Flying business class trans-Atlantic on Northwest gives you a nice 10" personal screen. The film selection isn't too hot though.
AEON FLUX (1.5/4 stars)
Take a 30 minute 80s cartoon plot and draw it out into a 1.5 hour feature film. Totally waste an Academy Award-winning actress on a simplistic plot and put her in bunches of unimaginative action scenes. You get Aeon Flux.
It's probably interesting for the fans of the old cartoon to see what they did with it, but ultimately I think they'll be disappointed. There was no improvement over the cartoon in any aspect. Lots of CGI wasted on meaningless storuy elements and paper-thin characters. You could have replaced Charlize Theron with Jessica Simpson and not lost much onscreen.
Bottom Line: Eh. The practically-unknown Equilibrium is lots better than this. Pass.
HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE (2/4 stars)
Look, if you saw the first three there's little to lose by seeing the fourth installment of JK Rowling's retirement fund on the big screen. If you DIDN'T see the first three, you'll be completely lost. Heck, if you didn't read the book you'd still probably be scratching your head at anything not Tri-wizard tourney related.
Cuaron yields the reins of the series to yet another direcotr. The pace is relatively breakneck, with little time for character exposition. The three romances among the lead characters are glossed over, and important characters like Sirius Black, Fleur DeLacour and the Weasleys are given no development. Yes, there's no way you can do the whole book. I'm just saying that Goblet doesn't do as good a job of condensing the book to its essentials as AzKaban. But yeah, it's probably a much tougher one to screenwrite.
Bottom Line: No reason for a fan to pass. No reason for a non-fan to see it.
MAN ON FIRE (incomplete)
I started the Denzel film but didn't finish. Will catch the rest on the backswing. Later.
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