Movie Madness Monday...on Wednesday

I've decided to dedicate Monday's to a movie review by yours truly. As a set up, I love 8 Mile, The Notebook, Christmas with the Kranks, Ghosttown, Gran Tarino and the Bridget Jones movies to name a few. So if you like those as well, we have similar taste. If not, you can read what I think and go the opposite direction. Seems like a win-win, but wanted you all to know where I stand on my movie watching. Today isn't Monday but I saw the movie on Monday so I still think it counts. We certainly can't have Movie Madness Wednesday. There is not enough alliteration there.

Moving on.

Monday night I saw Daybreakers, the newish vampire movie with Ethan Hawke. I give it a resounding 2 thumbs up. I thought it was a fantastic movie, although Matthew would give it a luke warm thumb up.

The movie is a little (well, a lot) graphic in nature so I certainly wouldn't recommend it to your weak stomached folks or children you don't want to witness heads being ripped off humans and blood spurting everywhere. But, if you can get past that whole thing, it's great.

I just finished the Twilight series, but have been disappointed in the movies, not only in how they have developed the relationships and cast the characters, but also in the portrayal of vampires. I felt there was a lot more they could have done. Not just putting some baby powder on their face and spiking up Edwards hair a ridiculous amount. Vampires are blood suckers, not douche bags with a lot of high hair. Daybreakers did a great job (at least I think so) of portraying vampires. They were real people with the need to drink blood. They had the golden eyes and slightly fangy teeth, but were not surreal in nature. You couldn't, at a distance, tell them apart from the humans.

And, they incorporated the blood sucking in so naturally. People ordering coffee with blood mixed in, instead of a fifth of a really nice vodka it was a fifth of pure human blood (top of the line), people sat in business meetings sipping on blood rather than a glass of water. And the blood looked so real. It was amazing. It was truly as if vampires ruled this Earth and we humans were mere pawns in their game of life, trying to remain blood filled rather than blood sucked. As a very non-science fiction person, I actually believe this world they created could happen.

Furthermore, they portrayed these vampires with human characteristics. The vampire who wanted society to remain vampire so he could become even more powerful and dominate the world. The science lacky who wanted nothing more than to give him that so he could reep his own benefit. The brother vampire who became that way because it was what he was good at and gave him something more to strive for, rather than living in the constant shadow of his genius brother. And the doctor vampire who was turned, not by his own choice, but by the desire of his brother who couldn't bear the thought of losing his brother one day. But the desire to be human was so longing that he dedicated his career in part to develop a blood substitute to spare other innocent humans, but more to find a cure so humans could once again walk without fear of their lives.

Yahoo users and critics give it a B-. Users gave Twilight a B+ so I ain't trusting their judgement. Whether you like it or not, the movie is a definite must-see.