I Saw Two Movies This Weekend, And You Must Avoid One Of Them

[THUNDER HANDS]

I went out Friday and Saturday nights to the movies. It was the first time since I went to see Gangs of New York, and I figured I had picked out two pretty good movies.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and 28 Days Later.

One was awesome, the other sucked big-time.

Suprisingly, it was the movie I really wanted to see most that sucked.

28 Days Later.

God, was this an awful piece of poo. I can't belive they took a totally interesting concept and just ruined it. Basically it's about a group of animal rights activists who release a monkey infested with a virus called "RAGE" which turns its victims into zombie-like creatures. The virus spreads throughout England, basically wiping out the entire population. It takes place in London and while there was, to it's credit, absolutely breathtaking scenes of a deserted downtown.

But the movie's main problem is it's pacing. Normally a horror movie should move at a brisk pace, always keeping the audience on edge. This movie just crawled and crawled and was littered with scenes that had no drama or suspense to them at all.

And it had an oh-so-sappy happy ending. God I hate those in horror movies.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was, on the otherhand, quite enjoyable. It's not a perfect movie by any means. The fight scenes were kinda lame and Sean Connory can only do so much as an action hero. Plus there was a significant lack of drama in the film - as we never really felt any of the character were in any danger.

However, the film does have a great plot (19th century literary characters brought together to fight an evil superpower who uses 20th century weaponry) and really cool characters and special effects.

One of the characters is Captain Nemo, and his ship, the Nautilious (sorry about the spelling) is absolutely breathtaking - a ship the size of a city block shaped like a sword.

The Dr. Jecklyn & Mr. Hyde (specifically Hyde) character was interesting, but his body looked more than a little odd. His arms seemed to be bigger than his waist, and he looked more like Rumbleman from that 'Ready 2 Rumble' boxing game that was on Playstation years ago than what you'd think Mr. Hyde would look like.

But as a pure escape from reality for a few hours, this movie does it's job. It's not nearly as good as Lord of the Rings or Raiders of the Lost Ark (as this movie has been compared to) but it was probably as good as the first X-Men was.

There will be a sequel, though, so expect that in a few years.

Overall - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen gets a "B" and 28 Days Later gets a "D"