I will address this movie in two parts.

  1. DREDD: It was fine! It’s a pretty taut — and phenomenally violent — action movie. One nice thing it does is that it sets up its situation, and then keeps the situation tense from there on out, with no recovery beats or anything, so it’s all one big tense fight for the whole movie, more or less. It’s not my favoritest movie ever, but it’s competently legit.

    As an SF movie, it’s… not really one? I mean, there’s some token worldbuilding in there, but the reality is, it’s a Die Hard-style movie where you’ve got a dude in a building and there are a bunch of bad guys, and he needs to beat them.

  2. 3D: So in the previews for the movie, they had some 3D trailers, including one for the Hobbit, and holy fuck was that bad. It is one of those “converted” 3D movies, where the characters are all flat against a background like a fucking Viewmaster. There is nothing stupider than that, and I believe this is a lot of what has given 3D a bad name. Those should be forbidden by law.

    BUT the actual movie was real two-camera 3D, and it was pretty solid. It has the problem of most good 3D, which is that when it works, you mostly don’t even notice it or think about it that much, so why should they bother going to the expense (and force you into the hassle of wearing glasses) for a part of the experience that seems like a little fillip. But anyway, if you’re not allergic to 3D, this is a movie that’s worth seeing in 3D. The Hobbit WILL NOT BE.