Wednesday

Apocalypto is, I have to admit, an entertaining movie. I had been putting off going to see it, and only saw it this week because I've seen virtually everything else. The title is terrible, and the trailers (without any dialogue) made the whole thing seem like a bizarre dumb show. All the promotional material seemed to emphasise the aspects of the film that aren't interesting, which is strange, because this movie does have a lot that is very interesting. I don't want to spoil too much, because I knew very little about this when I went to see it and enjoyed it a lot. Perhaps that's the best way to do it. There are a great many surprises and twists, tension, drama, and exciting action sequences. The dialogue is a mix between being very stilted and then suddenly contemporary colloquial. Nevertheless, this was good fun throughout. Definitely a 'movie' -although it does have a half-serious message about the decadence of civilisations and their inevitable downfall, with perhaps a slight nod towards America - and a pretty good one at that (although I was a bit annoyed at the 'mythology' aspect, which undermined the interesting objective perspective, and was never fully explained). Because I'm entirely influenced by names and reputations, I probably would've enjoyed this even more if it wasn't called Mel Gibson's Apocalypto.