A good choice and a baaad one.

This is about how I feel right now.

While completely absorbed by the awesome Nintendo DS games about Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright, I have managed to press in two film viewings aside from Night of the Demon (1957) in the previous post. Now, let's play a guessing game. One film was chosen by me and was watched only my me and my headset. The other film was chosen by three men, one of them my boyfriend and the other two our dear friends. (Why do I almost only have male friends again?)

The guessing game: the films in question are Terminator Salvation (2009) and Inherit the Wind (1960). Who chose which film?

I will make this a little easier for you (I know it's hard) by listing the positive and negative elements of each film. Here we go.

Terminator Salvation


Good stuff:

• The main character Marcus Wright was interesting.
• Helena Bonham Carter had a supporting role. She's cool.
• There was a cool car chase scene.
• The length - 1 h 46 min. Most films nowadays are over two hours long.
• Once again we see Arnold Schwarzenegger naked, even if he this time is computer generated.

Bad stuff:

• Confusing plot.
• Shaky camera combined with ridiculous amounts of jump cuts = the cinematic cliché of the modern film making era.
• Too much CGI masturbation. Confusing and boring.
• Christian Bale and his Batman voice. (I liked him before he started with that darn voice. I have to see The Prestige (2006), I think that one might be able to restore my respect for mentioned actor. Anyone else that thinks that Mr. Bale has a clause in his contract demanding him to use the dark Batman voice at least once in every film he does?)
• Hard-to-hear dialog, almost exclusively shouting during massive explosions. Sounds like "Ouahouahouah! Come with me if you wanna live! Ouahouahouah! My men died down there!!! Ouahouahouah! You grow a beard!" (I swear, he said the last thing. Although the other guys said he actually shouted "You brought him here", which I find rather unlikely.)
• Did I mention all over-the-top special effects?
• More special effects and more cliché dialog. I actually believe that the script to this film was made by cutting all mainstream action movies made during the last 30 years to pieces, and just clued random lines together into a dramatic over-the-top script with dubious purposes. I really didn't understand a thing.
• 
  

Inherit the Wind

Good stuff:

• Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond.
• Fredric March in the most unflattering role ever, the sweaty hypocrite Matthew Brady.
• Gene Kelly in his coolest, most suiting role ever - the cynical journalist E. K. Hornbeck. He should have done more roles like these.
• The camera work, constantly having things going on in the foreground and background simultaneously.
• The opening scene, with black dressed men with straw hats gathering to arrest the young school teacher who has the guts to teach evolution to his students, all to the sound of a single woman singing "(Gimme Dat) Old Time Religion". Brilliant.
• Intense courtroom scenes with brilliant cross-examinations.
• The closing scene - Drummond carrying Darwin and the Bible on top of each other out of the courtroom. "Do people really have to choose between religion and science?" it seems to say, and at the same time stating that this is a film that takes for granted that its audience isn't a bunch of retards that needs explosions and CGI to be entertained.

Bad stuff:

• It ended.

So, take a guess. Which film did I choose, and which film was preferred by the sweet gentlemen that surround me? I really hope that I will be able to study film at the University of Stockholm this spring, 'cause I am in desperate need of film buddies with taste...