Weirdly enough, all three of these movies can be reviewed with the following sentence: "If you've seen the trailer, you've seen the movie." But seeing as I'm actually trying to do this, I'll go into a bit more detail.Angels and Demons: I confess I didn't actually go to a theatre to watch this, and in fact barely listened to most of the dialogue while I watched in on my computer, but frankly I doubt that doing either would have made much of a difference. Much like "The Da Vinci Code," this movie took far too many liberties with it's original novel material. While I can't stand Dan Brown, and find it obnoxious that he writes himself into each of his books as the main, dashing, humbly brilliant and heroic protag, I also concede that his books are a fun read and have plots that do require you to pay attention while reading. That said, I hate that this movie felt it necessary to dumb down, quicken, and overall ruin some of the finer points of the book. The last 20 minutes especially, come to mind. Tom Hanks was fine as Langdon, though it is a rather pedestrian role for him. I will say that Ewan McGregor, though blatantly mis-cast, was fabulous as the Camerlengo, his monologue and last 15 minutes on screen are by far the best parts of the movie, even so, the novel Camerlengo moved me to tears a few times in the book, no such luck here. I would recommend the film more to those who haven't read the book, because as with Da Vinci, if you did read it, you'll just end up pissed off at the end of this film, as opposed to enlightened.
Terminator Salvation: I can't believe I'm going to say this, but Christian Bale was COMPLETELY wrong for John Connor. That said, and seeing that Connor is the crux of the movie, I found myself relying heavily upon the talents of Aussie Sam Worthington, who, aside from minor accent inflection mistakes, was simultaneously the best part of the movie and worst part of the plot. In Salvation, Marcus (Worthington), is introduced as "new" technology, the first of his kind, an infiltration model who later evolves into Arnold's Terminator. This makes no sense, seeing as Marcus allegedly became a guinea pig for the program whilst about to be executed, so, where did the body model for Arnold come from? Not only that, but how did they go from a terminator with a human heart and mind, to Arnold, who is metal everything, chip everything, no human whatsoever? Oh, and wasn't Arnold a T-100? NOT a T-800 as alleged in this film? And WHY do the machines hate us so much if we aren't really a threat to them? What are they really fighting for? What objective? And how the HELL is Resistance "Command" so stupid as to think that the key to destroying Skynet and achieving "salvation" is a "hidden signal" in all Skynet frequency directives and commands? I mean really. So, much like T-3, this movie does nothing for the advancement of the Skynet saga, and only leaves us with existential questions that have no answers. Go see it for the effects and Worthington if you are a fan of the series, but otherwise, skip it.
The Taking of Pelham 123: Travolta and Washington elevate this otherwise droll plot into something worth watching, however, acting-wise, Gandolfini steals a bit of the show with his jaded, nearly retired mayor of NYC. "I left my Rudy Guiliani suit at home," is a particularly favorite line of mine. Travolta is over-the-top as Ryder, saying mother-fucker far more times than it is warranted, and not being half the badass I expected his character to be from the trailers...but nonetheless passable. Plus I can't escape the irony of his prior role in "Swordfish," not appreciating that in Hollywood movies never show hostages getting killed. Utterly brilliant. If you haven't seen both movies, the last is lost on you, but fear not, it's not that important. Washington is moving, if not spectacular, and John Turturro is far less annoying than he was in Transformers. The plot isn't as intricate or as twist-ridden as some of Scott's capers, but it's most likely better than whatever your girlfriend wants to go see.
