We've all walked out of the movie theater, shaking our heads, stunned at the insane pile of crap we just sat through. On this blog we count the many ways Hollywood thinks you're a mouth-breathing moron, a hormonally-addled 12-year old boy, a right-wing whackjob, or a religious nutcase . . . and makes you pay for the privilege. Here, we talk back to the screen.

Angels and Demons: Falling from Grace

Somewhat better than The DaVinci Code, the filmmakers managed to take another Dan Brown anti-Catholic screed and actually ratchet back from the howling bigotry of the first entry in the series.

In addition, the ending is far superior to the book, refusing to deny the physics of falling objects (a guy falling earthward from a helicopter hits 32 feet/second pretty quickly and cannot be saved by using his suitcoat as a parachute, even in a Hollywood movie),

All in all, though, Hanks sleepwalks through this movie as he walks through scenes spitting out exposition. Lots of running around Rome does not make an exciting movie.

Of course, this is a murder mystery, but why, in the name of all that is holy, must the antagonist be the Pope's right-hand man? Isn't that the most supremely obvious choice of evildoers? I'm surprised he wasn't carrying a baby around the whole time, planning to kill it and make cookies from the blood. Dan Brown really has a chip on his shoulder about believers in general and Catholics in particular, and one has to wonder when and if that well will ever run dry for this hack--his toolkit is indeed shallow and hackneyed.

As I've said elsewhere, if the movies really wanted to make the reveal of the antagonist a surprise, they'd pick the guy our guts tell us did it but our politically-correct brains resist.

Maybe Ron Howard will redeem his anti-western religion bias in his next film and make The Mohammed Murderers.
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