ing: this be­low is a lit­tle per­son­al, ram­bling, and prob­a­bly not a movie re­view.

You can make a case for this ac­tu­al­ly be­ing a good movie. It may not get all the way there, but it's a de­cent job, done by com­pe­tent crafts­men. You have to con­sid­er the movie as part of a larg­er thing, the sports movie genre. In par­tic­u­lar, the box­ing movie.

Ev­ery­one has seen them ... Un­der­dog ... Long Odds ... Train­ing Mon­tage ... Fi­nal Fight .. Last Round ... it's al­most like the con­ven­tions lie be­sides con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive, just a se­ries of clich­es wait­ing for you, com­ing at you like a riv­er. You can hear the up­per case ini­tials like waves ham­mer­ing at your tem­ples.

But I have many soft spot­s. And one of them is for box­ing, and it's for pure­ly per­son­al, sub­jec­tive, un­de­fen­si­ble rea­son­s.

My dad had a stroke many years ago. He was al­ways a dry man. Af­fec­tion with him was not ex­act­ly a sim­ple mat­ter. We had very lit­tle in com­mon.

But on late fri­day nights we would watch the fight­s. We would talk about them, he with the dif­fi­cul­ty of not be­ing used to talk to me, lat­er that of the hemi­plegic, me with the dif­fi­cul­ty of talk­ing to him.

Af­ter a while, I start­ed liv­ing alone, but kept watch­ing the fight­s, and when I vis­it­ed him, we would do it to­geth­er. Un­til Ben­n-M­c­Clel­lan, which cured me from any en­joy­ment of box­ing I ev­er had.

But I can still ap­pre­ci­ate ex­act­ly how hard box­ing is. Any sport at a high lev­el re­quires skills I don't have, and is hard. Now think about prac­tic­ing a sport (Any sport. Fig­ure skat­ing, if you will!) while an­oth­er guy, just as strong and quick as you is try­ing to beat the crap out of you. That's box­ing. You are not go­ing to con­vince me there is any­thing hard­er in sports (ex­cept maybe some oth­er com­bat sport).

And Rocky Bal­boa is a tale about a guy whose heart is so bro­ken he can on­ly think about that skill he used to have, and he gets a mirac­u­lous chance at do­ing that again, and it's a god­damn fairy tale, and noth­ing else, but I know how the eyes of a guy who would die, who would kill for a chance at do­ing some­thing he can't pos­si­bly do look like.

And that kills me. And this movie killed me. And I got shiv­ers at the end. And I am a goof­bal­l.