short, spoiler-ish movie reviews

•  Crash - Not the recent one, the David Cronenberg one about people who fetishize car accidents. James Spader is in it, so we had to watch. This is one completely skeezy movie, and one where I missed half the dialog because I couldn't hear it even though we turned it up really loud. It's hard to like this movie, but I don't think I'd call it bad. It is definitely completely ridiculous. Also, it includes James Spader doing another dude!
  
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - I liked the original movies. This one was half an hour too long, corny even by Indiana Jones standards, and overly referential to the previous movies. Nevertheless, Cate Blanchett was awesome as the Russian spy, and the part with the killer ants was appropriately disgusting. Shia LaBeouf (will he get a real name already) was okay in it, though occasionally irritating.
  
• Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - I think the Chronicles of Narnia series suffers from 1. the awesomeness of the Lord of the Rings movies, and 2. weaker stories in general. I read the Narnia series only recently, and they really don't hold up that well compared to Lord of the Rings. There's too many plot points that don't make sense - like, why are these kids so special? And doesn't it suck that the whole reason for their existence in Narnia is so they can learn some lessons to bring with them to the outside world? The CG could have been better, the acting was decent, and plotwise if you think about it, it doesn't really make sense. We also find out that the two oldest kids are not going back to Narnia, but it's a much better reason than the one in the book where Susan doesn't get to go back because she's discovered boys.
  
• College Road Trip - My niece wanted to see it. She has been raised on the Disney Channel; it is true. So she is used to this kind of "humor" and "emoting". Raven-Symone acts for about five seconds, but the rest of the time she's screeching and yelling all her lines. Martin Lawrence is so, so sad. The last part was even more stupid than I thought possible.
  
• The Grace Lee Project - Mark laughed his ass off when I told him about this. The director, one Grace Lee, sets out to find out who all the other Grace Lees are, and if they conform to the stereotypes of being "quiet", "soft-spoken", "gets good grades", "good Christian", "good girl", etc. And a lot of them do, but there's more to them than just that. There are a range of Grace Lees, from the Korean lesbian  to the hardcore Christian girl to an adopted woman who took in her friend and kids who were being abused. It's an amusing hour of ruminating on the Asian-American identity.
• Baby Mama - Mildly funny and predictable. The whole surrogacy plot resolution was such a cop-out and it just made me feel like the writers thought the whole thing was too "icky" to deal with in reality. Surprise great performances by Steve Martin and Sigourney Weaver, though. (Am I the only one who thinks she looks like the older version of Summer Glau?)