Reporter's Notebook: The many question marks of "The Great Wall" — Roxana Hadadi

I take a lot of notes during movies, sometimes scribbling down so much that I fear I'm actually missing what's onscreen while frantically trying to capture it all. It's a burden, I know.

But every so often there's a movie that inspires such frenzy in my reporter's notebook that I have to go back over my pages and re-read my initial impressions just to capture the absurdity of it all. Case in point: The Great Wall.

*Only Matt Damon's face gets to be in the poster because America.*

For fairness's sake, I will admit that I kind of liked The Great Wall! I gave it a somewhat positive review in Chesapeake Family today, and the reality is that it's stunningly beautiful and patently ridiculous, and I wish Matt Damon weren't in it. He legitimately serves no purpose ... and some excerpts from my reporter's notebook may capture why.

Here they are: some snippets from my four pages of notes for The Great Wall. All exclamation points, question marks, underlines, misspellings, and other very-hyped reactions are what actually went into my notes while watching the movie that gave us such gorgeous imagery -- fire lanterns floating through the sky; color-coordinated warriors running down the wall to fight the monsters -- and yet also limply served up Matt Damon's very-sad-looking manbun.

Some of this stuff makes very little sense out of context, but it's also so weird that it could be like a strange, stream-of-consciousness poem you didn't know you needed that takes you through my feelings as the narrative progressed and Damon felt more and more superfluous. And if you want more coherent thoughts, check out my review.

Matt Damon is a hairy bandit?