It rained for most of the weekend, so I stayed inside and watched a bunch of movies.

Underworld :: pretty good flick, very stylish, Kate Beckinsale looked hot. The ending was rather ho-hum tho, and the final creature effect amounted to turning the guy's skin green. After some pretty impressive werewolf transformations, the man with the green skin was a bit of a let down.

Ginger Snaps: Unleashed :: the first sequel to Ginger Snaps, the second "sequel" being a prequel, Ginger Snaps Back. This was a fairly decent movie, not quite as good as the original, but still not bad. The little girl who plays Ghost really stole the show and the movie takes an interesting turn near the end. It's playing on Movie Central this month and I might watch it again just to see if I missed anything. The first movie had a lot of metaphors about female sexuality during puberty, not sure what they were getting at with this one.

Lost in Translation :: an apt title. You could very easily get lost watching this movie as there ain't much of a plot. Nothing happens. The interactions between Charlotte and Bob are fairly interesting, but they don't exactly have deep conversations, it's mostly them looking longingly into each other's eyes, thinking "if only we weren't married to other people" and "I'm a young, hot chick and you're an ugly, old loser, this might not work". It wasn't that bad of a movie, but you could watch the first 15 minutes and the last 15 minutes and not miss terribly much in between.

I also finished watching my season one box set of the X-Files. When the series was playing on TV, I never got to watch it on a regular basis, just a show here and there. So it was nice to get to sit down and watch them in order, from the begining, with no commercial interruptions. The first few episodes weren't that good and I was a little unsure if this box set was such a good buy, even at less than half it's regular price. You could tell they were operating on a pretty meagre budget, the acting wasn't great and the stories weren't terribly gripping. But then you hit "Fallen Angel" and everything begins to fall in place. "Eve" was a great episode, very creepy. "Beyond the Sea" was probably my favourite of the set, great acting by Brad Dourif and a cool story. Sculley actually got some character development. "Squeeze" and "Tooms" were two good, interconnected episodes. "Conduit" had its moments. And the finale, "The Erlenmeyer Flask", was pretty damn cool, felt a lot more like a movie than just a TV show ep. I'm pretty happy with the set, and I would like to collect the rest eventually. But they sure as hell better drop the price, most sets go for around $50 nowadays, not the $120 they're asking for these sets.

After I finished the X-files, I moved on to 24. Never watched any of this when it was on TV, it just seemed like the kind of show you had to follow from the begining to 'get it'. And at $28, the price of a lot of 2 hour movies on DVD, you get 24 hours of stuff. [or less, I think the ep's are 40 minutes or so each] But all that 'stuff' wouldn't be much of a deal if the show wasn't any good. The first thing that struck me when I fired this one up is how good looking it is, they actually spent money on this and it shows. And it's letterboxed, woohoo. The story is well done, they keep the tension up almost all the time, switching between a bunch of interconnected stories [6?] to keep you interested. I've watched 5 ep's so far and I'm hooked. They end each episode with a bit of a cliffhanger though, and I wonder how they can keep that up over 24 episodes without that gimmick wearing thin. I ain't complaining, so far they've been able to pull it off. There are some slight plot holes, but considering how good this show is I'm willing to overlook them. For $28, this was a steal and I'm quite happy with my purchase. :)