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5,032 | [
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] | 528 | 648 | I went to see this because of snipes / statham, but honestly, Chaos is terrible. This movie has absolutely nothing going for it - it should not have been made.<br /><br />Don't read this review if you don't want to read spoilers, cause I'm going to address a lot of plot-holes here.<br /><br />First of all - the opening scene. It's the great big event that made the two semi-lead characters (Statham and Snipes) turn crooked. But it's boring and mundane. Only at the very end we get to see what really happened and by the time you won't care anymore. Also - this whole event, where one bad guy and his hostage get killed is hardly big enough news to fill hundreds of newspaper articles, as referred to in the movie.<br /><br />Then the bank job - it doesn't get off the ground for any second. The bank robber makes some un-needed references to chaos theory (which has NOTHING to do with the whole story, by the way). The way Statham gets summoned is very 'Die Hard With a Vengeance', but more boring. Then the things that happen in the bank are strange and pointless. -What's with the safety deposit box. There seems to be some plot unfolding there, but then, it doesn't. -Why go through the trouble of stringing up two people, when it leads to nothing? It involves a lot of preparation and it's used for nothing at all! -Why doesn't the SWAT leader listen to the officer in charge when he tells them to stand down?<br /><br />And this is only the first 10 minutes. It keeps getting worse and worse. <br /><br />-The whole romantic / love interest story (with the 'he wasn't just a better cop, he was a better man' remark to finish it of) is painful to watch. It's just pointless -Why would Statham's character point out the change in camera position in the footage reviewed from the bank. This essentially leads to finding the 'virus' that will get him all the money. -Why go through the trouble of forging some guys signature and killing him, but then NOT kill the guy that can identify you.<br /><br />I could go on for ages (really), but it's like this movie is... pointless. The whole script is a mess. The 'smart' references to chaos theory are really laughable and quite pathetic. The plot 'twists' can be seen from miles away and the lead characters seem to be making mistakes all the time. It is really painful to watch a movie like this, where the audience is taken for granted as dumb popcorn crunching people, of which the director hopes they won't see all the plot holes and the over-all ridiculous script. The 'explanation scene' at the end only adds to insult. It is really, really not a good movie. In any way.<br /><br />People who come to see an action film don't get what they come for. People who come to see a cop-buddy movie don't get it. People who come to see a smart thriller don't get that. In essence, everyone gets the same - a huge disappointment and a waste of time and money. Do yourself a favor and skip this one. | 0 |
5,054 | [
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] | 488 | 624 | Sorry for any spoilers that this contains. But if you want to read on anyway: I really wonder why so many people are so high on Kevin Williamson. Let's just take a quick look at his work as a screenwriter, shall we? There's Scream 1 and 2 (plus the story for the next one), which I think are pretty funny but very overrated. Besides, by making Scream into a franchise, it ceased to become a parody of horror movies and simply became another one. Then there's I Know What You Did Last Summer, which is essentially the same movie again. He co-wrote Halloween: H20, but even he had the sense not to take credit for what he did on that monstrosity. Then comes The Faculty, which I can only say was god-awful. (Lots of fun to make fun of, though). Don't even get me started on the ridiculous, soap-operatic Dawson's Creek, I could rail about how bad that is for hours. So then we get to Teaching Mrs. Tingle. First of all, there are tons of little implausibilities in this one. For example: in most high schools that I know of, the valedictorian is NOT the only one who gets to go to college! This idea that Katie Holmes's character would never go anywhere unless she was valedictorian was absurd. Haven't you ever heard of financial assistance, damn it!? Also, I don't think you get expelled from high school or don't get into college because of cheating on one test. There are a bunch of other ones, but I'll skip to the big one now. The ending really bothered me: they committed a crime, but it was ok because the teacher was a bitch. Great. Do you know how many of my teachers I could kidnap based on that logic? I'm sure the police never took any statements to find out the whole story, either. That sure wouldn't be necessary. Helen Mirren was good, she added some nice flair to a character who (as a previous commenter noted) had NO reason for anything she did. And has anyone else noticed that Katie Holmes absolutely can't act? Her self-righteousness became incredibly annoying. "You wanted me to fail. Blah blah blah." Her last two scenes with Mrs. Tingle were the worst. The only reason I don't regret losing $8.25 on this disaster is because she got beaten up a bit. No, wait, I do regret losing the money: it wasn't real, and she survived. Mr. Williamson, if you're reading this, you've made the same movie (some violence and/or scary stuff offset by wise-ass kids who make sarcastic jokes and references to other movies) just a FEW too many times now (I count 6 so for, not including Scream 3 and whatever follows it), and I would really appreciate it if you would stop. Otherwise, I might just have to kidnap you and threaten YOU with a crossbow. Ok? :-) | 0 |
5,055 | [
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] | 477 | 608 | History teacher Mrs Tingle seems to have it in for student Leigh Ann Watson, who has her heart on achieving a writing school scholarship. She receives another low grade from Tingle, which doesn't help. When one of her classmates Luke steals the paper of the final history exams and pops it in her bag, Mrs. Tingle finds it sticking out. She threatens the three that she will go to the principal about it, but he's not available. So before she reports it the next morning. Leigh, her friend Jo Lynn and Scott head to her place that night and try to convince her not tell the principal. However due to Tingle's stubbornness, that find themselves reverting to drastic measures to stop this getting out.<br /><br />Wasn't fan of it when I first saw it, and after another viewing, I'm still not one. Writer Kevin Williamson was on a roll after penning the successful contemporary teen horror films; 'Scream (1996)', 'I Know What You did Last Summer (1997)', 'Scream 2 (1997)' and 'The Faculty (1998)'. He was riding the success (also not to forget the TV show 'Dawson's Creek), but this project would be the final bump. The difference there, compared with this entry was other then writing the screenplay, he was also making his debut in directing. The strange thing though, was that I found his direction to be competently done, but material he stormed up to flavourless and tired. It seemed to get caught in playing both a black comedy and straight-out thriller, without making it gel. The script is cluttered with quick-wit, on-going gags, trivial stretches and gimmicky references towards other films, but the problem is that it's too watered-down with so many contrived developments and sappy moral currents disrupting the flow. The fractured script had to be more strong and potent, since it's a small-scale production that feels like you're watching a stage show because of its mostly confined sets. It tries to play mind games with the characters, but these moments are there to only serve the story's poor progression into a puddle of stupidity and senselessness. The film's ending takes the cake. Williamson's polished direction is sound, but more so in a pedestrian way and therefore it lacks suspense and the pacing even with its taut surroundings can really plod on. You eventually feel it after the halfway mark, and it shows up how minor the story is. The performances are tolerable enough, although if it weren't for Helen Mirren's classy, icy portrayal of manipulative prowess as Mrs. Tingle and a buoyant Marisa Coughlan, we would have been stuck watching a vapid goody-to-shoes Katie Holmes. Barry Watson is modest in his slacker part and Molly Ringwald has a lesser role. The soundtrack packs enough energy, but I found it terribly overwrought and shapeless in its choices.<br /><br />Watchable, but mechanical all round. | 0 |
5,074 | [
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] | 495 | 639 | From the epicenter of the cultural globe, four working class teenagers attempted to change the world through music and fashion. It was the final attempt to do so last century, and they failed. Before the dust had cleared, band manager and SEX shop proprietor Malcolm McLaren spent the money The Sex Pistols had earned to make a "mockumentary" about his own role in their success. The film was called The Great Rock 'n Roll Swindle (take the hint) and consists of very little footage of The Sex Pistols actually playing music, and quite a lot of footage of McLaren effectively calling the audience idiots.<br /><br />Cod-surrealist nonsense in which guitarist Steve Jones is a detective on McLaren's tail, soon dissolves so he and drummer Paul Cook can jet off to Rio and spend time with "great train robber" Ronnie Biggs. Ready yourself for the spectacle of three very unappealing men dancing naked to a hideous irony-free version of "Belsen was a Gas" (a song about killing Jews for gold in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp), and another song sung in Ronnie's tone deaf whine which includes the lyrics "God save Myra Hindley, God save Ian Brady" (lyrics that Johnny Rotten would have considered distasteful). The Sid Vicious scenes are few and idiotic. Jumping out of bed in a thong with a swastika over the testicles to sing some bad boy biker song from the '50s. Playing into to the "Punk's a joke" theme of the movie, in an attempt to turn Sid into James Dean. I'm surprised McLaren doesn't take credit for Siddy's death too. The redeeming scenes are those of Sid in Paris and the infamous performance of My Way. The punk rock zeitgeist right there. Mocking an adoring audience before shooting them all. No need for an entire film, just watch that clip on YouTube.<br /><br />From Julien Temple's far superior (and more enjoyable) 2001 documentary followup, The Filth and the Fury, we were given a more balanced/honest view of what transpired in '78. But there were also a number of scenes that I would have liked to have seen in Swindle (as Fury was basically a reediting of the same material). One was an animated Sid complete with Sid's voice acting; "You f*cken betta wat'ch out, alright, or I'll slice you open" - a still of which appeared on the cover of the Something Else 7 inch - a snippet was shown in Fury, but I don't know what context that originally appeared. Was it in original prints, but removed after Sid's death? Was there more? Fury also shed light on the film Who Killed Bambi, which would have been the mock Hard Day's Night movie McLaren was originally intending to make. It starred Sting(!) as a member of a gay New Romantics group, and looked a damn sight more entertaining than Swindle.<br /><br />Sod Swindle, t'is a swindle. If you must, rent The Filth and The Fury and revel in music's failure as a world changing polemic. | 0 |
5,087 | [
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] | 443 | 600 | May or may not contain spoilers. <br /><br />Inuyasha is not a good anime. It's actually very overrated. Why? There's absolutely no story line, no plot, and the show just drags on... and on... and on... That's because there are more side stories and fillers than episodes that make the plot progress. And the fillers are just the same stories being repeated over and over again. The same episodes seem to go with the same plot: Kagome sensing a jewel shard, a worm/slime/tentacle demon thing pops up, Inuyasha says "Wind-Scar", "Iron Reaver Soul Stealer", etc. and kills the demon, they get the jewel shard, and then we just repeat this scene 160 or more times.<br /><br />Besides the repeating of episodes, there's the repeating of comedic devices, and they're not funny anymore. Wait, they never were. Sexual harassment is NOT funny. Viz rated the series Older Teens, 16+. I have no idea why they rated it that. There's nothing bad about it except for the so-called funny sexual harassment, which is kind of suggestive, and that could get you arrested these days.<br /><br />Now, this is how we know Inuyasha is overrated. The videogames. They all sucked. Especially the Mask game. I played that at my friend's house. It wasn't anything interesting. The game was slow, boring, and it had Nintendo 64 like graphics. In a magazine, it got a rating of 4/10, saying "...this role-playing game is slower than milkshake moving up a cocktail straw." Then, there's all these stupid Inuyasha toys, action figures, trading cards, stickers, and coloring books. COLORING BOOKS! We thought Inuyasha was 16+! Maybe not... But after being a member of Inuyasha groups on MSN, about half the people on there were 10 to 13. I guess Inuyasha is a little kid anime after all. (I think that just a small bit of editing done to this show, it could be shown on Toonami.) There are over 40 manga volumes. I can only help but wonder how many miles of forest that have been cut down to make them. Sad...<br /><br />Then there's the music. The music is so annoying. We hear the same 5 songs every episode. After 10 episodes, the music gets really annoying. In other anime, they have music to fit the mood and we don't hear some songs very often. There are about 15 different Inuyasha soundtracks. Don't waste your money on that garbage!<br /><br />And how do you think I know all this? Because I used to be a fan of Inuyasha. I feel ashamed of myself. I'd rather watch Kim Possible or Pokemon instead. Sadly, those two shows have more romance between the two main protagonists than Inuyasha will ever have... | 0 |
5,092 | [
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] | 584 | 664 | This film is totally unbelievable. The only way a girl would perform this act on a dog is if she had serious mental health issues or had a long history of sexual abuse or was under duress. Yet we are asked to believe that an otherwise 'normal' healthy female just got a bit bored and 'made a little mistake' and oops had a sexual encounter with a dog. What's more it never had any detrimental affect on her ever again except when she tells someone.<br /><br />Not she was raped by a dog or the dog did something she couldn't resist - she actively initiated oral sex and completed this activity with a pet dog of her own choice. She wasn't on drugs or anything she just 'felt like it'.<br /><br />The rest of the film seeks to put this action in a light of 'hey it could happen to anyone she's only being honest'.<br /><br />But really for this to be believed we have to believe that this is a woman who is capable of doing absolutely ANYTHING if she 'just feels like it'. Think about it - could she have considered the rights and wrongs of this action before carrying it out? If she had she would have stopped in her tracks. Human beings have instinctive boundaries for reasons. If we are now to start considering bestiality as a 'cute' little aberration, what is next? Child abuse? Yet the 'heroine' is portrayed as a hard done by, nice girl who had one moment of aberration. If she had been forced to carry out this act by an abuser - the story might have made more sense and I would have been able to accept the storyline. But there is no way that anyone carries out the prolonged activity required and referred to even once - if there is not some deep, disturbance that requires a great deal of psychiatric help. This is NO WAY a one off happening in an otherwise perfect life.<br /><br />I know this is just a film, but it is through normalising behaviour such as this via the media that society becomes desensitised and more and more awful realities become possible.<br /><br />I could imagine an abuser showing this to a child to persuade them that it isn't such a big deal and then moving on with their agenda. It could also be used by an abuser to underline to a child not to tell about the abuse - because look how people will react to you if you do.<br /><br />This is not about truth. The director WANTS people to think it's about truth. This is about degradation and how easily people (the viewing public)can be manipulated into accepting the most appalling concepts if wrapped up in the right way. The watching public are being manipulated, degraded and laughed at.<br /><br />This is a film in which the actors and the viewers are being humiliated and made fools of in a very sophisticated way by a clever but extremely disturbed film writer.<br /><br />This film appears to me to be being used as a vehicle for the creator of the film to get off on the excitement of playing with your mind in an abusive manner. I don't know whether it is conscious on their part - but it is the most classic example of Mind F***k that I have ever encountered.<br /><br />I hope that this doesn't offend anyone too much. But if you watched this film - I don't think there is any room left to be offended by anything any more. | 0 |
5,106 | [
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] | 486 | 626 | Ugh. Yes, it's exactly like the McMartin mess, or the horrific arrests in Wenatchee, Washington. In the movie, the mother keeps aggressively questioning her little boy, over and over and over, until he finally tells her what she obviously wants to hear. The court investigators and "therapists" repeat the pattern. The questioning itself is sexually creepy, a relentlessy repeated assault in its own way.<br /><br />The moviemakers throw in a doctor talking about physical evidence of abuse, maybe to justify the film's point of view: that two- to four-year-olds never make "things like this" up. Well, they will if every adult they know is asking them to. The way this piece endorses such discredited interrogation techniques makes watching it an exercise in frustration for anyone who knows what it takes to get a successful prosecution in real life. <br /><br />(They also add a special arrest incident towards the end to "prove" their case -- no parallel to this fictional incident ever occurred in real life. Can't say more here without turning this into a spoiler, but you'll know it when you see it.)<br /><br />Yes, children are abused, sometimes by paid care providers. But to watch a movie which affirms the ludicrous, hysterical accusations against so many totally innocent people, to watch re-creations of the trials that ruined the lives of countless children as well as the lives of the accused -- I didn't think I'd last until the end. It's just too sad, and made more so by the writing team's seeming endorsement of the abusive, paranoid, obsessional questioning techniques that started -- what can we call it? The bonfire of the sanities? <br /><br />No one I know has ever been accused of child abuse, thank heaven, but my 12-times-over-great grandmother was accused of witchcraft and killed for it. Mobs filled with what they think is holy anger are just as dangerous now as three hundred years ago. Sensational drivel like this -- "These accusations of Satanic abuse are cropping up all over the country, there must be something there!" "So tell the jury that!" -- just eggs them on. <br /><br />And whoever thought it was a good idea to have kids under ten, some of them under five, play these roles? It's traumatic to watch them delivering their lines; how much more traumatic was it to act these parts? The moviemakers' commitment to fight child abuse apparently doesn't apply to themselves. And what were the child-actors' parents THINKING? "Melinda" (uncredited, at least in the version on the A&E Network in 2005, but I think it was Cassy Friel) and "Teddy" (Brian Bonsall) were terrific. Professionals or not, though, they were too young to be exposed to this material, much less to be paid to act it out. Despite ruthlessly exploiting these real-life children, "Do You Know The Muffin Man" got an Emmy nomination for directing -- which just goes to show how crazed things were, back in 1989. | 0 |
5,113 | [
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] | 499 | 650 | So, you've seen the Romero movies, yes? And you've seen Jacob's Ladder, right? And the later Hellraiser movies? Okay, now let's make a movie out of all three, only let's just jam everything together and make a whole big mess of it, sounds like a good idea?<br /><br />This movie is terrible. Absolutely god-awful. Yeah, it's an indie flick, who gives a crap? Is that a pass to make filmic excrement? The film attempts to establish credibility by focusing on character interaction, that much is evident. Unfortunately for the writers, they're not good at character interaction. This isn't Night of the Living Dead; the characters are nonentities shouting their inane lines at each other in a vain attempt to be caught by the microphones on set. The dialogue is never interesting. For a movie that focuses so much on character interaction, you'd think the characters would have something more to say than "WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO" "I don't know" "WELL WE'VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING" "Well what are we going to do?" "I DON'T KNOW." "We should leave." "LET'S JUST ACCEPT OUR FATE." "No, we've got to leave." "WELL LET'S LEAVE THEN." "No, maybe we should stay."<br /><br />This isn't exaggeration, there are exchanges in this film that reach that level of redundancy and inanity.<br /><br />The worst thing about this movie? Half of it is a dream, and it really has zero purpose. Nothing in the dream has any relevance to anything in the rest of the movie. The writers couldn't decide whether to make a zombie movie or a monster movie and so they just made both. It's patently ridiculous, the cheapest trick in the book, and it's maddeningly insulting, especially since I'm pretty sure they ripped off the idea from Jacob's ladder, which handled the concept a hell of a lot more competently than these jokers could ever hope to do.<br /><br />And then there's the editing. Years of watching MTV and playing horror-themed video games must have inspired the filmmakers, but it's surely a sad thing they didn't realize what made the choppy editing and obfuscation in those pieces of media effective in the first place. In this film, you will be confused often, and not in the good, David Lynch way, but in the bad "Wait I thought she just got killed, no? Then who the hell was that? Wait, who is that guy? Where did he come from? How did they get here?" kind of way. It's constant and consistently bad.<br /><br />This movie is a laughable piece of trash and should only be sought out if you want to get trashed with a few friends and laugh at it.<br /><br />And as a final note: as for the "comedy" people in other reviews are talking about, it's all unintentional. There isn't a single intentional piece of comedy in this film. It's all supposed to be a big serious character study, because the filmmakers want to have credibility in their horror-concept. Sadly, their pretensions don't match up to their ability. | 0 |
5,115 | [
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] | 495 | 625 | Do not be misled. This is NOT a zombie movie. Take it from a guy who loves zombie movies, and who rents them all: the good, and the horrendous. Yes, this movie has an extended zombie sequence, but it's basically an artsy-fartsy exercise in existentialist dread, which is a long way of saying it's boring. If you've worked hard all day and want to spend a couple of hours being entertained, rent something else.<br /><br />"Rise of the Undead" has cheap special effects, mediocre acting, and crummy dialogue. All of that is understandable in an indie, low-budget film, and I can forgive such flaws as long as a movie has an entertaining story to tell. Unfortunately, "Rise of the Undead" hardly has any story at all. Moreover, the acting is not laughably bad so much as non-existent. All of the actors seem to have studied at the Buster Keaton School of Wooden Faces. Would it have killed them to show some emotion? (And no, yelling does not equate with emoting). The one character who actually had some pizazz was killed off first. Granted, there was another character who briefly held my interest. He looked and acted like Kyle McLachlan channeling Norman Bates, but it was too little, too late.<br /><br />The filmmakers seemed to have forgotten a tiny detail: film is a VISUAL medium. That means lighting your scenes well enough for the viewer to actually view what's going on. And all those artsy jump cuts and close ups might have seemed cool at the time, but all they did was make watching the film jarring and confusing. There is nothing wrong with telling a story in a simple, clear fashion -- just look at George Romero's low-budget "Night of the Living Dead" to see how it's done superbly. And I know these folks had a small budget, but if you can't hire the equipment and technicians necessary to actually make the dialogue audible, then just go ahead and make a silent movie (then those Buster Keaton wooden faces might actually work).<br /><br />I will say this for the film: the zombies were creepy. Unlike most zombie movies where the undead are shown in all their decomposing glory, the grosser the better, the zombies here were just shuffling, bloody-faced people. It actually worked to make them more like us, and therefore, scarier. That's the reason I gave this movie 2 stars instead of 1.<br /><br />The sad part about all this is that despite all of its flaws, "Rise of the Undead" does not insult your intelligence. The filmmakers seemed to have actually wanted to make a smart, scary, original movie, and it's a shame that they failed so miserably. If they could just forego the too-fancy editing, buy a few extra lightbulbs, crank up the dialogue, and come up with a real story that actually goes somewhere, then I think they have the talent to make something really good.<br /><br />Trust me: do not waste your time on "Rise of the Undead." | 0 |
5,132 | [
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] | 577 | 694 | After the lush, inspiring aerial shot in fast motion in the opening of the movie, this slipped into utter boredom and a one tone note right till the end.<br /><br />Where to begin, well I'll start with the characters. I really enjoyed them in the book, here they all were types and one dimensional morons that either had "Victim" or "Asshole" written on their foreheads from the get go. How any one didn't see through the store owner Lealand Gaunt (in a hammy and out of place performance by Sydrow)is beyond me.<br /><br />This film lacks in thrills, suspense, and in some sense yes, entertaining values. It stretches itself for far too long with not a lot of pay off. Why introduce too many annoying should-die-quick type of characters and then forget about half of them half way through? In the book practically everyone that went into the store met a grisly fate. Here, besides one of the only decent scenes that translated well from the novel (the fight between Wilma and Nettie), was a letdown and didn't have much balls. I'm sorry but after, one off screen death,a boring shoot off, and some bickering and then a couple explosions just didn't do it for me. The brutality and mean spiritedness from the book was sadly missing. The explosion of the church scene was so over the top and badly executed, all of sudden the entire city was in a brawl? It made no sense and characters that weren't introduced all the way through suddenly are, who are these people and why should I care?<br /><br />The story is all over the place and none of the scenes had momentum. I thought Ed Harris and Bonnie Bedeila were good actors in this, but the movie gives them not enough substance for me to give a damn. Amanda Plummer was credible but too pathetic to really be sympathetic (in the novel she was a sad and depressing character)here it was a too one note. J.T. Walsh was entertaining, but the role was far from interesting or layered. Too predictable. <br /><br />The soundtrack was too classy for the material it was supporting. It stood out like sore thumb. Easy there buddy, easy. Something a little less theatrical I'd assume would have worked.<br /><br />I will admit some of the gore it did manage to have was good enough I guess, The director seemed to hold back a lot of the times though. If your going to make a movie that reaches the 2 hr point be sure to have far more going on then this disaster of a adaption of on of Kings better novels.<br /><br />I often found myself laughing at scenes that were suppose to be taken seriously (Ed Harris speech at the end, or the character Hugh Priest in general), and was bored and uninterested most of the other time. Personally the director should have done so much more with this story, his approach is too tame and hides behind too much crisp cinematography to ever come off as a decent movie. The movie looks good, but not the look I think this story deserved. I mean, this dude helmed ALASKA,not a good sign. <br /><br />I'd rather just read the book, as you should too as if it is far more entertaining,layered character development, grisly violence and mayhem, a nasty sense of humour, and far more oomph. This is a butchered version, that has not much to offer. <br /><br />** out of **** | 0 |
5,137 | [
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] | 532 | 636 | STAR RATING: ***** The Works **** Just Misses the Mark *** That Little Bit In Between ** Lagging Behind * The Pits <br /><br />Based on another of Stephen King's lengthy novellas, this takes place in the sleepy little New England town of Castle Rock (also the name of the film's production company!), where a new antiques store, the titular Needful Things, has opened. The owner and proprietor, Leland Gaunt (Max Von Sydow) hides, you might say, a devilish secret. There's an item in his store that everyone in the little town wants-a small cash price upfront is first required, before a far more sinister price is asked for. As suspicion, hate and madness tear the town apart, it falls to police chief Alan Pangborn (Ed Harris) to restore order and save the town from a terrifying end...<br /><br />I read the novel of Needful Things earlier this year, and was eager to watch the movie adaptation again to compare them (like that was going to be any contest!) But it had been deleted on video and DVD and I couldn't find anywhere to rent it from. So I was happy when I finally found it in a flea market whilst on a shopping trip...<br /><br />It's one of the cruelest ironies that King novels are generally the best to read but when they get adapted to screen nine times out of ten they are complete junk, as is the case here. The material that makes his books great simply doesn't translate into a movie script very well, for some reason. And I suppose there's always the question: why bother watching this when I could be reading the book again instead? <br /><br />I appreciate that some are simply too lengthy (i.e. It, The Stand) to be made into a complete screen work with all the situations and characters included, but there's no reason this one couldn't have included all the material from the book. As a result, a lot of key characters from the book (i.e. Ace Merrill) are not included at all and we have some terrible character development that means we don't care about the characters that are involved since they are so stripped of depth and motivation- for example we have one character from the book, Danforth Keaton, who murders his wife toward the end yet we were shown no build-up to hint at any reason that he didn't get along with or hated her and so it has no impact when it happens, unlike in the book where there was a lot of depth invested and it really involved you to find out what happened to the characters involved. All the material in the script to fill in the cracks, if you like, is really stupid and corny and the typically goofy stuff that gets included in King adaptations like this.<br /><br />Most of the film's problems are that it deviates so far away from the book but there's also some terrible acting from a cast that obviously can't feel for the daft material they're being asked to perform. In the 90s, a lot of King's work started skipping the cinema and just being made into made-for-TV/video territory. Rubbish like this must surely hint at why. ** | 0 |
5,144 | [
600,
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] | 554 | 639 | I recently had the idea to make a short film featuring a man who is hit by a car and wakes up thinking that he himself is Chuck Norris. This meant that I would have to do extensive Chuck research, and find out as much as I could about the man. I later find out that he is not in fact a man, but an angel sent from heaven. With a face like that, who could ever doubt it? I have watched more Chuck Norris movies in the last four months than any one person should. I am proud to say that Bells of Innocence ranks pretty close to the top of the all time worst list. I spent most of the film wondering if I could return my copy to the local Wal-Mart without the receipt, which I had been biting down on to keep myself from swallowing my own tongue. The biggest reason why I chose to purchase this film was that it not only had Chuck in it, but his son Mike. I was anxious to see if Mike was a chip off the old can't-act-his-way-out-of-a-wet-paper-bag block. I came to the conclusion a long while ago; the Chuck Norris is one of the worst actors in cinematic history for one simple reason. The only character he ever plays is himself, Chuck Norris. No matter what movie, no matter what situation, he is always Chuck Norris. The one thing that he holds over his son is that he is consistent. Mike doesn't seem to understand how human emotions work. In the scene where he is talking to the little girl about his dead daughter, he seems to be extremely happy! Maybe this is because he actually pushed his daughter out into traffic, as depicted in one of the oddest flashbacks of all time. His actions confused me throughout the film, making it very hard for me to focus on what little plot there was. The other two lead actors were just as painful to watch as the son of Norris. The guy, who constantly wants to eat or tell a stupid peacock joke, was simply one of the most annoying characters that has ever graced the Direct-to-Video screen. The only thing I remember him being in other than this movie, was an episode of Walker Texas Ranger, in which he plays an equally annoying character. Maybe Chuck owes this guy something. The other guy, which is the only name I can think of because he was so forgettable, was your average Christian fanatic. I don't have anything against Christians, in fact I am one, but this guy was just too much for me. To round out the story, you have a multitude of townspeople who love to call people "friend", and a couple of villains who don't seem to be able to decide which one of them is in charge. Not to mention the creepy kids who remind me of the dollar store version of every other group of creepy kids in movies. All in all, the movie is possibly one of the biggest failures of all time, on more levels than Chuck Norris can kick people's asses. Despite being one of the worst actors of all time, I still can't get enough of Chuck. Maybe he really was sent from heaven... | 0 |
5,164 | [
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] | 493 | 600 | As a huge fan of the original Operation Delta Force, I thought I'd pick this film up. I figured it couldn't be too bad. However, here's a list of things I learnt from watching Operation Delta Force 4: Deep Fault.<br /><br />- The Delta Force, despite being the elite in American armed forces, are mostly mildly-overweight men in their late 30s and early 40s.<br /><br />- The Delta Force, despite being the elite in American armed forces, carry standard police issue pistols or AK-47s on their most important missions.<br /><br />- The Delta Force, despite being the elite in American armed forces, haven't learnt that during stealth missions, wearing bright red ski jumpers and running around in open spaces aren't exactly going to keep you out of sight.<br /><br />- When you drop a Molotov cocktail into a tank, it explodes externally like a grenade.<br /><br />- When you get hit by tank fire, you can run away, although the smoke caused may present minor difficulties for breathing.<br /><br />- You can die from one standard gun shot, but you can also live despite being hit multiple times by a sniper rifle, and a few times by an AK-47.<br /><br />- In hand-to-hand combat, members of The Delta Force, despite being the elite in American armed forces, are regularly pummeled by railroad attendants.<br /><br />- If bad guys are approaching you while on a slow-moving train, there's nothing to worry about - between the 4 of them, they can't manage to figure out how to get an automatic weapon to fire automatically, let alone hit anyone from 5 metres (16 feet) with at least 50 attempts between them.<br /><br />- If you're short on actors, just recycle them - the bad guy from Operation Delta Force 1 plays a good guy called Mac in Operation Delta Force 4, and the guy who played Mac in Operation Delta Force 3 now plays Skip Lang, a different good guy.<br /><br />- It's not OK for The Delta Force to shoot an unarmed terrorist, even if he's attempting to reload his weapon to kill you.<br /><br />- Grenades explode on impact with the ground when thrown by members of The Delta Force. When thrown by non-Delta Force personnel, they explode at exactly the point where the Delta Force members have thrown the grenades back at the bad guys.<br /><br />- Tanks can drive faster than standard trucks.<br /><br />- Militias and personal armies use the exact same chopper that the UN used in Operation Delta Force 1.<br /><br />- When a chopper arrives, a bad guy in that chopper cannot see you if you lie face-down.<br /><br />- Shooting someone multiple times in the chest will cause minor damage. Stabbing that person in the knee will kill them inside 5 seconds.<br /><br />- The Delta Force steal cars from old people to get around when in foreign countries, because the US Military do not provide them with any means of transport. This may also explain why they caught public transport.<br /><br />As you can see, this is not really the finest moment in film-making, but it's good for a laugh. | 0 |
5,188 | [
600,
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] | 528 | 688 | 'Rise of the Footsoldier' follows the unrelentingly cruel journey of gangster Carlton Leach and his associates through drugs, violence, sex, violence, guns, violence and did I mention violence?<br /><br />Protagonist Carlton Leach (Ricci Harnett), member of the I.C.F (Inner City Firm); a group of football hooligans turned professional gangsters, guides the audience through the events leading to the 1995 'Range Rover Killings', in which three gang members fell victim to particularly vicious professional 'hits'. Leach's success as a doorman and talent for locating aptly violent friends to control unruly punters at a local nightclub launches him into the company of notorious drug dealers and gangsters, profitably benefiting from the 80s/90s rave scene and drug culture.<br /><br />Opening with brutally realistic shots of the dead men, the viewer is left thirsty to understand what happened, but left wholly unsatisfied. The next 2 hours meander through a series of countless character introductions. Each of these basically establishes yet another typical 'hard man', shows him assaulting usually undeserving victims, before probably coming to an even nastier end. What little emotional understanding the audience is allowed to form for a few of the characters (for example a family man blamed for missing drugs) is quickly destroyed when they are either anti-climactically killed, or their storyline left unresolved. The hints of a plot introduced in the beginning are inadequately concluded with vague impressions of how the murders occurred, as the events are slotted into place with little reward for persevering with the hazy muddle of previous events. <br /><br />This film has been made with a standard formula in mind, for an audience who prefer violence and 'ard nut' slang to an actual storyline. 'Rise of the Footsoldier' borrows too much from 'Football Factory', leaving out the good bits, demonstrating no moral ramifications of hooligan subculture or establishing empathy with the protagonist. The violence, although brilliantly shot, seems excessive and implausible because no one is around long enough for the audience to form an emotional attachment. The implication that the gangs are untouchable by the police is fair enough, but machete-wielding doormen regularly committing blatant murder in public places pushes the imagination of even the most willing viewer. The audience are left bewildered as to the relevance of many key events and developed characters that had no knock on effect on the eventual conclusion. Attempted 'gritty-realism' is further destroyed with a substance called 'Truth Serum', which the Turkish Mafia use to coax honest answers from unwilling individuals. This is NOT the genre in which to invent psychologically unrealistic drugs, and renders the interrogation almost absurd.<br /><br />The actual scenes of violence (before becoming repetitive) hold some tension, spliced with rapid flashes of colour or the end of a film reel. Seamlessly choreographed brawls coupled with obligatory but effective shaky hand-held camera work saves the film, but unfortunately the plot (or lack there of) limits it to a niche demographic.<br /><br />In essence, the events this film is based on aren't deservedly represented, and an adequately sequential storyline is sacrificed for stereotypical characters and an unoriginal plot. This film has a place in the market, but if you like a bit of brain with your brutality this one isn't for you. <br /><br />http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/ | 0 |
5,202 | [
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] | 482 | 629 | For all its wonderful images, for all of its good intentions, this just comes off as yet another disgustingly one-sided, over-glorified, self-promoting propaganda.<br /><br />The message is simple, "All Japanese fighting on the Kokoda Track were sadistic, malicious f*** sticks who enjoyed gutting every last Aussie troop, cutting their throats before beheading them." Not only does Kokoda pick up on "Gallipoli"'s only flaw (that the enemy are faceless, nameless, and apparently inhumane), but manages to prove quite the opposite to Weir's masterpiece. Instead of giving us a perfect film with one flaw, we have a horrible mess with one redeeming feature.<br /><br />Let's start off with this: we're, without any comfortable adapting to the characters, introduced to these apparently quite laid back, two-dimensional people who we never... EVER get to sympathize with. We're kept at such a distance that even when we could so easily relate to the characters, they find a way to keep us away. That alone is a sickening feature, as it drives us from the very plot, helps the horrible pacing to leave us with a lasting impression, and makes it so much easier to see the contrast between an overtly sentimental ending and an otherwise lackluster body of a film.<br /><br />In other words, it drags us through a painful journey (not just for us, but apparently for them) and just as it should end, we're thrown into another eye-roller of a skirmish that ends faster than it began. So, for the as yet STILL uninformed: when it should end, it starts up again, only to end when we expect more. S***! It's just a confusing and agonizing pace!<br /><br />Which brings me to the ultimatum: this is meant to educate us on the events of the Kokoda track. It doesn't come close. Not only does it detail a very small, insignificant part of the campaign (sprinkling a little "mateship" on top in an attempt to make it relevant), but it succeeds in doing the one thing a film as important as this should be does, it makes us NOT care.<br /><br />Honestly, my eyes were constantly glued to my watch the entire time. The audience around me, all proudly Australian, bickering as they came in about how great the film is going to be, groaned, moaned, and whined in disappointment as every one of the painful ninety-five minutes droned on (for a short running time, it felt like Apocalypse Now: difference being that Apocalypse Now was a good film and deserved the three hours it got) and on to the point where suicide could wholeheartedly be an alternative should it be mandatory for this film to be watched.<br /><br />Though, considering how much the TV has been advertising this trash, I'd say it is mandatory, in a subliminal sense of the word.<br /><br />Watch if you like pretty images. Though you'd do better watching The Constant Gardener or Gallipoli anyway, since they have superior cinematography and ACTUAL plots.<br /><br />Overall: * | 0 |
5,239 | [
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] | 515 | 612 | I was a sophomore in college when this movie came out and I had never actually seen it until last night. I finally decided to watch it because I like good dancing and because the movie had such cultural impact. After seeing the movie I am completely baffled by how it had any effect other than putting people to sleep.<br /><br />The story is pretty preposterous when you think about it. Does anyone actually buy the idea that that beer joint full of gnarly old steel-workers and teamsters could keep their clientèle with the high concept dances that those girls were doing? They would have all been over to Zanzibar faster than you can say "performance art". Can you imagine the reaction of the real life versions of that audience to that bizarre TV watching No theater dance thing that she did? Please.<br /><br />It seems plausible to me that there could be a woman that worked in a steel yard and was also a dancer--after all both are physically demanding jobs. But I didn't buy for a second that THAT girl worked in a steel yard. And I didn't buy for a second that I was looking at a real steel yard. Steel work is dangerous. You don't keep your work area looking like a junk yard and not end up loosing a limb. I love some of the inane shots like when two welders are sitting in the big corrugated tubes welding. What the hell are they doing in there? Or when she is cutting six inches off of a rusty steel bar with a cutting torch. She was obviously board and just started cutting random things up.<br /><br />But story holes like that can be overlooked if the movie is fun or at least stimulating in some way. Flashdance doesn't offer anything to balance it, however.<br /><br />The dancing horrible. It is the spastic twitch-and-pose style that ruined American musicals until...well are we really over it yet? The sensuality that the movie tries for is ruined by Jennifer Beal's complete lack of personality. I mean I am a 42 year old male and when she was supposed to be eating lobster my only reaction was to think that she should get a lobster bib.<br /><br />You can't really get behind Alex and her dreams because her character is so stupid and shallow. The dog had more going on than she did.<br /><br />The love affair is flat. It comes across as nothing more than a boss with the hots for one of his workers. Zero passion.<br /><br />Even the final scene where she dances for Orville Redenbacher and some other stiffs is unsatisfying because the panels reaction is so unbelievable. What serious dancers wouldn't roll their eyes at Alex's lame cheerleader routine? In short the movie had nothing but leg-warmers and large sweatshirts. Oh, yeah, there is a good chunk of nudity when Alex "rescues" her friend from being a useless erotic dancer (a laughable bit of hypocrisy). Other than that the movie is a waste of time. I wish that the MST3K crew were still in business. This would make good fodder for them. | 0 |
5,242 | [
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] | 550 | 650 | I'm a dance teacher and was looking forward to some good dance routines in this film. How sad to have been subjected to such a painful experience. <br /><br />I had major problems with Jennifer Beals and her character. I found Alex extremely repellent. Beals' face is so young, sweet and innocent, and this very incongruous with Alex's very disturbing lewdness, especially in that disgusting restaurant scene. She also has the temper tantrums of a toddler. It is very difficult to believe that Nick would keep coming back to such a moody teenager after her frequent rantings and ravings, especially after she opens the door of a moving car and chucks a stiletto at him, opting rather to walk home - in the middle of the road - with only one shoe!!!. And what about after her idiotic behaviour after the night at the ballet. In fact, the whole romance was very disturbing - the 30 something year old man going after a girl who looks about 16. Yuck. <br /><br />As for the dancing, I'm afraid this 80s style is totally dated. What on earth was that TV dance sequence about in the club? Who was supposed to be dancing? I wasn't even sure if it was a woman or a man in drag! And even that famous final sequence is pretty disappointing, especially given the context of an audition for a ballet company. The camera shots of her leap actually ruin it's effect because you can't see what she's doing. And what on earth was she doing when she went past each of the panel pointing at them? And as many other comments have pointed out, she would NEVER get into a ballet company on the strength of that audition - perhaps that's why they don't actually say at the end whether she was successful or not, the closure is the fact that she overcame her fear in the end. Of the 'Flashdancers', I actually thought the best sequence belonged to Cynthia Rhodes (Penny in Dirty Dancing). You could see that she was a real dancer, and her acrobatics were very impressive. This is of course if you can get past her appalling costume and makeup. <br /><br />There were two good bits in this film - the ballet dancers stretching when Alex goes for the first time to apply for an audition - they look so lovely and classy, and at least this helps to underline the difference between her current dance career and the one she aspires to. The other good scene was the break dancing in the street. I also liked the ice skater's parents, they were funny.<br /><br />Some other random points - who was Hanna and how did Alex get to know her? What was an 18 year old doing living in a converted warehouse all alone? How did she afford that lovely barre and all the furniture?Where were her family? Was that scene in the 'nude' club really necessary? The person who wrote in their comment that it was something like a Disney film needs their head examined. And anyway, what happened to the ice skater? <br /><br />Many people said the film was poor but they liked the message - don't give up hope, keep on trying, and your dreams will come true. Watch "The Little Mermaid" instead. | 0 |
5,245 | [
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] | 533 | 642 | I give "Flashdance" a lowest rating of 1 out of 10 because it's nothing more than a series of music videos with a movie short surrounding the music videos, in order to clock in as a feature length film. Since when does that count as film? Jennifer Beals plays Alex Owens, an aspiring 18-year-old dancer, who, incomprehensibly, has a job as a welder in a Pittsburgh steel factory. Not a line of work most older women find their way into, much less 18-year-olds fresh out of high school. Meanwhile, at night she works as an exotic dancer, who never actually takes off her clothes, in a greasy spoon bar called Mawby's. Yet looking at the well choreographed and well polished dance routines the girls do every night at Mawby's, you would think they were working at the best casino on the Las Vegas Strip.<br /><br />Alex ends up having a predictable romance with her boss, Nick Hurley (Michael Nouri), who is about twice her age. After resisting Nick's advances, because going out with the boss isn't a good idea, she wastes no time in going all the way with him after their first date. Alex and Nick make no effort to hide their relationship on the job, which makes no sense given how it is likely to look to Alex's co-workers.<br /><br />When Beals isn't being doubled for the many dance sequences in the movie, her character spends most her time throwing temper tantrums. Alex's dream is to get an invitation only audition at the prestigious Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance. Inexplicably, when her boss/boyfriend helps her get the audition she's been dreaming of, she's throws one her tantrums. She angrily tells Nick she isn't doing the audition because of his intervention, and then gets out of his car in the middle of a busy tunnel. This is just one scene that leaves you wondering what the hell the makers were thinking when they were making this.<br /><br />Of course, Alex does eventually get her audition at the Conservatory. She puts on a dance routine before the Conservatory board that is so ridiculous that you would think it was in a movie marketed to the MTV generation. Oh yeah, it is a dance routine in a movie marketed to the MTV generation.<br /><br />I don't think I can judge whether or not Beals can actually act well on the basis of what I saw in "Flashdance". This is because the character she is forced to play is so poorly written, that I don't think it is a fair litmus test of her acting abilities.<br /><br />You have to hand it to the makers of "Flashdance" though. This movie is proof that the poorest film making can be covered up by a slick marketing campaign. In this case a best selling and award winning soundtrack and music videos for said soundtrack in heavy rotation on MTV. If they had devoted more of their energy to the writing of the script, then they might have been able to come up with a plot and a story with characters that I cared about. Instead what we get are stock characters put in ridiculous scenes any viewer with a functioning brain can't take seriously. A truly forgettable "film". | 0 |
5,304 | [
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] | 537 | 688 | Peter Hunt started out as a very gifted film editor and got his first stab at directing when he helmed the James Bond film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (considered by many Bond fans to be the best of the series). Other titles in his filmography include epic scale adventure movies like "Gold" and "Shout At The Devil", both adapted from Wilbur Smith novels. "Gulliver's Travels" is an odd one on his list of films; it seems strange that a director of Hunt's style and expertise would choose to direct a film of this kind. A half-live action/half-animated retelling of Jonathan Swift's classic satire, the film looked twenty years out of date even when it was made, and in all honesty it simply doesn't work. And there's not a damn thing that Hunt (with his usual eye for fast-paced action), or star Richard Harris (who can usually enliven the most stilted of roles) can do to rescue this one.<br /><br />Lemuel Gulliver (Richard Harris) is a brilliant medical student living in 17th Century Bristol. His father (Norman Shelley) wants him to go to London to make his fortune; but Gulliver prefers the idea of receiving rather less pay but a heck of a lot more adventure as a ship's surgeon aboard a ship called the 'Antelope'. During a voyage, the 'Antelope' is blown off course during a storm and hits a reef. The ship sinks and everyone is lost, apart from Gulliver
. who finds himself washed ashore in the kingdom of Lilliput. When he comes round, Gulliver finds that the strange land where he has washed ashore is populated by incredibly small humans, no taller than his toe. To them, he looks like a giant. They persuade Gulliver to help them in a war against another race of tiny people who live on an adjacent island. But Gulliver doesn't like being manipulated for purposes of war and devastation, so he makes plans to escape
.<br /><br />Harris is left to carry the entire film here. His first couple of scenes involve other actors, but once he is shipwrecked in Lilliput he spends the rest of the film striding over knee-high sets and acting alongside his animated counterparts. The idea of mixing live action and animation was not new at the time, but it certainly hadn't been done a lot. A few Disney movies like Song Of The South, So Dear To My Heart and Pete's Dragon had tampered with the idea, but it was still pretty much in its infancy. "Gulliver's Travels" is not an especially well-animated film, but the scenes showing interaction between Harris and his cartoon co-stars are at least competently done. Occasionally the film tries to be true to its satirical origins (there's one scene where we learn that Lilliput has gone to war with its neighbour because of eggs !?! - and the point seems to be that wars can begin over the most ridiculous of things). But at its heart, this is very much a kids' film and the satirical overtones are barely dwelled upon. Everyone involved has done better things during their career "Gulliver's Travels" might fill an otherwise empty afternoon, but apart from that it is a forgettable and underwhelming experience. | 0 |
5,332 | [
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] | 467 | 616 | If there was justice in the cinematic universe, director Lewis Schoenbrun would never be allowed to set foot on a movie set again. It would seem inconceivable that anyone who spent two full decades in an editing room, where LS started his movie career, could be so utterly devoid of any sense of pacing or dramatic staging, but this film is damning evidence.<br /><br />As bad as it is, it is fascinatingly so. From the opening scene, where a nurse is clad in a costume appropriate only for a porno film or a skit on a Mexican variety show, the viewer is compelled to see just how low it can go. The answer isn't far away, as in the next scene we move to a funeral parlor, where the next stunning fashion statement comes in a sexy off-the-shoulders black dress worn by one of the mourners.<br /><br />Aggressively inappropriate costuming isn't the film's only flaw. The dialog is a treat for connoisseurs of bad writing. "You turn my tears into wine," is a sample gem. The actor deserves an Oscar for delivering that one with a straight face.<br /><br />The director reinforces every cheeseball scene with what is possibly the schmaltziest soundtrack score ever recorded, which veers from embarrassingly maudlin in the dialog scenes to cheesy groovebox wannabe rocknroll in transitional scenes.<br /><br />The script introduces characters with no rhyme or reason and story beats are doled out as if with a broken ladle.<br /><br />Let's not forget this is a "horror" film, though. Our characters find themselves in a forest wherein lurks Dr. Chopper and his two "scary" henchwomen, who are supposed to be some kind of Frankencreatures but look exactly like Valley Girls with fake blood dabbed beneath their Supercut shags. I've honestly seen scarier make-up on eight-year-olds out trick-or-treating on Halloween.<br /><br />And again we get a whiff of the costume designer's malodorous handiwork, as Valley Ghoul One prances around in a pseudo-Victorian polyblend smock while her buddy wears a nondescript ensemble that might have been almost fashionable in less hip corners of the 1980s.<br /><br />Dr. Chopper makes the big fashion statement though, looking like a Crisco cowboy who got lost in the woods on his big black Harley, clad from head to toe in zippered black S&M leather.<br /><br />If this sounds intriguing, by all means check it out. There is plenty of side-splitting and belabored dialog (like the precious "elephant's graveyard" scene or the "intellectual" discourse on Ginsburg).<br /><br />To be fair, the cinematography is good, considering what was put before the camera, and the actors strive (with wildly extreme results) to make something from a scrap heap of clichés and inanities. You do have to wonder if they were really really stupid or just blindly desperate, not to walk off the set after catching one glimpse of the ridiculous-looking villains with their 99 Cent Store weapons. | 0 |
5,392 | [
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] | 530 | 647 | I liked all the Lilo and Stitch movies. The TV series weren't that great, but I put my opinions of the series aside when I watched this movie. And I must say... It was bad.<br /><br />One thing I found disappointing was the animation. Yes, you heard it. The animation. I found its quality greatly degraded since the first movie. Its quality was only as high as the TV series', something which I did not expect at all. If you're looking for eye candy, don't expect anything much here. Also, the animation failed to portray any serious moods. Even in the supposed sad scenes, I didn't feel anything for the character, another downgrade from the first movie.<br /><br />The next, was the absolutely horrible voice acting. I found it very, very unconvincing, and wondered why, Disney, with all its riches and glory, couldn't afford voice actors with real talent. The voice actors' skill were just as annoying as the one in the series. I tolerated the one in the series because, hey, who wouldn't be tired out when made to voice act for so many episodes? Heck, I don't even know how many episodes there are (Theoretically, there are 624, but I just can't believe that). However, I thought that the voice acting would improve in the movie, and I was put down in the face by the truth, that what they could do in the series was already their best.<br /><br />Next, was the horrible script. It was cheesy beyond redemption, and the writers just try too hard. They try to put some jokes in, but I just found them annoying. Maybe it wasn't the voice acting, but the cheesy dialogues that ruined the sound section. (On the upside, the soundtrack wasn't too bad, and matched the mood quite well.) <br /><br />Fourthly was the problem with the storyline. I predicted everything, and the storyline was what made the characters so unoriginal and unlikeable all of a sudden. You have the aliens get new positions and responsibilities inouter space. After the initial hype, they realize that they actually didn't like it and miss their old life. <br /><br />Meanwhile, the evil villain gets broken out of jail after a very 'action packed' action scene and breaks in to Jumbaa's lab to steal his experiment. The experiment was then cloned into 100 others and the hamster wants to conquer Earth. When the main characters find out, they try to stop the evil hamster but gets confronted in some cheesy final showdown against the experiment and owns him in an extremely lame excuse for trying to make the series to look cool. The characters then give up their new privileges and return to Earth to resume their life. Seriously, how many other movies has used that ending already? The that storyline was extremely short and formulaic, so don't expect too much from it.<br /><br />So Disney has failed in sound, graphics and storyline. The only charm of the series was the original characters, and how they managed to retain the 'feel' of the characters, but even that wasn't able to save the movie. I tried to like it, I really did, but I give it a rating of 4/10. Another Disney failure. | 0 |
5,428 | [
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] | 508 | 678 | I wish it were "Last Dumb Thriller". But thrillers are like that. They are like children: numerous, illogical, and often annoying. They want so desperately to be taken seriously but what is there to take seriously about a child's behaviour or a thriller's plot? Having seen this particular child - I mean... thriller - I understand why reviewers refer to it as "a hitchcockian thriller"; they might as well have called it "idiotic" for that's what "hitchcockian" means in the movie dictionary (look it up, if you don't believe me). Even the soundtrack is old-school Hollywood which is a mistake: it doesn't fit a late 70s film and makes it look phony. Besides, how dare they steal De Palma's idea of stealing from Hitchcock?! The story is absurd. Scheider's wife is killed, and her killers are never an issue. Instead, first his former employers follow him around, and later decide to kill him. Why do they decide to kill him? No explanation. Perhaps because the FBI is a dark, dark organization ("X-Files") which is very trigger-happy about knocking off its former employees for pension-funds reasons. Or perhaps because it's fashionable to want to kill Scheider in this movie; everyone seems to be after him. And while the poor unsuspecting viewer is trying to figure out the mystery by logically assuming that there is a major conspiracy, in reality the killer is... Janet Margolin! Yes, the woman occupying Scheider's living quarters; the one that briefly hinted she was "depraved". Why does she go after Scheider at precisely a time when his wife was murdered and he is feeling paranoid - and followed by his own ex-employers - and not a few years earlier or few years after the wife's murder? A pure hitchcockian (look it up again in the dictionary, in case you forgot what it means) coincidence. And how about that brilliant motive of hers...! Her grandmother was forced into prostitution when she was a fresh-off-the-boat 15 year-old virgin in NY, and then syphilisized by a bunch of horny Jewish men, one of whom - tah-dah! - is Scheider's grandfather. As a result, Margolin has been playing a hooker in her spare time (among other things) in order to kill off all the descendants of the men who so cruelly syphilisized her once-virginal grandmother. How hitchcockian (look it up) is that? The finale then shamelessly rips off the Mount Rushmore scene from "North By Northwest", except that the love-interest is a killer and she doesn't get saved.<br /><br />The movie also offers some dubious/off-kilter dialog and some not-so great acting. Check out the silly and obvious way in which Napier follows Scheider at the cemetery. Let's also not forget the moronic plot-device of Napier reaching for his jacket and holding his hand very suspiciously - but it wasn't a gun! How brilliant! Napier in the tower: now, there's another string of illogical behavioural patterns. J. Demme was, is, and always will be a director without style, without flair, and the man who directed "Philadelphia". Let's give him another Oscar! | 0 |
5,478 | [
600,
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] | 563 | 686 | I saw this on Sci Fi, and in retrospect, I'm not sure how I actually managed to watch it all the way through. This is utter trash. It's not a B movie, it's a "D movie" at best.<br /><br />Basically this grim reaper looking thing on a horse (and sometimes not on one) goes killing everything in it's path somewhere in the mid west of America. A load of people are missing (infact murdered) and a bunch of mismatched spec op soldier types go looking for them. The best part of this movie, I'll tell it now, is there's some really cute girls. Let me now spoil this by telling you that all but the least cute one get their heads either chopped off, slashed apart, or hit so hard with a mêlée weapon that the head explodes off. That's no spoiler... The gore in this movie is over the top and really grotesque. It serves no real purpose, either.<br /><br />Here's what's good: The sets look OK, the actors sometimes act OK, The outfits and props, some of them, are decent.<br /><br />Everything else that you can think of, sucks. A lot of the badness is in the editing. Some times it just switches over from a rapid action scene to a real quiet and dormant scene. Sometimes the characters do non-understandable things, and they're always splitting up, but not even in a way that the viewer can follow. Looks like they get split up without realizing it amongst themselves but they also all seem to know that they're splitting up all the time and are OK with it even tho they're in a really dangerous situation and there's bodies all over the place and people are dying right and left. Nothing in this movie is the least bit plausible, most of it is incoherent and confusing, and I don't really get how this immortal, indestructible bad guy killer was able to be stopped in the end, and frankly, I don't care. Too much stupid, hilariously bad nonsense happens during this movie and I don't really care to list it all here. And they're all so serious throughout the whole ordeal when it's almost laughably bad... just awful.<br /><br />This movie is a complete waste of time. There's no excuse for watching this, unless the only channel you happen to receive is SciFi and you're bound to a chair in front of the TV. But if you're not bound, you're better off doing a crossword, throwing a Frisbee, or even just thinking. There's lots of much better B movies that you can watch.<br /><br />My senior year in high school my friend and I, in visual communication and deign class, made a long movie trailer type deal for our own movie (There was no full movie, just a really long trailer) and we did a better job of filming and editing the piece with premiere. It was better work than this movie. That really says something about this and I'm puzzled and troubled as to why Sci Fi would show anything like this when there are so many good low rate movies they can show.<br /><br />The only movie that I've ever endured that was worse than this is Raptor Island (another brilliant SciFi work)-though it had smoother and more followable flow than this movie- but this comes very close and is definitely 2nd on my list of worst movies I've ever seen. | 0 |
5,499 | [
600,
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] | 572 | 677 | Why???? What a disgusting joke of a supposed movie...from the poster it looked like a cute movie.. what a disappointment.. who the heck is the male lead? He looks like an old retarded retired reject cop... I am a cop and I can tell.. the man can't act... go back to being a cop..no screen presence.. why did they show his bare ass so, as if he is Mel Gibson,, hell no... put the filmmaker out of business.. this guy has no business making a movie... I seriously doubt women or gay men find him attractive... whoever cast the film is a no talent hack who cast no talent hacks in the lead.. it's great that us white guys are alway getting the Asian women but why an ugly white guy why not Dean Cain or Brad Pitt as the white boyfriend.. why to Asian women like ugly white guys or black guys in what I see??? Don't get it.. must be low self esteem..<br /><br />The only hot girl who can act in the movie was the Kate Holliday..why was there one hot white chick among all the rest of the ugly Asian chicks who think they are hot and can act???<br /><br />Only two actors in this movie the Host of the Poetry at the end of the movie and the one hot white chick in the massage house.. TL Young and Kate Holliday should have been the leads in the movie..<br /><br />The Asia Character was ridiculous looked like she was trying too hard to be some kind of ghetto/sexy black girl...key word here is "trying"..<br /><br />Gina.. you can't act and you are not hot enough physically for this kind of role.. you need to play character roles and be more humble in your self presentation..<br /><br />I think the actress is Gina Hirazumi... I looked her up on the IMDb and she is a great Asian Actress???? if that is the case I don't want to see what the bad Asian American actresses are..<br /><br />. No wonder Hollywood doesn't have Asian American Actors!!! if this is the best they got!!! they were supposedly winning some kind of Asian film award?? give me break...it looked like they just made a movie for the sake of putting a bunch of Asian girls in them.. they aren't even hot..Gina...you are not hot.. stop trying..play character roles and improve your acting..you are not a leading female type...<br /><br />If this movies makes money pigs can fly..sorry for being so blunt but I feel that these actors/ actresses need to either get better or work on their craft: for the exception of the two actors I mentioned who should have played the leads.. I say this in love for all the Asian lead girls in the film please do what your parents say and go and be doctors/lawyers/and engineers...and do acting on the side for fun..hopefully that is what you are doing now.. I am not trying to be mean but hoping this will be read and push you people to either get better or go do another business.. there was not even a message ethically in this movie..<br /><br />I would not be surprised if "Soap Girls" was secretly funded by members of the Ku Klux Klan special department of Asian American hate propaganda of the Klan<br /><br />.. Otherwise Asian people must hate themselves..seeing this film makes me as the viewer grateful that I am not Asian..you folks are pathetic..have some self respect you Asian people. | 0 |
5,509 | [
600,
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] | 567 | 660 | Let Freedom Ring was probably made with the best of intentions, but it sends out a curious mixed message in the final product.<br /><br />The folks at a western town where the railroad is coming through are overwhelmed by the arrival of immigrant railroad workers, working on the railroad being financed by robber baron Edward Arnold. There are a few ranchers and farmers whose land stands in the railroad's path and these folks are dealt with summarily by Arnold's hired men. One man who won't give in is Lionel Barrymore whose son is coming home from Harvard a lawyer and ready to take up the rancher's cause.<br /><br />Only Nelson Eddy decides the best way to fight is to go Zorro on the bad guys. But other than Charles Butterworth no one knows he's the Wasp (a very interesting choice of names by the way). <br /><br />What Arnold's done is used the tried and true methods of the political bosses of the east, getting the immigrants to vote. Nelson's idea is simple, if the immigrants only knew the truth about what a bad guy Arnold is, they'll vote with the original settlers and knock out the alien urban political machine in their midst. He kidnaps newspaper editor Raymond Walburn and takes him and the press to a mountain cave where some subversive newspapers are printed and distributed.<br /><br />The railroad workers are a real mixed bunch of immigrants, not the Irish working west or the Chinese working east as history has it. It's a real United Nations working on Arnold's railroad. The workers are kept in line by foreman Victor McLaglen and Nelson has the unenviable task of beating some sense into him like John Wayne did in The Quiet Man.<br /><br />Of all the films that starred Jeanette and Nelson and they certainly have come down in history as a duo, this was the worst of what they did at MGM. Nelson is about to be hanged along with Barrymore for crimes that are undefined at best, but certainly nothing worth being hung for. And Virginia Bruce who plays the Nelson's girlfriend saves the day with a rendition of My Country Tis of Thee that the immigrants join in with. In the face of a revolt by his paid for immigrant voters, Arnold quite rationally packs up and leaves town to build his railroad somewhere else.<br /><br />I kid you not, that's the ending here. Just what is the message, vote with the settlers and lose your jobs with Arnold? But somehow you'll get by here? <br /><br />I do wonder some times if 20 years from after the incidents of this film take place and the town as settled into a sleepy backwater of the west while some towns where the railroad has come through that are now cities, that the good citizens of that town haven't rethought about what Nelson Eddy did. If they did they're probably running him out on a rail.<br /><br />Nelson is of course in good voice and has a variety of concert and popular pieces to sing including a ballad to the immigrants written by Sigmund Romberg, Where Else But Here. The song is a heartfelt tribute from an immigrant who did make good in his adopted country. Too bad it didn't have a better venue.<br /><br />The almost platinum blonde Virginia Bruce I'm sure is dubbed here. And I'm sure Jeanette MacDonald was just as happy she wasn't accompanying Nelson on this trip west. | 0 |
5,510 | [
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] | 517 | 683 | What an atrocity. I am not one to demand total verisimilitude from a movie, but the plot and screenplay of "Killing Zoe" are so artless that I found myself wincing through the entire (mercifully short) ninety minutes of the film.<br /><br />Readers of these reviews will by now have figured out the plot: Zoe, a call girl who falls in love with American safecracker Zed, is also an employee at the bank that Zed will help rob in a high-stakes Bastille Day heist.<br /><br />The film strains one's credibility from the get-go. Zed and Zoe's night of magic is highly prosaic, and Zoe's claims to have experienced the orgasm of a lifetime would seem to reflect the screenwriter's lingering teenage fantasies more than any actual on-screen chemistry. Zed's complete indifference when his friend Eric throws Zoe out of the hotel room hardly sets the stage for their later strong attachment.<br /><br />In act two, Eric's band of bohemians--drug-addled losers leading a marginal life of petty crime--prepare for their big heist with a night on the town. Here Roger Avary's main goal seems to be to prove that he knows something about drugs. A secondary thread involves convincing us (by endless repetition) that Eric is really, REALLY glad to see his old friend Zed again. Really glad. Eric's devil-may-care, over-the-top flamboyance and affection for Zed isn't even remotely believable--check out, for example, his phony bemusement at discovering a dead cat in his apartment building. Development of the characters who will accompany us through the rest of the film is an afterthought.<br /><br />The heist is a disaster--understandable, since the plan is laughable and the criminals are complete amateurs. This is where Avary continues to pay tribute to his idol Quentin Tarantino by showing that he can be more violent than violent. In reality, though, he's just more boring than boring. To build up the excitement, there is an extra security guard hidden inside the main safe. This was boring in video games, and it's boring now.<br /><br />Zoe is taken hostage during the heist but despite our expectation that she'll play a pivotal role, she just sits pretty. Or more precisely, Avary fails to do anything with her. In literally the last five minutes she springs to life, breaks the hostage situation and saves the grateful, but still dazed Zed from suffering any consequences of his crime. Why she doesn't mind his involvement in the crime--or why she gives a damn about him at all--is impossible to tell. After all, she's had no chance to see that he's any more decent than the rest of the gang.<br /><br />Throughout, the dialogue is stilted and phony. Much of it is in French. As a native speaker, I can certify that it doesn't ring even remotely true. Eric's sugary-sweet discourse, rapidly alternating with tough-guy boasting, is meant to be at turns charming and scary, but is instead just grating. Meanwhile his scaredy-cat accomplices are more Scooby-Doo than Thomas Crown. When Eric is gunned down in a ludicrous example of excessive force, we can all breathe a sigh of relief: like the bank hostages, we will soon be freed from this miserable ordeal. | 0 |
5,530 | [
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] | 539 | 668 | I watched this out of curiosity. I enjoyed Stargate SG1 and I've watched many of the other TV shows and movies that the principal characters have worked on.<br /><br />My expectations weren't high, so I was surprised to be so monstrously disappointed.<br /><br />The acting throughout is appalling, and the script is worse. <br /><br />Zero research into the bad science that is spouted throughout the movie, or into martial arts (which several cast members engage in throughout the movie, despite clearly having no martial arts training (baton twirling does not a warrior make)) training makes the already implausible plot even less credible. The same weapon (carried by Michael Shanks), when shot at the side of a mountain, causes extreme damage, but when shot indoors at the wall made of wicker, creates a small fireworks effect without damaging the wicker structure - OK, I suppose Michael Shanks fans will be sued to seeing that in Stargate SG1, where a staff weapon creates either a surface burn on a main character, or blasts a hole in a section of castle wall as required), but still... A bad CGI snake 'god' eats one of the faithful in the way a dog would eat - snakes just don't behave like that.<br /><br />The basic premise of an amazonian warrior cult on a distant planet is silly at best. Matriarchal societies have always been based on a lack of understanding that men are required in the process of propagating the species - for instance, the Picts, who didn't figure out the role of men in sexual reproduction until the ninth century - at which time, the balance of power moved from the women to the men. They carry technological weapons and demonstrate some knowledge of science - particularly of medicine, so the idea that a matriarchal society could exist with this level of scientific knowledge is based purely on the original author's wet dream. Of course, the few references to stellar science made in this movie demonstrate that the author knew nothing about that either (except for a few keywords that he must have heard in other movies). Still, it could have been done better - like 'She' in 1965 for instance, which showed matriarchal society with a certain reverence, far more believably, and even after 45 years it seems fresher than this fetid exercise in stupidity. Marching a few women around in 'armour', pouting aggressively, and spitting out their lines like a kiddie looking for a fight in a nightclub ("Come on then! I'll do ya!" style), seems to be over-simplifying the complexities of a matriarchal culture.<br /><br />The cultural references are so simple - 'all hail the snake mother' pretty much sums it all up. Even the tiniest hamlet shows more cultural variation. <br /><br />There is nothing clever, thought-provoking, interesting, visually exciting, or remotely entertaining about this movie. The soundtrack is of similar quality.<br /><br />I can only assume that the few, overly-charitable positive reviews this movie has received are from blinkered Michael Shanks fans who will give a thumbs up to anything he's involved in. Don't be fooled. Low budgets are not a reason for a film to fail - cheap B movies can be brilliant. This isn't one of them, and there's no reason to inflict this movie on yourself. | 0 |
5,568 | [
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] | 439 | 609 | In the early 00's, production companies had a short-lived craze for supernatural genre movies in France after "The Crimson Rivers" and "Brotherhood of the Wolf" turned out to be hits, so several movies were green-lit or saved from their "direct-to-video" fate. However, France, as opposed to the US, UK or Italy, has little tradition of fantasy B-movies and it turned out quickly that "Samouraïs", "Bloody Mallory" or the "Crimson Rivers" sequel were ill-advised attempts at recreating a kind of magic that had never existed in French cinema in the first place. As they flopped, producers have gone back to their usual fare: derivative farces or the umpteenth self-referential tribute to French New Wave by a former critic from "Les Cahiers du cinéma".<br /><br />"Brocéliande" could only have been green-lit during this short window, as it serves no other discernible purpose. It's your by-the-book slasher movie mixed with vague mythological element and horror references and you'll find bimboesque female characters, a French University looking like a US campus and plot twists so lazy you don't even care because you had guessed it by yourself an hour before, even before the movie started.<br /><br />These elements make all the fun of a 70's or a 80's B-movie and you expect them in a 70's or 80's movie. However, we're not in the 80's anymore and nobody warned director Doug Headline, as this tribute to the slasher movie genre is nothing more than a derivative slasher movie. Headline himself is no rookie and has been writing as a critic about this kind of pictures since the early 80's but as a first time director he shows a lack of skill and ambition that makes "Brocéliande" a bore.<br /><br />When you put together clichés from a movie subcategory and hand them to a skilled and inventive director such as Wes Craven or Quentin Tarantino, you get a "Scream" or a "Death Proof", movies that are imitations from old guilty pleasures but also magnify these clichés and add a great deal to them. That's called "talent" and that's why you can't confuse these recent movies with their original inspirations shot decades ago.<br /><br />"Brocéliande" takes the lazy path and only reproduces the worst elements from past movies (unfortunately for the male viewer, the gratuitous nudity is mostly missing). There are very strong similarities (presumably unintentional) between the plot of "Brocéliande" and the reviled "Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch", as both deal with supernatural Druidic evil rituals and some silly attempt at taking over the world on Halloween night. As even the plot of "Halloween 3" makes more sense than this one, it means that something seriously wrong went with "Brocéliande". | 0 |
5,627 | [
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] | 481 | 614 | I am a fan of Jess Franco's bizarre style, and a lover even of his trashier films, and my personal opinion is that he has, besides several very entertaining movies, also created a few masterpieces, such as the brilliant "Paroxismus" aka "Venus In Furs" of 1969, for example. It is, however, an undeniable fact that the 180+ movies this highly prolific filmmaker has directed in his career, also include a bunch of big time stinkers. "Sadomania" of 1981 certainly is one of these stinkers, just an utterly bad and plot less movie with the ability to bore the hell out of you in spite of constant sleaze and nudity.<br /><br />Sure, the constant nudity will keep you entertained for 20 minutes, but since it keeps going on and on like that one is pretty likely to get bored after a short time. The only thing that really kept me watching this was the intensity of the sleaze which is, generously spoken, slightly amusing.<br /><br />After couple of newlyweds get lost in the desert on some island, they are stopped by a bunch of topless women carrying guns, wardens of a local prison camp. While the husband is banished from the island, the wife is taken to the prison camp, a place of torture and sexual humiliation, reigned by the sadistic nymphomaniac Magda and an extremely perverted governor. The prisoners are, of course, entirely hot chicks, most of them blondes, the wardens are entirely topless women carrying rifles.<br /><br />The plot, if one can call it that, is extremely stupid of course, but who is going to watch this for a good plot anyway. The (only) interesting thing about "Sadomania" is the high level of exploitation, even for a 'Women In Prison' film. There are probably two short scenes in the movie where we see a woman actually wearing a top, the sleaze contains all kinds of sexual perversions from rape to bestiality, and some of the torture scenes are really nasty.<br /><br />It is amazing that a film with this extreme level of sleaze, however, can still be so boring. The sleaze will keep you watching in the beginning, but after the first 45 minutes I actually had a hard time not to fall asleep. It also makes me wonder why, out of all pornstars, Jess Franco chose Ajita Wilson, who was, according to most sources, a transsexual who had been born a man (well, maybe for exactly that reason). If you really want to watch this, make sure you have enough beer at home to sit through it and watch it for the sleaze and exploitation only (and maybe for the slight unintentional fun factor). Don't expect to be highly entertained, however, it is almost unbelievable how a movie with such a high sleaze level can be so boring. I am a Jess Franco fan and I always will be, but "Sadomania" is just bad. 2/10 | 0 |
5,647 | [
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] | 533 | 643 | This is about some vampires (who can run around out in the sunlight), that are causing some problems down in South America. Casper Van Dien is sent in with his team of commandos to investigate. The movie opens with Van Dien & Co. walking through the jungle, and there's this huge black guy who just absolutely, positively cannot act. He speaks all his lines as if he's reading them off the cue-cards for the very first time. His voice is also so low that, well, it's positively hilarious. Great way to get the movie started! Anyhow, they run into some of our vampires, shoot them (this causes them to appear to die for about 20 seconds), and then of course they come back to life. Van Dien notices that one of them was impaled across a tree limb, and yells to his buddies to kill them with wood. The stunt work must be seen to be believed - the vampires are on wires that pull them up trees, which is supposed to make them look like they can climb really easily, but it just makes them look like they're bouncing around on bungee cords or something.<br /><br />Yeah...anyhow, later on, the huge black dude is down in South America with some guys (Van Dien not included), and they're attacked by more vampires. It's really too bad these guys never heard of a crossbow, because it would seem to be the perfect weapon to kill the little bloodsuckers with, but instead they use big old wooden stakes that they try to impale the vampires with by hand. The big black dude ends up getting captured and he eventually becomes some big powerful vampire leader. Van Dien ends up battling him later on. It doesn't help that all through the movie, everyone forgets that if you shoot a vampire, they are knocked out for 20 seconds or so, which would enable a person to stick a stake in them fairly easily. They just try to stick stakes in them in the middle of hand-to-hand combat. Yeah, not exactly brilliant tactics.<br /><br />There's a hot babe (remember Veronica from The Lost World TV show? Yes, it's her!) who also happens to be walking around in the middle of Vampire County on some sort of research mission, and she also just happens to be Van Dien's ex-wife. Hey, what are the odds? It's a shame she's not in the movie a whole lot more than she is. Will her and Casper get back together in the end? Will Van Dien defeat the huge black dude who can't act? Will the circus performer vampires make you laugh through all the numerous action scenes? Will we hear the three stooges music when somebody does something funny? Has even Lynda Carter forgotten how to act in her small cameo (she's more convincing in her Sleep Number Bed commercials)? These questions and more will will be answered if you make it all the way to the end of the movie.<br /><br />I don't know, it might score some points on the so bad it's good scale, but that's about it. Eh, it's a bunch of goofs running around in the jungle, I guess it's kind of entertaining. | 0 |
5,649 | [
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] | 562 | 683 | Slayer starts in the South American rain forest where Captain Hawk (Casper Van Dien) & his men are attacked by a bunch of Vampires, they barely manage to escape with their lives. Jump forward six months later & Hawk is called to see Colonel Weaver (Lynda Carter) who informs him there has been other reported sightings of Vampires & that his ex-wife & her Goddaughter Dr. Laurie Williams (Jennifer O'Dell) has gone out there on an expedition to study beetles, worried she ask's Hawk to take a squad of soldiers back to South America & officially provide back up to Captain Grieves (Kevin Grevioux) & his men while at the same time unofficially look for Laurie & not get killed by the Vampires who have decided to venture out of the caves & into the civilised World...<br /><br />Edited, written & directed by Kevin VanHook this is yet another poorly made Sci-Fi Channel original which just isn't very good in any respect. The humourless script has nothing going for it as far as I could see, it's one of those modern Vampire films which decides to pick & choose the 'traditional' Vampire film lore rules it wants to use like these Vampires can be killed with stakes through the heart & have fangs but at the same time can freely walk around in sunlight & they don't sleep in coffins. The film moves along at a reasonable pace but it's all very dull, bland & lifeless. The story is poor & just rather stupid, the character's are terrible, the dialogue is forgettable & there's very little here to recommend. Slayer also tries to have some sort of ecological message as the head Vampire claims they are only starting to kill human beings because of their systematic destruction of the rain forest where they have lived in secret for centuries, unfortunately there's no conviction there & is more like a throwaway line to fill the time than a serious statement. There isn't enough exploitation content & is a rather unsatisfying way to spend 90 minutes of your time. The makers don't even do anything with the jungle setting, hell I didn't expect Predator (1987) but I hoped for a bit more than this.<br /><br />Director VanHook has made several horror films all of which I have seen have been equally poor, I'm sorry but he does nothing here & turns in a throughly forgettable looking & feeling film. There's no atmosphere or tension & as for genuine scares forget about it. The gore is restrained, there are some bitten necks & a bit of spraying blood but it's nothing we haven't seen before or has much impact. There's also a huge Vampire monster creature at the end but it doesn't look that impressive & it gets itself killed far too easily.<br /><br />With a supposed budget of about $2,000,000 this actually had a decent sized amount of money spent on it but it's still a rubbish film, it's reasonably well made but nothing special or memorable. The acting sucks, I'm sorry but that's the way I saw it.<br /><br />Slayer is yet another poor, stupid & boring made-for-TV Sci-Fi Channel rubbish that I simply can't recommend. Not to be confused with the rather fine one time British 'Video Nasty' gore film The Slayer (1982) which is 100 times better than this so track that down & watch that instead. | 0 |
5,686 | [
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] | 522 | 666 | If this is not heavily featured on every list of "what not to watch", it should only be because those keeping that particular list are not aware of its existence, which, as long as that remains so, is the acceptable alternative. I'm not kidding you, this is a *bad* "movie". Joseph Meeker returns from the dead, with various vague, undefined supernatural powers, the most employed of which would seem to be appearing in new, increasingly comical-looking and ridiculous(and never scary or creepy... in general, when this goes for the latter of those, it winds up just being bizarre, and attempts at the former just don't work, period) outfits and stereotypes/archetypes, and he is portrayed by David Keith(whom I respect in... well, at least Daredevil), doing a more often than not terribly inconsistent(which could also have to do with script) and often over the top performance. A character or two have personalities so unbelievably irritating that they're painful to watch. The editing thinks it's considerably more clever than it really is(and what on Earth was with the red tint for the flashbacks?). Cinematography... oh, dear. Framing, coverage, effective use of angle(that one could be attributed some to editing, too, perhaps), please, guys, stop me when I say something you've ever heard about the existence of. As far as the technical side goes, this is a pretty lousy excuse for something more worthwhile to put in the projector than unexposed film. But why stop there? The plot is just poor. The basic idea's been done, and it's been done so much better than this(The Crow would be one). The way it's told is gimmicky, and while there is some explanation behind the flashbacks, it still doesn't satisfy. Pacing is about non-existent. The lead is distinctly unlikeable, and there's more personality in a barn door, not to mention that those are also considerably less wooden. Kelly Perine and Thomas Ian Nicholas? What in the name of all that is good and just(pun intended) are you doing in this? Perine, you were already funny before this, on The Drew Carey Show, Nicholas, well, I haven't seen you in anything preceding American Pie, but if nothing else, you *were* funny later on, and in those productions, the amusement was intentional. Dialog is... the less said, the better. Language is unrestrained, and tends to be stupid. The violence is shoddily done, and they don't even seem to care to try to hide it(hinting at it might have been the smarter strategy). Characters, don't get me started. Why spend so much energy on portraying unexciting, at times utterly illogical, events? The more you think about this, the worse it gets. It's not even passable as a "bad horror flick", or a B movie(it may very well pass through the rest of the alphabet, and go further still), it couldn't scare you on the scariest day of your life if it had an electrified scaring machine. I recommend this only to people who want to disprove how bad this is, and don't say I didn't warn ya. 1/10 | 0 |
5,700 | [
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] | 559 | 659 | In a world where humans can live forever you spend the entire movie wishing they would die. First off if you insist on watching this movie do two things first put it on mute, don't worry you miss a plot, hell they don't even talk for the first 70 min of an 87 min movie, after putting on mute you must now hit fast forward till the main chick dies don't worry even if your paying attention you won't know why or how she died. Once you get to the "good part" take it of mute. Oh, how will you know the good part, wait for an elevator scene with two morons in space suits with WWII weapons. These weapons won't seem like much till you realize that the first protagonist had a laser tag pistol and a bandoleer of CO2 cartridges. The only remnants of a plot take place between a glowing ball and a semi hot chick who looks like she was attacked by Wolverine. After listening to the "plot", you will wish they went back to not talking. Of the four people that are in this movie none of them can remotely act, not even a little bit, you will have better luck witnessing acting at a kindergarten theater.<br /><br />To comment on the special on the special effects, let me just say "Wow", no really you will spend the entire movie saying to your self "Where did this movie's 1.8 million dollar budget go!" Seriously it will leave you in aw of the magnitude of ineptness. The best "sets" are basically windows wallpaper backgrounds. The Ships are basically flying wrenches, Wait some are barges that kinda look like whales . I have never heard so many made up words in my whole life. They have buttons on their wrist(large pedometers) that can put them in "fight mode" and super runing mode (makes them super blurry). This will seriously drain their power reserves but they find bits of wires to chew on to regain their strength. The explosions were less impressive than my fourth of July, I only had sparklers.<br /><br />So the plot as far as I can figure goes something like this "mother" is a space ship captain and goes to the desert for a while rides a rocket dies. Then her daughter 6000 years in the future ( no I am not exaggerating) recalls her mother's memories through some sort of capsule. Anyways they jabber on for another 10 min and then the cause a big bang. Yes the Same "Big Bang" that started our solar system. It's explained how she goes back in time or something, it does not really matter it happened i guess. Roll Credits Seriously the whole script was mercifully on one sheet of paper, unless that actually detailed any of the dreadfully fight scenes.<br /><br />After watching the credits I have now laughed more than I did the entire movie, the jobs the created like catering supervisor "galactius sarcophagus" and then the special thanks to George Lucas was just the best.<br /><br />I really wasn't expecting that much for a movie I paid 99 cents for but seriously some body owes me for this. Most frequent comment heard after the movie "I want my life back". You have to admire that some but put time and effort in to this movie but seriously, why ? | 0 |
5,719 | [
600,
700
] | 526 | 625 | Yes, we all know about Dan Schneider's odd little fascination with making shows with young kids and iCarly is no exception. See young girls wiggle their toes and stick their tongues out for the camera and wear skimpy clothes and bikini's. Yes, it makes you wonder if these shows were made for teens or for some older degenerate crowd. Either way the show isn't that good when compared to Dan Schneiders other shows like the far superior Amanda Show & Drake and Josh.<br /><br />The show is about a brother and sister (Carly and Spencer) living alone and having to get by on their own while their father is off in the Army and their mother is strangely absent from their lives. Carly has a mean spirited friend named Sam and they do a very well produced, award winning web show called iCarly with their little school friend Freddie. The episodes deal with their lives in and around the web show and their hi jinx at school.<br /><br />Carly Shay is a young, all knowing web personality/ business woman/ producer played by Miranda Cosgrove, a young actress who relies on talking very very loudly and fast to get her point across and making odd faces. Her brother Spencer is a somewhat mean-spirited, dim-wit and eccentric artist played by Jerry Trainor, who tries a bit to hard to be like Jim Carrey and whose comedy style seems to be aimed at the young male audience who'd like this type of Joey Gladstone humor. Then there's Sam Puckett, an unlikable, mean little, lying thief of a brat who needs an attitude adjustment played by Jeanette McCurdy who clearly wears hair extensions as you can see them disappear then reappear from scene to scene. And finally there's Freddie Benson the web shows nerdy cameraman and technical adviser, who has a major crush on Carly but will obviously get nowhere with her who's played by Nathan Kress.<br /><br />Other secondary characters come and go such as Freddies mother, Carly's grandfather, annoying teachers and many of their annoying little school friends to round out the cast. Most of the comedy is mean spirited, like blowing up Lewbert the Doorman as a gag, throwing a water balloon at a teacher and knocking over the table of young girl scouts selling cookies. All of the adults come off as complete idiots while the children are all knowing, and certain main characters have absolutely no morals. Lying, cheating, stealing and violence all are acceptable in this children's show created and written by Dan Schneider, Yes... it's a children's show! What more could the young viewers ask for?? Well, with Dan Schneider we can expect to have the young girls dress in tight clothes and bikini's and do some odd things like sticking their tongues out for the camera and eating banana's.<br /><br />Shows like this are just what the young crowd likes though and I guess no worse then any of the other garbage Nick shovels at its young crowd. There's always fans to be found for anything seen on TV, at least this is a bit better then most of the stuff seen on Nick like that horrible Naked Brothers show. | 0 |
5,730 | [
600,
700
] | 554 | 627 | The first time I watched this show it was OK. There were some funny moments and I laughed a couple of times but this show is getting worse and worse. Carly and Sam's web show is NOT the least bit funny. They play a stupid video from the internet, scream at the camera and make some very bad jokes. And then the laugh track goes off?! One problem with the show is that none of the main characters are funny. Carly is not funny. Miranda Cosgrove's acting is lackluster at best. Her acting in this show is nothing like her acting from Drake And Josh. Her friend Sam is very rude and crude and the show is written in a way that makes her look like some kind of hillbilly. I mean they make jokes about her mom driving a rusty old truck, her mom smashing an old TV with a bat, and then there's the jokes about Sam failing in school, getting detention all the time and running from cops. None of that is funny at all. Then there's Freddy who is a computer geek. He isn't too funny unless his Mom is treating him like a baby. The show's only somewhat funny full time character is Carly's brother Spencer. He makes some funny jokes and does some pretty funny things like pretending to drive a space ship while making spaceship noises, knocking over a girl scouts' cookie table for revenge as they did the same thing to him. His material is the only thing worth laughing at. Aside from the characters other things make the show bad too. Like the fact that a couple of kids doing a local web show from a Seattle apartment is a worldwide hit and got them a free trip to Tokyo? Another thing is that how can a 26 year old single guy with no real job can pay for a 2 level apartment in downtown Seattle and raise his 13 year old sister and pay for a room full of camera and sound equipment including a remote controlled projector and a green screen and an HD camera? This sounds like it was written by a 10 year old. The worst thing is that the show contains some pretty questionable content. There are a couple of times when Carly(remember a 13 year old girl) appears on her internet web show in a bikini top. WTF? Then I saw an episode where Freddy tells Carly and Sam that he "slept in JUST his socks the night before." I mean WTF? Then there's an episode where Carly's rival Nevel blackmails her by taking her website rights and agrees to give her the website back in exchange for a kiss. Creepy! And I just saw an episode where Carly meets a boy who just moved into their apartment building and he has some kind of back injury and he takes off his shirt and Carly stands there drooling over him. I can't believe Nick even lets them show that kind off stuff and I can't believe that this was created by the same guy responsible for Drake and Josh. This show is not appropriate for kids under the age of 12 and that's even questionable. iCarly is just another addition to the long list of awful Nick programming. | 0 |
5,738 | [
600,
700
] | 524 | 677 | Miranda Cosgrove is known for her debut in "School of Rock" with Jack Black and her role as Megan in the show "Drake and Josh" and she has become a fan favorite amongst the Nickelodeon public, so it isn't a surprise that Dan Schneider would create a show just for her. Unfortunately, it ends up being as bad as, if not worse than, "The Amanda Show".<br /><br />"iCarly" is about three friends, Carly, Sam, and Freddie, who have become idols in the junior high community through a webcam show called "iCarly". Carly and Sam are the hosts and Freddie shoots and puts it up on the internet. Carly also has an older brother named Spencer, acted by the hilarious Jerry Trainor who is known for his work in "Drake and Josh" as Crazy Steve.<br /><br />Well, let me tell you this. Don't believe the 8.3 out of 10 this show received because it is pathetic in nearly every aspect. Dan Schneider probably went through about 5 minutes of studying teenage interests because all I see is him saying "iPod? iPhone? iHome? Aha! Teenagers love anything beginning with 'i'!" and a majority of gigs that were used in "Drake and Josh", if not, then they are just really dry and forced jokes that don't even count on a generousity chuckle, such as "You want me to turn up the AC to 60 degrees?" "No. We want you to turn it up to 60 pickles!" Not only that, but if you look closely, nearly all the sets in the shows were used in "Drake and Josh" and "Ned's Declassified" that were simply spit-and-polished with random stuff to try and make it look different.<br /><br />The scenes where the show is showing a broadcast of the iCarly network is just as terrible as the entire series itself. The dialogue in them is atrociously bad, which may be accepted by some since it IS just two friends playing around in front of a camera, but what's the deal with the really odd, humorless antics they do like "Random Dancing!"? And it just gets worse from there.<br /><br />In terms of acting, Miranda and Jennette aren't at their best, by far. Nathan Kress, who played Freddie, isn't believable at times, but he does an okay job. The person who really steals the show is the humorous prowess of Jerry Trainor, who fits in his "protective older brother" role very well and his wide-eyed loud-mouthed acting can make for some pretty funny segments. Too bad they aren't frequent, because that might have given the show an extra star in my opinion.<br /><br />Dan Schneider must have made this show for the sole purpose of giving Miranda Cosgrove her own cable-born playground to hop around and spew unfunny jokes and pathetic cue-card lines in every direction, because everyone else has exceptional talent buried underneath the poorly-done script and weightless acting. Dan Schneider did a great job with "Drake and Josh" so it's a real disappointment that "iCarly" is such a failure. Jerry Trainor's acting saved this show from a 1 out of 10 rating, but he alone can't save "iCarly" from being as horrible as it is. | 0 |
5,850 | [
600,
700
] | 549 | 661 | If a movie has an unimaginative, hackneyed story and bland characters it needs to make up for it by being really, really funny. You can get away with a lot if you're funny. But while there are a few amusing moments scattered here and there in Grandma's Boy, they are so far and few between that they cannot begin to make up for the hack work the film displays in such abundance.<br /><br />The movie certainly doesn't aim to surprise anyone. When Alex hides marijuana in his grandma's house in a tea tin you know what's going to happen later on and it does. The movie appears to have been written by a committee who did a study of mediocre comedies and grabbed any gag that appeared in more than one of them.<br /><br />The most interesting thing about the movie is its somewhat unusual setting. The game takes place in a video game development company, which should be an interesting source for some clever comedy. But don't be fooled, this is not a movie about video game developers. This is basically a college frat house movie in which all the frat boys have been shoved into a big room to play video games.<br /><br />The way the movie completely fails to think through its setting and use it for original laughs can be seen in the character of J.P. J.P. is I think more-or-less conspired by the creator of Doom, John Carmack. At least inspired to the extent that he's an odd genius who makes games.<br /><br />In the movie, J.P. is a weird, obnoxious geek who is despised and jeered by the company game testers. That makes no sense at all. If you are one of the most significant people in the history of video games (as J.P. is supposed to be) then even if you're quirky and obnoxious, people will still admire and respect you on some level. If Stephen Hawking is obnoxious his associates still aren't going to make jun of him to his face.<br /><br />Also, game testers are just as likely to be geeks as J.P., but in the movie they are basically frat boys. It's a fun normal guys against the obnoxious dweebs movie. And while that formula has worked, very occasionally, in the past, it is absurd in the setting of a game company. If you decide to use an unusual setting for a movie, you don't simply cram in all the conventions of movies from different settings into that one. Unless you're a hack.<br /><br />About two thirds of the way through the movie I gave up. Something happened that I knew would result in a series of painfully predictable events. And I realized I hadn't actually laughed at anything for the last half hour anyway. So I stopped (although I did fast forward just to make sure I was right that they would follow the most predictable clichés, which they did).<br /><br />Normally if a movie's bad I just say it's bad and then run out of things to say, but this movie is such a phenomenally shoddy production that it deserves a long diatribe.<br /><br />Shame on the movie for luring a good actress like Linda Cardellini into it, then surrounding her with talentless nobodies. I'll give the movie 1 point for giving Shirley Jones the chance to be the anti-Shirley Partridge though. | 0 |
5,893 | [
600,
700
] | 477 | 603 | For producer David O. Selznick, no one director would ever do. Hence, on "A Farewell to Arms" (1957) we get two Charles Vidor and John Huston. Though both men were quite accomplished in their own right, neither could make head or tail of this disastrous remake of Hemmingway's magnum opus. Hemmingway in general has never translated well from book to screen. But under Selznick's zeal to transform it into his next 'Gone With The Wind' the excursion is both punishing and exhaustive. At this point in Selznick's career, he was no longer the titan who could take "box office poison" and transform it into Gone With The Wind. Tired, frail, minus his studio, and, with an impending sense that his second marriage to Jennifer Jones might have been a mistake, Selznick handed the creative reigns of this flick over to Fox Studios but he kept enough of himself in it to become a damn nuisance on the set.<br /><br />By now one is, or should be familiar with the bittersweet tragic love story of a nurse, Catharine Barkley (Jennifer Jones) and her soldier hero, Lt. Frederick Henry (Rock Hudson). Their passion is supposed to serve as the stabilizing force for what is essentially a war correspondent's tale with romanticism thrown in for good measure. But the chemistry between Hudson and Jones is both turgid and dull. In the final reel, Jones' facial contortions during child birth are so bad I am surprised that neither director opted to cut them from the general release. Part of the problem with Jones is that at thirty-eight she's far too wise to play the optimistic Catharine with any great conviction. Yet, older actresses have frequently managed to make an audience forget discrepancies in age. Not so with Jones. One is painfully aware that she doesn't fit the bill in either acting chops or years invested on this planet. Hudson's laconic charm is hopelessly out of touch with to stoicism of an army soldier whose heart is broken but head remains strong. The supporting cast is peppered with such luminaries as Vittorio De Sica and Mercedes McCambridge, but these are wasted bits of nonsense that in no way reflect upon the formidable talents of either actor and best made evident elsewhere in their canons of film making.<br /><br />The anamorphic picture element for "A Farewell to Arms" looks good enough, though there's just a bit too much film grain present in certain scenes for this reviewer's liking. Overall, colors are subtle and muted, though balanced in accordance with the DeLuxe color processing employed at this time. Some fading is evident. Flesh tones don't appear very natural. Contrast levels are a tad weak. Blacks are generally solid. Whites are almost clean. There's not much to recommend this film sonically. It's essentially a wordy picture with gun shots as a backdrop. There are no extras. | 0 |
5,908 | [
600,
700
] | 523 | 690 | This should have rocked. VH1 moved away from the traditional divas (Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, etc.) that had made the 2003 show so stale. Sadly the move backfired. The show had no MC keeping the show together. Queen Latifah did a fantastic show at the 2003 Divas. The show kicked of with a horrific rendition of Lady Marmalade featuring Patti Labelle, Cyndi Lauper, and Jessica Simpson. Okay in the studio with some control they can all sound great. <br /><br />However, when they are competing with each other (why?) it just sounds torturous! Jessica Simpson has the most bizarre facial expressions when she sings that i've ever witnessed! Cyndi Lauper also performed Girl Just Wanna Have Fun. That wasn't as bad but it was hardly impressive. The worst was yet to come! Cyndi and Patti Labelle teamed up to perform Cyndi's hit 'Time After Time'. It was acoustic, and didn't fit in with the rest of the show. Still it could've been okay if they both hadn't insisted on squealing like mamed animals. It was just dire.<br /><br />Debbie Harry (from Blondie) is always cool. She has a style of her own and although maybe she can't compete vocally with a many of the divas although she certainly can sing very well. Debbie came out and performed Blondie's #1 hit 'Rapture'. With some lovely vocals. She really hit the notes perfectly. She looked stunning. Rapper Eve provided a new, but sadly inferior rap. It was good. Debbie's next performance was a team-up with newcomer Joss Stone. They performed the Blondie hit 'One Way Or Another'. I think Joss misunderstood the style of the song and just shouted over Debbie. A rather sad bit was when Debbie tried and failed to match her shouty style which spoiled it a bit. She should've just let Joss get on with her totally inappropriate warballing. The whole of Blondie performed this track. The final track Debbie performed was Blondie's massive hit 'Call Me'. It was pretty poor. Not Debbie's fault because you just couldn't hear her. The sound was atrocious all the way through the show.<br /><br />Joss Stone also performed a few songs on her own. They were quite well done. Ashanti also showed up to perform two inexplicable cover versions. Firstly she did Diana Ross' 'I'm Coming Out', and then Chaka Khan's 'Ain't Nobody'. She is not a diva! She can sing to an extent but she has no presence whatsoever. Why not just get the real singers in. Chaka was even interviewed on the show....<br /><br />Gladys Knight showed up and did a medley. It was very good. She was probably the best bit of the show. I don't know much about her other than she is a seasoned performer in Las Vegas and her experience and class really shone through. Patti Labelle fitted in another performance this time her 80's hit 'New Attitude'. It was the finale and it was okay but it was too little to late. This was one big dud. Better luck next time VH1.<br /><br />The version I saw was a heavily edited 55min version which was shown on VH1 in the UK. If these were the best bits..... | 0 |
5,928 | [
600,
700
] | 550 | 667 | When Exploiters become evangelist, they still exploit in the name of poverty! <br /><br />My first reaction after seeing the movie is God Bless me that I am not eating fish or any non-vegetarian products! <br /><br />The documentary is about Lake Victoria of Tanzania where numerous varieties of lovely fishes used to live, and one day during 1960s somebody came and injected the mighty fish Perch, who became the exportable commodity for Tanzania to European and Japanese markets. The consequences were severe firstly all local small and big fish were extinct; secondly the plane that came to take the fish could not travel empty because it does not make commercial/ business/ capitalist sense, so it is filled with arms and ammunition (that is what Europe can give this world); thirdly the pilots (as all migrants and traveling population like truck drivers) has to survive their sexual needs by flourishing cheap local African prostitutes for them; fourthly the brokers, dealers, middle men in the chain (mainly Indian origin business people) get richer and Tanzania's poverty remains the same; fifth poverty drives the children to crime, drugs etc.<br /><br />The premise to make this documentary was excellent. But has the Director Hubert Sauper succeeded in making a good documentary? It is a big NO. <br /><br />I say the reasons: Like in India, it requires a higher caste Brahmin to stand up and project to the world, Indian poverty and untouchables; similarly it requires an Austrain born European documentary maker to tell the world the story of Tanzania and its crumbling and ruining economy and poverty. It is the pathetic motive of unaware breeding of that rich class (who have never seen poverty or known poor), who survives, live, earn and fame like pest hanging on to projecting poverty to the world as soon as they see it. There is nothing more but despise by poor people in African and India who see such images of their.<br /><br />The intention and motives of the Hubert seems totally lop-sided. The images, characters, locales, interviews are too grave and murky, dark and disturbing. He uses exaggerated ignorance as a voice to present his case. What we feel in the end is pity and sadness for Africans. We also start considering the Tanzania government and people as villainous. May be some westerners sitting in their air-conditioned rooms would find time to discuss and debate about the pathetic living conditions of Africans, but there would be nothing more than that.<br /><br />The director restrains to show himself even once on the screen so as not to be identified among the Europeans who exploit this poor country.<br /><br />This Director Hubert can only survive being exploiters themselves like today's CNN and BCC media giants. Hubert did not have guts or common sense to talk to any Europeans who eat or companies who import these fish products. A totally lop-sided flimsy effort! But I understand the reasons of the same Hubert just wanted to rake his fame, sitting and smiling with awards in his European comfort.<br /><br />No more words to spare for this pathetic effort. I hesitantly give the documentary a higher rating 3.5 Stars out of 10, just because the theme was correct; but was pathetically exploited and blown away by amateurish ill conceived director made solely for un-intelligent western audiences! (Stars 3.5 out of 10) | 0 |
5,930 | [
600,
700
] | 567 | 621 | The title of this documentary is very misleading. At no time during the documentary do they show how the introduction of the Nile Perch fish into Lake Victoria has cause any of the problems facing the town of Mwanza, Tanzania. The film tries to place the problems of Tanzania on an environmental cause but the truth of that matter is the problems stem from a parasitic outside force. The documentary is very slowing paced with no narrative what so ever. Instead it relies on small blips of text between none related segments to display bits of information that do little to add or expand of the subject matter. There are only two attempts to discus the environmental effects of the Nile Perch fish. One is a small segment about 10 seconds long where they interview the factory managers where the fish is processed and he briefly mentions how 50 years ago the Nile Perch was introduced into the lake and it consumed the other fish species. The film maker makes no attempt to follow up on the matter or go deeper into it. The second attempt is when within this documentary they film the showing of another documentary that is discussing the environmental impact the Nile Perch has introduced, and again no real attempt is made to expand on just how devastating the problem has become. <br /><br />The subject matter that this documentary does delve into has nothing to do with the Perch fish itself and more to do with the problems facing most African countries. The film tries to link the introduction of the Perch fish with AIDS, Poverty and Pollution in Tanzania but never makes a direct connection. As any intelligent person well read with problems in Africa, the problems shown here are not unique to Tanzania but affect most of Africa and have nothing to do with the fish. It would have been great if the film makers would have shown how the local economy or life was before the fish was introduced and how it has been negatively impacted by the introduction of the fish but they don't. The fact of the matter is that many of the people they interview say that the fish has provided jobs and opportunity for many. Yes things are BAD within the town of Mwanza but they are far worst in other parts of the country and continent for that matter.<br /><br />A weak attempt by the documentary makers to link the fish to famine problems in Tanzania is quickly discredited by the documentary itself. First off Tanzania is a very large country and Lake Victoria is only a small portion of the country. Many of the individuals interview actually say that they can to Mwanza, the fishing town on the lake, to find a job and feed their families because things were so bad in other parts of the country. <br /><br />This documentary is very weak, has no narrative and makes no attempt to actually link anything they display to the Nile Perch. It plays on people's emotions by displaying images of the devastation of poverty, famine and AIDS making no attempt to show you how any of this is unique to the Lake Victoria region of Tanzania or directly related to the Perch Fish. The fact is most of the problems have more to do with War, Globalization and Christianity than and environmental effect of the Perch fish itself. | 0 |
5,935 | [
600,
700
] | 539 | 622 | If this film was just outrageously poor would be fine, the problem is many take it seriously. To make it short, a few points: <br /><br />- There is no story, no focus, no lead whatsoever and all the questions raised fail to find an answer. Overall, the film is extremely repetitive and boring (I have been in war-torn African countries several times and found all the lingering on local misery and hopelessness very painful to watch but still having no sense).<br /><br />- Questions raised are pure manipulation and the truth is that they are no questions but statements.<br /><br />- I am no doc filmmaker, but what's the point in raising, for example, the question of weapon smuggling, if the only element brought to the audience is a local reporter's statement? The director doesn't even bother showing us at least a sequence where he would be waiting near the airport trying to spot heavily loaded trucks leaving the area right after a plane landed.<br /><br />- The story of the fish takes up less than 5 mn, and is only supported by a sequence where the director films a documentary shown during a local conference. Did this guy do any work at all???? <br /><br />- Abject poverty is shown all the time in endless sequences but where's the point? One can go almost anywhere in Africa with a hand cam and shoot the same images unfortunately. Where's the big news? <br /><br />- Filming the prostitutes watching and crying over images of their assassinated friend and fellow prostitute is worth the worst emotional manipulations one can see these days on thrash and real TV.<br /><br />- The parallel drawn between the famine devastating the country with over two million starving and the exportation of fish is absolutely pointless, dishonest and makes no sense but to manipulate viewers in typically anti-globalization and anti-western feelings.<br /><br />There is an interesting debate in France after an academic published a very detailed comment on the film, which brought number of journalists working in Africa for decades to investigate a bit further about several details. It turns out that: <br /><br />- The fish waste shown drying in the sun and collected by some local people is not at all meant to be eaten by human beings but is collected to be exported for reasonably good money for animal-feeding purposes. I think I am not the only one having had the impression that the director suggested the exact opposite.<br /><br />- Arm smuggling is a reality (but there again, where's the big news??), but not the way this film explains the issue. If the empty planes landing in Mwanza do participate in smuggling, they actually unload their shipment in a different location in Africa, then go to Mwanza to pick up fish in order not to make the trip back empty (meaning that they do actually land empty in Mwanza...).<br /><br />- People do eat fish locally, contrary to what the film suggest (around 40-60% of what is taken out of the lake) and thousands of people make their living with it. Good for them! It's private business of that kind that will one day take African countries out of poverty and not western moaning and endless foreign assistance.<br /><br />I cannot tell how shocked I am seeing the success of this film! | 0 |
5,948 | [
600,
700
] | 529 | 686 | There is a reason why the world forgot these creatures: they are dull. This is a Hammer Production which means that whoever made this movie should be struck with a hammer, several times if possible - and where it most hurts. Most people put more thought into taking a dump than these idiots have put into making this movie.<br /><br />Seriously now
The movie begins with some cavemen hunting an antelope-thing. Now, antelopes must have evolved a lot from those pre-historic times because they actually attack and kill people here. After that, it's time to meet the rest of the tribe: more bearded men, some fashion-models, and even a couple of very old, grey-haired grannies and grandpas. These old geezers obviously never heard about cave people not surpassing the age of 30; they refused to bow to the will of both logic and pre-historical records, so they remain alive. One of the cavemen isn't bearded; he is clean-shaven. Not quite as clean-shaven as Tarzan, The Lord of the Humanoid Clean-Shaven Ones Roaming the Jungle Since Childhood And Without a Razor, but thereabouts.<br /><br />What follows is the obligatory earthquake/molten-lava destruction sequence which causes a lot of our not-so-hairy friends to meet their doom. It is interesting to note that before the earthquake the fashion-models showed their breasts more. After it, they must have gotten shy or something, because they covered their chests for a while (maybe they were covered by ash so I mistakenly thought they were covered). More action follows in the form of two fashion-models wrestling in the sand; the next-best thing to female mud-wrestling, I suppose. After a good deal of the desert has been crossed, our black-haired tribe meets - how else could it be - a blond tribe. Yawn.<br /><br />More spellbinding stuff follows. There is that redhead fashion-model who is bothered by seeing a cave-teen kill a hedge-hog-thing. There is also the scene of a woman dying at birth: those cave-fashion-models are so frail. Eventually we get to meet an even darker -haired and -skinned tribe, i.e. an evil tribe. One of them becomes a WWF champion after he actually beats(!) a huge bear-thing in a wrestling bout. 1,2,3... and it's done: the bear is the loser. We also witness a jealous caveman miraculously recover from two major injuries: first he gets stabbed with a big spear into the thigh, yet he walks away from that as if it were but a scratch. Then he gets thrown off a cliff - onto a big rock - by the blond goodie-two-shoes caveman, yet he walks away from it as if he were thrown onto a giant sofa. It's unclear in the end whether he dies from falling off an even higher cliff or from that voodoo doll being crushed. Oh yes, voodoo was used in pre-historic times by white tribes that live in the desert and whose females were fashion-models. It's always important to learn from movies.<br /><br />The message of the movie is as insightful as it is educational: cave people liked to fight for local power and they loved their fashion-models, too. As if any self-respecting caveman would fight to be leader of such a sorry bunch. | 0 |
6,025 | [
600,
700
] | 475 | 600 | I spotted the DVD on a store near my home, and since I'm a "cheesy horror movie/alien flicks" addict, I wondered how good it was. It even had two award mentions on the cover (I don't remember what festival it won) so I figured "Hey this might be good". So I bought it (for five euros) and I came here to IMDb to check out some reviews. Here, either people bashed the movie to say it was bad, or people said the movie was a wonderful feat in indie movies bla, bla. I then played the DVD, not thinking about any review I had read, with an open mind, and not expecting anything at all.<br /><br />Man... I don't' like being this critical, but the movie was genuinely bad... OK, I'm just going to give out some pointers of what I thought:<br /><br />1-Acting/dialog: The acting was so confusing... sometimes the actors did a decent job, but there were scenes were I could spot no effort at all from them! The dialog was even worst... I think it was probably the aspect I most disliked in the whole movie. The talking in between characters seemed... off. Not just bad, but far away from the actual happenings in the movie. The monologues of the female character, although well delivered, became boring and annoying in a little while... But of course the most ridiculous aspect was the... "aliens" or the "infected"... I wont even comment on that one, just going to say that it was absolutely ridiculous and took the entire mood away from the picture; 2-Visuals: the strongest aspect in the movie... if you forget the awful FX and light flashes they used to simulate explosions or what the hell they were supposed to be. The "camera in car" aspect was quite cool actually, but they didn't even used the environment to inspire fear or dread. They left that to cheap sound and video FX and the three "infected" characters. The movie becomes boring in so many scenes...; 3-Sound: Talk about editing... this movie has no problems in showing how weakly edited it was. From computer sounds imitating the forest animals to the "alien dialog"... ah...<br /><br />So what did I like in the movie... (SPOILERS) the only thing I really liked and it was actually quite scary was the succession of two scenes where the car is still and you spot something/someone walking in a distant. At first I really thought it was me seeing things, but when the character realizes that the "figures" coming towards her were her own reflection, I was surprised! Pretty creepy idea done well! Apart from that... I had an awful time.<br /><br />And I don't recommend this to anyone... not even "teen get together" because you can't even laugh at this...<br /><br />I give it a solid 2. Only some technical achievements worked here... apart from that... yeah... nothing | 0 |
6,028 | [
600,
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] | 532 | 640 | Jesus Christ, what the hell happened here?. This is one of the most boring movies I have ever seen, how is it possible that they screwed up such a nice idea for a movie. To tell you the truth I was so hyped for this, I though it was like Blair Witch but with actual alien creatures chasing the camera guy. Goddamn it, I have been reduced to fast forwarding this pile of sh*t, and I never do that while seeing movies. The high rating here on IMDb makes me believe that actual aliens are giving 10's for this piece of crap.<br /><br />Invasion is about well, an invasion. The movie starts by saying that everything you're about to see is real, blahblahblah. Then they go and tell me about a special camera system used in cars, as if I need to believe their bullsh*t to enjoy this movie. Next thing you know I'm seeing the most boring car driving ever filmed, in a forest at night mind you. Is this a movie, or a Disney theme park ride? The first 20 minutes is all boring dialog between cops while seeing grass and one straight road with a flashlight. Where the hell were the aliens?! They were sleeping of course! Then we learn that bad acting is not only reduced to high school plays, as the cop behind the camera goes out of his car to look for a missing man who was 'nightfishing' and had stumbled upon a mysterious meteorite. I wonder what happens to him? Out of nowhere, we see the 'nightfishing' guy walking like a zombie. The cop is apparently too dumb to notice that something is wrong with this man. Apparently he was indeed dumb, as the zombie/alien guy injects in the cop's ear some sort of alien parasite, thus changing him into an alien. Then the cop/alien goes back into his car, looks for a young couple that were having sex a while back in the forest, gets to them, changes the guy into an alien, and then the girl runs to the cop's car and escapes. If this quick plot introduction didn't get it in your head that this movie was bad, then the following 40 minutes will. Watching this movie is as painful as stabbing yourself repeatedly with a plastic fork. The script, while it may sound interesting on the back of the DVD box, is badly directed and sadly, we are left with another boring straight to DVD atrocity.<br /><br />The only thing that kept me awake were the constant flashing and loud sound effects (lamentably). If seeing the same forest trail for 63 minutes is not enough, we must endure crappy flashing techniques to "scare" the viewer and constant wailing of a bad actress that gets old and annoying pretty quick.<br /><br />If you feel you must rent this, I say to you, why? There are better SciFi/Horror films out there. Even the dreaded remake of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers is more entertaining than this. For the love of all things good, don't bother with his crap. My eyes bled, and for the first time, I wanted suicide. A 1/10, avoid this like a disease. | 0 |
6,060 | [
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] | 483 | 603 | The Three Stooges are arguably the greatest comedy team in film history. For that reason alone, they deserved a much better ending at Columbia than they received with this short.<br /><br />"Sappy Bullfighters" is just not good. Granted, this is not all Joe Besser's fault. I personally feel that some of his shorts are fun enough, simply because of the departure from the Stooges usual fanfare that they contain, and for the fact that Larry is sometimes showcased more. However, this short just will not do. And the fact that one knows that it is their last short that was ever shown, well that just adds to the overall disgust.<br /><br />This film just epitomizes how short subjects were on their last dying breaths during this time and how little effort went into making them. This short is so sloppy. It is a simple re-make of a Curly short, "What's the Matador?", filmed years before. As if this fact wasn't bad enough, the studio actually threw in footage of Moe and Larry from the original (which was filmed nearly 20 years prior). Are these things not obvious? Laughable or sad? You be the judge.<br /><br />Another part of this short that makes it miserable is the fact that it is basically a Joe Besser showcase, with him showing that all he is (at least in this film) is a Curly-wanna-be-gone-completely-wrong! Moe and Larry have little to do in this short. As a Larry fan, I also must say that I feel it a bit disgraceful to have Besser get to use the joke that Larry originally popularized in the short "Ants In The Pantry". To see Besser say "I can't see, I can't see!" and have Larry say the simple "Why can't you see?", while Besser gets to quip "I got my eyes closed", is just wrong on all levels.<br /><br />The two brave soldiers who stuck it out for all those years, Howard and Fine, have so little to do in this short. There are hardly any funny bits with them. The only thing that qualifies is Larry hiding under the bed of a jealous husband, attempting to be "Pepe", his dog.<br /><br />One can't blame the dynamic duo. Larry and Moe give it their all. No matter how ridiculous things could get (and I'm sure they had their opinions by this point in their careers) Howard and Fine never gave anything less than their best. Their efforts do not pale from 1934-1959.<br /><br />I often enjoy many shorts that some will dismiss as horrible. I'm all for their more "experimental", unusual shorts. At least those contain new ideas. However, this short, I think everyone can agree, is just not good.<br /><br />Thank goodness TV later discovered the boys after the shorts department closed. Had they been forced to go out in THIS fashion, well that would have been a gross injustice to all the years they invested in making audiences laugh. | 0 |
6,080 | [
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] | 517 | 602 | Great piece of fiction played as if factual. Tonight I was looking at the Birdman of Alcatraz. Robert Stoud was not a model meek prisoner and he was in jail because he was pimping and a customer did not pay up. Once he got into jail he was so uncontrollable he spent most of his time in solitary confinement or in the prison hospital. Killed a few people in prison too. This movie reminds me of the Birdman of Alcatraz but even worse. Robert Stroud did write books and he did contribute to society in someway. And the BOA had some hints of Strouds lunacy. BUT this guy Henry Young who Murder in the First is suppose to be about was a a known bank robber who took hostages and beat them up in more then one robbery. He wasn't some poor guy who stumbled into a grocery store which just happened to be a post office and took some money. This man was a hard core criminal. He also killed a person 3 years before he went to Alcatraz. He killed another person in jail not because of the solitary confinement which ended over a year before the murder. The real story of his life would of been more interesting. They did not even get the warden thing right. You can't be a warden in 3 different prisons at the same time. And by all accounts the warden in the movie was a pretty stand up guy as wardens go. Plus if my math is right the Warden played by Karl Malden in the BOA is suppose to be the same warden in this movie. Oh Boy. Not only that, in this movie we are to think poor Henry committed suicide. And he wrote the word Victory. Not true..he might be alive right now. He was sent to Springfield where Robert Stroud was also a medical center prison then Walla Walla for another murder he committed and then was released and jumped parole in 1972, never to be found. Maybe he is hanging out with that CB Cooper guy who jumped out that airplane in Washington state after committing a bank robbery lol. Now the acting was very good. Kevin Bacon is in that class of actors which include Jeff Bridges and Dennis Quaid, the vastly underrated actors club. Gary oldman well they just might of made-up the warden part so he could play it because he was great. Christian Slater still somehow sounds like Jack Nicholson, I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. Bacons wife Kyra Sedgwick was in the movie I think just because she is his wife. I like her though but not in this flick. For some reason I felt this movie when it first came out was suppose to be a special project for Kevin Bacon. I feel he could of taken a person who is truly a victim of the penal system, there sure is enough of them and spread some light on their plight. Other then picking a psychopath to show as a victim. | 0 |
6,156 | [
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] | 479 | 614 | Like CURSE OF THE KOMODO was for the creature feature genre, Jim Wynorski's CHEERLEADER MASSACRE is a straight-faced parody of slasher movies, such as SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE. A psycho, who has escaped from his padded cell,(..he was sent to the loony bin thanks to killing eleven people)is working across the mountainous backwoods countryside of Bobcat County attacking anyone within his reach. A van load of cheerleaders, their teacher, two equipment hands, and the driver are on their way to a contest when their vehicle runs out of fuel while taking a supposed short-cut to avoid having to turn back. Luckily the group find a cabin up ahead, but fall prey to a killer who attacks each victim one by one. The psycho loose in the county couldn't have killed one girl because she was in the cheerleaders' locker room while he was elsewhere which means someone among their own is the culprit. Meanwhile the sheriff of the county and his deputy pursue the whereabouts of their psycho, while also trying to find the location of the missing cheerleader squad.<br /><br />Shot cheap on video, Wynorski does what he can with the limited budget having to find clever ways to assassinate characters off-screen without the luxury of properly effective special effects. In other words, lots of melons were stabbed, the sound effect used to let us know that certain victims whisked away into the darkness by a black gloved hand died savagely. Wynorski incorporates a scene from SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE regarding Brinke Stevens' character Linda, her being pursued by a killer with a drill(..that killer and Linda both wound up dead, but I guess Wynorski wanted to connect his film to that one, albeit rather poorly)..still it was nice to see her, even if it was a glorified cameo. Tamie Sheffield, as Ms Hendricks the teacher of the students in trouble, has a long bathing scene in the shower soaping her naked body and fake breasts. The girls who make up the cheerleaders are a bit unconvincing, because their obviously in their twenties. Aging soft-core porn stars Samantha Philips(..as a police officer who is attacked by the psychopath she's searching for)and Nikki Fritz(..a hiker who is victimized while jogging across a dangerous bridge)surprisingly don't have to strip. Wynorski vets Bill Langlois Monroe(..as Sheriff Murdock) and Melissa Brasselle(..as a detective who assists Murdock on his case)contribute to the sub-plot of the search for John Colton's serial killer McPherson. Interesting enough, the McPherson story serves as a McGuffan as, in truth, the meat of the film is devoted to the cheerleading group and their perilous situation. I'm not sure if slasher fans will embrace this movie because it takes too long for the kills to flare up and when they eventually enter the picture, the violence isn't potent or shocking enough to satisfy. | 0 |
6,171 | [
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] | 572 | 695 | After reading many good things about it ,i finally watched "the clearing".With a cast of great actors like Redford and Dafoe ,one would,at least, expect a decent film.After the closing credits had rolled i was still shocked by how bad and incoherent this movie actually was.<br /><br />Is it supposed to be an "art" film??I don't think so cause it is too melodramatic for that.The bad thing is that the drama seems way too forced and unrealistic.<br /><br />The truth is that the script makes absolutely no sense.First of all it never really explains the motive behind the actions of any of the characters,it just overblows their so called "personal issues".What's so bad about Redford's character's life that he has to "clear it"??The fact that he cheats,occasionally,his wife??The guy is a millionaire who has had a good life,has a great son and a great daughter,a wife that loves him(and a girlfriend that also seems to be way above the generic mistress type of woman)o and a new-born grandson.The only problem seems to be that he...has been working hard for all his life to be a successful person.So what??It seems that his hard work has really paid off and there's actually no real problems with his life.<br /><br />Then we come to Dafoe's character:here's someone who was a manager for one of Redford's companies and was fired.Why is this guy unemployed for ...eight years???It seems that he must have some kind of good education to have a job like the one he had in the first place and seems to have been a man with solid ideas about his work(as evident by his flashback of a conversation that he had with Redford when he was working for him).Why couldn't a man like that get a decent job and have a decent life??Cause he was ,once,fired??Totally unrealistic.<br /><br />The film really tries to portray these men as "tortured souls" or something and that comes off as really cheesy.In fact i would say that if the creators of this film were trying to say something about the American dream then they failed miserably.<br /><br />As for the actual events that take place during the movie ,they also make no sense at all.In fact the last 20 minutes of the film come off as an insult to the viewer's intelligence,because there's not one thing that takes place that actually makes any sense.Redford seems to have about a 1000 chances to escape ,yet he doesn't.At one moment he is ready to escape and yet he misses his chance cause he feels sorry for his kidnapper and doesn't want to hurt him!!!Then Dafoe picks up his gun from the water and the mud,which should be useless(if you fire a shot with a gun after the gun has been in the water and mud it will possibly blow up in your face)and the gun is in perfect condition!!! The way an unemployed ,useless(as portrayed in this film) and mentally unstable character,manages to outsmart the entire FBI with such ease brings the narrative of this film to "twilight zone" levels.The cheesy ending(with Redford's wife illusion) comes to finish the viewer off.<br /><br />This film pretends to be something,it's not(i.e a quality,sophisticated psychological thriller).Unfortunately it fails so hard,that it becomes a disaster and that's the word that describes this film best:A DISASTER. | 0 |
6,231 | [
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] | 555 | 617 | So many people have taken shots at Platoon and Born On the Fourth of July among other calling them "leftist propaganda film." Now its my turn to take a political shot at a movie. To me this movie is very imposing on certain religious beliefs and on its political views.<br /><br />The acting and writing was a little to clichéd for my liking. Mel Gibson seems to like to play in these unnecessary violent films and proves it once again by teaming up with his partner Randall Wallace for yet another one. Throughout this movie there was this garbage prototypical "Just tell my family I love them" or "Tell Ronny to pray before hoe goes to bed" lines. The was so overloaded with this garbage retread lines that I felt like I had to vomit. How about that scene were Gibson's wife goes to do her laundry and this "no colors" applies to what to put in the washing machine. Its in the mid-sixties was she some how stuck under a rock not noticing the racism around her. Another scene is were Gibson's daughter asks him what war is and the scene is shot in such a trivial matter.<br /><br />The directing displayed this all perfectly. The countless scenes of Gibson and his family or soldiers praying. I'm fine with showing that once or twice but after a while I wonder if the movie is trying to shove something into my head. How many scenes with the American flag at its finest hour were shot with the melodramatic music on. The director also makes it seem like we won some sort of victory in Vietnam. What exactly was won their. The cinematography was the worst of it with the slowed down scenes see the American flag in the distance scenes spread throughout. I love America but movies like this seem to glorify every little thing we do.<br /><br />This may seem like a rant and maybe it is but I cannot stand it when a movie like this makes people who are not religious are not so patriotic that they will agree with anything their country does look bad. This movie to me is narrow minded and limited in so many aspects. To me it says if your not Christian your wrong. Would God or Jesus want people to kill I don't think so. To me this movie was offensive. At first this movie was funny with the countless clichés and overacted scenes but then when I looked at what this movie was trying to say or not say it was really frustrating to watch. I guess though it is my fault that I chose to watch this movie. I hope no one takes this comment offensively because I am not criticizing religion or patriotism but some of the narrow minded people who are so into both and discount everyone else.<br /><br />If you want a real depiction of the Vietnam war watch Platoon, Born On the Fourth of July, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter or The Killing Fields. Even Full Metal Jacket which I absolutely hated was a better depiction. I have read a quote that in context says a true patriot does not go with everything the government or country does but questions it when its wrong. A real patriot loves their country too much to see it do bad things. | 0 |
6,318 | [
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] | 537 | 652 | Wow, Jeez, I don't even know where to begin commenting on this thing they called a movie. I seriously don't know what the hell David Bradley began smoking after making Hard Justice, which in my opinion, was quite a good movie after the American Ninja features. I hadn't seen any of this guy's latter movies after Cyborg Cop. Lucky I saw them on Amazon for like 5 pounds each and I can safely say the following: if I had thrown down the drain the 5 pounds I spent on Total Reality, Crisis and Expect to Die, I would have ended up happier than having to sit through the 90 minutes that each of them lasted. My God, how the HECK can anybody label these as "movies" ??? And why do action/martial arts actors fall knee-deep into the smelliest horse-dung when they've like reached their peak?? I mean, David Bradley's no Oscar deserver but his first movies were pretty entertaining. Tough, cool guy with pretty good martial expertise who delivered corny lines but at least entertained action and martial arts fans to a certain extent. But I seriously would love to know what went through this guy's head after making Hard Justice. His final 3 movies have to frankly be the WORST I have ever had to sit through. As I mentioned before, I'd love to get my money back on the 3 DVDs I bought. Crisis was the epitome of sleepiness, Total Reality was harsh but this Expect to Die is just utter nonsense. I bet the director was either mega-stoned when he made this or he was just taking the pee out of every David Bradley fan who would sit through this heap of crap. The plot circles around a doctor (Bradley) who develops some type of Virtual Reality game in which he's just killing different people off one by one. Sorry but I just couldn't take this guy seriously playing a baddie with that posh hair-do, glasses and gray slacks and doing absolutely NO physical fighting whatsoever (frankly, his best asset). The film is even worse than any of those Saturday afternoon B-movies because the acting is laughable, the directing is horrendous and the few fights in the movie, well, what can I say... The actors look like they're training with their gym buddy. We get a dumb muscular cop who starts to show off his fighting stuff like one hour into the movie and fails heavily... a french hairy version of Van Damme who just can't fight, act or speak to save his freaking life and Bradley, the supposed protagonist, playing the evil doctor who I was really happy for when he stopped making this type of expendable rubbish. I even reckon he didn't throw a kick in this movie probably due to his heart condition already playing up on him. For a B-actor, I must admit I really liked this guy, his style, physique, fighting skills... But I'm really, really glad he stopped acting after this monstrosity because I honestly wouldn't have been able to sit through another ninety minutes of pee-taking material like this one. Avoid at all costs even if you're family of David Bradley, you'll be glad you did, word. | 0 |
6,338 | [
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] | 554 | 684 | The unpleasant "home invasion" genre can be traced back to Wes Craven's early sleazefest "Last House On The Left", with such nasty off-shoots as "I Spit On Your Grave", "Wrong Way" and "The Visitors" soon following in the footsteps of that film. Here, in this early '80s Italian offering the same plot is regurgitated once more, with the twist being that this one is set on a continental train. "La Ragazza Del Vagone Letto" known in English-speaking countries as "Terror Express" starts out surprisingly well but about twenty minutes in it takes a turn for the worse, as the sex scenes start to gain precedence over the more serious action and suspense.<br /><br />David, Phil and Ernie, three rich youths who wallow in terrorising and humiliating others, board a trans-continental express in Italy. The train is full of other passengers, among them prostitute Juliette (Silvia Dionisio) who rides the train frequently and has struck up a deal with one of the porters to act as a kind of pimp, persuading the male passengers to part with their cash for a night of passion in her sleeping compartment. The three cretins quickly set about upsetting the passengers with their aggressive, drunken behaviour, but matters get more serious when they seize control of an entire car on the express and barricade themselves in from the rest of the train. Pretty soon, they are revelling in their temporary control
. a young wife (Zora Kerova) is raped by two of the youths in a cramped compartment; Juliette herself is subjected to a prolonged sexual assault; and later the odious trio force the male passengers to role a dice in order to decide which one will rape a 16 year old virgin travelling with her parents (a concept made doubly tasteless by the fact that her father is one of the men forced to play the game). The only passenger who seems prepared to fight back is a convict who is being escorted to Germany, but what hope does one man have against three armed thugs? <br /><br />La Ragazza Del Vagone Letto gets off to a decent start. Various intriguing characters are introduced, and the three hoodlums are shown to have a genuinely unsettling influence over the travellers. Though the story is clearly the stuff of exploitation, the opening scenes are built up carefully and the film seems to be rising above the usual gutter-level of its genre. Things fall apart during a horrid scene in which Kerova is sex-sandwiched in a toilet compartment by two of the thugs. The scene is gloatingly filmed, and the effect does not seem to be to generate sympathy for the victim or hatred towards the perpetrators
instead, we are being asked to feel turned on. This is sensationalism at its worst. Further humiliating rapes follow, but the rape sequences involve too much lingering camera work over acts of oral sex and the female genitalia. One sequence featuring the 16 year old girl teeters on the brink of hard core and feels particularly "wrong". By the end of La Ragazza Del Vagone Letto it is easy to forget that it was intended as a thriller, for the final hour of the film is dedicated to pornography rather than suspense. Lovers of sleaze will revel in it; others might want to look elsewhere. | 0 |
6,394 | [
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] | 548 | 613 | I wish I could have given this a Zero. Sure I'll admit that I also mistakenly picked this up thinking it was the Spielberg version. A clever marketing ploy releasing it at this time and being prominently displayed at the video store. However, I was willing to give it a go anyhow - I wish I wouldn't have.<br /><br />Where do I start? I have read some of the other reviews here and have to say I disagree with anyone who thinks any of the acting was good - sorry even C. Thomas Howell stunk. None of the performances were any good. Not a one.<br /><br />Even if the acting was decent the dialog is terrible! "Ginormus" and "dick skinners" just doesn't really cut it.<br /><br />Now as for the story well - it was terribly adapted and must have been edited by a 5 year old. The main character is constantly running into situations that are way convenient - or at least appear that way due to how the film was edited together. For example he is trying to get to a place called New Hope to find his brother. During a brief break someone just randomly hands him the directions to New Hope. What the hell is that? When he gets to New Hope he just happens to stumble onto his dying brother. Then there is the part where he has been traveling away from his destination for days and just happens to come across the car his wife and son were traveling in. He was going in a different direction then they were how did that car end up where he was? He has a black back pack that randomly appears and disappears throughout the film. There are parts of the film where the characters are just waking up in the morning and then two seconds later it is night - or worse yet dusk of the next day. I also can't forget the main character and the preacher falling through the floor of a house for no reason - we don't find out until later that an alien has landed on the house. Which reminds me of the moment when they are walking and suddenly find themselves standing under an alien they didn't notice. What the hell, the aliens are like two stories tall with huge bodies and multiple legs - how could they miss it? There is one point where an alien kills a random citizen, supposedly by spitting some kind of junk at him - but you never see the stuff fly it just appears on the guys face. The special effects in general are terrible. The entire movie is like a bad "train wreck". When we finally get to the end, after this guy trying to get to DC to find his family, they just appear. No searching no asking questions nothing. Just oh there you are I am so happy - the end.<br /><br />I am sorry if my review rambles a bit but this movie was so bad I had a hard organizing my contempt. Please save yourself the time and don't watch this sneakily displayed pile of cinematic stench. It is quite possibly the worst film I have ever witnessed. I would rather have been getting a root canal - It would have been less painful. | 0 |
6,421 | [
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] | 542 | 696 | Although a well produced made for television movie, Dying to Love You reeks with low grade melodramatic splendor.<br /><br />The film opens up to Roger Paulson (Tim Matheson, looking much older than I remember him to be), who is a struggling businessman that leads an empty, lonely life after his wife Ruthie (who looks suspiciously like Roseanne Arnold) leaves him with the quickness. Now all Roger has is his cats....and his ad in the newspaper. <br /><br />Once his ad is answered, he calls Johnnie-Elaine-Lisa-oh it doesn't matter I'm whoever you want me to be-Lawrence. Then...they have phone sex.<br /><br />I'm not sure where you're from or when you were born, but I remember that phone-sex bit was played out by the late '80's. I'm sorry but that was trashy.<br /><br />Soon Roger and the broad hook up and have a whirlwind romance. They fall in love, visit the zoo to see gorillas, and then have some kinky sex with Roger's son in the other room. She ties him to the bed and seduces him.<br /><br />Roger is just so stupid that he does not realize that Johnnie-Eliane is just a bimbo that loves to sleep around. God forbid women only sleep with one man. Soon enough, strange phone calls begin to occur, Johnny Girl wants Roger to marry her with absolute quickness, and she keeps ranting and raving about her ex-husband who used to beat her. It's funny to see Roger believe her through all this stuff. That's until a frumpy co-worker tells him to go snooping through her belongings like a nosy housewife. He takes her crappy advice and lo and behold, he finds a suitcase crawling with fake ID cards and wigs and guns and a crossbow. He immediately takes the suitcase to the police and has her arrested. Even though all this jazz, he still loves the dumb broad. She tells so much lies, it seems her tongue will catch fire if she tells the truth once.<br /><br />Roger goes on with his life and meets an ugly woman named Angela who looks like something off of Gremlins 2. She has a child as well and Roger takes quite a liking to her. But something inside Roger's subconscious keeps him connected to Lisa Rohn (if that's even her real name) and he keeps going back to see her.<br /><br />Now Lisa is the "ex that won't go away" as she "earns" herself a get out of jail free card and shows up at Roger's doorstep and his son Matt is so busy trying to check her out, he pours juice all over the floor. IL' Rog is so stupid, he throws Lisa out and doesn't even change the locks. Boy, if all people were that stupid, I wouldn't even be writing this review. The ending of this movie is so corny, you won't believe.<br /><br />Tim Matheson is a Made-for-TV-Movie king. he just looks like such a dawm mummy in this movie. He's a little wooden and stiff. The dazzling Tracy Pollan works well with her role and her trampiness rings true. She is extremely beautiful and I do see what Michael J. Fox sees in her. <br /><br />This movie is great to watch when you're on that late night tip, but then again, you might fall asleep, considering how dull and bland it is. | 0 |
6,483 | [
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] | 492 | 667 | It must say something about the state of our nation that this programme is one of the most popular currently screened. <br /><br />The 'square' is peopled by such a miserable, untrustworthy, amoral, spiteful, unrelentingly dour group of characters as can be imagined. Everyone is stabbing someone in the back, everyone is attempting to commit adultery, everyone is trying to cheat someone. That, or they are being stabbed, cuckolded or swindled. Nobody is cheerful. Nobody laughs. Nobody has a blinding stroke of luck or a really nice day. It's hell, with cockney accents.<br /><br />I suspect this programme must be sponsored by The Samaritans. It's perfect viewing for the depressed. It doesn't cheer them up; what it does do is present a whole community of such terminally despondent sad-arses that viewers are moved to believe their lot really could be worse - they might be living in 'Albert Square'.<br /><br />Apart from the above; as a representation of London's east end, it is pure hokum. The programme-makers have evidently never been across town. The first thing you encounter on the Mile End Road is a colossal mosque. And this pretty-well defines the racial majority of the population. White British Londoners are a dispersed and rapidly diminishing minority. A large advertisement hoarding presently near the Bow Road flyover, and sponsored by Tower Hamlets Health Care boasts that 'Eight out of ten members of the community can now see their doctor more quickly'. Ten healthy, smiling faces beam down at the observer in confirmation. Eight of them are dark-skinned... <br /><br />What's more, I used to work with a bunch of Anglo-Saxon - dare I say 'pukka' - cockneys a few years ago. And I can tell you that a more obnoxiously racist experience I've never had. Each day was like an Oswald Moseley rally. They couldn't pass 5 minutes without denigrating some other race or nationality than their own, and in terms that were repulsive and obscene. 'Fackin' Pakis' and 'fackin' Maceroons' were the small change of conversation. In fact their entire (and extremely limited) stock of adjectives fixated upon sex-organs and their application. Alf Garnett was a paragon of liberal virtue in comparison.<br /><br />Any programme that purported to represent London's native east-end Caucasians in their true nature would be completely unfit for broadcast - even after the 9 o-clock watershed. Imagine a Ku Klux Klan script written by Quentin Tarantino and you'd be somewhere near the mark. But when they weren't being inveterate bigots they were at least extremely cheerful.<br /><br />I don't know how such a soap-opera came to be. This imaginary castaway island of white misery has absolutely no bearing upon real culture whatsoever. And if you're of a comparatively sanguine disposition, it will quickly reduce you to tears of grief. Comparatively ordinary actors pretending to be comparatively ordinary chronic-depressives with cockney accents - what's the point of that?<br /><br />Dull, dreary, unrelentingly disillusional, and ethnically preposterous. The most popular programme of an apparently diseased and dying nation.<br /><br />Avoid it like the plague. | 0 |
6,501 | [
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] | 512 | 622 | The film starts well enough. It is a truly terrifying scene as a couple of fugitives on the run from the law tear apart an innocent family living in a secluded country cottage by killing the mother and father. The young daughter only manages to escape with the aid of a mysterious spectre, who kills the two aggressors while she covers in a downstairs cupboard. Then, we catch up with her 15 years later as a drug-addled student researching the supernatural, living with her promiscuous aunt and being looked after by a mysterious redhead. She has no real friends, was almost raped at a party and keeps having bizarre visions which no-one else can see. So yep, life is grand. Things get a lot more pleasant when she has a falling out with her mum's sister, who is later found dead in a bathtub under suspicious circumstances with 11 etched into her forehead. Hmm, I wonder who the police's main suspect will be? This is quickly followed by more deaths, all linked by their relation to our heroine having been on bad terms with them before their passing. Could she be the culprit, or perhaps the explanation could be something of a more ethereal nature? Clue: If you think the former, you've picked up the wrong movie from Blockbuster. Go back and get the correct one, short-sighted gimp.<br /><br />As I said, I was all ready to fast-forward to the good parts, safe in the knowledge that I wasn't missing out on anything but a mediocre suspense potboiler. But the first ten minutes grabbed me, and I decided to give it a chance. I was quite pleasantly surprised: it certainly wasn't a masterpiece but the acting was good enough and the script kept throwing up intriguing situations of which I looked forward to finding the solution to. Alas, 45 minutes in, I realised my attention start to wander during a long sequence where the main character is walking round a library, doing nothing. We then get a cheap scare, followed by quarter of an hour of goddledegook about the paranormal between her and her new hunk of a boyfriend. Things only got worse from there, as the promising beginning is thrown out the window as we get one unconvincing plot twist after another, followed by an ending so anti-climatic it's like being promised the moon and ending up with a teeny weeny meteorite instead. Pathetic.<br /><br />If it was bad all the way through, it would have been far easier to swallow. The fact that it starts at a canter and barely ends with a whimper is not just disappointing, it is heartbreaking. How can something which began so promisingly end up being so formulaic? I don't know, and I don't particularly care. I'll just give the writer and director a bit of advice for next time: Don't spend 5 weeks writing the first part of your screenplay, then 5 minutes finishing the rest. You tend to notice these things in the final product when you treat your project as sloppily as you have here... 3/10 | 0 |
6,537 | [
600,
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] | 549 | 643 | I have seen this movie but not in a single sitting. What happens it that it is playing on the TV, I watch for a few minutes, find that I have take all that I can take and then leave the room. During those few minutes I do not laugh once, experience no pleasure in what I am viewing, and find myself more depressed that angry. Interestingly, I am told the psychological states are incompatible, that is, one cannot be angry and depressed at the same time. This movie tests that theory.<br /><br />I think part of the problem is that I spent nearly ten years in Chicago so as I am watching the scenes I am thinking of my own experiences in that rotten town and thus I am clearly bringing a lot of my baggage to the piece. It is entirely possible, I am willing to concede, that if you are not a Chicago denizen you will find the piece amusing. If so, I envy you.<br /><br />And yet. John Hughes set his films in Chicago and those movies worked for me. I think the difference is that Hughes was a first rate writer. I think it obvious he knew how to comically balance his situations, as well as make his characters both sympathetic and believable. In a comedy (as distinguished from a farce) this balance vital. And it is not easy to achieve. If it was everyone would be making great movies and we would not have to fret as we do in the real world wondering when genius will ever appear. In "Adventures in Babysitting," it doesn't. I hated those characters. <br /><br />There is a difference, profound and real, between sympathetic and simply pathetic.<br /><br />For me every scene in this movie is a clunker. There is no humor, no humanity, no people one can recognize. Just actors reading their lines as if it all they can do to restrain themselves from screaming them out, certain that finally hilarity will ensue, this time for sure! It's like watching the antics of very bad comedians. It's embarrassing and after a while, usually at the point when I get up and leave, I start to feel pity for all concerned, which is a kind of emotional connection, I suppose. Elizabeth Shue is terrible. She doesn't act, certainly not act comically, and it's entirely possible she can't. But lord how she tries. She looks older than 17, and acts way younger like a seven-year old straining in a school play certain that this is how one gets an award. And she is not alone. It is as if everyone cannot relax and let the tale flow. As if everyone simply has no idea what they are doing. <br /><br />Now, this was an early effort for Chris Columbus and he clearly would improve and having better writers (e.g. John Hughes himself) certainly helped, so perhaps some forgiveness is in order. But the film just reeks of desperation. Yet like I said it may work for some. If any of the above appeals to you, and it clearly did some of the reviewers, then go get the DVD and knock yourself out. Otherwise, avoid this mess like you would a dark Chicago alley where as you hurry by you can only see shadows and hear muttered threats. | 0 |
6,582 | [
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] | 547 | 669 | The main word that comes to mind when considering this film is "dodgy". This is a low-quality film biography of one of the most iconic performers of all time. The Gloved One deserved better.<br /><br />Before getting into the meat of my thoughts on this biopic, I have to say that there are two things I found effective. First was the use of actual fan footage and interviews at certain points in the film, especially in the scenes depicting the first set of child molestation allegations. I feel that this contributed a certain authenticity that was *severely* lacking throughout the rest of the film. Second was the sequence depicting the courtship of Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley. I will not comment on whether I believe the marriage was a sham, but by many accounts, it was a relationship where care and affection existed between the two parties involved. That really came across in this film; Flex Anderson and Krista Rae had decent enough chemistry to pull it off. These successful points are enough to keep Man in the Mirror away from 1-star status.<br /><br />That said...there was very little else here that worked. Very few of the actors looked like the people they were supposed to portray, most egregiously those playing Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Jackson, and Diana Ross. Also, the absence of Jackson's music was a huge loss. How can you effectively tell a story about him without his music?? I understand that they were unable to secure the rights to it with this being a low-budget, unauthorized production; it seems, though, that if you can't have the man's music in a film about him, you might as well pack it up and go home, because you're missing out on an extremely important part of his life story.<br /><br />This film's characterization of Jackson bothered me a little, too. I won't argue that he was troubled and may have been a few fries short of a value meal, but here, he was portrayed as something close to mentally disabled. I don't believe that Jackson, known to have been a shrewd businessman, would have been quite as naive about how the adult world works as he was made out to be in this film.<br /><br />Finally, the way this film was written was nothing short of disgraceful. Many lines or exchanges of dialogue were either extremely corny, like Michael and Janet's "Tinkerbell" exchange, or nonsensical, like the "Blanket of love" comments made by Michael. Also, the screenwriters don't exactly have a knack for subtlety. There was a lot of telegraphing of upcoming events ("What could possibly go wrong??" sorts of lines) and extremely overt hammering of themes and motifs in the film (if I'd heard the word "believe" one more time...). This is what ultimately hobbled the film as something that could be considered awesomely bad.<br /><br />Perhaps when we are a few years, or even a decade or three, removed from Jackson's death, someone will be able to bring his story to life in a more deserving film. By that time, we might have a better perspective on his life, and someone will be able to present a truly thoughtful examination of who Michael Jackson really was and what he's meant to the world of entertainment. This very dodgy biopic was not that film. | 0 |
6,626 | [
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] | 494 | 613 | I have been a huge fan of the original crew of the Enterprise since I was eight years old. I watched all the movies and appreciated each one for what they retained from the old series and for further developing the characters (and the Star Trek universe, in general). Even in "The Undiscovered Country" I thought the aging of the characters was well handled and the story worthy of a theatrical release. However, having said that, "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" is easily the worst of the series featuring the original crew. I agree with many that the camaraderie of Kirk, Spock and McCoy is well handled, but the overall script, the direction -- by William Shatner -- and the special effects are not worthy of anything more than a television episode. This is a "buddy movie" and, at times, almost unrecognizable as a Star Trek movie. The action sequences are not sustained and therefore, build little or no tension. The dialogue is weak though it does provide for a few laughs, both intended and not-intended. The Klingon's seem thrown in as an afterthought. The whole "Sha-Ka-Ree" concept is just silly and Laurence Luckinbill, a fine actor in everything else I've ever seen him in, boarders on the absurd in this movie. The scene where Sybok conjures up images of Spock's pain and McCoy's pain shatters the image of the characters as we've known them. Spock would never be party to such stupidity and McCoy, trying to save his father is full of insipid, redundant dialogue and totally wastes DeForest Kelley's acting abilities. The whole scene is wasted and really shows us nothing new and nothing we want to see from these characters. I understand that Shatner didn't have the luxury of working with ILM for the special effects and that the budget for this movie was tight, but that doesn't allow for such a bad story. In some respects, I think this story does fit in with the old series, but the movies, including "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" are all much better quality than this. It's a shame that most of the other characters have so few lines and so little to do with most of this movie. The focus on Kirk, McCoy and Spock is nice, but way over used. The old crew really seems to be out of character. I liked the old Klingon General and the sultry Romulan in the bar. I liked some of the humor and the idea that Spock has a half-brother, but that's about it. If this was a TV episode, I'd be able to accept a lot of the faults. As a movie, this is just bad, uninspired film making. It's a shame too, because I want this movie to be good. Even if it was the level of "Star Trek III" I would be happy, but this movie makes all the other movies in this series seem like works of Shakespeare. | 0 |
6,647 | [
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] | 480 | 608 | So then... this is what passes as high art for the likes of SXSW Film Festival and Sundance, eh? Well, I suppose I can relate as long as story, script, dialog, acting (save for Ms. Aselton), cinematography and editing are completely irrelevant.<br /><br />I remember telling other film-making friends some years ago that the biggest problem with digital video was that we were now going to have to wade through a future sea of crap to get to anything worth watching now that anyone and his brother (or brothers in the case of the Duplass') could run out and make a movie. "The Puffy Chair." Need I say more?<br /><br />This feature length video is yet another chapter in the dismal, ever-expanding world of "dudeology" movies; young guns armed with a DVX100A, a few thousand dollars, a hastily written, shallow script, and some friends they call actors who decide one afternoon to make a movie and voilà!, instant feature video-makers. Don't get me wrong -- I'm all about independent cinema (i.e. Hollywierd sucks). But having said that, you can't argue with some of the realities of that system. <br /><br />If the Duplass Brothers would've had to have gone out and raised a real budget and bring on real producers, its clear a script like this would never have been green-lighted! And therein lies the problem. There is no longer such a thing as a vetting process for getting films (sorry... videos) ready for production. Just grab a DV/P2 camera and off you go! And what makes it worse is that high-profile festivals like the aforementioned actually embrace and encourage this kind of nonsense. And why? Precisely because its no-budget. <br /><br />I think its important, especially in todays climate of indie films, to quit allowing video-makers to high-jack the language by labeling themselves, "filmmakers." There is quite a difference in my book. When you have to go out and actually put your script on the line, asking friends and family or business people for real money to make a feature "film", knowing the potentially losses at stake, then you will know what it means to be a "filmmaker." But dropping a few hundred at Sam's Club for some DV tapes, some soda and chips doesn't cut it. <br /><br />Oh... and by the way... I have to mention how utterly annoying it was to listen to a female being addressed as "dude" throughout the entire movie. Even Mark Borchardt reserves that intensely-overused moniker for his male friends only where it is at least endearing where his buddy Mike is concerned!<br /><br />I think its high time the indie film community started to call out these shoddy, no-budget videos for what they are, and simultaneously scold prestigious festivals for giving such casual efforts, high praise. Either that or ask these festivals to at least have the courtesy to add a new category to their festival line ups... "Dude Films." | 0 |
6,732 | [
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] | 467 | 611 | Simply put, I was amazingly disappointed. I'm a huge fan of Asian Horror, and I can watch unoriginality (I myself enjoyed "The Red Shoes" and "Phone"), but this was just poor.<br /><br />The movie has a lot of elements that are very high-quality: the photography is eye-catching, the visuals are cool, the directing is inspired, the acting is pretty good, the music is easy on the ears, and the CGI is incredible. But, since this is a horror film, we are expected to be scared, which just won't happen with this film. As with most South Korean horrors, this is unoriginal almost from beginning to end: there's the trademark long-haired vengeful female ghost, ominous clumps of thick, black hair and puddles of water, and near the end, a twist that *almost*, but not quite makes sense out of the whole thing (the twist is easily one of the best qualities). And to the viewer's irritation, when the film isn't recycling (at times, so exact that it could easily be dubbed plagiarized) imagery from other movies, it's making you jump. A lot. And by jumps, I don't mean things jumping out or anything, just VERY loud noises and screeches in the soundtrack used to make the audience jump six feet in the air (there's even a few "made-you-jump" moments that are simply infuriating). And when it is not ripping-off other movies, it's boring, and hard to sit through.<br /><br />And it's a shame, because "Ryeong" could have easily been really good, and it has everything to make it good, but its the annoying overuse of completely predictable loud noises and jump scares that eventually ruin the movie. A perfect example of how good it could have been: there's a moment when one of out characters is looking at a corpse, and without a sound, the corpse looks back. It's wholly predictable, but the use of silence in that scene is brilliant. And unfortunately, that's as scary as the movie got for me.<br /><br />Admittedly, "Ryeong" has a few good features, and even a couple jumps that aren't as predictable, and do work. There's a very good and sad back-story used to explain the events, and the twist is pretty unpredictable. Those are the only things that separate the film from any other Asian ghost/horror film. But the problem with these is, even though they do work, they have been used before (J-Horror fans will easily realize the big reveal was inspired by "A Tale of Two Sisters"), and it takes the back-story a good fifty minutes to get going.<br /><br />So in the end, "Ryong" really seems like a truly wasted opportunity. Tae-kyeong Kim hoped that the plot twist and other good features act as diversions, so the audience won't notice the huge flaws. But he failed, and well... We noticed everything.<br /><br />My rating: 4/10. | 0 |
7,024 | [
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] | 582 | 685 | I really wanted to love this film. I have read the book to my daughters and we all loved it. The book is marvelous. This film is very far from the book. The book is splendid - this film is an awful adaptation.<br /><br />In the book, Sara is honorable, kind, strong, and NEVER does anything spiteful to get back at anyone. That's the POINT of the book! She behaves as a "princes" regardless of circumstances. An important part of behaving like a princess is to not return unkindness. It is to behave honorably regardless of how you are being treated.<br /><br />In the book, she endures much and touches the lives of others. Other people change their behaviors after they witnessed her kindness and ability to endure without sinking to spite and vengefulness. Sara does what is right simply BECAUSE it is RIGHT.<br /><br />Outside of the bakery, she comes upon a beggar girl who is more poor and hungry than she is. She has half a dozen hot buns. She is VERY hungry. She gives one bun to this wild looking little girl huddled on the doorstep of the bakery. When she sees how ravenous the girl is and watches her gobble the bun, she gives her another. She continues to do this until she has given 3 or 4 I think - I don't remember how many.<br /><br />The baker is watching through the window. She is so moved by what she has witnessed, she takes the beggar girl in and raises her as her own daughter. Other people are similarly influenced by Sara.<br /><br />And in the book, her father has died. The man next door is her father's partner - he has been looking for her. Her father did not lose his money after all - the man is thrilled to find Sara; he takes her and Becky into his home and raises them as his daughters. And Sara has her full inheritance, of course.<br /><br />Miss Minchin is not a chimney sweep. In fact, she remains in her same post at the school. But she is humiliated as Sara has told her new guardian of the cruel treatment she received. And Sara does speak to Miss Minchin in the end - Miss Minchin is trying to minimize her treatment of Sara and Sara with a calm steadfast demeanor, instructs Miss Minchin that she had been cruel.<br /><br />There is no comeuppance for Miss Minchin. She continues on in her miserable existence. It does not matter - what matters is that Sara has a home with a guardian who loves her - and her dearest friend in the world, Becky, is now for all intents and purposes, her sister.<br /><br />The book is about love and honorable behavior under the worst of circumstances. It is about self control and humility. It is a wonderful book. This film does NOTHING to capture the true story and messages of the book. My wife was so disgusted with it, she wanted to leave the theater in the middle, but we decided to stick it out. We were not rewarded.<br /><br />I cannot for the life of me think of a reason the film makes should alter this excellent book in such a bad direction. Perhaps it was the influence of the ghastly screenplay from the book that Shirley Temple acted in. I don't know - but this film is so far from the book in character and values that I do not recognize it.<br /><br />Don't waste your time - buy the book. It is unforgettable... even for a dad! | 0 |
7,035 | [
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] | 517 | 653 | (Some Spoilers) PRC quickie that has J. Carrol Naish playing Dr. Igor Markoff who's not really Dr. Karkoff but an impostor who took over his identity back in Europe. <br /><br />The real Dr. Karkoff had a affair with Dr.Markoff's wife that lead to him to murder the real Dr.Markoff and then having his wife Lenore infected with acromegaly that made her look like the "Elephant Man's" sister. This was done so that no one would ever want to look at her and he could keep Lenore all to himself; but the disturbed Lenore later got even with her insane husband by killing herself. <br /><br />This nut, the fake Dr. Markoff, then spots Patricia Lawrence, Wanda McKay, one evening at the theater where her father Tony Lawernce, Ralph Morgan, a world famous pianist is giving a concert. Enchanted by the lovely Patricia who's a dead ringer for his dead wife Lenore Dr. Markoff becomes obsessed with her and goes to extreme lengths to marry her even though she's want's nothing to do with him.<br /><br />After getting ridicules in his efforts to get Patricia to fall in love with him, by sending her flowers with syrupy love notes attached to then as much as five times a day,Tony goes to see the crazed Dr. Mankoff to tell him to stop annoying his daughter. It's then that Tony ends up getting knocked out by the good doctor who has him injected with a dose of acromegaly that turns him into a somewhat unsightly fellow. With his hands and body swelling up and not being able to play his beloved piano Tony is told by his Doctor Dr. Adams,Sam Flint, that the only one who can cure him of that dreadful disease is non other then Dr. Markoff! the person who gave it to him. <br /><br />The movie has the usual sub-plots with Dr. Markoff's assistant Maxine,Tala Birell, who's also in love with him jealous of the phony doctor making a play for Patricia. There's also Dr. Markoff's hulking butler Glenn Strange who, like his pet gorilla, is just a big clumsy oaf who can't even subdue Maxine who's less the half the size. Strange ends up getting bopped on the head and knocked out cold by Patricia's boyfriend Bobby Blake, Terry Frost. As for the Gorilla he turns out to be but a big hairy wimp when he also tries to do in Maxine and is chased away, and locks himself back up in his cage, by the pet dog Ace. Dr. Markoff in his desperation to get Patricia to marry him promises her to cure her dad only to have her father break out of his chains and in the ensuing struggle with him ends up shooting Markoff dead with his own gun. <br /><br />There is a happy ending to this whole mess with Maxine, who knew as much about Markoff's cure for acromegaly as he did, injecting Tony with a secret serum that made him as good as new. The movie ends, like it started, with Tony playing the piano to a packed and cheering house at the local theater. | 0 |
7,073 | [
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] | 525 | 637 | I liked the first The Grudge. It really creeped me out and it had something to it that made me want to see it twice. That something was missing from this sequel. There was no creativity, nothing new or original, nothing that really sticks to your mind. It's people dying because a scary ghost comes out of the shadows and says boo. And most of the time, it wasn't even all that scary.<br /><br />Plot-wise this movie is a dead end. Amber Tamblyn is a good actress, but she was given nothing to do, and Karen's death seemed really unsatisfactory because it came so quickly. I was also disappointed in the Kayako's mother subplot. I was thinking that she might provide some way to fight the Grudge, but she dies in the hands - hair? - of Kayako. That was such a stupid twist. All in all, it's difficult to feel for characters that you know from minute one are going to die. All in the same way. And there's nothing they can do. It doesn't feel like a cruel destiny awaiting them. It's just boring, because you know what's going to happen. If they had anything to fight it with, that would have added suspense, even if they failed. If there was any hope, it would make the scares more justified. Now you're just waiting for them to die.<br /><br />Kayako was really scary in the first movie, but this time we saw her too many times and that took away some of it. I was still scared during some scenes, but I actually got used to the huge eye and blue face. The makers obviously realized this would happen as they added other scary ghosts. Yes, I was scared at the school psychologist scene - even if I knew where it was going as soon as she said "I've been to the house". A nice touch. Toshio, however, was not scary at all in this movie. I was much more creeped out by the non-blue Toshio with black eyes and a blank stare that sometimes appeared in the first movie. A blue boy sitting in the corner does nothing for me.<br /><br />Some of the characters seemed really unnecessary - the notorious milk-scene with the girl whose name I can't even remember comes to mind. I wasn't scared, it was just "Huh?" I'm not sure if the schoolgirls were even really needed. Karen could have brought the grudge to the US with her. It could have killed people related to her life, everyone at the funeral, or something like that. Even so, it would have been dull to watch them all die, but being introduced to so many unrelated people really felt annoying. Hated the "I won't call you mother" scene. Aubrey's mother issues were equally dull. The little boy was a touching character, though.<br /><br />The Ju-On sequel was much scarier than this one. It had some new twists - dreams and reality blurring much more, for instance - and even if it left me feeling quite down, I was also somehow satisfied. I got to think a bit and be left wondering. This movie only provided cheap scares. | 0 |
7,116 | [
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] | 427 | 600 | In trying to keep up with the hipness of youthful audiences as the 70s approached, OaCD,YCSF was the product of odder and odder material selected for musicalization. Here it's past life regression, ESP and hypno-therapy... pretty loopy! The real problem with the concept (music or not) are the extraordinarily low dramatic stakes; just where can a movie go, and what can happen, when a man falls in love with a previous incarnation of a girl he can't stand? It can't go any place new, but strangely, it can't even go any place old! Indeed, if it could, audiences would still have no interest in the union of Yves Montand (playing a much older, arrogant, French ass) and Streisand. (a much younger girl). We never become invested in them, their situations or outcomes. Montand is miscast and his strong accent makes many of his lyrics unintelligible.<br /><br />It's all been given a shallow 60s veneer that makes it eminently disposable; despite efforts here and there from Minelli that are respectable. It's not even adapted from a non-musical story that met with any previous success... that's just too passe! Streisand occasionally has some funny business to offer, as when she's trying not to fall asleep on her roof and improvises an energetic dance. But she over-relies on her ingratiating (translation: irritating) kooky, Jewish girl shtick. She can however sing very well, at both the "gentle" and "powerhouse" ends of the range. Amidst a score of musical dross, she gets 3 or 4 amazing songs* of much higher caliber than anything Fanny or Dolly had to offer. 'He isn't you' is a sweet trifle as sublime as Lorenz Hart's 'My Funny Valentine,' but the movie isn't able to realize any impact from it; because the lyrics don't seem to be referring to anything in the movie, and nothing remotely suggests a great love is blossoming between Chabot and Melinda.<br /><br />The only cut we can view is a poor hatchet job of a much bigger film. Strong research shows a longer, better-explained and more decorative, but not necessarily a better film at: http://barbra-archives.com/films/clear_day_streisand_2.html. You can be sure there's be more Babs in that version but more importantly, there'd be more thoughtful work from Minelli.<br /><br />In the end Montand sends Babs off to sing the title song, after she discovers he's a total dick who feeds her a self-esteem homily to allow himself off the hook. And she takes the bait. So, uh... hooray for that.<br /><br />(*Hurry it's lovely up here, Love with all the trimmings, He isn't you, & the title song) | 0 |
7,199 | [
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] | 530 | 670 | I've never been a huge fan of Almodovar, but, generally, I've always found something to enjoy in his films. Unfortunately, I had more trouble finding something to enjoy in Broken Embraces then I would normally think I would.<br /><br />I find the biggest failure in Broken Embraces to be the characters and the lack of depth they display. The film is essentially a love story, one that is tragic, and one that wants to involve the viewer in their stories. I found this problematic from the beginning.<br /><br />In the opening scene, our 'hero' the director/screenwriter, Mateo, is having sex with a very attractive young woman whom he just met. His agent comes in as the woman bashfully leaves.<br /><br />In the opening scene, our 'hero' the director/screenwriter, Mateo, is having sex with a very attractive young woman whom he just met. His agent comes in, and rolls her eyes, as the woman bashfully leaves. Mateo babbles something about needing to enjoy life as the only thing he has left. Having been blinded in a tragic car accident that also killed his 'true' love Lena, played by Penelope Cruz, the viewer might buy into to this notion except the rest of the film really never illustrates why Lena was the love of his life or any depth to his character or any other.<br /><br />Cruz plays Lena the mistress to an industrialist named Ernesto Martel. From the outset, their union is rather a pathetic one, as Martel clutches jealousy to Lena, and Lena avoids uncertainty of being on her own by staying with the much older Martel. To skip ahead, Martel finances a film for Mateo so he can keep tabs on the star of the film, Lena. Naturally, without any back story, Lena and Mateo fall in love. And, in Almodovar's world it really is that simple. Mateo, in the opening scene, has sex with a sexy young woman, now Mateo falls in love with Lena, later it's revealed he had a son with his agent after their love affair. Her son responds to this information with a laugh and an, "Oh, well." Again, no depth, no understanding for any of these characters, it all just happens. From the beginning of the film to the end, I got no depth of emotion from Mateo. He is flat, and doesn't act much different from one scene to the next.<br /><br />The one scene I did enjoy was when film producer, Martel, is watching video footage his son recorded under the guise of doing a documentary of Mateo. There are nice a moment of Martel watching obsessively as a lip reading confirms his worst fears. Later, Lena confronts Martel as he's watching the footage and speaks her part out loud matching the video footage of her lips as she talks. Some quite brilliant moments. Rather contrived, but still really fascinating.<br /><br />Unfortunately, for me, the rest of the film left me rather bored. I couldn't care about these characters or their situations, so no amount of cleverness on Almodovar's part can make up for this lack of depth. I think if you're a fan of his work you'll enjoy this movie, but if you're like me, in between, then you'll find it lacking. | 0 |
7,221 | [
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] | 555 | 639 | The Salena Incident is set in Arizona where six death row inmates are being transfered from the state prison for reasons never explained, while driving along the heavily armed prison bus gets a flat & the driver is forced to pull off the road. Then two blonde birds turn up & after seducing the incompetent prison guards manage to get the better of them, the six prisoners are released but in a shoot-out their getaway car is damaged leaving them all stranded in the middle of the Arizona desert. They decide to head to the nearest town, Salena several miles away & take the cops with them as hostage. Once they reach Salena they find it odd that the place is completely deserted with not one single other person in sight. They soon discover that the entire town has been killed by flesh eating aliens & they are firmly placed on the menu...<br /><br />Also known as Alien Invasion Arizona in the US on DVD & apparently having the working title Terror Town this rubbishy low budget sci-fi horror flick was co-written, co-produced & directed by Dustin Rikert & has no real redeeming features at all, to be frank The Salena Incident is the sort of film which gives films a bad name. The film could roughly be divided into two parts, the opening forty or fifty odd minutes focuses on the prisoners in a thriller feeling opening, the guards & the escape although it's pretty poorly written & staged stuff. The dialogue between the two blonde birds & the prison guards is so bad it's unintentionally funny as the two fit birds chat up the two not so fit prison guards. Funny stuff actually, unfortunately The Salena Incident is supposed to be a sci-fi horror film not a comedy. Then once the escaped cons & their prison guard hostages arrive at Salena it goes into sci-fi horror mode as the aliens turn up & start killing our clichéd character's off which is good because they are annoying. Look, the whole film sucks as it's badly written, thought out & made. I can't really be bothered to go into why but trust me The Salena Incident is awful on every level.<br /><br />As well as being just a bad, boring & stupid film The Salena Incident is also poorly made. The action set-piece scenes are awful, the aliens looks terrible & are never shown on screen at the same time as the human character's & as such it's sometimes difficult to tell what's happening. The special effects are poor too, the aliens look rubbish & the CGI computer effects are absolutely terrible as well. The editing is poor, the cinematography is poor, the sets are cheap & the whole thing is just an eyesore really. There's a bit of gore, there's some gunshot wounds, someone is ripped in half & a severed hand is seen.<br /><br />Obviously shot on a low budget The Salena Incident has low production values & looks cheap from start to finish. Filmed in Superior in Arizona. The acting is terrible from no-one I have ever heard of although the actress who plays the female doctor is pretty good looking.<br /><br />The Salena Incident is a rubbish sci-fi horror film that is terrible in just about every way, not worth 90 minutes of yours, mine or anyone else's time. | 0 |
7,223 | [
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] | 509 | 622 | The Salena Incident is by far the director, Dustin Rikert's, best film --- which isn't saying much. In his past films (and I use the term "films" loosely), the director takes ideas from Hollywood blockbusters and severely marginalizes them. The Salena Incident is no different. The movie is basically Con Air meets Aliens done with the semblance of your average film school production. The film is riddled with out-of-focus shots and plagued by special effects that would have trouble rivaling most high school computer animation classes. For example almost every on-screen explosion is the same fire effect matted over the screen.<br /><br />The weak effects and production value are only compromised by a flawed plot and rocky dialogue. In a sentence, the story strings together like an exposition of overused Hollywood clichés. The movie begins with the worst CGI Alien ship ever made crashing into the worst CGI earth ever made and a team of army somethings going down to investigate. Next a bus of prison transports, carrying the worst of the worst from across the state, is overthrown by the prisoners with the help of their blonde girlfriends armed with silicon implants. The prisoners escape and run into the town of Salena where they encounter the aliens who... SHOCK... have escaped from an alien prison transport carrying the worst of the worst from across the galaxy. The prisoners, and their captive police armed with only guns and sad puns have to fight off the aliens and escape the town before the International Space Alliance *rolls eyes* bombs the city into oblivion.<br /><br />The only real enjoyable parts of the movie are when the actors (who are clearly undermined by the script) are given the freedom to improvise and also when they fight off the smaller of the alien creatures in a flurry of gun fire. Other than that, the movie really isn't worth anyone's time let alone the plastic that the DVD is made out of. How awful was it? Let's just say the Secretary of Defense is about 90 years old, works in a room that is about as high tech 1950's real estate office and is wearing a Looney Tunes tie. Yes, if that wasn't clear enough before, THE MAN IN CHARGE OF THE PENTAGON IS WEARING A TIE WITH BUGS BUNNY AND THE ROAD RUNNER ON IT. The movie basically culminates (HAHAHahhaaa did I say culminates...) with the last remaining soldier running into the group of prisoners and guards and the new formed team fighting their way away from the vicious aliens --- which for some strange reason leads them straight back to the Alien ship? yeah...<br /><br />The movie has heart but is riddled with horrible direction and even worse camera work. Someone seriously needed to slap the DP and tell him there is more to cinematography than repetitive, stagnant, chest-level shots. This movie really isn't worth renting (if it ever makes it that far) being that it's not as horribly bad as the last films made by the director which reduces the laugh-ability, but it's nowhere near watchable cinema. | 0 |
7,245 | [
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] | 522 | 628 | The original Road House was a classic cheesy 80s movie, which although it didn't have anywhere near award worthy writing or acting, was a very enjoyable and popular film, largely due to the presence of star Patrick Swayze and the great supporting cast, along with some excellent fight scenes and eye candy.<br /><br />16 years later, and MGM / Sony attempts to re-create the magic which left us all quoting one liners and reciting the three rules of bouncing... with a movie which quotes all the original's best one liners and recites the three rules.<br /><br />Were this an amateur fan made film, it would be seen as a loving homage to one of the most popular of Swayze's movies. As a professionally made film, it falls flat on it's face right into the DVD Bargin Bin, with its continual reuse of lines and plot from the original movie becoming more of an annoying sign of lack of originality rather than cool references to the original.<br /><br />Having said that, with new lines such as "I'm gonna kill you just like I killed your father" no wonder the screenwriters decided to rehash much of the original script.<br /><br />I knew this was never going to be anything special, being a Straight to DVD Sequel, but I had at least hoped that there might be a couple of new ideas and fresh things included to live up to the Road House name, but what you get is simply just a 2006 remake of the same film, with a little narcotics added in.<br /><br />Were I the director, I'd have removed all references to the first film so as not to tarnish the original and it's characters. As it is, we got Patrick Swayze's character now supposed to be dead (killed off screen in a lame way by Jake Busey) and his brother and son now the main characters, who strangely enough have completely different surnames.<br /><br />My favourite part was that Dalton's 'son' drove the same car his father did, a genuinely cool homage, although it was later ruined by having the car meet its end EXACTLY the same way as its predecessor did. That's a good example of how this film goes too far in including sequences and ideas from the '89 movie.<br /><br />Also of course who can forget the legendary moment where Wild Bill promises to kill Shane "just like I killed your father" and then proceeds to attempt to dispatch him in a completely different manner. Amazing writing there. I see Schaech is listed as co-screenwriter. Stick to acting, or preferably, nothing.<br /><br />Overall though, this is an OK film if there's nothing else to watch and you want to turn your brain off for an hour and a half, or if you haven't seen the first Road House, but hardcore fans of Swayze's classic will be totally disappointed almost to the point of feeling insulting at how much of a rip off this movie is of the first. As someone once suggested as an alternative subtitle for this film, "Even Jeff Healy is glad he won't be seeing this one!" Stick to the original Road House and relive the good old Swayze days! | 0 |
7,246 | [
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] | 512 | 611 | If I had never seen the first Road House, then I guess this movie might get one more star, but even then that makes it a 3 star movie. For that matter I was really surprised as to the relatively high rating it currently has.<br /><br />In reality, I was not able to finish this movie, as it was painful. Where it went wrong (at least the most obvious way) is that it pretty much parallels the original exactly even though the original plot is still referenced. This doesn't really make sense and doesn't work. Also, the acting is weak...I never felt like I was into the movie yet I felt like I was watching people act. Even good actors like Busey don't work out, probably due to the screenplay or maybe the awkward editing. The strangest thing is that the movie feels like a mid 90's B movie, yet is made in 06. I am not sure as to why, but then again, this often seems to happen with sequels for some reason. The music, the look, and the whole overall feel reminds me of movies you saw 10 years ago on Cinemax late at night. The strangest thing of all is that I am also expecting Ja Rule to come in at some point...often it reminds me of more current movies with rappers as actors.<br /><br />The most irritating thing is love interest girl who's character seems like a total rip off of the Lois Lane character on Smallville which is also quite annoying. And lets not forget the fakest sounding "southern accents" I have heard since Walk the Line. I realize this is common place in movies, but no accent at all would work better than attempting to sound like you are from that universal hick place on TV where anyone from any southern state (or KY and WV) sound exactly the same. Sure, people in desert towns in AZ sound just like people in Southeastern states 2000+ miles away. That was wearing thin 10 years ago in the B movies where technique came from. Why do writers / directors make such decisions? <br /><br />Bottom line: I would truly not recommend this if you are a fan of Road House or if you like good movies. Also, if you have not seen it yet, don't spoil it by seeing this version first. The original Road House was one of those accidental classics that people love and watch over and over. It was an unexpected success like American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused, and more recently Office Space, Fast and Furious (only the first one!), and Napolean Dynamite. Why did they spoil it!!!???<br /><br />They should have never made a sequel to Road House other than a high budget version with the right actors / director. Sure, you can never top the original (ex: Bad News Bears, The Longest Yard, etc.), but at least if you can do it right it will be presentable as is the case with the examples I mentioned. But to make a low budget, off-network, self production of Road House is criminal. | 0 |
7,292 | [
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] | 523 | 622 | The Willies starts late one night as brother's Josh (Joshua Miller) & Kyle (Jason Horst) are camping outside with their cousin Michael (Sean Astin), they decide to pass the time by telling scary stories...<br /><br />First up is Michael with a story entitled 'Bad Apples' in which a young boy named Danny Hollister (Ian Fried) is bullied at school, however the sinister new janitor Mr. Jenkins (James Karen) decides to help him out...<br /><br />Next up is Kyle as he tells a strange story called 'Flyboy' in which an overweight bully with a worrying fascination with dead flies gets what he deserves in a horrible twisted way...<br /><br />Written & directed by Brian Peck The Willies didn't do much for me & I doubt it'll do much for you either. The script is strange as far as episodic anthologies go, instead of the usual three or four stories it only has two main tales & a few bizarre 'urban myth' type mini scenes at the start, these consist of the person who orders food from a fast food restaurant only to find a dead rat in her chicken, a man who dies of a heart attack on a ride & someone who tries to dry her poodle off in the microwave only for it to explode. I have no idea what the purpose of these scenes are but they add nothing to the film, as for the two main stories they are both weak. For a start they are too long which is a huge mistake in these types of films, usually the stories in anthologies are short, sharp & quick with a nice twist at the end usually involving people getting what they deserved. However in The Willies the stories last for the best part of 40 minutes each which is longer than the average TV episode & I must admit I found both stories very boring, they have very little going for them & seem to be aimed at children. The first story is the better to watch as a whole but it has no twist ending as far as I could see while the second one has a nice 'just deserts' ending but the build up to it is weak & drawn out for no good reason. I really like horror anthology films so The Willies comes as a disappointment, frankly it lets the genre down.<br /><br />Director Peck was obviously working on a low budget & as a whole The Willies is pretty tough to sit through, there's plenty of continuity errors & it's poorly made. There's no atmosphere, there's no scares, there's no gore, the special effects are poor & it features unnecessary shots of a dirty toilet several times. Overall it's a pretty unappealing film to sit through.<br /><br />Technically The Willies is rough around the edges to say the least, the effects are far from special & it has an extremely drab & grainy look to the picture. The acting is poor, no ones going to win any awards thats for sure.<br /><br />The Willies is a poor film, it's not scary, it's not fun, it's not entertaining & it only features two overlong stories. Definitely not recommended. | 0 |
7,316 | [
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] | 531 | 691 | This film took up three hours, including commercials, on the History International Channel last night. But it felt like three weeks. It wasn't the cheap, stagy and unintentionally funny depictions of the bombing of Dresden. It wasn't that the film is stripped of almost all context surrounding World War II. It wasn't even that the bombing itself was often made to appear as nothing more than a major inconvenience for a goofy love story. No, it was the wooden featureless characterizations that sucked the life out of the story. Oh, and the fact that if it is possible for a movie to be obsequious, then Dresden is that movie. Perhaps a better title would have been DRESDEN--AS URIAH HEEP WOULD HAVE EXPERIENCED IT.<br /><br />It is especially the latter point that so irritates. Was the bombing of Dresden a war crime? The makers of this movie believe so. But in the typically emasculated way that Germans have come to approach World War II, they can't bring themselves to say so without braying about "peace" and "no more wars--anywhere" like they're Mother Teresa. And, also typical of German obsequiousness towards the British in particular, there is an unwieldy effort to grovel before "Britishness", while loading all the "guilt" for Dresden on to one person, Arthur Harris.<br /><br />Did I say one person? Well, not quite. At the beginning of the movie, there is an exclamation from the leading character, Anna, with whom we are all supposed to sympathize. "Damned Americans!", she screams, while watching as far off bombs fall. And a few minutes later, a radio voice intones warnings about the "American Terror Bombing" being inflicted upon Germans.<br /><br />Note the word, "terror". Got that? It's really the Americans behind the inhumane targeting of German civilians. No matter that the American strategy for almost all the war in Europe was the "precision" bombing of industrial and war manufacturing sites. No matter that it was the British who enthusiastically adopted "area" bombing of civilian targets in Germany--before the Germans had themselves even targeted English ones. No matter that the Americans bombed during the day, suffering more casualties in the process than the British, in order to hit precision targets, while the British bombed civilians under the cover of night. No matter that the Americans, essentially, were brought into the RAF's true terror bombing campaign kicking and screaming against it. No matter that most American officials, from FDR to Gen. Dolittle, opposed targeting civilians, while Churchill and his generals couldn't wait to do so.<br /><br />No, in DRESDEN, both the Germans and British, except for "Bomber" Harris, are innocent of a doctrine, it is intimated, created by the evil Americans. And only the might and power of a love story between a German nurse and a downed British bomber pilot can adequately explain the "truth" of the atrocity. Right.<br /><br />Oh, by the way, for the younger and likely less well read readers of IMDb, the first and still so far only major literary effort to give a thoughtful voice to Dresden's bombing was the pacifist novel penned by Kurt Vonnegut--an American POW in Dresden at the time of the bombing. I guess Germany's ZDF couldn't find a pretty nurse for Billy Pilgrim. | 0 |
7,324 | [
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] | 509 | 688 | Imagine a GILLIGAN'S ISLAND set in the African desert in modern times. Add people nowhere near as jaunty as the Skipper or Marianne--and enough angst to fill a German psychiatrist's office. Throw in a plot that manages to be interesting only episodically and literary parallelism that never delves deeply enough to truly satisfy. Season with a truly morose topic that's been exploited since the first world travelers found themselves very, very lost.<br /><br />If THE KING IS ALIVE weren't a product of the reigning czars du jour of Dogme 95, would this film be garnering as much attention? Dogme 95 is to Hollywood as Danish modern is to rococo. A byproduct of digital technology, this Scandinavian movement seeks--quite dogmatically--to strip away artificiality in film-making, by using more natural elements and returning to the essence of storytelling. PEARL HARBOR, for instance, is the Dogme Antichrist.<br /><br />Director/co-author Kristian Levring's saga ponders interpersonal relations and human nature when placed under the fire of a life-threatening situation. Eleven people aboard a bus riding through the Namibian sand dunes suddenly find themselves stranded in the remains of an abandoned town. An African local who does not speak their language serves as observer and narrator (whose insights are among the film's most trenchant). As the strongest heads off for a five-day walk to the nearest village, the others stay behind, surviving on dented-canned carrots and circumambulating their likely future as vulture chow. Former thespian Henry decides that this rather unappealing crew needs a diversion, and hand-writes KING LEAR from memory. He assigns roles, and the group passes many days learning lines and rehearsing, in an effort to divert their attention from the seemingly inevitable.<br /><br />Gradually the cast begins to lose it, and the savageries of their natureor, William Golding might say, human naturebegin to surface. If you've ever seen LORD OF THE FLIES, you know that these things can get ugly, that being in a lifeboat situation can turn even Mother Teresa into the PMSing termagant of Calcutta.<br /><br />The film was shot using an international ensemble of American, English, French and South African actors, who, the Dogme dogma dictates, develop themselves and their roles quite organically. THE KING was also filmed chronologically, adding a sense of realism to the ever-increasing desperation of its characters. After up to three hand-held cameras shot in digital, results were transferred to 35mm film.<br /><br />The performance that compels most comes from Jennifer Jason Leigh, who plays a boho Pop Tart trying to bolster the spirits of the group in any and every way she can. Henry (David Bradley) is another finely played character, whose passion for his life's work ultimately saves the gang from utter despair. It's hard to feel too sorry for the otherscruel wives and their oafish husbands, hirsute old womanizers, sulky French intellectuals, wealthy men who have more important places to be than marooned in the Namibian desert. Beckett might hate this question, but why is this group riding a bus together through remote Africa in the first place? Life-threatening morbidity! Utter despair rendered in graphic detail! A relentlessly tedious pace! Enjoy. | 0 |
7,387 | [
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] | 534 | 686 | This guy is a real piece of work. An angry, immature boy in a grown man's body, packing all the charisma of a rock, he goes around to places most people would only wish to visit and does his best to be as miserable as possible.<br /><br />Give this job to someone else who actually appreciates it.<br /><br />I could go down an endless list of all the stupid things this guy does in his "episodes," though I'll just highlight the worst: Crete. While the locals are putting up seaside picnics in his "honour," this clown has the gall to act like a petulant, spoiled child. He complains about everything, including the fashion sense of the people who live there. What an imbecile.<br /><br />When he went to Sweden, he spent at least five minutes feigning incredulity at a bunch of chefs (who probably had better things to do than talk with some dimwit American, like work) because they didn't think Abba was horrible. Everywhere he went, he brought up Abba. This is the kind of talk you'd hear from 13-year-olds who watch too much MTV.<br /><br />When he was in New Orleans, he got upset that a certain restaurant had better-tasting fries than his, so he "accidentally" spilled some wine on them in order to ruin them. What a strange, emotionally unstable person.<br /><br />The worst of it all are his clumsy voice-overs, where he attempts in vain to add some kind of perspective on a situation he was too thick and ignorant to appreciate. He tries to use all these "big" words in order to sound like an author, but he's really just a pretentious hack whose lack of awareness has convinced him he has something to say. That, by the way, is probably the one good thing about this joker's TV show. It goes to show you, no matter how inept you are, as long as you take yourself seriously enough, the world will as well.<br /><br />Then there's the way he speaks with local guides whose English is obviously only rudimentary. He'll use vocabulary any writer--as he believes himself to be--would instinctively know will most likely not be understood by these people. Does he care? No. Self-important schmucks like this Bourdain clown do not use language to communicate; they use it to make themselves look important.<br /><br />Mcg13jthm's review on this same page is a perfect example of the kind of mind Bourdain attracts--that of a low IQ social misfit. Observe how the reviewer attempts to justify Bourdain's sociopath nature with simple-minded, childish excuses that hardly make sense. "Bourdain may complain but he goes through 'a lot' and, not only that, he was 'forced' to do this show but is trying to redeem himself." A dolt attracts dolts, and reading Mcg13jthm's review should let you know perfectly well whether or not you are the kind of person who'd enjoy this utterly useless, pointless show.<br /><br />Finally, to add a bit of "fairness" to my diatribe, I admit Bourdain would have been momentarily amusing had I met him in a bar. But as a TV host of a travel show whose purpose is to show the viewer the beauty of other places and cultures, Bourdain is a miserable, abject, hopeless, grim and depressing failure.<br /><br />A failure. | 0 |
7,403 | [
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] | 548 | 681 | A tedious mixture of puerile efforts at humour with romantic relationship melodrama fails to provide this weakly made film with any flavour of reality. As action opens, Reno (A.J. Buckley) enters his apartment, there discovering his girlfriend in flagrante delicto with his roommate, who gloatingly tells Reno "Well, at least it's with someone you know", resulting in Reno's decision to never have another roommate, this decision told to viewers by means of a soon abandoned voice-over. The storyline then proceeds ten months where we find that Reno is indeed true to his word concerning avoidance of roommates, although this appears to beg the question due to his garnering of a live-in lover, Holly (Holly Fields), with whom he has generated marital plans. The plot briefly shifts to a sleazy Hollywood strip club, wherein Reno's Uncle Charley, enamoured of a "dancer" whom he finds eminently desirable, keels over dead atop the club's bar after seeing the unadorned charms displayed by the object of his affections. It is apparent that Charley had been aware of the flawed condition of his heart, because he created a video tape during which his commentary bequeaths his large (and mortgaged) residence in Hollywood to Reno, and we see the latter deciding to, contrary to his vow, interview applicants for two roommates as tenants, with he and Holly sharing the selection process in an organized manner. Following an inane sequence involving bizarre renter candidates, all of whom Reno and Holly unsurprisingly find unsuitable for living along with them in their house they, unknown to each other, each select a renter of the opposite sex, with the lovers manifestly cool toward the choice of their partner. The newcomers (Chad and Nicole) would seem to have little discernible point to their existence other than highly aural fornication with a broad range of partners, and it is not long before jealousy mars the harmonic relationship of Reno and Holly. Reno is bent upon patenting and merchandising a type of sporting travel bag and, as he has given an engagement ring to Holly, the potential success of this entrepreneurial adventure is of great financial significance if he intends to advance his marital plan. Unfortunately, the rapacious team of Chad and Nicole, whose every action is ostensibly laced with lust, is likely to disrupt any future wedding intentions of Reno. Direction is slack, plainly far from fulfilling basic needs of the players, although an erratically composed script provides scant material with which actors may work, and ad libbing falls embarrassingly flat. As a result, the performances are undistinguished, not aided by spotty editing, while the manner of camera-work changes as abruptly and often as a firefly's tail light. Filmed with a low budget and on location, only a modicum of skill is required for the designing processes, but a larger measure of value might have been placed upon the tasteless D.J. background soundtrack, generally blaring and nearly always invasive. A good deal of discussion has been stimulated by the movie's final sequences that are apparently not expected by a viewer based upon what has come before, but in reality these comprise probably the only thoughtful portions of a poorly cobbled screenplay, and bids fair to make the work almost watchable, despite the shabby quality of the production as a whole. | 0 |
7,438 | [
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] | 471 | 606 | Two teenagers in the north-east of England are desperate to raise money and buy season tickets for their favourite football team. They go through a series of "comic misadventures" but come up smiling in the end.<br /><br />The trailer for this film sells it as a comedy and includes most of its light-hearted moments. However, the tone is increasingly grim and the end result is a depressing story peopled with familiar stereotypes. The two "heroes" have no problems with lying, cheating and stealing. Their adversaries are a callous teacher, a pantomime villain of a father, a psychotic skinhead and a well-meaning but incompetent social worker. The other female characters are a drug addicted teenager, a pregnant schoolgirl and a battered wife who seems to be smoking herself to death. There are no likable characters, and the audience can only feel either pity or contempt. Local actors Tim Healy and Kevin Whateley both play against type as baddies, but the writing and direction of their characters are so one-dimensional that they have no more than novelty value.<br /><br />Chris Beattie and Greg McLane give good performances in the two young leads. However, they are miscast, because they have the wrong accent. To anyone from the north east, it is obvious that they both come from the Sunderland/Durham area, and yet we are expected to believe they are natives of Newcastle. As a Geordie myself I can assure you that the accents are by no means the same. Take the phrase "Let the poor lad speak". We say "Let the pooa lad speek" while they say "piwer lad spiyk", with two distinctly different vowel sounds. This discrepancy creates a ridiculous double irony in a scene in Sunderland football ground, where the two lads are trying to disguise the Newcastle accents they don't have, and *pretend* that they come from Sunderland - which they clearly do. In a gentle comedy this kind of criticism might be seen as nit-picking. However, the film's bleak tone makes it clear that writer/director Mark Herman is aiming for gritty realism: that means "near enough" is actually way off.<br /><br />I had hoped for humour and optimism from this film, and instead found tired old clichés. Tyneside is not a grey wasteland populated solely by losers, and in telling us it is, Herman should have known he would cause offence. It's interesting to compare the film with the same director's "Little Voice" - also largely downbeat and populated by one-dimensional characters, "Little Voice" at least has a talented heroine and doesn't wallow in misery to the same extent. I've heard "Belter" ranked alongside this year's "Billy Elliot", but that film is a vastly more enjoyable and life-affirming experience.<br /><br />Incidentally, I may be just too old, but having lived on Tyneside for 42 years, I have never heard anyone outside this film use the expression "Purely Belter". | 0 |
7,462 | [
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] | 535 | 649 | This is a polarising film. People either love it or despise it, it seems. Me, I despise it. The film comes from the same context as Lindsay Anderson's Oh Lucky Man, but while that is a masterpiece, this is just horrible.<br /><br />Both films take Kafka's unfinished novel - America, for their inspiration and general ideal. America is a surreal story of a youth's travels through the country. Kafka uses the this character as a pure observer, one who does not change over the course of the journey (although the book is about 300 pages and still seems only a quarter finished, so we'll never know). Allowing Kafka to concentrate and comment on the absurd/surreal situations and surroundings. Oh Lucky Man follows this same template to show Britain through the eyes of Malcolm McDowell and Weekend does the same for France.<br /><br />Both films are also hugely Brechtian, using various tricks and techniques to point up the fact that this is NOT REAL, this is confabulation etc. But the difference comes where Oh Lucky Man uses the constructed film to convey the absurdity of life and the class system, Weekend uses the constructed film to bludgeon us to death with ideological polemic. Because Godard goes further than Anderson in his Brechtian principles, we end up with two principle characters in which we have no investment, at all. We're forced to spend 90 minutes with them, yet we couldn't care less about them. Deliberately so. But in doing this, Godard leaves us with a film that is entirely about his own message, which, in the first half of the film is provided through relentless and overbearing symbolism, and in the second half through a series of long speeches directed to camera. Combined with unpleasant and unnecessary scenes such as the really horrible pig slaying, far worse than any of the off camera violence of the car crashes.<br /><br />The end result is like listening to a student political apparatchik droning on and on and on about his views whilst repeatedly kicking you in the head so that you get the message. The problem with Brecht is, if you alienate the audience too much, then you've alienated them from what you are trying to convey. Which always seemed self evident to me.<br /><br />The parts that really stick in the craw for this movie though, is the contrast between the extremely sexually explicit verbal description of the threesome at the start and the off-screen comical rape in the middle, which, even if it could be viewed as allegorical, completely destroys the film's faith in itself and it's characters, what little of it existed in the first place. It's so French with a capital F, it hurts.<br /><br />Watch Oh Lucky Man instead. That is a work of genius. Weekend is a work of pretension.<br /><br />Two stars, and only for the traffic jam scene and the piano scene, which are just hints at genius, although they actually make the end result more frustrating and unsatisfying as without them, this is a bad film by the worst most pretentious director in the world, with them, well it's obvious that this is a damn good technical director making the most intellectually pretentious film in the world. Somehow that's far worse. | 0 |
7,613 | [
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] | 439 | 608 | I once saw a bit of this film, and was interested to see the full thing just to see why the critics give it two stars, the result being that I agree. Basically the film begins with Kermit the Frog (Steve Whitmire) telling all his Muppet chums that they have lost everything, and he ends sitting depressed (and possibly thinking about suicide) on the bench. Meanwhile, in another world (Heaven) angel Daniel (David Arquette, who had already been in Muppets from Space) visits the 'Boss' (Whoopi Goldberg, another reason I wanted to see the film) to show that Kermit really needs help. In the flashbacks, it shows Kermit, Miss Piggy (Eric Jacobson, not the original and better Frank Oz), Gonzo (Dave Goelz), Fozzie Bear (also Jacobson), Pepe the Prawn (Bill Barretta) and all the other Muppets have prepared a stage show for many people to see in the Christmas holiday, and it all seems to be going well. But the really mean Rachel Bitterman (Joan Cusack) is determined to either shut the show or the theatre down, and Kermit is doing everything possible to make sure that doesn't happen. Of course, Kermit fails the last time, and Bitterman tells him that they are finished, and she can officially take the theatre. This is where Daniel is sent as Kermit's guardian angel to try and help him, but Kermit is not in the mood, and eventually ends up saying "I wish I was never born". Obviously, you can recognise the spoof of It's a Wonderful Life, with Kermit as the George Bailey, and Cusack as the Mr. Potter, and in the end, obviously Kermit realises how much he means to everyone, and goes back to find the theatre saved as historical landmark. Also starring Whitmire as Rizzo the Rat and Beaker; Goelz as Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Waldorf; Barretta as Dr. Teeth, Rowlf the Dog and Swedish Chef; Jacobson as Animal and Yoda (the only character who sounds similar to Oz's version), William H. Macy as Glenn, Matthew Lillard as Luc Fromage, Carson Daly, Molly Shannon; Scrubs' Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, Neil Flynn, John C. McGinley and Judy Reyes, Mel Brooks as Joe Snow; Brian Henson as Scooter and Janice; Jerry Nelson as Robin the Frog, Statler, Pops and Floyd Pepper, and Kevin Clash as Sam the Eagle. The most memorable moment for me is the stage spoof of Moulin Rouge, besides that and the well known faces in it, not fantastic. It was nominated the Emmy for Outstanding Music and Lyrics for the song "Everyone Matters". The Muppets were number 47 on The 100 Greatest Pop Culture Icons. Adequate! | 0 |
7,679 | [
600,
700
] | 477 | 645 | The first time I had heard of Guest House Paridiso was in the, er... "washroom" after having just seen Fight Club. In each urinal was deposited a small, round black circle. When the circle came into contact with moisture (to put it delicately), it caused a colour picture to form, with photographs of the two stars and the tag line "You'll P*** Yourself Laughing". When you'd finished washing your hands, the circle had dried and faded to black again, waiting to spring it's surprise on the next "victim".<br /><br />Okay, maybe the punchline wasn't terribly sophisticated, but you have to admit it was innovative. In fact, I think I can honestly say I've never seen anything like it in my life before, and these days of over a century of cinema and marketing, that's a real feat. What a pity the film that went with it failed to live up to the promise.<br /><br />I hate to pan Guest House Paridiso and I am indebted to Rik Mayall (Richard Twat) and Adrian Edmondson (Eddie Elizabeth Ndingombaba) for many years of laughter through their appealing television series, be it the invention of The Young Ones (1982-1984), the sitting room plays of Bottom (1991-1995), or even solo work, such as Rik in the New Statesman (1988-1993). In fact, this would have made an hilarious 45 minute tv special. Unfortunately, its an 89 minute film.<br /><br />There's definitely some merit to be had, and I laughed continuously throughout the protracted finale, which spoofed the Exorcist and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and involved... well, you'll have to see that bit for yourself. Yet often the pace is leaden, and a sterile atmosphere is throughout. The two stars (Edmondson taking his usual backseat, this time due to the fact that he adequately directs) never really get into first gear, Mayall only sporadically showing the foul-mouthed mania that makes us love him on the small screen. Indeed, the writers' presumption that we are already familiar with the characters leads to them being underdelivered to the audience. The slight hints of depth seen in the series (Richie's effeminate, failed social-climbing for example) are not present here, and instead we are left with parodies of parodies.<br /><br />The Fawlty Towers accusation does pass water, complete with drunken chef and unseen, called-for waiter "Pasquele", which uncannily rhymes with Manuel. Some of the ideas, such a hotel next to a nuclear reactor with a childrens' swing hanging over a cliff face, are very, very funny, but ultimately the frenetic pace is stolen, the two constantly looking for a studio audience that isn't there, and all the "dead laugh" areas patched up with incidental "comedy" music that would have been dated in a Carry On film two decades ago.<br /><br />Paridiso's brand of puerile, sadistic, perverse humour IS funny, and I feel sure it will make you laugh ... just not as often as it should. | 0 |
7,733 | [
600,
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] | 580 | 673 | This story of Ted Brice, an American pilot who is the sole survivor of the crash of an Allied reconnaissance plane in Belgium in January of 1944, is pretty much of a mess. The title would lead you to think that it is principally a story about the Belgian armed resistance groups, but that seems to be just a backdrop to prop up a silly love story between Ted and Claire, the woman who takes Ted in. Claire's husband Henri is a committed resistance member, but it is Claire who decides, in Henri's absence and against his wishes, to give Ted refuge.<br /><br />Crucial plot details don't make sense. Central to the story is the retrieval of the recorder on the downed plane that contains navigation codes and the positions of targets. But in the opening scene we see Belgians looting the plane, resistance members among them. Why did they not retrieve the valued items at that time instead of waiting for the Nazis to come and guard the plane? And the whole affair of transferring Ted out of the area was conducted using secret instructions and code words when the transaction could have just been a simple exchange. The ponderous music attempts, but fails, to lend some weight to this tepid undertaking.<br /><br />The most ludicrous part of the movie is how the love affair develops between Ted and Claire. At first Claire is devoted to nursing Ted back from near death and, when Ted starts to recover, they become physically involved (while Henri is conveniently away conducting resistance business). Julie Ormond does a passable job as Claire, but she effects a French accent that I frequently found impossible to understand. Her responses seemed a little weak at times - when informed of the hanging deaths of several town members she reacts as though she had just been told that the local grocery was out of peaches. As Ted, Bill Paxton seems just to be reciting his lines; his performance is so uninspired that it's embarrassing. A true American pilot might evidence such a flat personality, but it does not make for convincing cinema. I did not sense any chemistry between these supposed lovers.<br /><br />The most idiotic thing is the way that Ted and Claire act like lovers on holiday. Maybe sexual release from such heavy situations is understandable, but to appear totally oblivious of the gravity of the situation is hard to fathom. At first Ted is consigned to an attic room and Claire worries about his even coming into the house. But as things develop he not only comes into the house, he dances with Claire to loud music, enters the adjoining barn to have a game of baseball with a local boy, and ultimately goes on a car trip with Claire to a nearby town.<br /><br />The young boy seems to be most committed to his role, but he is undermined by the script. He has an uncanny ability to be at crucial events without being noticed. And when he delivers lines like:<br /><br />"Have you ever seen someone get hanged. They look like the're dancing, but they can't find the floor." <br /><br />you feel that it is the screenwriter talking and not a thirteen year old boy.<br /><br />And oh, by the way, there are scenes to show that the Nazis are pretty bad guys.<br /><br />Comparing this film to the brilliant "Ashes and Diamonds" about the Polish resistance, or the equally stellar "Lacombe, Lucien" about the French resistance, one realizes what a truly dismal affair it is. | 0 |
7,775 | [
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] | 530 | 657 | Isn't it strange how crap-movies always tend to be a little better when you start watching them with an attitude like: "boy, this is going to suck harder than few things have ever sucked before"? It's pretty much impossible for anyone to rent this movie with high or even remotely positive - expectations, as "House of the Dead 2" is a sequel to something that is generally considered to be one of the absolute worst genre disasters ever to be released. The abysmal reputation of the original actually turned out to be a great advantage for director Michael Hurst, as it was really easy to surpass the quality level of its predecessor. And exactly how embarrassing must this be for Uwe Boll, huh? Having to acknowledge that a straight-to-video sequel without star power or promotional campaigns is MUCH better than his own pretentious video game interpretation? In case anyone still doubts: NO, "House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim" isn't a good horror movie at all but, YES: it's definitely better than the first and even worth renting in case you're looking for an undemanding splatter film with loads of gory butchering, sleaze and stupid humor. There's no real connection with the events in the first film (another advantage) and this part two opens like a typically rancid sex comedy set in a college campus. The male fraternity club plans to attack a sorority house, inhabited exclusively by blond coeds with enormous breasts, but the party gets interrupted when an insane professor (Sid Haig!) who runs his car over a girl and takes her back to his lab to turn her into a zombie. This is the beginning of a quickly spreading and deadly epidemic but, no worries, as the government is prepared and sends their best scientists & soldiers to the campus to search for survivors and to bring back blood samples for an antidote. Hunting down zombies seems like the most common thing in the world for this squadron, they even named them Hyper Sapiens, but their constantly increasing amount eventually endangers the lives of the most hardened soldiers. Director Hurst thankfully found his inspiration in the more eminent classics of the genre, like James Cameron's "Aliens" and of course - George A. Romero's dead-trilogy, particularly "Day of the Dead". He luckily also didn't made the same mistakes as Uwe Boll, who inserted footage of the actual video game in his movie (why?!?) and *slightly* exaggerated with the use of CGI-techniques. HotD 2 contains heavy images of violence, like chopped up female corpses and detailed amputations, but it never really becomes nauseating or shocking. Naturally, there's isn't the slightest bit of suspense to enjoy and every dreadful horror cliché features here as well. The film is very enjoyable as long as story writer Mark Altman doesn't try to explain the origins of the zombie epidemics. They're walking corpses with their brains hanging out of their skulls, so we really don't need to know what caused their deaths. Especially not when the explanations are given by a blond sorority slut who clearly hasn't got a clue what all the medical terms mean. Just avoid getting bitten, sweetheart. | 0 |
7,785 | [
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] | 491 | 652 | The trouble with this film, like so many other films that fail, is the script.<br /><br />The script is so unfocused it flounders around all over the place. What IS the story here? OK, it's a biopic but I think everyone will agree there is no way that an entire life can be condensed into 100 or so minutes. Some selection and editing is required but this script just didn't select or edit enough. It didn't render Hoffman's life down to one or two definable pivotal moments or themes that the audience could identify with and, through them, 'get' the bigger picture of the whole man.<br /><br />The movie wanders from being a straight plodding 'troubled genius' biopic, to semi-docu/mocu-mentary (using new shots faked up to match archive footage), to sub True Life Sob Stories Movie of the Week (the whole "I'm bringing up a son who doesn't know I'm his Dad" shtick), to political conspiracy theory movie etc. etc. It just never makes its mind up what it wants to be, and the half-hearted Citizen Kane like narrative structure (reporter interviewing people from Hoffman's past) is soon abandoned which leaves the film even more unstructured and flabby than it starts out.<br /><br />The movie is full of moments and incidents that contribute nothing to the story and could well have been cut to leave room to expand something more important. The whole scene in the psychiatrist's office after Vincent D'Onofrio pounds the window screaming "I'm Abbie Hoffman! I'm Abbie Hoffman! I'm Abbie Hoffman!" ("I'm acting! I'm acting! I'm acting!") could have easily been cut. All that happens is the psychiatrist says "You have bipolar disorder here's some lithium.", and the two women in his life say "We could see you weekends more often." and bang! That's it. No more mental health problems. It is such a laughably pointless tokenistic scene it could easily, and should, have been dumped before it was shot. The scene where they all get high and watch newsreel footage from Viet Nam and Hoffman phones GOD? Pointless. Tells us nothing about anything. Yet, when it comes to a pivotally important moment like the drugs bust, the film making is so hurried the situation just comes out of leftfield and doesn't make any sense to the audience. Suddenly he's dealing in heroin? Where did this come from? Why? What is going on here? <br /><br />I, being a middle-aged leftie, would guess I am sitting well within the target audience for this movie but even I got fed up with the portrayal of 'The Man', 'The Pigs', 'The Fuzz' etc. as brutal, be-suited, unthinking, hippie-hating androids. It may have been like that in 60's America, I don't know, I wasn't there, but in film terms it was cheap clumsy polemic.<br /><br />Having said all that Vincent D'Onofrio was convincingly charismatic as the younger Hoffman and I could watch Janeane Garofalo in anything, even reading a bus timetable, though she just wasn't right for this part. | 0 |
7,802 | [
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] | 519 | 623 | Ivan The Terrible is more a filmed stage play than a "big-screen-opus". Citizen Kane - a similar work in many ways - is quite the opposite (in the way we come to expect such fare) in that it has lots of location shooting for example.<br /><br />Acting is meant to convey a character's motivations and thinking to the audience; if it succeeds in making you understand the character, what does it matter HOW it was done? And considering the low amount of action, how else is one to express events that influence the story, and consequently the characters' machinations and decisions other than "exaggerated movements"?<br /><br />As well, there's a historical level why the acting style should not surprise. The rise of totalitarian regimes in Germany and USSR forced film-makers who stayed behind to make films the way they knew how. As they were prevented access to more modern works that showed cinema's evolution and techniques, they only used what they knew.<br /><br />The Nazi's control of government in Germany destroyed the great German film industry of the 1920's, due to their total control over that film industry. And propaganda films can only "entertain" German troops so much; hence the need for popular German silent films of the 1920's, for example. So a lot of Ivan The Terrible film's techniques would have been derived from such captured German films supplied to the film crew (as mentioned in other comments).<br /><br />There was no confusion anywhere and though personally it was found over-hyped, it is by no means a bad cinematic experience - and definitely NOT amongst the worse films ever. The acting is fine, and part of the cinematography excellent (even by today's standards; more below). Definitely not a popcorn flick; one can't leave their brain outside this one's door. Dated perhaps and very symbolic - only worth watching on the big screen if one is unable to view the films with the lights off at home, for many of the cinematic elements will be lost in these films' chiefly B&W experience. It all depends upon what expectations one walks in with...<br /><br />WARNING - SPOILERS: Do not read the following comments, in case they influence your personal view of the film(s).<br /><br />...and if one does not mind the obvious communist propaganda (as opposed to capitalist propaganda). For Ivan is how Stalin saw himself - obvious in his influence on the film's direction (see other comments) - and anyone with a world historical awareness outside the US perspective will definitely understand this. Maybe Ivan was an earlier incarnation of Stalin, or maybe not; this is more a diatribe on Stalin and his motivations, decisions, loneliness, promotions of lackeys, etc - using the persona of Ivan - than any true historical record of Ivan. Also note the obvious use of particular colours in the sequel: Red (for the USSR) in the banquet scene. And perhaps blue (for the USA) during certain shots when the usurper wears the crown?<br /><br />But it has many excellent visuals such as the profound use of shadows, or the exterior shot of the populace coming to beg Ivan's return to Moscow. | 0 |
7,808 | [
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] | 525 | 619 | OK, here is the deal. I love action movies and generally have no problem suspending a great deal of disbelief over plot holes or other implausible actions. However, this movie went far beyond minor flaws and went straight to the ridiculous. Let me get this straight. The police send a notorious gangster and cop killer (along with a number of other prisoners) on a bus with a grand total of two guards. They then are forced to stop at a precinct where precisely two cops are working, one of which is a day away from retirement and the other is a burn out. Apparently the building was about to be shut down so somehow the police decided that everyone else in the entire precinct got the night off for new year's eve. Right. But wait, it gets better. Gabriel Byrne shows up to take out Fishburne before he can rat him and other dirty cops out. (although we never find out anything about their relationship or dealings). Interestingly, the cops launching the assault on the precinct are in full SWAT gear with night vision goggles, assault rifles, the whole nine yards. Later on they even bring in a helicopter with MORE people in full gear. I'm not a cop, but I'm pretty sure you can't just waltz out of the station with an entire swat platoon worth of equipment without someone asking what you are doing. And the police helicopter??? In the supposedly terrible winter storm??? Also, no one near the precinct happens to hear or see this major siege going on with flash grenades and heavy rifle fire going off? I mean seriously, come on. I know this is set in Detroit, but even there it would raise suspicion on a supposedly top secret mission. I also love the fact that they find a Tommy Gun in the evidence room and somehow the gun still works and has bullets that are still intact and usable.<br /><br />I could live with some of these problems if there weren't other glaring issues also. For one, the opening couple minutes of the movie are shot nicely in a very frenetic and hyperactive way and I thought was going to set the tone for the rest of the movie. Unfortunately I was wrong. The remainder of the film has no sense of pacing or tension or drama. The "characters" don't relate to each other in any way which is probably largely due to the fact that they aren't particularly interesting. There isn't enough interesting action to make this a good action movie, and there isn't enough character development/storytelling to make this a passable thriller/drama. The "relationship" between Hawke/Fishburn is the only thing that the director even tries to make interesting or intense. Oh and by the way, the final scene in the wilderness? Uh, I thought this was in the middle of a run down industrial section of Detroit and suddenly we are in the woods?? The acting isn't terrible in this movie, it is just that the directing and writing are atrocious. I really enjoy some of Hawkes, Fishburne, Byrne, Dennehy's other movies but this one is terrible. | 0 |
7,858 | [
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] | 539 | 649 | This is one of the rare movies that I did not immediately discuss with my friends after watching it. This wasn't because it had particularly entranced or impressed me. The contrary, it had given me nothing at all.<br /><br />Why? Because somehow, everything was so much overdone that I couldn't take this film seriously anymore. There was so much sex and violence that I got the strong impression that the film was trying very, very hard to be offensive, as if it was aiming at superlatives in ugliness, rather than in telling a convincing tale about two women caught in a spiral of crime.<br /><br />Baise-moi had been described as "Thelma & Louise with actual sex" to me. Well, it is true that the main idea is similar. There are two women traveling through the country because they've committed crimes and know that their lives are finished now, that the police are going to catch them, and they decide that now that everything's over anyway, there is no way to hold back.<br /><br />Baise-moi had been described as a feminist film where women, who had suffered from male dominance in the past, exact revenge upon the men that they encounter.<br /><br />This is something that I had never interpreted into this film, simply because none of these women had ever been innocent, and because they do not just kill irresponsible, violent men, but also men that they seduce themselves, men that show the sense of wanting to do protected sex. And they kill women. No, they are in no way better than the characters that they encounter and murder in hideous, brutal ways.<br /><br />How easily the "heroines" decide to murder, and how much pleasure they take in it, made it absolutely impossible for me to relate to them in any way, or even take them seriously. It was just all too much. Too much sex, too much violence. I got the feeling that sex and violence were only there in order to create a superlative in ugliness, rather than in conveying a story, or making a point.<br /><br />Baise-moi left me with no impression, hadn't set me thinking, because it was so far removed from any real world. So constructed, unrealistic and over the top.<br /><br />There was nothing that I could do with this film, there was simply nothing about it to think about, other than "Why did they make this terrible film?" Had the intense unpleasantness going on in this film, served a purpose, I'd easily accepted it. But since I found nothing, since the film's story appeared to be not more than an excuse to squeeze as much and as ugly sex as possible into one film... I filed it away under "unnecessary torture", decided to never ever, EVER, watch this film again, and I now consider this to be the worst film I've ever seen. <br /><br />Worst, not just because it really isn't my cup of tea to watch people get raped, rape, have sex in other forms and kill one another... but because whatever it was that the makers wanted to tell the world with their film... if they wanted to say anything at all... it just didn't work. And there's nothing else that could save this film, because it's also filmed in such an ugly style. | 0 |
7,883 | [
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] | 550 | 685 | While there is a lot to recommend about Maetel Legend both in concept and finished product, it's ultimately a poor film. Plot wise it's a retelling of Maetel's early life, which is usually unclear; at the same time the writers take the opportunity to tell the story of the Machine Empire. And since Leiji Matsumoto has trouble not including his other work we get a starting point for Emeraldas her sister, Her mother: the Queen of La Metalle and a bit of Galaxy Express 999 to flesh out the film.<br /><br />In short Maetel is a princess on the planet La Metalle, a planet with an irregular orbit, thus meaning its cycle around the nearest sun is reaching a cold stage and it's artificial Sun is dying. The Planet grows increasingly colder throughout the story, thus increasing the sense of doom. In order to protect her subjects and family the Queen decides that mechanisation is the only way to ensure survival of La Metalle's people. Enter Lord Hardgear, a robot / cyborg who provides the means for the job. Through the film, the characters are left to question mechanisation, will they still be human? Can Hardgear be trusted? Do souls and hearts remain? So for a fan of Matsumoto's work, there's lots to enjoy, questions to be answered, themes continued, except it's obvious that the film is meant to be an introduction, as well as a fan curiosity. The negatives, foremost the animation, while Galaxy Express 999, a TV series from over 20 years ago has shoddy mouth animation and at times sketchy character design, Maetel Legend has all the worst traits of modern animation and thus earns an air of respectability to Galaxy Express 999. The design is well detailed but unfortunately the animation has suffered leaving well drawn characters that 'slide', as in the backgrounds move or the camera zooms, a quick way of animating. However the few, yes few well animated scenes are re used over and over in dream sequences, repetition and in extra scenes. Anyone who's seem the film will wonder how many times Lord Hardgear can drink the same glass of wine.<br /><br />Next the story, While in concept everything sounds great, the finished product is in fact a series of conversations of plot which are repeated over and over to little effect, the number of times the characters encounter the same problems and learn the same things is practically insulting to the audience and the characters, which are seemingly much more articulate in former incarnations. Add to all of that some terrible character design, that seem lifeless, over exaggerated, and the audience is left with a movie so miss handled it might as well have been rewritten as a different film, at least the newcomers wouldn't be left baffled.<br /><br />And yet, it really has its moments, the ending at least is surprising. The plight of the citizens of La Metalle was quite affecting and rightly disturbing; I guess I find that whole man-machine theme distressing. It's hard know who to recommend Maetel Legend to, since it's not well animated, written or executed, plus confusing once Leiji Matsumoto's mandatory cross-referencing is introduced. However I can't help but brighten up when the magnificent entrance of Three-Nine occurs, now that's good cinema.<br /><br />1/5 stars out of 5, 2 if you're a fan. | 0 |
8,037 | [
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] | 515 | 631 | This film spends a lot of time preaching against marijuana. However, the plot and visuals are so insane that it seems more like the poster-child for LSD.<br /><br />Plot: The heroic struggle of Michael as he battles his drug addiction while being subjected to the humiliation brought on by the likes of Winnie the Pooh and Papa Smurf.<br /><br />Yea, yea, there's a good message, but it's obscured by the fact that the writers have taken a rather stale PSA idea and tried stretching it into 30 minutes. This includes a song sequence, where you're told that there's a million, rational ways to say "No!" such as "I can't smoke pot, I have homework!"<br /><br />The writers can't make up their minds what to do with the characters they've brought in royalty-free. At first we see they all have to hide from the human characters, but within five minutes we see them all running around in plain sight without anyone noticing. Soon they begin interacting with the human cast, and the only one who's even slightly disturbed by this fact is not the drug-abusers, it's the little sister who talks to her teddy bear (Pooh, by the way.) Further, there's the little drug demon floating around. Because you know, pushers don't give kids drugs. He too is ambiguous - while he might be symbolic of Michael's addiction and hence is not supposed to be seen by other people, he laters goes and haunts little Corey to get HER into drugs. So I guess he's...uhhh.....moving on!<br /><br />The whole plot finally culminates in some insane sequence in which Michael is in what would appear to be the Saturday Morning Carnival of Souls, aka a theme park from hell where the various cartoon characters beat him up and ignore him and stuff. For example, Miss Piggy eats him in a sandwich and spits him out. If the writers were not high when writing this, I must recommend they try getting high because they can't get crazier than this. Of course, the film ignores the fact that Michael's been having highs for two years by this point, so why this tripping sequence would frighten him is beyond me.<br /><br />I realize I'm completely whaling on this film, but I actually just saw it again because I went through the trouble of tracking it down on eBay because of it's sheer infamy of being a BAD cartoon. The level of unintentional humor is is brilliant. Take this scene for example - Michael's dad is rooting through the fridge for a beer. He notices many of them missing and mentions it to his wife. The ever-observant Mom tells him "Don't worry, you probably just drank them last night watching football." While we're obviously supposed to be learning that Michael is drinking beer (in addition to the pot and crack), we instead read further in and realize - Hey kids, it's okay to have chemical dependencies as long as you're a grown-up! Scenes like this are worth the tiny price tag of this film. Oh yea, and the fact you get to hear Simon the Chipmunk say "Marijuana." | 0 |
8,056 | [
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] | 530 | 629 | This movie definitely made me laugh but that doesn't mean it was exactly funny. Well, then again, me and my friends had a lot of fun watching it.<br /><br />I doubt there is anything about this movie that hasn't been done at least twice before, just like the plot itself. All of the characters are overused movie cliché cardboard-box roles that don't even require acting skills; accordingly, such skills are not delivered. We have the corrupt cop, a ruthless killer who claims to care about his men and their families whilst caring nothing about people he shoots in the forehead at so close a range as to have blood spat on his face. We have the "worn-out cop on the edge" so nicely pointed at in the discussion boards of this movie; we have the old one-day-away-from-retirement-cop who just about everyone must have immediately identified as the most likely man on the inside, since he had most to gain and he didn't utter a trustworthy word throughout the movie. About as see-through as a glass house on a sunny day. The big black gangster king was a copy of all previous big black gangster kings in movie history (they could've just called him Marcellus Wallace), but just slightly tougher and more ruthless, because something has to emphasize that we also know Laurence Fishburne from actually good movies. Then we finally have the HIGHLY EDUCATED doctor who can't think of anything reasonable to do as soon as the situation differs from her ordinary life and who spends the majority of the movie sitting in a corner helplessly trying to figure out how to hold on to the weapon she was given. NOT USING IT.<br /><br />The whole siege story is not interesting, not original (having been used twice before), and this movie manages to add absolutely nothing interesting to it. There is the initial probe, then the laying of the siege, then the assault, then the escape attempts. Meanwhile a bunch of strained, stressed, freaked out cops and thugs manage to hold off a Police assault team with high-tech equipment and the quite important advantage of VISION. Then again, in deep night, with the power cut and with a snow storm raging overhead, there is definitely a lot of light coming in, so who really cares about night vision.<br /><br />But the best part comes right at the end. In the first scenes showing Precinct 13, we see it is situated in an outskirt of an industrial city; factories and office buildings surround it on all sides. From this point, the besieged walk maybe a hundred meters in a sewer and where do they end up? Some alley ending right in the middle of a forest! A FOREST! Where did that forest come from? Who decided to lay a pine forest in the middle of an industrial area? How is this forest, in the last scene, suddenly on a hill over the city in question, while in the scenes inside the forest it looked deceptively FLAT?? <br /><br />From here I leave the judgment to you, and to your common sense. Go and see this movie if you're looking for an unintended good laugh, I can really recommend it. | 0 |
8,099 | [
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] | 471 | 607 | Rarely does one find a movie so bad that it achieves the often-sought paradigm of having so little redeeming value that that alone makes it worth watching. "Cyclone," I am happy to report, is such a film.<br /><br />I knew I was in for something good as soon as I found the videotape. I am at least its fourth owner: It has a "Used Movie Sale! $9.95" sticker on the front, and a yard-sale sticker for one dollar. I picked it up at a thrift store for fifty cents.<br /><br />The Used Movie Sale! sticker covers much of the front cover artwork, meaning that what I see is a truly odd blended still of the front of the Cyclone super bike, a car flipping over on fire, and Heather Thomas, wearing Flouncy Eighties Hair with her mouth open in an expression that says, "I 'ave a 'ooth ache." I saw that and thought, "All RIGHT." The case, honestly, was enough ("with nowhere to turn and no one to trust, Teri is plunged headlong into a maze of danger and deceit"), but I surprised myself by actually getting around to watching it. I always make time for the really bad films. That "Fight Club" tape can wait.<br /><br />Meet Teri. Teri is a stunningly well-crafted character, as we can tell from her introduction, in which she and her friend do exercises that highlight her breasts and, later, her legwarmers. Then Teri goes off to hook up with her boyfriend for the evening that goes horribly wrong. Before she knows it, Teri is driven "straight into a web of deadly double-crosses in CYCLONE." The VHS box tells it like it is.<br /><br />Left out of the box summary - perhaps out of some faint hope that actual copies of this film would be sold - is how awful the acting is. It might have been just me, but I kept thinking I could read the characters' thoughts through their eyes. "This is dumb," thinks Heather Thomas. "I know," thinks Bad Guy with Too-Wide Mouth.<br /><br />A driving force (no pun intended) for the second half of this epic picture are the car chases. Those were actually pretty good, although I'm inclined that gasoline doesn't need coaching on how to explode. What really impressed me is that, in all the chases, the streets were pretty much empty. It's like there are only twenty people in this huge city.<br /><br />I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Gee Wilikers! I have to see this movie!" The sad thing, though, is that you can't find it. Oh no. "Cyclone" is a film that finds YOU. Just wait. Some day - perhaps during lunch, perhaps late in the evening, perhaps "when military scientist Jeffery Combs ('Re-Animator')is murdered by hired assassins" - you will hear the rustle of legwarmers, and know that it is time. | 0 |
8,129 | [
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] | 518 | 646 | Realty television crew are assigned to cover a small town high school hockey team running into a serial killer wearing a black mask and hoody. Lots of interviews where the members of the crew(and some of the locals who live in the town of White Plains where most of this film is set)talk into the camera about each other, those they encounter in the town of White Plains, their current situations, and the showbiz side of their lives. The screenplay is often acidic, cynical, and caustic and Killer Movie essentially pokes fun at realty television shows, featuring a cast of characters one might find on The Real World. If this plot is attractive to you, knock yourself out. I found the characters tiresome and the satire is old hat. Out of the cast, Paul Wesley, the director needing a big break, encountering more than he could possibly bargain for, Jake Tanner, is a nice guy, coming off very likable and tolerant of the crap he must contend with, considering the prima donnas and immature people in his entourage who often cause nothing but migraines. Particularly irksome is his producer Lee(Cyia Batten), a tyrant constantly barking orders to everyone, her poisonous attitude creating much tension..she's the type of producer who wishes to capitalize on a small town eruption regarding the killer, using the hockey team cover story as a front to exploit the tragedy occurring in White Plains. Those familiar with Kaley Cuoco know that by now she has perfected the pampered princess, got it down pat because it's the only role we ever see her in most of the time. As Blanca, she's polarizing the way she demands attention, milking what little celeb status she has to the hilt, manufacturing much friction as she becomes a source of frustration, and has quite the potty mouth(Cuoco may've taken the part just so she could escape her usual television sitcom roles, allowed to spout profanity without restriction) Cuoco, along with the entire cast, services Killer Movie as eye candy, but it's hard to find any character you wouldn't want to see hacked to pieces with a meat cleaver. Jason London is the sound/equipment guy, a real creep with a sour attitude, often tormenting the others with his foul comments that are uncalled for. We witness lots of personality clashes, watching how these self-absorbed Hollywood types in the cast snipe at each other. The killer's identity shouldn't surprise anyone, it's quite blatantly obvious. Some minor gore, but most of the violence is shot off-screen. Despite some tame lesbianism, not even this is satisfying. Leighton Meester pops up in the film as a cute victim. Director/writer Jeff Fisher assembles quite an attractive cast, but I wouldn't be able to distinguish this from the innumerable slashers that have stocked the horror shelves over the last ten or so years since SCREAM. While I've never liked any of Cuoco's characters, I never tire of looking at her, but eventually she needs to come up with a role that doesn't consist of her preening, with smug arrogance, always whining and complaining. | 0 |
8,174 | [
600,
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] | 542 | 644 | That is what this movie is. Good God the special effects suck in this movie. It is difficult for anything to suck more than this movie's plot, but the special effects manage to pull it off. Let me try to explain just how bad this movie is.<br /><br />First, there is the plot. There are four punk-ass teenage dirt bikers who are riding around in a forest in Duluth, MN. One of them is a dumb-ass and tries a ridiculous jump and breaks his leg. A paramedic comes to help him, but gets stranded with them when the helicopter breaks. Then all five realize that there is a forest fire, which we see is started by some guy dumping tons of gas all over the forest. All they show us is his boots, and they show scene after scene of this guys boots walking around dumping gas and starting fires. Meanwhile, the teenagers try to escape the fire, only to find that boot man has somehow managed to get ahead of them (while they were speeding through the forest on dirt bikes!), dump gas all over the area they were riding through, and start more fires. He does this several times, and the paramedic finally catches him and starts him on fire. I won't spoil the ending, but this guy's resilience will have you shouting "WHAT THE BLOODY HELL?!?!" at the screen. Anyway, they are now surrounded by fire, and their only escape is through a mine which is filled with methane gas. Yes, methane gas. I'm not even going to try to describe the ending, because it is too ridiculous, and you'll enjoy it more if you don't see it coming. Which you won't, because you can't possibly expect what happens. This is because of the second major problem with this movie: consistency.<br /><br />Is some semblance of consistence too much to ask for? Apparently so. I cannot even count the number of broken limbs in this movie (they keep breaking arms and legs while crashing their bikes). I think each character breaks at least one limb, and several more than one. They then limp around until the scene ends, and then forget that they're supposed to have broken limbs. There is one scene where three of them who are supposed to have broken legs start dancing. But then their injuries suddenly return when the plot needs them to.<br /><br />Finally, the CGI. If there is a hell, it consists of watching the fire in this movie. All they did for the forest fires is line the dirt paths with CGI fire. You can clearly see that the only CGI fire is along the paths, and all of the trees more than two feet from the path are left untouched. And then they zoom out and show the whole forest being engulfed in flames. It's hard to describe in words how ridiculous it looks, but I assure you that the ridiculousness is quite impressive.<br /><br />This movie is one of those so-bad-its-good types. There are some occasions where it descends into the painful-bad category, but for the most part it stays above the line and is laughably inept. I can't wait to check out the other Nature Unleashed movies that came in the four-pack with this one. | 0 |
8,175 | [
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] | 574 | 679 | **MAJOR SPOILERS** Watchable only for the action sequences not the story or acting in it "Nature Unleashed: Fire" has one of the longest and excruciating endings in modern motion picture history. We have the fearless Ranger Jake, Bryan Genesse, leading this trio of hysterical bikers to safety in of all paces an explosive fume beaching mine shaft! This during a raging forest fire! It seems that Ranger Jake with all his knowledge of the great outdoors didn't realize that a mine shaft that's leaking with dangerous and explosive methane gas is the last place to go when all the woods around it is on fire!<br /><br />***SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON*** All this started some time ago when Ranger Jake in an effort to save the not that on the ball miner Tiny, Chris Harz aka "The Sherd", let him slip through his fingers and fall to his death at the bottom of the mine shaft, or did he! Even though we were kept in suspense to who's setting the forest fires for the first half of the movie it wasn't a surprise at all the Tiny was the culprit! As you would expect in movies like these Tiny seemed to be made of hardened steel in that nothing that ever happened to him, fires explosions as well as impaling, could stop the crazed miner.<br /><br />Before Tiny's reappearance, or resurrection, Ranger Jake got involved in rescuing bikers Chris Mel Sharon & Marcus, Josh Cohen Melanie Lewis Anastasia Griffith & Ross McCall, who were trapped in the woods with fires breaking all around them. Having the usual know it all-Marcus-among the bikers things don't go as smoothly as Ranger Jake wanted them to go. Marcus not only eggs on the meek Chris to do something stupid, jump with his bike over a 10 foot pile of logs, but has the guy break his leg. This makes it almost impossible for Ranger Jake to have Chris air-lifted out before the fires consume him as well as his fellow bikers!<br /><br />For the remainder of the movie Ranger Jake, who put himself in charge, makes boner after boner in his attempt to save himself and the trapped and lost in the woods bikers! All this ends with Jake's brilliant idea to hide in a dangerous and abandoned mine shaft with the rescue party just yards away from rescuing them if they only stayed put and in the open where the rescue team could find them!<br /><br />Even though he was supposed to be the life of the party, or movie, Tiny for all his efforts in being another indestructible super villain came across as a man who spent too much time out in the sun. The make-up job on Tiny was so outrageous that he looked like he dumped a jar of spaghetti sauce over his head instead of having it burned to a crisp.<br /><br />Ranger Jake came across as either somewhat very naive or retarded in his being so taken in by the dangerous Tiny in always trying to save the rampaging psycho who never hid his feelings about what he had in mind for the play by the rules Forest Ranger. In fact Ranger Jake actually encouraged Tiny to do both him and the bikers in by showing him how incompetent he was in trying to save them. The fact that Ranger Jake was successful wasn't because he was so smart but because Tiny , despite his indestructibility, was so brainless! | 0 |
8,207 | [
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] | 534 | 657 | Wow. Just wow. Never before have i seen a horror movie in which it seemed like a bad self insert fanfic that somebody wrote one day in 20 minutes. And then i happened to come upon "Lady Frankenstein". This movie takes everything you know about Frankenstein and turns it completely upside down... and not in a good way. If you've seen this movie you either stumbled across it on Italian TV, or you have the dubbed version on the 50 Chilling Classics Box set like i have, as number 24. And lets just say there's a reason why these movies are here. Because they're not very good. enough of that though, onto the movie.<br /><br />It starts out with Dr. Frankenstein trying to make the monster with his assistant who's....obviously not igor for some reason. His college graduate daughter (?) shows up and states how she just graduated with a medical degree, cause yeah. there were so many female doctors back then. So she states how she wants to help her father with his work and he says no. And then he makes the monster and it kills him. So she grieves for exactly 7 seconds and then makes up a story with the assistant how it was a burglar. The monster escapes and goes on a rampage. <br /><br />OK, i really can't believe they killed Dr. Frankenstein so early in the movie. he dies like...20 minutes in. and then his daughter takes over. which.... doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but sure. <br /><br />So Lady frankenstein decides the best way to kill the monster who's now rampaging....is to make ANOTHER monster! oh yes how i love her logic. so her new monster she gets the body by killing someone and putting the brain of the assistant in it...i know. just nod and go along with it. So the monsters meet and duke it out. I love how the assistant asks "why don't we just let the mobs kill it?" and she answers with "They wouldn't know how to kill it!" and in the end he kills it with an axe to the head. haha. oh yeah, nobody ELSE could have figured THAT one out. so in the end the brain switched new monster kills lady frankenstein. The End.<br /><br />This movie was just....weird. it was seriously like somebody wrote a self insert fanfic. There's no other way to describe this movie. there were some odd naked scenes too. like, this girl was having naked sex in the park with her boyfriend, the monster picks up the girl and the guy drives away. haha. nice guy. She then struggles a bit and dies from.....to be quite honest, i really don't know what she died from. But whatever. It's Lady Frankenstein. It doesn't have to make sense. <br /><br />This movie had a lot of those "Why?" moments to the point that i just gave up. Movies shouldn't do that, but for some reason i see that more than i probably should. <br /><br />So final word, it's not the worst movie i've seen on this pack, but it's a tad boring, and full of many many holes and random things. <br /><br />So Lady Frankenstein gets 3 Frankenstein porn scenes, out of 10 | 0 |
8,227 | [
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] | 495 | 644 | After their star cross-country runner dies after a race, the members of a track team are stalked and killed by a mysterious masked murderer seeking vengeance for the girl's death.<br /><br />From the beginning of this film, it was quite obvious it was not going to be very good (at least as far as true quality goes). The 'dramatic' track race at the end of the introduction scene was one of the least believable sporting events I've ever seen in a film. It would seem that the winner of the race had never actually run before in her entire life. Not just run track. . . but, run at all. Ever. From there, we get a horribly unrealistic female Navy member who was breaking numerous appearance rules with her jewelry and make-up, not to mention the fact that her hair was hanging loose onto her collar while in uniform. Ridiculously awkward camera angles, pathetically done gore effects, and acting that ranged from frighteningly over-the-top to boringly under done (all in one actor, mind you) all help to make this film one of the most unintentionally hilarious horror films ever made. On the other hand, the writing wasn't all that terrible and the story was actually okay. But, the direction was horrible, made worse by offensively bad cinematography. The acting ranged from acceptable to just plain abysmal. Regardless of all the embarrassingly bad elements, however, there's something here, whether it be cheese or something else that I can't figure out, that makes the film extremely enjoyable and very worthy of a watch. Maybe it was just Vanna White.<br /><br />Obligatory Slasher Elements:<br /><br />- Violence/Gore: Death scenes were fun enough, but the gore was just awful: blood squirts from impossible angles, no actual gashes or wounds from knives, etc. But, this film has the first 'death by football' scene I've ever seen.<br /><br />- Sex/Nudity: There was a bit of nudity (I mean, Linnea Quigley is in it, after all), and some overly horny high schoolers, but nothing to excess.<br /><br />- Cool Killer(s): If you think leather gloves, stop watches, track suits, and fencing masks are cool, this one is for you.<br /><br />- Scares/Suspense: Not really any at all. There is one moment that takes place in the girls' locker room that I was preparing myself to be scared at. . . but, it just led to some typical stupidity and was ruined for me.<br /><br />- Mystery: A little, but if you can't figure out the killer's identity about 20 minutes into the film, then I'm not too sure about your powers of deduction.<br /><br />- Awkward Dance Scene: There's a great impromptu jam session ("Graduation Day Blues") with a guitar & harmonica that leads to some awesome 80s bopping. This is followed shortly by some kind of weird blend of 70s disco and 80s break dancing that was probably the scariest part of the film.<br /><br />Final verdict: 4/10. Don't take it too seriously and you might enjoy it (just like most everything else Troma touches).<br /><br />-AP3- | 0 |
8,331 | [
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] | 523 | 638 | One of the greatest lessons I ever had in how to watch a movie happened this way: <br /><br />I was working in Roger Corman's offices, like so many other wanabees before and since, I was interning and trying to figure out how it all worked and how to make myself indispensable (hah!). One afternoon Julie Corman, Roger Corman's wife and a producer in her own right, asked me to load up a tape. I'm not sure why she wanted to watch it. I got the impression it was a student film or a show reel, something like that, some sort of calling card. Whatever the reasons she had to see it, the only free video machine in the offices at the time happened to be in the room I was working in, and I was the nearest person to the machine. I started the tape.<br /><br />Fade in: On screen a figure sat at a desk facing the camera. Behind him, screen left, was a door that opened into the room. Against the far wall was a coat rack. A second character entered through the door and started talking. The first character, the guy at the desk, turned round to reply, (this is all one take, static camera, there are no cuts pans or dolly shots. Just one locked off camera). The second character turned to hang his coat on the coat rack and delivered his next line. Julie Corman said "I've seen enough." and left the room.<br /><br />What she had seen in the ten seconds of footage she had watched was that the director was an idiot. Opening with two characters who immediately turned their backs to the camera delivering lines? Nope, sorry. Next! That's how long you've got. Ten seconds. Cock it up in the opening shot and you are dead.<br /><br />I was reminded of that moment while I watched the opening of this piece of crap. After an interminably long travelogue of jungle we see several monkeys apparently throwing themselves into cages. A man carrying a gun laughs. A jet liner lands and we see it taxi the whole way to the terminal. God this is boring! Cut to the interior of the Airport. Two men meet. Aha! Something is happening! They shake hands. Cut to a different angle of the two men -<br /><br />- and the director crosses the line.<br /><br />The first two shots of the movie that have any kind of spatial relationship with each other and the guy has cocked up. 'Not Crossing The line' is one of those basic rules of movie grammar that keeps the characters from jumping about from side to side on the screen and confusing the audience. Audiences don't like to be confused. Mystified? Baffled? Puzzled and intrigued? Yes. Audiences love all of those. Confused? No. You loose them. They walk out. 'Not Crossing The line' is one of those things they pound into you at film school, or should. It's basic stuff. It's not an inviolable rule (there are no inviolable rules) directors break it all the time - but not on the first real cut of the movie.<br /><br />I thought, "I've seen enough". And switched off. | 0 |
8,405 | [
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] | 518 | 612 | Congratulations to Christina Ricci for making this movie and putting her mojo behind this important subject and trying to make a great film. Ricci is my favorite actress: She is so gifted, so natural, her reactions are perfect and so is the energy she constantly radiates, which gives credence to the often misapplied term "star." <br /><br />The film misses its mark for lots of various reasons, but perhaps most notably for the story's seeming unadaptability to the screen in making it a compelling narrative...more on that later. The cast at first glance is excellent, but come to think of it, Jessica Lang as the Jewish mother is too Protestant and not exactly right, Ann Hetch doesn't come close to showing the compassion and dedication of the psychiatrist from the book, and when your making a movie, how can you justify saying no to Anne Heche and Jessica Lange? But the real problems are in the film's construction: first in the failure to elicit any kind of lasting sympathy for the Elizabeth Wurtzle character, and second to say anything meaningful regarding the all too common and horrible situation that this poor girl finds herself in. <br /><br />Unfortunately do to the flashback construction, Lizzy merely comes off as certainly more affected teenager than most, but not nearly as devastatingly ill as she comes off in the book. This is a major problem. This story had to be told from beginning to end and from the therapist's couch. She is only eight or nine when her depression starts due to devastating social factors, both society and the home, and this is a crucial point in not only eliciting the proper sympathy for her but also of the gravitas of her case. She is so talented, and such a vulnerable and disaffected spirit so early on, that one's heart can't help but reach out to her due to her victimization. This is missed on the film.<br /><br />Ultimately one has to come to terms with what the film is trying to say: it is a biopic of one severely affected girl, but also it is a film about a nation who can't get its act together; that is very clear in the book but interestingly not in the film where the chosen at Harvard are even more messed up than the average college enrollee. The film finally isn't able to get either of these messages across compellingly, and that's too bad. Is Prozac a good thing or is it a bad thing, or a mixed blessing or a seeming necessity in a country in which so many people can't function without a chemical crutch? These are tough and challenging concepts to work with and the writing does not really attempt to address any of them in a more or less engaging way. The Challenger disaster is an interesting image to symbolize a dysfunctional America, but that doesn't have the effect it's suppose to have due to the crosscutting and insufficient earlier development of controlling themes.<br /><br />Ricci's performance is tight and heartfelt, and one of the best of her acting career.<br /><br />Michele Williams is also superb in her role. | 0 |
8,417 | [
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] | 521 | 648 | Although this movie (and I use the term loosely) was made in 1997, we just watched it tonight for the first time. My husband commented that a Tommy Lee Jones movie that we'd never heard of made him a little apprehensive. I blithely watched anyway, certain that if Jones was in the movie, it must at least be worth two hours of my time. After all, he has been one of our go-to actors for years. Although Heche isn't one of my favorite actresses, I was additionally reassured by seeing another well-known face. The list of accomplished actors/actresses continued to grow, so I endured more and more of this film, certain that if I pushed through enough clichés and trite social statements, I would arrive victorious on the other side of the plot. Alas, there was no plot. It appeared to be burned by the ever-oozing lava of doom.<br /><br />The characters were paper-thin. The plot was so chock full of holes that it literally distracted me from most of the special effects and acting in the movie. Was the fee for a brief consultation with an elementary science teacher too much for this film's budget? No acid rain...no toxic gasses (like sulfur or hydrochloride)...no deadly ash...no skin-searing heat just a few feet from the lava. Wow...it's the world's friendliest lava ever! <br /><br />The events were no better than the characters. Each incident was so contrived and far-fetched...it's like the writers said "Okay, we need to get rid of the little girl NOW"...and poof, she's splashed by a lava bomb which burns her enough that she has to be carried to safety (not from the lava, but from her own helpless stupor)...but just moments later in the car she is in no apparent pain and soon after is running effortlessly through the (groan!) building that (oh no!) is about to be blown up. After enduring all of this, your reward is the line from the little boy at the end (about all the people looking the same)...which has got to be one of the worst movie lines I have ever heard. Even if it wasn't so painfully scripted, it was ridiculous timing for all the characters involved. Kid and cop aside, as if the mother would still be in the area and just needs to be pointed out because she just isn't speaking up...what...she's hoping to slink off into the shadows and get away from the little brat once and for all? I don't think so. Obviously the child's mother would be missing or dead - or yelling her head off to find her toddler.<br /><br />The token black gangsta tough hoodlum with a secret soft spot versus the chip on his shoulder narrow minded cracker cop with a secret soft spot scene made my eyes bleed. Even if such pat characters existed, they wouldn't behave as the movie portrays them given the circumstances. Something about imminent fiery death and massive destruction tends to catch people off-guard, ya know? <br /><br />There are too many canned movie moments like these to mention...really, it's just an embarrassing movie to watch. Those poor writers...where are they now? | 0 |
8,434 | [
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] | 552 | 664 | I went to see this because I'd never seen Tel-Aviv, where the story is set. I was disappointed, since it doesn't offer many views of Israel's largest metropolis. It's also pretentiousone of those movies that leaves you guessing at its meaning until you ultimately give up with a shrug of the shoulders.<br /><br />The main protagonist is Batya, a woman in her twenties' who works as a waitress at catered weddings. Her parents evidently don't care about her very much, and when a little girl walks out of the sea with an inflatable ring around her, Batya feels compelled to take care of her. The little girl doesn't speak, and Batya can't give her to social services because it's the weekend and the agency is closed. So she takes her back to her apartment with the leaky roof, and when it comes time to work in the evening, she has to take the little girl with her. The boss is very unhappy about this and other shortcomings in Batya's work performance.<br /><br />Another main character is Keren, who is getting married. At her wedding party (where Batya is of course working), she breaks her leg climbing out of a ladies' room cubicle whose door won't open, and so she and her new husband cannot take the Caribbean vacation they've planned. They end up in a dingy hotel on the seafront without a view. It smells bad, there is noise from the traffic, and Keren is complaining all the time. Her husband meets a strangely attractive older woman a writer who is also staying in the hotel, and Keren worries that he has slept with this stranger.<br /><br />The third main character is a Filipino woman named Joy who looks after old people. The old woman she is hired to care for is very crabby and speaks no English, only German and Hebrew. Joy speaks English but no Hebrew or German. Joy is mostly concerned with how her son is doing back in the Philippines, and wants to buy him a toy boat, as he has asked. She finds the perfect boat in a store and plans to buy it. The daughter of the old woman, who hired Joy, is an actress appearing in some sort of post-modern "physical theater" adaptation of Hamlet, and does not get along with her mother.<br /><br />The way in which these three storieswhich intersect momentarilyresolve themselves is presumably supposed to mean something profound. I didn't get it. There is a fantasy element to Batya's relationship with the little girl, and maybe Batya's non-existent relationship with her parents is somehow inverted in this relationship. When Joy sees the toy boat in the shop window, there is a strange effect used where the little sails billow as if blown by the wind, and they do this as if they are on the scale of a real-life ship. Keren draws the outline of a bottle around a ship that is on a brochure cover in the hotel room, and a narration of the strange woman's poetry mentions a ship in a bottle. But what does all this mean? I thought about it for a while and realized I wasn't going to lose any sleep in the process. If anyone out there has a clear idea of what it's all about, maybe they can fill me in. | 0 |
8,492 | [
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] | 531 | 654 | Well, at least we have to acknowledge the big Hollywood horror-producers are finally getting smarter and more perceptive. Instead of patiently waiting to buy the rights of Asian horror hits and subsequently remake them in America, they now discovered they could simply hire the Asian directors and assign them to make their brand new ghost story directly in the states. That's like killing two birds with one stone; way to go guys! "The Messengers" is pretty much identical to every other supernatural chiller that came out of the Oriental countries ever since "Ringu". Roughly translated, this means it's a boring, overlong and entirely gore-free film, but it does feature copious amounts of false scares and embarrassingly weak "did we scare you yet?" moments. The Pang Brothers (Danny & Oxide) previously made the extremely overrated "The Eye" and it sort of is a tradition for them to build up a story with clues and hints towards a point where it becomes nearly impossible to meet the expectations of their curious audiences, yet they don't seem eager to alter their formula any time soon. And they're also unscrupulous enough to recycle the same old & repetitive ghost topics over and over again. Restless spirits of the previous inhabitants trapped in the walls of a remote countryside farm? The protagonist family torn apart by unprocessed traumas from the past, so they first have to restore faith and trust in each other? Give me a break! Throw in a videotape and a seven-days-curse, why don't you? Even the attempts to make you jump in your seat are too déjà-vu and won't scare anyone over the age of 7. Slamming doors, filthy & gradually larger growing stains on the walls, ghostly appearances, noises coming from the cellar... The endless overuse of cheap tricks like this is almost becoming insulting to horror fans. "The Messengers" revolves on a family on their way to a new life in the country as the growers of sunflowers. The family situation is kind of dysfunctional since a personal tragedy (which doesn't get revealed until late in the film) caused their youngest son to stop talking and the parents to distrust their revolting teenage daughter. Soon after, the children experience strange presences in remote farmhouse, but they don't manage to convince their parents to leave. That's pretty much concludes the entire film. Little Ben sees things but he can't talk and Jessica repeatedly gets attacked by supernatural forces but nobody listens to her. The basic premise of "The Messagers" is very derivative of Stanley Kubrick's immortal classic "The Shining", only it lacks the constantly ominous atmosphere and disturbing tone. The script takes itself far too seriously even though it's fairly easy to predict the final denouement and the total absence of violence and bloodshed is unforgivable. At least "The Eye" delivered some genuine shocks in the end, whereas the happy happy joy joy ending of "The Messengers" is just pathetic. The only positive elements I can think of are the beautiful rural filming locations, the adequate editing job and the promising young acting talents (and beauty) Kristen Stewart. And there's an uncanny, but sadly underdeveloped supportive role for William B. Davis. | 0 |
8,549 | [
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] | 559 | 699 | The satirical movie website Dateline Hollywood joked that "Son of the Mask" was all a practical joke star Jamie Kennedy played on New Line Cinema for his show "The Jamie Kennedy Experiment." If only. And if only the movie had been half as funny as that satire piece.<br /><br />"The Mask" was the ideal vehicle for the face-pulling Jim Carrey that so many viewers dote on; it also delighted males over the age of 12 by introducing Cameron Diaz. So having a followup minus both of them was not a good idea, plus you'd have thought New Line would have learned their lesson after "Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd." But no... though to be fair, having an all new cast is in keeping with the original comic (in which the Mask went from owner to owner). As written by Lance Khazei and directed by Lawrence Guterman, however, there's nothing there in return, except a steady stream of admittedly decent FX by the usual squadron of houses (Industrial Light and Magic improving on the "Ally McBeal" dancing baby and their own "Baby's Day Out," with the Tippett Studio, Giant Killer Robots, Digital Dimension and so on in support) and an even greater pandering to cartoon fans by having our hero work at an animation company (responsible for such gems as "Siamese Popes"), naming his character after Tex Avery, and working in not just references to classic cartoons but actual clips.<br /><br />The trouble is that last approach doesn't really work, partly because most of the attempts to bring cartoon trappings to live action fall flat (especially the cars getting in the party mood) and mostly because the tributes to the Flintstones, Woody Woodpecker, "Duck Amuck" and especially "One Froggy Evening" show up how weak this movie is in comparison. Plus the movie fits in shambolic slapstick alongside strained sentiment (the underlying theme of the story is family; our hero isn't ready to have a son, and his nemesis - Alan Cumming as the Norse god Loki - is far from the apple of Odin's eye... and what Bob Hoskins is doing here as Odin, even after "Super Mario Bros.," is beyond me), and Kennedy just isn't in the same league as Carrey in the zany stakes - though it's not like he gets any help from the script. Also note that unlike Diaz, the very cute Traylor Howard (as the mother of the son of the Mask) doesn't get much to do; giving HER the Mask might have helped the movie.<br /><br />Further points are lost for throwing away Cumming, Hoskins, Steven Wright and Magda Szubanski; for a suspiciously abbreviated running time (which would account for some gaping plot holes and scenes that seem to be missing); and for an incredibly bad attempt at an inside joke when our hero fails to sell the concept of the "green guy" as an animated TV series - "The Mask" did become an animated TV series in real life, and was a far better follow up than this sequel. The fact that this actually opened in Britain before the US should tell you everything... what with this and "Blade: Trinity," New Line seems intent on cornering the market on dreadful sequels with cast members from "Two Guys And A Girl." What next, "The Butterfly Effect 2" with Nathan Fillion?<br /><br />Somebody stop this. | 0 |
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