Watching Watchmen

I realize the last few posts have been mostly pictures of hot men - not that there's anything wrong with that, of course!

Anyway, I wanted to do a film review of Watchmen, which I saw at the Tysons Corner theater with Sean last Sunday, basically because it was cold and wet outside. Sean - bless his heart - sometimes wants to see movies that are... shall we say questionable. So we settled on Watchmen as a compromise. (and I know certain friends who are probably shouting now that I have no room to talk after dragging them to see David Lynch's Inland Empire).

So, be warned that this movie is around 3 hours long. For a movie to be worth me sitting in a theater that long, it had better be pretty damn good. And in my opinion, this movie was. I give it an A-. It loses points with me for poor editing (the movie did not need to spend 2 hours on pure backstory, thank-you). Yet, for the emphasis on seemingly pointless backstory, the vignettes of each of the superheroes are very entertaining.

In fact, overall, the entire movie is captivating is only for it's very offbeat style. This is NOT like any superhero action movie you've likely seen. And that a good thing. Bear in mind it's a very noir and violent movie, to the point of being gratuitous. But I love watching a movie with morally ambiguous characters rather than cookie-cutter "good" guys, and movies that don't have happily-ever-after endings. I'm not sure if American audiences can handle that, but judging from the ticket sales, I think people are watching it.