Anyone out there a fan of The Shield?  Or, should I say, used to be a fan of the show since it’s officially over and done with?  Wes and I were big fans of the show for a long time now.  He got me into it back during the very beginning of our relationship.  Back then, if I was watching TV it was either because of a good movie or because I wanted to kill some time watching the Classical Arts Showcase.  When Wes suggested The Shield to me, I initially balked.  The show was on too late, it was really violent, and he never wanted to come watch it with me.

No thanks.

Then, I went to college.  College changed things, the most dramatic changes being that I was now a good three hours’ drive away from Wes the majority of the time and I was watching more TV than I ever had before.  I was ready to try this show he was so excited about.  Every week, Wes and I would commandeer a TV (him at his house, I in my dorm room) and watch the program while on the phone with each other.  Mind you, this entailed a solid hour of cell phone call, none of it spent talking.  We watched the show together from opposite sides of the state, and it was something we looked forward to every week.

As you can see, this show’s been with us for a long time.  Seven years, in fact.  A lot has changed in our relationship during this show.  We’ve broken up, gotten back together, gotten engaged and then married; we’ve gone from living with parents to living on our own; this show’s seen me through high school, college, and now worker-bee-dom.  I know I butchered the syntax of that sentence, but I hope you get what I’m trying to convey.  This show meant a lot to us.  We kind of grew up with these characters, and while we despised virtually every decision they made, we watched and we hoped for the best outcome because there was a connection there.

The last season, which we just finished almost a year behind everyone else because that’s how we roll, was a dismal finish for us.  Both Wes and I were horrified by how the show writers chose to leave it.  The last episode in particular was perhaps the most hurtful of all.  The show writers left a few loose story threads dangling, they chose an abhorrent and upsetting end for some, and left the main character’s fate maddeningly ambiguous.  I don’t think it’s artsy to leave readers/viewers guessing, I think its downright inconsiderate.

I’m not saying the acting wasn’t superb, or that the story ended in a way that I would consider inconsistent with the other seasons.  It’s just that after everything these show writers have put us through, watching characters we liked die too soon while watching the evil ones flourish and take others down with them, to leave it on such a vague and unsettling tone was a slap in the face.  As much as I used to love this show, I honestly wish I’d never started watching it.  Not well played, not well played at all.

This is my official love letter to the first season of Dexter.  I mentioned the show in an earlier post, something about how awesome it is, but now I really want to be clear: This show is unique.  It’s well-written, has an interesting premise, skilled actors/actresses, and a storyline that as yet to go careening off the rails into lunacy.  We’ll see how that goes in a few more seasons, however.

I really hope they don’t muck this one up.  Goodness knows they butchered Heroes, and Lost was terrific until the plot grew more convoluted than the synapse bundles of an Alzheimer’s patient.  Bones was lame for the first season but the second season was terrific.  The third season is bizarre, however, and contains one of the most awful and unwelcome plot twists ever conceived in Hollywood.  So, I guess Bones joins the list too, though with only one redeeming season to its name.

It just seems like so many shows start out mind-blowingly good, but then as time wears on (and producers approve more seasons) writers start pulling desperate plot lines out of their you-know-whats to manufacture suspense/interest/drama. 

On the other end of the spectrum is Firefly, which was a-freaking-mazing and didn’t even get the courtesy of a full season.  Why they cancelled that show is beyond me, when it was so clearly a pinnacle of TV writing excellence.  It just goes to show you: Don’t get attached, because you never know if your parents will let you keep it.

Anyway, Dexter.  Is very very good.  The show is about a sociopath who was rescued from a traumatic childhood by a caring man who recognized the boy was a sociopath and drilled into his head a moral code to live by.  The show is about his constant struggle to master his urges by following this code.

As a psych student, I can tell you it’s a pretty accurate portrayal of a sociopath.  I’m not an expert (I focused my studies much more on depression) but from what I learned in my four years at an institute of higher learning it’s a decent representation.  If you’re lacking in shows with which to bide your time, and you don’t happen to mind gore, then I highly recommend you take a slice of this pie.  It’s good, and excellent when served with ice cream.

Before I type anything (besides the words I just typed {and those too}) I must preface this post by coming clean about one thing: I am under the influence.  Of a cold.  A nasty sore throat I woke up with yesterday that sprouted fangs and a nasty thrashing tail overnight to become this terrible mind-clouding fog that makes me forget where I put my purse and gives me reason to believe I may have driven home with the emergency brake on the whole way.

That being said, this post runs the risk of not making any sense.  This is a shame since my cold has convinced me that I am particularly profound today and that this post could change lives.  Or save lives.  Or has nine lives.  It’s definitely one of those three.

The subject of this post is that which I wrote of in my last post: the new Terminator movie.  Wes and I decided to see it yesterday and I exited the movie theatre with mixed feelings.  Something was bothering me but I couldn’t quite put my birthday cake-encrusted finger on it.

I blame my cold for obscuring my thoughts on the matter.  In an effort to discern what was fashing me so much about the movie, I turned to my favorite source for all things movie review: Pajiba.  If you’ve never visited this site, I highly recommend you do so the next time you’re waffling about whether you want to see a movie.  Yes, the reviews are scathing, but they’re also incisive and helpful without being hoity-toity-I’m-better-than-you-because-I-went-to-film-school-for-one-semester-until-I-dropped-out-to-work-at-Blockbuster-and-scowl-at-people.

The Terminator review really said anything I could have said, only better because that guy sounds really smart and stuff.  I’ll attempt to ad to what he said, but I do so in good conscience only by telling you that his review is much, much better.

Essentially, I left the theatre feeling a bit let down.  On its own, taken as a simple action flick, it does its job.  The action scenes are bone-rattling and completely enthralling, there are subtle dashes of call-back humor to brighten the mood, and the story moves along at just the right pace.

***There could potentially be spoilers henceforth, but not really.  They’re not really spoilers but they toe the line.  You have been notified.***

As a story, though?  No dice.  I don’t really think the movie accomplished much.  It’s basically the same as the others, wherein the heroes of the story continue the war against the machines and the movie ends with them winning a battle against the machines but reminding us that they haven’t won the war.

The problem is, at the fourth movie into the story, it would be kind of neat if there were some glimmer of hope.  But there’s not.  There’s just one battle won and the bleak likelihood that they will continue to make as many Terminator movies as they can until people like me stop paying to see them.

I guess my fear is that there’s no end in sight for this story.  I want these movies to be leading up to something, but I fear we’ll wind up with some crazed half-baked mish-mash of crap like with what happened in the Pirates of the Caribbean series.

We’ll see.  Word on the street is that they’re already making the next one.  I can only hope that Terminator: Salvation offers no resolution because the screenwriters are building up to a nice fat climax in the next one.  I’m tired of winning battles.  After twenty-odd years I’d really like to know the end of the war is in sight, y’know?

Movie reviews are tricky little suckers, aren’t they?  The only thing a movie review has ever encouraged me to do is not see a movie.  The reviewer either lambastes the movie, calling out all its inconsistencies and pointing out to the point of ridiculousness how much they disliked it, or they praise it to high heaven until you’re convinced it’s too good to watch.

For much the same reason that I rarely feel inclined to watch the movies that win the Academy Award for “Best Picture,” if a movie is too highly reviewed I’m convinced it’ll be boring, too much of a movie that’s a movie for the sake of being a movie (I should probably shove the word ‘movie’ in here a couple more times, don’t you think?).  Of course there’s an art to film making, but does that mean I want to ooh and aah over camera angles while I’m eating pizza and watching a movie on a Friday night?  Nope.

All rabbit trails aside, if Wes and I want to see a movie I usually make a point of avoiding movie reviews about said movie.  I really don’t want to be turned off a movie before I’ve ever seen it, and I especially don’t want to be aware of every flaw in the movie while I’m watching it.  Too much criticism will ruin a good time every time.

Unfortunately for me, I was ambushed by a review of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie on Friday morning.  I was driving to work and it popped onto the radio and I couldn’t turn away.  The reviewer had two things to say: The CGI is horrible and it wasn’t that great of a movie.

I shook my head in sadness and conveyed these thoughts to Wes.  We are not made of money and, as such, have to choose our date movies carefully.  He felt confident about the movie, and I felt confident in his confidence, so off to the movies we went.

I have to tell you, I enjoyed myself.  It’s an interesting story full of interesting characters and I thought the movie was a lot of fun.  It kept me entertained, at no point did I wonder how long I’d been sitting there, and there was really only one point where I felt the CGI looked unfinished.  That one point did not detract from the movie experience for me personally, though, so I guess there’s that.

If you like X-Men, and enjoyed the previous three movies, I think you’ll enjoy this one.  It has plenty of action, strong supporting characters, and a story that’s easy to understand without lapsing into snoozeville.  Is it the best movie ever made?  No.  Does it have the best music and the most convincing actors/actresses?  No.

The music’s pretty generic and I was not wild about the way a couple of the actors played their parts.  The nice thing is that the music was unobtrusive so you barely noticed it and the actors I didn’t like spent very little time onscreen.  The movie is what it is: A comic book movie.  In my humble opinion, it’s a terrific movie to go see if you like comic book movies and feel like being entertained for awhile.

Two servings on the Dionysus plate, 1 lb. of Sweet Factory candy, two scoops of coffee ice cream, and two movie tickets later, Wes and I are back from our date.  I’ve had to wait all day to write this review, and I’m here to tell you that keeping impressions and ideas that long is harder than it looks.  This review’s been burning behind my eyes so long that I could probably write it in Pharsee if you gave me enough time.

The overwhelming impression that Wes and I got from Watchmen is that we liked it.  A lot.  We think.  This movie bears a passing resemblance to Fight Club in that, after the first viewing, you’re pretty sure you liked it but feel as though another viewing would be helpful.

It’s a whole lot of movie, clocking in at just under three hours.  The story is long, convoluted, and well-developed but at no time did I feel confused or in the dark about anything (except perhaps Ozymandias’ strange mutant cat).  I think the movie did an excellent job of telling a story with a crucial backstory without making you feel like you should have read a fanfic novel before watching.

In my opinion, the movie makes the most sense split into two parts: the movie, and the ideology.  The movie itself is solid.  The dialogue, camera work, action sequences, and special effects are all seamless.  It’s a fast-paced movie that goes by quickly and leaves you feeling very satisfied.  It’s fun to watch, makes sense, and tells an interesting and robust story.

Oh.  And there’s a lot of glowing blue wang (moreso in this movie than in any other I’ve ever seen).  I’m not going to be mature about this.  I couldn’t not watch it while it was on screen.

The second part of the movie, the ideology, is a little harder to write about.  There are so many aspects of the story that could each bear the weight of a lengthy ideological argument that when I left the theater I felt a bit like my brain was in knots.  The role of the American government in foreign conflicts, human behavior in response to a threat, killing millions to save billions, all this and more is dissected and exploded on-screen but never quite resolved.

In order to truly say you enjoyed the movie, I think you would have to say with confidence that you truly understood the philosophical underpinnings of the story.  I’m certain there are people out there who can say this with alacrity.  I, however, am not one of them.

Stylistically, the movie was rich.  The imagery, flashbacks, and music were all meticulous.  I thought a few of the musical selections were odd (specifically, “Hallelujah” sung by Leonard Cohen during a love scene.  I couldn’t help but wonder why they picked that song, and it’s a really odd song to listen to when two people are going at it) but not so much that I’d complain about it.

Overall, it’s an excellent movie.  It’s fun to watch if you’re already acquainted with the story (like Wes) or if you’re a newb (like me).  I have the feeling this will be a favorite movie in our house for a long time.

The rest of the date was awesome, too.  I nearly had to remove my husband’s hand when he tried to sneak some of my sour gummy belts (I loooooooove Sweet Factory sour gummy belts.  So much so that they are not for sharing.  Ever.) but the rest of the evening was a perfect date.  We’re tired after being out so late, and a considerable number of dollars lighter, but we’re happy.  Money and time well spent.