(no spoilers)

I’m shocked that RottenTomatoes.com has a rating of 22% for Da Vinci Code. I read the book a few months ago and loved it. I didn’t think it was great but the story was captivating and I loved the presentation of the puzzles throughout. I have a pretty solid background in mathematics, philosophy and history so you can guess that this is the sort of thing that I would love.

So what’s the grip that everyone has about the movie? It isn’t like this was a bad rendition of Shakespeare or Tolkien. This is a movie adaptation of a pretty good book but that book is light years from being considered high literature.

The acting was decent. With Tom Hanks in the lead everyone was expecting perfection but this just isn’t the role for him. I never thought he was bad, just nothing better than good.

Ian McKellen was pretty damn good. Surprised?

Acting wise the weak link was probably Audrey Tautou. Again, not that she was bad just not anything to write home about. And as a personal grip I wish Ron Howard would have focused more on getting Audrey to enunciate.

One thing that I really liked was that they played fair with the controversial issues. Every time a theory was proposed it was argued, intelligently and fairly.

Overall I would give the movie a B-. I enjoyed the movie but it isn’t anything that I’ll want to see again.

(no spoilers)

If you’re a fan of well made movies, and who isn’t, then you can look forward to another generation of good movies from the Reitman family. Jason Reitman is the director and wrote the screenplay for the hit movie Thank you for Smoking.

Jason had good actors to work with. Aaron Eckhart did a great job in the lead. It isn’t easy to make a despicable character likable. Credit to the actor and writer here for not forcing us to like him but instead giving the viewer reasons to want to like the character.

Cameron Bright did a fine job as the son. I don’t think it was a particularly challenging role so you don’t walk away thinking, “Wow, what a great young actor.” It was more like one of those roles that good actors blend into and make you forget that your watching an actor.

What’s best about the movie is the way the story is told. The pacing is very good. There’s never a long drawn out moment where you want them to move on with things. And perhaps more importantly there’s never a moment where an actor does something that seems out of place or glossed over by the story.

Best of all the movie is intelligent and funny at the same time. You will certainly get a few good belly laughs out of the movie and even more chuckles. At the same time the movie allows us to perhaps get a better understanding of people which is never a bad thing.

(No spoilers)

I was expecting to see a movie that was mostly an excuse to see Tom Cruise look really angry and get to use lots of cool toys to do, you know, impossible things. And here and there would be some funny moments, mostly centered around Ving Rhames. Toss in a few really hot women with guns and you have a movie worth the price of admission.

As it turned out MI3 had more acting than I expected and much less action. You know the iconic scene they did in the first movie? None of that, although they did a nice little homage to it that only took about 5 seconds.

We do get a lot of scenes were Ethan is just too pissed off for words. Which is good because Tom Cruise has his iconic stare going pretty good for most of the film.

Going to the theater I wasn’t expecting much. Leaving the theater I felt that I’d gotten more than I expected. It’s kind of hard to rate a movie based on that combination.

Perhaps the best thing to do is rate it by comparison. Is it better than the first MI movie? Yeah, pretty much. It goes without saying that it’s way better than the second MI. But it’s not nearly as good as Bourne Identity though it’s pretty much on par with Bourne Supremacy.

You know, I think that’s a great way to rate a movie by placing it in a spectrum of similar movies. I’ll work on that list and add it to this blog soon.