I'm Moderately More Attractive than Gene Shalit

So I've had some downtime this weekend, which is a new thing for me. I don't know if I necessarily like it, because I feel like I haven't gotten much accomplished, but it is what it is.

One of the things I've done is watch some movies I'd been meaning to catch up on. So I've got that going for me, which is nice (points to the first person who knows the actor who said it, and why).

So I've seen three movies this weekend: Tropic Thunder, I am Legend, and The Big Lebowski, the latter of which I'd seen before. I also read the Wikipedia article on the French Foreign Legion, for no reason at all.

Tropic Thunder, I know, got a lot of bad press. It makes fun of the mentally challenged frequently (though not as frequently as a lot of high-and-mighty critics have implied), and is phenomenally ridiculous, but you know what? It's hilarious. If this movie is any guide, Tom Cruise is now the world's greatest character actor, although Robert Downey, Jr. deserves a little bit of recognition, too, for his work. I was almost rolling on the floor laughing at this movie.

I am Legend is a weird one. It's one of those "last man standing trying to undo the worldwide armageddon caused by Emma Thompson's hubris" movies (just like Love: Actually), and has some things going for it. It's generally in keeping with the book of the same name by Robert Matheson, or at least it's in keeping with how Matheson would have written the book in 2007 instead of 1960-something. It's better than Charlton Heston's version of the book, which you may have seen as Omega Man. It's generally OK, and it's nice to not have to worry too much about character development, since most of the movie is spent in a simple one-on-many mindset. I mean, there's backstory work and all, but it's hardly necessary; the protatgonist-vs.-demon-antagonist thing that the movie has going is pretty captivating anyway. I don't think this is the best movie of the last two years, or even the best Will Smith movie of the last two years, but it's nice to see him back in the action mode after that touchy-feely stuff he had going on in The Pursuit of Happyness and Hitch.

The Big Lebowski is a classic. See it. Love it. Doesn't get old.

Now, let's see if I can put up with Hitman.