watched this last night. the first 20 minutes are just dazzling. it captures the feel of a comic book much better than any movie in its genre, even if on a small’ish tv it probably doesn’t look as good as it did in the theaters. however, the story and so forth aren’t very much better than another recent installment in this genre, “the league of extraordinary gentlemen”, though this is wittier. giovanni ribisi, who i like a lot, does a serviceable supporting turn but the appeal of angelina jolie and gwyneth paltrow continues to baffle me. and is there nobody other than jolie who can play englishwomen in action films?
technical stuff: on the one hand we have something like “terminator 3” in which computer generated monsters and machines interact with the world of humans; in this we have humans being digitized and inserted into a world of computer generated machines, animals and sets. both kinds cost many, many millions to make (i believe this was $70 million)–but neither is as much fun as “raiders of the lost ark”. i thought i had a point when i started that last sentence but i see it might resemble one of roger ebert’s so i’m just going to back away from it.