VIDEODRONE

By only

Wednesday May 21, 2008

NEW MOVIE MONDAYS TUESDAYS WEDNESDAYS
National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets
And now we bid you adieu, secret-society-conspiracy-theory-history-embellishing globe-trotting-puzzle-riddle-puzzle movie. To say you had a good run would be a lie. Oddly, you started strong with the first National Treasure movie. Mr. Cage as a swashbuckling history buff seemed like a stretch at first, but weird, it wasn’t. The adventure was entertaining, and the puzzles oh so intriguing. And then, in what was a strong example of what we in the industry call “embarrassing”, that movie somehow managed to out Da Vinci Code The Da Vinci Code. It was, to say the least, the worst of times. And then they got worser. This new National Treasure movie, while fast paced, is also boring and pointless, and also unbelievable (hah!). It would appear that history has run out of fake secrets, which, most likely, proove that secret societies exist, and are just doing a really good job of overexposing themselves.


Diary of the Dead
Well if the Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield weren’t enough in the shaky-equals-real department, then zombie king George A. Romero’s fifth entry in his “Dead” series ain’t gonna do much for you. We had high hopes for this one. The idea that people were filming a zombie attack, first person style, had us kind of giggling as we thought about the gruesome images, rendered and caught on a home video camera like a summer vacation gone seriously fucking wrong. But as we watched this badly “we didn’t know what we were about to witness…” narrated “document”, we realized that no matter how grisly the gore, the concept of acting natural or real is NOT the same as bad or wooden.


The Walker
Paul Schrader is a weirdo. Having written Taxi Driver – like a million years ago – he later made Cat People and began his descent into a world of sordid sexuality and drug abuse. He resurfaced a few years ago with Auto Focus, and now this one. The Walker. OK. We get it. A “Walker” is someone, usually a gay man apparently, who hangs out in wealthy circles and accompanies Society women to the opera or to fancy country clubs to play cards. This subdued (and by that we mean kind of boring) little thriller would be even more boring if Woody Harrelson wasn’t so good. That’s right, he plays gay real good. Almost as good as Robert Downey Jr. And that’s pretty good gay.