terminator salvation
Last night, I watched Terminator Salvation. The film wasn't bad, but in the context of the series, it was fairly weak. To be blunt, the recently canceled TV series was far superior in what it added to the cannon. There was almost no plot development in the film at all. They could have omitted the entire story line of this film, and nothing would have been missed. The special effects were decent, not spectacular (especially when considering how ground breaking they were in the first two films). The acting was fairly middling. For all the hoopla over Christian Bale, he wasn't even in that much of the film, and when he was, he basically phoned it in. I can only hope that the next film is a vast improvement, or the entire series is going to be lost.
Tonight we watched Adventureland. The movie was actually shot in Kennywood, which is where Denise & I worked the summer of 1996. It did touch on a lot of relatively accurate types of events that were common there at the time (angry/abusive customers, incompetent management, etc). The trailers for this film were incredibly misleading, suggesting that it was an 80s period comedy. Instead we ended up with an 80s drama, with some comedic elements. Now that alone wouldn't have been bad, but the plot was really thin and predictable. The only redeeming quality was the comedic elements which took place in the amusement park.