I’ve spent some serious time watching movies in the last couple of days, so I figured I’d fill you in.

24, Season Three: I spent the entirety of Monday, from 8:00a to Tuesday at 1:00a, watching the third season of 24, marathon style. My dad and Jenn also took part in the festivities and things went much like the last marathon (for season two) - lots of fun with lots of fattening food.

I thought the third season of 24 was good. Maybe not quite as good as the second season, but good nonetheless. I felt more connected to the characters in the second season, and while the third season had the same good writing and acting that I’ve come to expect, I felt there was just something missing. A couple of the characters really irritated me in the third season, while I wasn’t irritated by anyone in the second season. (I think they were supposed to be irritating, so the effect was right on.)

I still find it amazing that we got through supposedly 24 hours of real-time action in 17 hours. That means if you watch this thing on TV, you’re losing 29% of your time in commercials. That’s absolutely unacceptable, and for that reason alone it’s worth buying (or renting) the DVDs to watch it that way. My time is worth more than the networks would like to allow for.

One interesting item of note: There’s a considerable overlap of talent between 24 and La Femme Nikita. I liked both of those shows. Significant?

Do check out the third season of 24 if you haven’t already. You won’t be disappointed.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy: I’m a huge Will Ferrell fan. He was great on Saturday Night Live, I thought Elf was hilarious, and I even had a good time with A Night at the Roxbury, lame as it was. I anticipated good things when I saw the previews for Anchorman, which made me laugh out loud.

I am actually dumber for having watched Anchorman. Not only was the entire story generally without focus, the jokes were stupid and the characters were totally unmemorable. I read the reviews at Amazon on this and folks compared this favorably to his other movies, saying that if you liked Ferrell’s other work, you’ll like this. I disagree: I feel that Ferrell’s other work has been reasonably clever and funny; this is just garbage. It’s almost like the writers couldn’t figure out what would be funny, so they held a contest and took joke submissions, then pasted the random jokes into a storyboard (regardless of whether they made any sense) and started shooting.

Not only that, but they did the one unforgivable thing when it comes to movies: They showed really funny scenes in the preview that didn’t even make it to the final film.

Terrible, terrible, terrible. Don’t waste your time or your money.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse: This movie got panned by critics, and I see why: There’s really a very weak plot and the whole thing revolves around action and action alone. I say there’s a time and place for movies like that. I thought the first Resident Evil movie was not bad, implying that it wasn’t award-winningly good, but I didn’t necessarily feel my time was totally wasted. I left it entertained. The same is true here. Weak plot, nonexistant acting (though I do love Milla Jovovich, and have found a new affinity for Sienna Guillory)… but entertaining. I think there’s something to be said for that.

Not a masterful piece of moviemaking, and I definitely think they need to improve the quality of video-game-based movies (and movie-based video games), but it was worth the rental.