Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

2 pipes out of 4

Pirates has returned with a bang! And that’s about it. Don’t get me wrong, it is better without Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley but the plot just seemed to be a quickly thrown together cluster fudge. No Pirates can top the original Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl but On Stranger Tides easily tops Pirates 2 and 3. With Knighltey and Bloom removed, the uneventful and bothersome love relationship where Bloom could not make up his mind whether he wanted his father or his wife. It opens the door for a new romantic dynamic with Jack and Angelica. The story follows Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) as he meets Angelica (Penelope Cruz), a former flame, who is impersonating him to recruit a crew. He ends up shanghaied on Blackbeard’s ship on his way to the fountain of youth. While on the way they must gather several items, a mermaid’s tear and two chalices. Angelica saves a missionaries life in an attempt to save the soul of Blackbeard. Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) also is after the fountain of youth in the name of the English Crown to keep it away from the Spanish which causes some interesting encounters between the two groups along the way. There are a couple of plot holes in the film that can be pointed out, such as when the missionary is injured and asks for the mermaid to kiss him in order to save him, she does so but then plunges him into the depths of the sea and we never see if he is saved or not but other than the small amount you can point out, the plot just seems to go on and on and have only a very general destination with random twists and additions. It is also quite predictable all the way through for instance when Blackbeard is prophesized to die by the hands of a one legged man, it is quite obvious who that man is. It was still an okay movie which can derive only from the fact that Johnny Depp carried it and he even seemed uninterested and blasé. Comedy returns like in the original as well but this time it is mostly derived from the sexual tension between Jack and Angelica. Another issue that I had with On Stranger Tides is that throughout the film Jack and his first mate Gibbs continually reference events and places that they had done and been in the past to explain how they did something. This allowed a lot of speculation on how they managed to perform some unimaginable feats. I also would like to know, if Blackbeard can control his entire ship with his magical sword, why does he even need a crew that can cause a mutiny? Just some food for thought. All in all I was let down by Pirates 4 but would still watch it over Dead Man’s Chest any day of the week.

All The Pretty Horses

1 pipes out of 4

This movie is just a random series of events with a very general plot of two boys trying to find a better life only to find their way back home. The story follows John Grady Cole (Matt Damon) and Lacy Rawlins (Henry Thomas) as set off in search for better ranches in Mexico as ranching in the U.S. is going down in the 1940’s. They run into a boy named Jimmy Blevins (Lucas Black) who is also looking into the better life of ranching. Once they get a job on a Ranch Cole falls in love with the Rancher’s Daughter (Penelope Cruz) and Blevins makes a huge mistake. This movie jumps from scene to scene with little explanation about what is happening. Case in point, Lacy Rawlins is stabbed repeatedly in prison and you are made to believe that he is dead until John Cole is stabbed and then released from prison and we find Rawlins waiting for him on the outside with no explanation on how he lived and how they got out. It is explained how they got out of prison later on in the movie but it is never explained how Rawlins lived other than they pumped a liter of Mexican blood into him. All The Pretty Horses is also an incredibly depressing movie with a depressing but deep message and that message is the only reason that I can see Matt Damon signed on to this Billy Bob Thorton directed atrocity. That message is human’s are cruel to each other, as demonstrated by the scene where a Mexican police captain drags Blevins out into the desert and shoots him even after the person who paid to kill Blevins himself refuses. This is just a depressing movie with no fantastic acting or fight scenes to rationalize the brutality.