Who Watches the Watchmen? David Chen.

First and foremost, let me put this out on the line: I am a bit of a geek. When I hear about a new superhero movie or comic/graphic novel adaptation coming to theaters, I HAVE to know more. What characters are they including? Who is playing whom? What will the storyline be? Etc. With that in mind, I went to one of my new favorite movie websites, /film, to find a review of the recently released film, Watchmen. The result: a lengthy, detailed, and yet spoiler-free review by David Chen praising the cinematic achievement of successfully bringing the celebrated graphic novel to the big screen.

I never read the graphic novel (though, after Chen's many references to it, now I think I might have to), but I did go to the midnight release of Watchmen at the Kearney Cinema 8. In retrospect, I'm not sure that was such a good idea. In his review, Chen mentions his second screening of Watchmen at the IMAX theater, saying that he actually didn't care for it because it made the movie's flaws too prominent. I would say the same for the midnight screening. When it is almost 3:00 in the morning, and the movie is STILL not over, you can't help but focus on all the things you didn't like.

I almost abandoned the review when I started scrolling down...and down...and down. But I decided to give it a shot. I found that, despite its length, I really enjoyed Chen's review. He brought up many good points about the cinematography, and even music playing in the background (which isn't usually something I find in movie reviews). However, since I haven't read the graphic novel, and because Chen makes soooo many references to it, I did feel like there was a lot of information I couldn't relate to or form an opinion on--and I don't like not having an opinion. I didn't agree with some of his observations on cast performance levels (I thought Malin Ackerman did a great job of keeping up with the men), but he provides more than ample reasoning for his opinions and stresses that they are just that--HIS personal opinions. Overall, his review gets two thumbs up from me.