One Paragraph Review: The Last Airbender

What an utter disappointment. Watching this movie makes you cringe so hard that you start to wonder what kind of people Shyamalan surrounds himself with. How did nobody else's ears start to bleed when they watched this movie? Shyamalan clearly gets the material. He gets the style, he gets the fantasy, he gets the concept, and I think he even gets the whole overarching plot. How then can he so totally NOT deliver this to a script? Nothing he's touched in the past approaches this level of unwatchability, plagued by lifeless actors reading lines that don't make sense. Did he even watch how ridiculous his characters looked kicking bad CGI fireballs around? And what the hell is that big white flying Falcor-rip off that just flies around the movie moaning?? Do yourself a favor and avoid this; the handful of visually neat scenes just aren't worth killing what I bet is a neat cartoon.

One Paragraph Review: The Karate Kid

It's worth noting that it was probably impossible for me to really like this movie unless I ended up just watching the 1984 Ralph Macchio version. Despite that, this wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I found Jaden Smith to be very unlikable (possibly I am still scarred from The Day the Earth Stood Still), but Jackie Chan was quite good. It's entertaining and respectful to the original, a very young Chinese girl does a very unsettling dance to "Pokerface" and - oh fuck it, who cares; from the moment this movie started, all I cared about was how they were going to handle the Crane Kick. Next to finding One-Eyed Willy's treasure and Maverick re-engaging, the Crane Kick was probably the most important thing I saw on a TV screen growing up. So, how is it in this remake? It sucks. I don't know how I would have done it differently, maybe just give in and copy it directly? - but then again, I wouldn't have fucking remade this movie in the first place!