Summer is almost over. I want my blockbuster!

So I'm still waiting to see a summer blockbuster that's better than just OK. It could happen, but I'm not holding my breath.

This is the list of $100M+ films being released in the UK in the next month.
Miam Vice - $135M
...er, I guess summer must be almost over.

And some highlights in the sub $10M category
A Scanner Darkly - $8.5M
Clerks II - $5M

I'm hoping something blows me away soon, after all, I don't want to become disillusioned with the movie industry, because, well, I have no where else to go. I guess I could give a weekly 5 star review of the latest Simpsons episode, but then hopefully I'm here to tell you something you don't already know.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Director: Gore Verbinski
Starring: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Kiera Knightley, Bill Nighy
Production Budget: US$225M
Running Time: 150 min
Extraneous Running Time: 50 min

The biggest hit of the Northern Hemisphere summer, DMC reunites pretty much all of the characters from the previous film, The Curse of the Black Pearl, and some.

The story goes: Will Turner (Bloom "what I lack in personality I make up for in prettiness") is threatened with the execution of himself and his soon to be wife Elizabeth Swann (Knightley "when are people going to realise that I'm not that attractive and am a bit annoying, really") unless he gets Captain Jack Sparrow's (Depp "woohoo, this is fun, and I'm getting paid a shitload of money") magic compass for the new head of the East India Company. Not everything goes to plan (duh?) and Turner ends up getting caught up in Captain Jack's latest adventure, trying to escape the dreaded Davy Jones (Nighy who is always good in a grumpy kind of way, although surely it would have been more appropriate to use the real Davy Jones), who has come to claim Jack's soul for eternity, which is about how long the movie goes for.

The Dead Man's Chest title turns out to be quite clever, given that it refers to the chest or locker that our heroes must find to defeat Davy Jones, but it also alludes to the object that resides therein. Hmmm...

What follows is a mash of action, comedy and drama. Most of the way too long running time is spent either in huge action set-pieces (some are over-the-top great, especially early on, and some are over-the-top confusing, especially later on) or introducing or re-introducing a multitude of semi-major characters. They manage to squeeze in a story, although it doesn't make a lot of sense, and that doesn't seem to matter. Its pretty easy to get the gist of it. One gripe I have is that there is no sense of time or distance between locations, leaving me wishing for a simple map like that used so effectively in Indiana Jones. After all, it is a pirate movie, a map would make sense.

DMC is a mostly enjoyable movie. It's fun to watch Johnny Depp hamming it up, and the locations are stunning, but it's too long. Some movies genuinely need a long running time because there is so much story to get through, but here the story is very light, and it's not like they had a huge novel that they had to remain faithful to, such as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. I just think they had such a massive budget, that the producers must have kept saying things like "Uh, Gore, we've still got $80 million left, better make the Cracken attack the ship again, and uh, that scene where three men are sword fighting on a huge waterwheel, it looks great on the trailer, make it twice as long will you, and why not have it go crashing through the jungle. We've paid for this location, so we're bloody well going to trash it. Thanks".

If you've seen Star Trek 2 or The Empire Strikes Back then I guess I just gave away the 'Cliffhanger' ending... and the plot of the next movie in the trilogy. I think it's going to be called The Return of Barbossa's Search for Sparrow.

$$1/2