I've never written a movie review before. And I may well never write another. But I saw "Eagle Eye" at one of those pre-screenings on Wednesday night and as such I saw it before most everyone else so I thought I'd take a minute here to let you know what I thought about it in the hopes it might be informative to you.

Now, my goal here isn't to be objective or to evaluate the movie on any particular set of criteria--I'm simply going to tell you my thoughts. Note that I cannot be held responsible for any irreparable damage this may cause. ;P

Here's the thing about this movie: the villain is a computer. Specifically, the antagonist is a computer that has become too smart for its own good and is now trying to do things that the humans in the movie consider to be nefarious. These include wearing white shoes after Labor Day, swimming immediately after eating, and killing people. Silly computer--tricks are for kids! Okay, so the computer doesn't have feet on which to wear shoes and it doesn't appear to have any interest in either eating or swimming, but it sure ain't kidding around on that whole killing people thing!

Let me say this: I like Terminator as much as the next guy. But that's set way in the future. And that machine at least acts like a dude. The computer in Eagle Eye, on the other hand, isn't all that different from the computers we're all used to, only except this one is ginormous, has these befuddling infrared innards which Hollywood apparently thinks will impress people with their complexity, and oh yeah--is trying to kill people (and I don't want to hear about how your computer seems to be trying to ruin your life by crashing at all the wrong times--it's not the same thing). The computer in Eagle Eye isn't at all like a dude--it does talk, but it has no face, no body, and it can't move around under its own power. Actually, it does have a bit of a thing for car chases so maybe it's a little like a dude after all.

So anyway, much as I like Terminator, I don't like movies set in the present day where the main difference between our actual world and the world depicted in the movie is that in the movie there's a crazed computer bent on destruction. Eh, I suppose that if the crazed computer were some minor plot line, I could hang with it if the rest of the movie were interesting, but when the crazed computer is core the entire story of the movie, I'm pretty much done. Because I was with my girlfriend and I simply don't like giving up on things, I hung in there with Eagle Eye for a bit after it became clear that the villain was a computer. But the film is so predictable that there wasn't anything even interesting to keep my attention, and so it got to the point where I just couldn't wait for it to end. To the film's credit, it at least didn't drag things out.

If you like movies where the antagonist is a computer, have at it. But if you're like me and such movies aren't your thing, skip this one. And remember, computers don't kill people, people kill people. Or something.

I find myself regularly surprised at some of the downright confounding marketing decisions I see made out there. Now, I'm a detail-oriented person so I sometimes catch things that most people wouldn't, but some of these things are glaring. Everyone makes mistakes, but when it's something like a TV commercial, I would think that there would be multiple content reviewers to prevent those mistakes from making it out into the wild. Yet today, I heard this in a commercial:

Don't shop around, call [offending company] first.

So much for content reviewers! Maybe it's just me, but the first thing I thought was "why are they telling me not to shop around?" Well, actually the first thing I thought was how arrogant it is that they would presume to tell me what to do, but once I moved past that I was left with the aforementioned question, to which I could only conclude that they have something to hide. Now, maybe they do have something to hide and maybe they don't--it doesn't really matter because at this point they have put the seed of doubt in my mind and I don't trust them. And that's what I call Bad Marketing.

Are you one of those people who does some of his/her best thinking in the shower? I am. And for longer than I can remember, every now and then, I've had a thought to which my response was "hey--I need to put up a blog so I can post about that." Today's thought? "I have a blog now--I can post that!" Of course, now I can't remember what any of those other thoughts were. ;)