I've watched a couple of new movies in the last week or so, and it's been a pretty mixed bag.  I don't post about it all that often, but I'm a pretty serious moviephile, and so's my wife, so we see a lot of films. 

• Kill Bill (vol 1): I thought it was pretty good.  You can tell Tarantino worships the genre, and it fit well.  Vikki thought it was too gory, but I thought it was genre-appropriate, given what he was going for.  I think Uma is critically underappreciated since she tends to take off-beat roles.  Lucy Liu was great as the trash-talking ganster boss.
• Master and Commander: I was totally prepared not to like this film, but I was quite favorably surprised.  The role suited Crowe well, cinematography was very good.  Peter Weir has a great feel for composition.  I thought it had just the right level of realistic violence.  It conveyed the horror of combat without being gratuitous. 
• Van Helsing: yuck.  spit.  hack.  It sucked.  I knew it would be bad, but I didn't think it would be bad.  Jackman was totally underutilized.  The special effects were cool, but not enough so to carry the film past the wretched dialog and lack of coherent storyline.  I saw one review on the web that compared it to Battlefield Earth,and I don't think I'd go quite that far, but still, majorly lame.  All the supporting characters were overacting without being melodramatic (which would have been genre-appropriate), especially Frankenstein's monster.  What a ham.  Bah!  The werewolf effects were novel, but again, not cool enough.  Check out Dog Soldiers if you want a good werewolf movie.  The guy who plays Dracula could have been good if he'd stuck with Lugosi instead of occasionally lapsing into Oldman.
• The Last Samurai:  OK, there were totally no surprises here.  It's exactly what you'd expect.  Dances with Wolves, only set in Japan.  But it was well executed.  Good cinematography, decent enough acting, great artistic direction.  The sets and costumes were very well done, and pretty accurate.  I really liked the job they did on the Samurai's kimono.  Don't expect anything dazzling, but a good solid film.  I wish Cruise wouldn't keep taking the same role over and over again though.  He can actually act (witness Magnolia or Eyes Wide Shut). 

I'm looking forward to seen Troy this weekend, although I'm sure it's going to suck.  As both a movie and history buff, I can't really stay away.