Just the Ticket #51: The Department of Holmes-land Security
Old meets new in today's review, with a brilliant deduction perfected in grade two.
The year is 1891, twenty-three years before World War I was incited by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ("I say don't you know/you say you don't know/I want you/to take me out"), and in a delicious blend of historical fiction and modern day terrorist plots, Professor James Moriarty (who made his unseen presence known at the end of 2009's Holmes, played by Resident Evil: Apocalypse's Jared Harris--my Resident Evil reviews can be read here) is orchestrating a fast-forward on the 1914-1918 conflict. Returning to stop him are Robert Downey, Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson. Rachel McAdams briefly reprises her role as Holmes' love interest, but is killed off early in the film (a bad idea, considering she was featured in the trailer so prominently).
Like the series' freshman film, A Game of Shadows is chock full of all manner of precognitively narrated hand-to-hand combat, flashbacks of a too-quickly explanatory nature, crash courses in the awesomeness of physics, machine-gun-rapid verbal sparring, and stagedly perfect gunfights that are both enhanced and diminished by their waltz-meets-J-Ho quick-quick-slo-mo pacing (perhaps an excuse to "sneak" some 3D effects into the film via slowly ejected shell casings, splintered wood on the fly, and soforth).
In fact, A Game of Shadows is so full of visuals that the intelligence brought to Holmes 2 by Moriarty's grand scheme, and all its details for that matter, are rendered irrelevant. Like Holmes thwarting Moriarty at every turn, Hollywood has used this particular Game to thwart its audience's efforts to think by so bludgeoning our eyeballs that we wish to forget there was anything to think about.
C+
Another week of movie rental uncertainty is afoot this coming week. Stay tuned and be surprised.
That's elementary, my dear Watson. So what's on?
A dance most macabre, best served with corn that's popped, not eaten from the cob.
It's Sherlock Holmes in A Game of Shadows, where he and Moriarty finally come to blows
that it's in need of some critical reduction.
Like the series' freshman film, A Game of Shadows is chock full of all manner of precognitively narrated hand-to-hand combat, flashbacks of a too-quickly explanatory nature, crash courses in the awesomeness of physics, machine-gun-rapid verbal sparring, and stagedly perfect gunfights that are both enhanced and diminished by their waltz-meets-J-Ho quick-quick-slo-mo pacing (perhaps an excuse to "sneak" some 3D effects into the film via slowly ejected shell casings, splintered wood on the fly, and soforth).
In fact, A Game of Shadows is so full of visuals that the intelligence brought to Holmes 2 by Moriarty's grand scheme, and all its details for that matter, are rendered irrelevant. Like Holmes thwarting Moriarty at every turn, Hollywood has used this particular Game to thwart its audience's efforts to think by so bludgeoning our eyeballs that we wish to forget there was anything to think about.
C+
Another week of movie rental uncertainty is afoot this coming week. Stay tuned and be surprised.
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