Saw two movies this weekend: Brokeback Mountain and Underworld Evolution. One was fantastic, the other a great, though somewhat expected, disappointment - in that order.
I'm still processing Brokeback. I honestly don't know what to say about it yet. My gut reaction to it has been pretty positive on the whole. Beautifully shot and incredibly well acted. Heath Ledger's acting has developed tremendously since the days of "Ten Things I Hate About You." Though I have to wonder if it just took getting the right role to bring him out. The subtlety with which he plays his part; it's so restrained and powerful. The story is compelling regardless of your opinion on the morality of the relationship it's built around. With the recent trend in film towards political agenda (Syriana, The Constant Gardner, Lord of War, etc.) I expected this film to be more heavy-handed, to be full of social commentary. But as a story it felt very self-sufficient. The tension created by the forbidden love between Jack and Ennis was closer to the tension in a Romeo and Juliet (or any other good story of love denied) than what you find in an "Angels in America" or "Philadelphia" (or other films focusing on the trials of gays in our culture). I don't know that I could recommend it to everyone, but it's certainly challenging and beautiful to watch.
Underworld Evolution on the other hand was totally disappointing. I'll admit right off that I'm a sucker for a vampire flick. I'll see just about anything that comes out. And the first Underworld was really good. It had style and took advantage of the system that dealing with vampires creates (immortality, stakes through the hearth, that whole bit). But the sequel falls prey to what I call the Matrix Fallacy. You take a perfectly good idea and make a great film about it (The Matrix). Then in the sequel, you toss out what everyone loved in the first film (superpowers that are only possible inside the matrix) and instead make an unnecessarily long movie about a bunch of badasses having fights between themselves. Almost nothing in Evolution has anything to do with vampires or werewolves. It's all just a bunch of super strong characters fighting in dark rooms. Oh, a couple of comletely gratuitous sex scenes. Josiah said it best as we walked out: "Well that was a complete waste of two hours of my life."