Movies - recent mini-reviews

We've seen quite a few movies lately. Some in the theater even! Yes, the summer of [Pick Your Movie] #3 is upon us. Anyway, DVD or in the theater, I do mini-reviews to keep track of what we've seen. I've talked about it before. So, here is the recent lot. (I've removed a couple columns to make it more readable in a blog.)

Spiderman 3	74	Glad I saw it, and I’ll own it, but… But, there were too many long stretches of weak character development. And two of the three villains deserved a longer story than they got. Venom should have been a major story. Still, the action was good. In the category of “King Kong” in that respect. But “Kong” had too little character.
Déjà vu	75	Pretty darn good. The “déjà vu” was not mystical or haphazard, and I liked the sci-fi nature of the result.
Casino Royale	70	Really a pretty good “origin” story. But Craig isn’t sophisticated and handsome, so it’s going to be interesting to see whether they can make him Bond-like with future movies. The movie itself was a little long, as they weaved more into the origin than we expected.
The Good Shepherd	73	How much of this was “history?” I almost don’t want to know. Cool view of how the CIA got started, and what it meant for one of its key founders.
Pirates of the Caribbean 3	91	A bit complicated, but quite satisfying as a final (?) episode. Action and characters and visuals all mixed well.
Pirates of the Caribbean	95	Set the bar for adaptations of concepts into story. Casting Depp was critical to the success, and he created a character which will live forever.
Goldeneye	73	A very good installment. It would benefit from more action music, but the opening stunts are spectacular, and the grand scheme of the villain was good, if not quite as over-the-top as the traditional villains.
Children of Men	83	This is old-fashioned sci-fi. A bit tough to follow at times, but I think that was part of the appeal.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles	64	A couple truly hilarious scenes, and then the rest. I liked the movie, really. And it’s not TOO long. But a few more laughs would have been good.
Ocean’s Twelve	77	Caper films are best when you like the thieves (we did,) they pull off complex heists (they did,) and there are surprising payoffs (there were!)