Ah, movie night. I love it when I get a day to myself. I took in two movies on Sunday. One was, by far, better than the other, so we'll start with the shitfest that was:
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is a movie about Chun-Li and... you know what? I'm not even going to bother. This movie was BAD in every way possible. The writing was horrible, the acting was just awful, casting was whacked. I love it when movies film on location and, in this case, the movie was filmed in Thailand but that couldn't even save it. SF fans ought to be crying FOUL at this bad perversion of established SF story. Aside from the obvious 'Chun-Li is supposed to be Chinese', there are so many other odd things about the story that I gave up caring. Bison spoke with an Irish accent, despite being orphaned in Thailand when he was a baby and, apparenly, Charlie Nash had a falling out with his shower because he seriously looked like a greaseball (note to Chris Klein: not bathing doesn't make you a gritty tough guy, it just makes you smell funny). Even if you changed the names of the characters and did away with the SF name, this movie would have still sucked. Honestly, do yourself a favor: Get SF4, play through the arcade mode a couple of times, scream out random cheesey movie lines and BAM! You've outdone the new SF movie. For all of its campy awfulness, I FAR prefer the Jean-Claude SF movie from the 90s.
On the other side of the movie spectrum is
Revolutionary Road, the story of a young married couple (nailed by Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio) in the 1950s who are basically falling apart at the seams. The movie examines a lot of conventions of the period; marriage, children, male and female roles in society, almost nothing is safe (I say almost nothing because religion isn't really talked about). The supporting cast is, for once, more than strong enough to prop up the main characters; Michael Shannon turned in an amazing performance as the whack job John and Kathy Bates is just, well... Kathy Bates. Even with their performances, though, the strength of the movie comes from Winslet and DiCaprio. Seriously, I was worried about seeing the two of them together and having flashbacks of Titanic but I had nothing of the sort. I was amazed by how well this movie sucked me in and held on to me. And I will admit it: I cried at the end. Not a couple of tears, either. I cried hard. Leonardo DiCaprio made me cry. This movie was absolutely beautiful and I highly recommend it.