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My nose is bent slightly out of shape as I write this. I had sent a previous comment on this film some weeks ago that has not yet appeared, so I assume it was rejected, even though it met all the usual guidelines.<br /><br />I found this film interesting for the first thirty minutes, particularly the performance of Jordi Mollà, a veteran actor who has appeared in such major productions as "Blow" and "The Alamo." Leonor Watling is also quite good. Unfortunately, everything sinks eventually under the weight of a truly awful, melodramatic script. There is also an abundance of gratuitous nudity that does nothing to advance the narrative or lend even an impressionistic nuance to what is otherwise a beautifully filmed piece of art.<br /><br />An actual day trip to the beach at Valencia would be much less arduous than having to encounter these fictional characters again anywhere, anytime. | 0 |
This Paramount version/ripoff of OKLAHOMA!/ANNIE GET YOUR GUN/CALAMITY JANE isn't all that unusual or innovative. The marketing and intro comments may be there to salvage what is really a pretty bad movie musical western shot on a soundstage and like a live TV show. I don't find the use of the background cyclorama, lit in various scenes with yellow, or pink, or red, or....all that innovative. As noted, it looks more to me like a movie that was produced on a TV budget: All soundstage, with minimal sets backed by the lighted cycs! (Compare to NEW FACES (OF 1952). The actors come off reasonably well, though. And this style was much better realized when Paramount shot LI'L ABNER in 1959. Of couorse, this movie suggests the often repeated question: "what were they thinking?" | 0 |
I will never forget the night I saw this movie. We were on a submarine on patrol in the North Atlantic and this was the scheduled movie of the evening. We ALL gave up after the second reel. They did not even try to show it at the mid-night showing. Opting for a rerun instead...... This is all I really have to say but they have this stupid rule that my comment must contain ten lines. I'm not supposed to pad the comment with random words so I will just continue to ramble until I get my ten lines of BS. I could not find George Goble listed in the credits but I remember him in the movie. The sining was terrible and the songs even worse. | 0 |
It was Jon Pertwee who said " It`s very difficult to be funny but very easy to be silly " . Well if that`s the case PASTY FACES is " Very easy " . David Baker ( As Director /Screenwriter ) and his cast seem to be under the impression that comedy involves stealing scenes and style from superior Britcoms like LOCK STOCK.. and TRAINSPOTTING , using a completely underdeveloped script and jumping up and down speaking in a very fast voice very loudly . Alan McCaffrey especially suffers from this type of OTT performance but not enough to ruin the film because there`s not enough of a film to ruin .<br /><br />PASTY FACES is terrible on all fronts especially scriptwise . I couldn`t understand why it ended the way it did , it just seemed to stop in a very abrupt and silly manner . Oh and other glaring errors are that you need a visa to visit the USA and a green card in order to work there - This film would have you believe you can get off a plane and start a new life in America without any authorisation - that you still get paid to donate blood in America - People who I know in America , and who donate blood tell me payment for donations stopped several years ago - and that you can buy any type of weapon from a gun shop . As far as I know gun laws in America differ from state to state but no gun shops sell anti tank guns over the counter . So we`ve got a very erroneous view of America from a very unreal and oh so unfunny film . Maybe this is revenge for BRAVEHEART a very Hollywood view of the Scots ? Perhaps , but this doesn`t stop PASTY FACES from being a crap comedy | 0 |
If John Waters had written and directed "House of 1000 Corpses" after being struck about the head repeatedly with a heavy object, the result would probably be something like "The Blood Shed." It's mildly entertaining for the first half hour, but then it slides into a sort of featureless glop of constant screaming and people doing things to each others genitalia with electric carving knives, cutlery and pliers. Susan Adriensen (Sno Cakes) is incredibly annoying and Terry West (Elvis Bullion) is almost as bad in whatever it is he's doing in front of the camera.<br /><br />Maybe the best thing about "The Blood Shed" is that it won't take most viewers very long to forget about it. | 0 |
A female country singer nicknamed "Big T"--seriously, that's what they call her--risks her budding musical career and her life by falling into the company of a sleazy drunkard (Busey) who wants to be her manager. His mother committed suicide, his father's an alcoholic as well, and he has a violent temper. You can imagine where that leads. In the meantime, there's music aplenty, as Parton, with her fluid vocal talents, belts out song after song (at least half a dozen of them about Texas). Steer clear of this mess and check her out in NINE TO FIVE or STEEL MAGNOLIAS instead. | 0 |
The first point that calls the attention in "For Ever Mozart" is the absence of a plot summary in IMDb. The explanation is simple since there is no story, screenplay, plot or whatever might recall the minimum structure of a movie. Jean-Luc Godard is one of the most overrated and pretentious directors of the cinema industry and this pointless crap is among his most hermetic films. I believe that neither himself has understood what is this story about; but there are intellectuals that elucubrate to justify or explain this messy movie, and it is funny to read their reviews. <br /><br />My vote is one.<br /><br />Title (Brazil): "Para Sempre Mozart" ("Forever Mozart") | 0 |
...said a couple exiting the movie theater just as I was entering to watch this. Hmm, not a good sign, but who knows? Different strokes for different folks, after all. Well, nope. They were being kind. Godard has released work that is passionate (Contempt), entertaining (Band of Outsiders), sometimes both (My Life to Live). This is just dull intellectualism, that grates on the nerves pretty quickly. During my showing, literally half of the audience had walked out by the end of the film. If only I had been so wise. | 0 |
this movie, i won't call it a "film," was basically about nothing and functioned mostly for the popular acts of the time. yeah the war was on full swing (pun intended), and this movie gave the troops and our audiences a treat.<br /><br />but let's have something with a bit more substance.<br /><br />loved seeing a young Buddy Rich on the drums. the music was good throughout.<br /><br />but one cameo after another gets old fast.<br /><br />i didn't even recognize Zero Mostel! so if you're one from the "greatest generation," as they say, you'll definitely enjoy this...<br /><br />movie. | 0 |
Really, it's nothing much. I only recommend watching it if; 1.) You're a big fan of any of the main stars. 2.) If you really want to check out the first time Lucille Ball was seen with red hair.<br /><br />4 out of 10 stars | 0 |
<br /><br />The main question I pose concerning this film is, how do you film a cole porter musical and only use 3 of his 15 songs! merman and lahr played the lead roles on broadway, here they are replaced by the weaker red skelton and lucille ball. plot changes abound and the fun is lost.<br /><br />SKIP IT. | 0 |
Following the release of Cube 2: Hypercube (2003), and playing off the alleged success of the original Cube (1998), Director Ernie Barbarash takes the liberty of bringing us the third installment in the trilogy, the prequel Cube Zero.<br /><br />Deep in the bowels of a giant and faceless institution, time and place unknown, two low-ranking operators, Wynn (Zachary Bennett) and Dodd (David Huband) sit and observe on monitors the behavior of people that have been placed in a giant network of cubic chambers, some of which are rigged with death traps. Told that the people they are observing are convicted felons who chose this horrific and deadly ordeal over a lethal injection, these observers have had no problem with their jobs until Wynn, a mathematical genius, discovers that one of the prisoners, a woman named Cassandra (Stephanie Moore) never agreed to be put inside the Cube. Suddenly it's realized that perhaps their "jobs" are not what they seem, and that they may be part of something deeply sick and twisted...<br /><br />For people that have seen and enjoyed the original Cube, this prequel will probably not be to your liking. It's not that the story does not have potential; it's simply that the first Cube film never needed to be expanded on. Standing alone, it is a neat little psychological thriller with very interesting concepts and a certainty about its own message. It was also nicely self-contained. The problem with Cube Zero is that it destroys some of the mystique of the original, attempting to answer questions with more questions but only really resulting in making a mess of what never needed fixing.<br /><br />What this new film has to offer, which is questions about the psychological nature of authoritarianism and the banality of evil, certainly are good questions to be raised, but probably should have been done so on their own merits, rather than as a continuation of a film that had no such aspirations.<br /><br />Having said this, the other traits of the film, such as acting and direction and writing, are not awful. There is a bleak, dark look to the film akin to such film noir as 'The Matrix' and 'Dark City', and they have certainly managed to recapture the claustrophobic feeling of the first Cube. Unfortunately for Barbarash, these are not enough positive qualities to save it. | 0 |
The first Cube movie was an art movie. It set up a world in which all the major archetypes of mankind were represented, and showed how they struggled to make sense of a hostile world that they couldn't understand. It was, on the non-literal level, a "man vs. cruel nature" plot, where the individual who represented innocence and goodness came through in the end, triumphing to face a new, indefinable world beyond man's petty squabbles; a world where there were no more struggle, but peace. I rated Cube a 10 out of 10, and it's a movie that was never meant to have any sequels.<br /><br />The second movie, Hypercube was a massive disappointment. Some of the ideas were kind of cool, but in the context of the original movie, both the story and the setting made no sense and had no meaning. Still, for being fairly entertaining, I rated it a 5 out of 10.<br /><br />The third movie, Cube Zero, while ignoring the second, plays like a vastly inferior commercial B-movie rehash of the first, sans the symbolism. There is no "homage" or "tribute" here; there is only ripping off. The same kind of plot, with some elements idiotically altered (like having letters instead of prime numbers between the cubes - an idea which shows more clearly than anything else that this is a rip-off with absolutely no originality and nothing to say).<br /><br />That we see something from "behind the scenes" means nothing, because the watchers are just part of the Big Bad Experiment, the architects of which we hear nothing of. And, in this movie, those who get through to the exit (like Kazan did at the end of the first movie) are just killed - where the *bleep* is the sense in that?! That's just flippin' stupid. I'm glad I didn't pay to see this.<br /><br />The production values and acting in Cube Zero are not too bad, but the story and the ideas are so utterly devoid of any inspiration that this movie can only get from me a rating of 3 out of 10. | 0 |
The plot doesn't offer any new excitements, it even starts the same as cube I. This time there are no other enhancements for the cube machinery, except for having an extra exit, which is not guarded, very ingenious. The characters are also not so well elaborated as in the first episode, they just became "flat" as in a soap opera. <br /><br />If somebody makes it to the normal exit, the person would be asked some questions, like "do you believe in god?", its not really creative or original and especially in my opinion it doesn't fit into the mystery of the cube with it traps. Really there is nothing much else to say about it. | 0 |
The screen writing is so dumb it pains me to have wasted 2 hours of my life I'll never get back (where have I heard this before). The acting is so-so. Things change often enough to keep you watching and waiting for something gruesome to happen. Nevertheless there isn't a single original thing in this movie. While the first Cube was a nerdy horror movie, which didn't make a whole lot of sense in the end, cube zero has picked up on that and tries to retell exactly the same story, except this time it makes an obnoxious point of trying to spoon-feed explanations for every detail that the first movie didn't answer. The comic thing is, the director recycles the exact scenes of the first movie that were somewhat weird, and tries to explain them. But the scenes are just copied over, there is no coherence whatsoever. This script is sooo pointless. I can imagine it being written by some half-wit 15 year old with a baseball cap and a pack of beer for a class project. The best part is in the end, they cripple the 'good' wunderkind guy, and he becomes the retarded fellow in the first movie, and you see him when they find him ('this room is green..') in Cube 1997. Goodie gooodie, clap clap, what a twist. First of all, what about if you haven't seen the first one, this doesn't make any sense you nitwit director. Oh, another great idea: instead of the numbers to identify x,y,z coordinates of the room (cube 1997), this time it is 3 letters, each one giving one of 26 possible coordinate values. Duh. Except now permutations don't make much sense anymore..so he lets the letters disappear before anybody can use them..I want my money back.<br /><br />I guess I had to write this down since there are just so many bad, inconsistent, or just stupid ideas in this movie. Directors/writers should be required to possess some talent. | 0 |
Follows the same path as most sequels. First one was great. Second was average and this one, full of bad acting and some stupid dialog and well as a lot of suspension of disbelief, this movie was weak.<br /><br />Too predictable and I just couldn't stand that Henry Wrinkler-like boss with that stupid eye, there was so much more they could have done with this. I liked the first one a lot. I wish they would have went more down those lines, rather than what they did here.<br /><br />There was too much unexplained that needed to be explained, what time period this was in and why why why is there an old fashioned phone in that room?<br /><br />I understand there is another one in the works. <br /><br />Blah! | 0 |
The original "Cube" is a fantastic B-movie rich with paranoia, meaty characterization, and fine over-the-top performances. It's creepy, cryptic, and cool. And it stands perfectly well, on its own, without a stupid sequel like "Cube Zero." <br /><br />This third (!) film in the Cube series is part retread (most of the booby traps are sadly recycled), part aberration. It takes the bold step of explaining what the cube is - something that was never revealed in the first movie - but, since said explanation is bland, I'd rather it was kept a secret. There are some potentially interesting references to the society that exists outside of the cube, but they never develop beyond hints about some kind of political-religious totalitarian state. So, what little social commentary there is feels flat and unfocused.<br /><br />What works? Basically nothing. The acting is purely amateur hour, the pacing is slow (how much of this movie consists of two nerds watching a screen?), and the gore effects, while revolting, fail to convince. In short, "Cube Zero" reminded me of a "Cube" fan-fic, a sloppy and sophomoric clone of a good movie that definitely did not need a sequel. | 0 |
This is pretty much a low-budget, made for TV, type of movie intended to capitalize off of the success of the original. I'm a fan of b-movies, and this one might have been good had they not attached the name "Cube" to it, because as is, the director and plot of the original were better, and this movie just about ruined my taste for the entire series. The characters are annoying and clichéd, there are problems with continuity, and several outright production screw-ups. The story hardly gets a chance to develop because of superfluous dialogue and suffers from that. They more or less use the same horror gimmicks over and OVER throughout the movie, and because the first one was so good, this simply turns out as a disappointment.<br /><br />If this was a stand-alone b-movie, I'd probably give it about a four. The "1" rating I give it was pretty much a statement about how it utterly paled in effects and intelligence as compared to the first. | 0 |
Those familiar with the two previous Cube films pretty much know what they can expect: a small group of people trapped inside a bunch of booby trapped rooms, paranoia, bad acting... This one is a bit different though. Roughly half of the film takes place outside the cube, where we get to watch the people watching the people inside the cube (or at least five of them).<br /><br />I guess Cube Zero aspires to explain what the deal with the cube is, but you really don't get to know much more than what was covered in the two first films. Sure, there's sort of an explanation in there, but it feels pretty lame compared to what was suggested in the first film.<br /><br />Cube Zero looks rather cheap (as did its predecessors), and the fact that it shows more than just a couple of empty rooms only emphasizes this feeling. I also fell pretty confident in saying that there's no risk that any of the actors will win any awards in the foreseeable future. They have brought back the traps from Cube 1, though, (by that I mean that they're almost the same ones, which is a bit of a shame).<br /><br />I know that many people kind of appreciate this film and its ties with the first one, but I just feel that it's a completely unnecessary contribution to a franchise that wasn't that great to begin with. [1/10] | 0 |
The killings in this movie isn't that bad, but for sure the movie is. It's even worse than that. It's not even worth the wear it might cause when you slide it into your DVD-player.<br /><br />Not even the wear it causes on your shoulders carrying it from the DVD-store, not to speak of the money and time you spend renting and watching it. Horrible.<br /><br />It's beyond understanding how anyone could say anything positive about this movie. It was just a bare masochistic tendency of mine that caused me not to stop watching, add to that the group pressure from my co-watchers.<br /><br />The manuscript is awful, the directing even worse and the acting is plain despicable.<br /><br />I hope you don't see this as a spoiling your fun, i'd rather see it as a fair warning: Do not waste your time watching this garbage! | 0 |
i think this one sucked on ice, because it left the cube, and gave us to much information as to the who's and why's. The original CUBE never left the cube, and it left everything to your imagination. This crap fest however, gives you it all. and i didn't like it...Though the acting is solid, I think the reason this one was a downer was because it was done by people other than the ORIGINAL filmmakers, if they had Vincenzo Natali do this prequel, or even the sequel i think it would have done better and would have been more true to the source. so i recommend you stay far, far away from this one, and HYPERCUBE, another movie i don't even want to discuss...(i gave it a 2 for the acting only) | 0 |
This movie was yet another waste of time... Why oh why do I keep renting crap like this?... someone please tell me... *sigh* Oh well. back to the movie at hand: Cube Zero is probably worth it if you REALLY REALLY enjoyed the first movie, (like I did), and just want to check out what's up in the last (hopefully) movie scraped together just to keep some poor actors and screenwriters employed, then of course this is the movie for you. But if you are looking for a good movie with good acting and a fantastic plot... *evil grin* then this movie is definitely for you :-D.... OK I'm lying... At best this movie sucks. OK, I have to admit that certain elements to it was cool.. well.. coolish... and I laughed quite a few times, prolly at the wrong things, but nevertheless I was amused. :-) But all in all the few things that barely makes the "ok" category isn't enough to make this movie worth it at all.. Unless you count "Manos - Hand of Fate" one of the top ten movies EVER! | 0 |
the only thing that frequently pops into my head while i'm writing this review is,i'll never get that hour and a half back!!! to indicate that i'm not just blowing air, i'll compare the movie to the other movies of the cube trilogy(cube and hypercube)!cube wasn't great but it was original and that made up for some technical flaws!hypercube as a sequel lost the advantage of originality but it came out looking pretty sharp and i even liked it beter than cube(the story was better)! but cube zero in comparison to it's predecessors really isn't worth sh*t!a complete lack of good fx, a very f*ck*d up script and just plain old bad acting don't combine well! example:all of the time during the movie i was thinking it would be incredibly stupid if ... should happen and then it would happen, so it's not very original neither! my advice: don't lose that hour and a half i lost!!!!!!!! oh and i hope this movie crashes and burns!!!!!!! | 0 |
Checking the spoiler alert just in case.<br /><br />Perhaps one of the most horrendous movies I have ever seen, Mazes and Monsters felt like I wasted 101 minutes of my life. The only redeeming quality of the movie were scenes that tried to be serious, but just ended up being funny since they were so bad. Evil Dead anyone? Unfortunately for M&M (fortunately for us) it did not develop a cult following and result in a trilogy. This movie tried to address a series of problems that the main character, Robbie (played by Hanks) encountered throughout the film. It ended up being a fear mongering video about stereotypes that helped fuel the D&D is the Devil movement in the 80s.<br /><br />If you want to avoid wasting your time and money, steer clear of this junk.<br /><br />P.S. - Even though the cover looks kinda interesting, which is why I guess my brother bought it, it in no way takes place in a fantasy realm, unless you consider New England or New York City to be such a place. | 0 |
Many things become clear when watching this film: 1) the acting is terrible. Tom Hanks and Wendy Crewson are so-so, but the parent-child conflict borders soap opera-ish. The other two boys: an overly pouty child prodigy and your stereotypical I'm-a-babe-but-I'm-really-sensitive-inside blonde dreamboat; 2) the film as a whole is depressing and disappointing; 3) Robbie's dreams and episodes are disturbing (acted by Tom Hanks); 4) the inclusion of the beginning love ballads is an odd choice ("we are all special friends"); 5) the weird lines and side plots are not made any better by the terrible acting; and 5) this is a really bad movie. Expect to be disappointed--and probably disturbed. | 0 |
I caught this movie at a small screening held by members of my college's gaming club. We were forewarned that this would be the "reefer madness" of gaming, and this movie more than delivered.<br /><br />Tom Hanks plays Robbie, a young man re-starting his college career after "resting" for a semester. What we, the viewer, find out as the movie progresses, is that Robbie was hopelessly addicted to a role-playing game called "Mazes and Monsters," a game that he gets re-acquainted with after a gaming group recruit him for a campaign.<br /><br />This movie is laughable on many, many levels. One scene features the group "gaming by candlelight," which is probably the best way I can describe it. While I'm sure that this was meant to be "cultish" in some way, as most gamers know, it's horribly inaccurate. Most role-play sessions are done in well-lit rooms, usually over some chee-tohs and a can of soda.<br /><br />The acting, while not Oscar-caliber, isn't gut-wrenchingly awful either. This is one of Tom Hanks's first roles, and Bosom Buddies and Bachelor Party were still a year or two over the horizon. The supporting cast, while not very memorable, still hand forth decent performances.<br /><br />Mainly the badness lies in the fact that it was a made-for-TV movie that shows the "dangers of gaming" Worth a view if you and your friends are planning a bad movie night. | 0 |
the only value in this movie is basically to laugh at how bad it really is. with a plot that makes your average middle-school writer look good, and acting which is almost as good, it gets my bottom score. one of tom hanks very early films where he obviously didn't have the pleasure to be real picky. the best special effect of the movie consists of a guy dressed up in an incredibly fake rubber monster consume. | 0 |
This film reminds me a lot of the anti-drug films of the 50's and 60's due to the fact that it was made by people that have obviously never experienced the social evil that they are warning us about. Tom Hanks and his buddies are "role playing", but there are no dice, lots of candles, and then you are just swept away in a bad montage showing Hanks falling for the lady in the group. quite funny but misguided. I wonder how many poor kids had their D&D stuff destroyed, and were told that the use of their imagination was the road to destruction. As a film it's basically an after school special, bad acting (although Hanks does show some of his talent) and relationship talks, and no one seems to be having any fun. It seems these films have a psychological focus on adolescents starting on the road to adultism, which is more serious, apparently, and requires you to buckle down and do the things everyone else does. Despite my vote of 2, this is worth watching due to its unique genre, scare films, which I personally find quite funny. | 0 |
I'd completely forgotten about this film until now. This was the most blatant and worst attempt to demonise a hobby that I have ever seen. It's message seemed to be : "Don't teenagers use their imagination; they might take games seriously, go mad and hurt people." I can only guess that the unimaginative writers of this piece thought that D&D style games are form of evil ritual or arcane worship. | 0 |
First off, I knew nothing about 'Mazes and Monster' before I watched it. I had no knowledge of the Role-playing controversy behind it or the fact that it was a Made-For-TV movie. When I looked at the cover (the updated DVD one) I seriously thought it would be another Fantasy adventure like 'Legend', with Tom Hank as the nerdy hero from 1980s earth entering a mythical world to save a princess from an evil maze filled with monsters. Sounds exciting, right? That is what the cover suggests to you at first glance. I was given this movie as a gift, obviously under the same premise because my aunt knows I'm into action movies with a medieval myth theme. And it has Tom Hanks, one of my favorite actors. So I popped this movie in, expecting a feel good movie with Tom Hanks in a 80s special effects world that would be good for a laugh.<br /><br />No! None of this happens. Now before I continue I will confess, I am a nerd but I have no interest in Role-playing games. That is all this movie is about so my interest in the content is lukewarm at best. And M&M (copyright infringement?) is not even a feel good role-playing based movie with lovable geeks that uses their imagination to enter a world of awesomeness. No! This is an Anti-Role-playing movie that must have been made by some Religious folk (the same people who also think Barney is the work of Satan.) I understand, Satan is a crafty fellow but I don't think he is desperate enough for soul to lull RPG lovers into worship him. This movie is THEE anti-gamer movie. This is what I get from this movie: it hates RPGs and not only does it make fun of the people engaging in Role-playing but it makes poor Tom Hanks a mental patient.<br /><br />Tom had an excuse to talk to a volleyball in 'Castaway', poor guy was alone but Tom somehow made his insanity fun and you literally saw the Volleyball as a lovable character through Tom's good acting. I wish I watched that movie instead of this. In this movie, Tom is attacked by a make believe dragon creature (it looks like a poorly made mascot for a RPG team) and has a split personality that is creepy at best. Tom's acting only exceeds to make you feel bad for his character and nothing else. I get that the poor guy lost his brother and is not right in the head because of it so the movie does win points for being intentionally tragic. I am not one for films that exploit mental illness and the ending to 'M&M' made me feel like cr*p. Luckily I watched 'Hudson Hawk' afterwards and got a good laugh before my soul was crushed any further. Yah, 'HH' surpasses 'M&M' by . . . a LOT! This is not one of Tom's better films. In fact it is thee most depressing movie I've ever seen him in (Even 'Saving Private Ryan' is not this depressing). I walked in hoping to watch a feel good movie and I ended up feeling the exact opposite. If you want to watch a sad (both emotionally and visually) movie then by all means watch this. If this movie is to convey a message, it is this: "Don't play RPGs if you are Cuckoo for Coco-Puffs." | 0 |
If you didn't know better, you would believe the Christian moral majority in their preachy testimonial of the sins of the young, their questing for Satan, and that Hell was just brimming with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons fans.<br /><br />None of these items bears one grain of truth, folks. This work does nothing but give the Southern Baptists a chance to take a breath, while the movie continues to spout their erroneous and alarmist views concerning a creative and original gaming system.<br /><br />Tom Hanks contributes a stellar performance for this work, but even that wasn't enough to save it. It's crap. It's beneath crap. It is ignorance breeding ignorance and as such, it rates NOTHING from...<br /><br />the Fiend :. | 0 |
This film sold for one-dollar at Wal-Mart on a DVD and so I do not feel like I lost anything for watching this film, except my TIME. Enjoyed the acting of Tom Hanks, (Robbie Wheeling), who was very young looking and gave an outstanding performance considering it was a horrible script. The story is about college students who decided to play the game Mazes & Monsters, only in a very realistic setting. Robbie Wheeling has had problems in the past playing this game at other colleges and is advised by his parents to leave the game alone and get good grades. Robbie meets a very nice gal and has a romantic fling with her and once he starts playing the game, he stops making love to her and acts like a Monk. There are some scenes in the film which are taken running around the former World Trade Center and also in the Observation floor and Roof area. It is rather sad viewing this part of the film where so many human beings died because of evil in the world. This is not a very good film, except for Tom Hanks trying to keep the film above the sinking level of entertainment. | 0 |
The subject matter seems pretty dated today. Adapted for TV from Rona Jaffe's book; we trip and stumble through a fantasy existence. Four college students get deeply involved playing a live version of the board game Mazes and Dragons (based on Dungeons and Dragons). One player, a young Tom Hanks, enters the fantasy world too deep. His co-players must come to his rescue and save him from self inflicted harm.<br /><br />David Wallace, Wendy Crewson and Chris Makepeace round out the game's foursome. Support cast is made up of veteran actors like Murray Hamilton, Vera Miles, Anne Francis and Susan Strasberg.<br /><br />At this date, it seems lumbering and tame. But the highlight of watching is seeing Tom Hanks between his "Bosom Buddies" salad days and his big splash in SPLASH on the silver screen. The youngest of viewer will get most enjoyment. | 0 |
This film is horrible. Bad acting, bad writing, bad music. It's just horrible. Not only is it incredibly misrepresentative of role-playing games, but the key elements of the film are poorly executed. May the God I don't believe in have mercy on the souls of the miserable wretches who conceived and gave birth to this abomination. | 0 |
I have seen this movie many times, (and recently read the book the movie is based on) and every time I see it, I just want to slap all four of them. The fact that they don't clue in to the fact that Tom Hank's character is flipping into his D&D(oops M&M) :) persona ("Oh, he's just acting in character.") outside of the gaming session. That and the fact that after three months of therapy, let's just destroy all that and feed his delusions! These kind of people are what give RPGs a bad name.<br /><br />Also the corny 'love ballad', and the music done by 'cat on a piano' and 'stop us if we get too annoying' are almost enough to set your teeth on edge! | 0 |
Many people like to point to this TV movie when arguing with the vast legions of Hanks-philes out there that Tom did in fact make crappy films (I think "Bachelor Party" was great, but that's another story). The movie focuses on a "Dungeons and Dragons-style game" that eventually drives our young Gump to hallucinatory madness. The story is charmingly early 1980s, focusing as it does on the imminent threat to our youth posed by those evil role-playing games.<br /><br />I, however, prefer to view "Mazes and Monsters" as the turning point in the "Whatever Happened to Chris Makepeace?" story. we all remember him as 'Rudy the Rabbit' in "Meatballs" and as the hapless Clifford in "My Bodyguard", where he gave us all a vicarious thrill by beating the crap out of Matt Dillon. Few could argue (especially those of us who read "Dynamite!" on a regular basis) that great things were in store for him.<br /><br />And then came Rona Jaffe. The line between bad acting and bad writing is razor thin, so I leave it to you to decide whose fault Makepeace's performance in this is. All I know is that the last major release I saw him in was "Vamp", and that was 1986. He had a small role as Sean Penn's brother in "Falcon and the Snowman", but by that time the Brat Pack torch had been passed to others with straighter hair and flashier resumes.<br /><br />I can't in good conscience recommend this movie. Watch it if only to see a younger, more idealistic Chris Makepeace, before Rona Jaffe feasted on his soul. | 0 |
I own this movie. Not by choice, I do. I was really bored the other day and the box intrigued me. So i popped it in the old VCR and spent the next hour and a half of my life crying "why God why?". The story-line was not that bad, as an gamer I could appreciate bits of it. I think that maybe if you're into super geeky-cheese romantic scenes you'll enjoy this film. "I always thought of myself as a Vulcan you know like Dr.Spock...unable to love" There is very few good things to say about this film, truly it is awful. But if you're up to really badly made film this is the one for you!!! The real story's much more interesting though ;)<br /><br />If I had to sum up this film in one word it would be:<br /><br />LAME | 0 |
This is the movie that epitomizes the D&D fear of the 80s (and even today). The fear being that people who play D&D (or any other role-playing game for that matter) will be "sucked in" and lose their ability to distinguish reality from fantasy (and go on killing sprees, child sacrifices, suicide, etc). Great movie for anyone who likes to blame the problems of society on inanimate objects, but anyone who has played a role-playing game, a video game, or even acted in a play will see this as an insult to their intelligence. It is to D&D what Wargames was to computers. Plus as a movie, it just kinda sucks. | 0 |
One wonders how the script came to be written.<br /><br />Wayne and the other performers do an OK job but as it is neither comedy, romantic thriller or anything else it is all rather disappointing.<br /><br />One feels as if one of the threads had been pursued it could have been something worthwhile. It is nonetheless interesting to see a real turkey of a story made just before the USA became directly involved with the war. I wonder if the surrounding politics had something to do with trying to make a movie for all tastes but ending up with something that pleases no one.<br /><br />Nonetheless it has historical value. | 0 |
Lynn Hollister, a small-town lawyer, travels to the nearby big city on business connected with the death of his friend Johnny. (Yes, Lynn is a man despite the feminine-sounding Christian name. Were the scriptwriters trying to make a snide reference to the fact that John Wayne's birth name was "Marion"?) Hollister at first believes Johnny's death to have been an accident, but soon realises that Johnny was murdered. Further investigations reveal a web of corruption, criminality and election rigging connected to Boss Cameron, the leading light in city 's political machine.<br /><br />That sounds like the plot of a gritty crime thriller, possibly made in the film noir style which was starting to become popular in 1941. It isn't. "A Man Betrayed", despite its theme, is more like a light romantic comedy than a crime drama. Hollister falls in love with Cameron's attractive daughter Sabra, and the film then concentrates as much on their resulting romance as on the suspense elements.<br /><br />This film might just have worked if it had been made as a straightforward serious drama. One reviewer states that John Wayne is not at all believable as a lawyer, but he couldn't play a cowboy in every movie, and a tough crusading lawyer taking on the forces of organised crime would probably have been well within his compass. Where I do agree with that reviewer is when he says that Wayne was no Cary Grant impersonator. Romantic comedy just wasn't up his street. One of the weaknesses of the studio system is that actors could be required to play any part their bosses demanded of them, regardless of whether it was up their street or not, and as Wayne was one of the few major stars working for Republic Pictures they doubtless wanted to get as much mileage out of him as they could.<br /><br />That said, not even Cary Grant himself could have made "A Man Betrayed" work as a comedy. That's not a reflection on his comic talents; it's a reflection on the total lack of amusing material in this film. I doubt if anyone, no matter how well developed their sense of humour might be, could find anything to laugh at in it. The film's light-hearted tone doesn't make it a successful comedy; it just prevents it from being taken seriously as anything else. This is one of those films that are neither fish nor flesh nor fowl nor good red herring. 3/10 | 0 |
There are people out there who will greenlight anything! That is the only explanation I can offer as to why the House of the Dead movie exists. And that's only scary part to the whole movie. It's so bad you'll go off movies forever. I seriously wanted to switch this off and turn the TV over to the Paint Drying channel but I was bound by my word to suffer the whole thing. I don't know why I do these bad things to myself.<br /><br />As if it matters, here's the basic jist of the 'story'. A group of twenty-somethings are so desperate to go out to some island in the Pacific Northwest (Canada actually, because it's cheap) for the 'Rave of the Century' (which consists of about 8 people and un-raving music) that they pay some craggy old fisherman $1000 to take them there after they miss the main ferry. That's gotta be some rave to be worth all that dough! The fisherman warns them that the island is also known as the Island of the Dead (hang on-I thought this was HOUSE of the Dead?) and that they are all doomed yadda yadda yadda.<br /><br />First faults here. Why would a tiny little rave (of the Century my foot!) be held on some remote island? Why would anyone willingly pay loads of money to get it? Why pay even more to the craggy old fisherman to take them back when they could just come back with the others?<br /><br />Once they arrive they discover that the rave (which consists of about 2 tents, a small stage and a port-a-john) has been smashed, there's blood everywhere and no one is around. What would any rationally thinking person do? Run for their lives of course. But no, these clueless, obviously blind people decide to go look for them. Soon enough they discover an old ramshackle house that's 50 times as big on the inside as it is on the outside. Another half hour of stumbling around in the forest follows, as an excuse to kill of some of the lesser characters, and after much tedium they arrive back at the house again. The characters, like the movie, go nowhere.<br /><br />Jammed into this ghastly disaster is a superabundance of gibberish dialogue, heinous acting, mumbo-jumbo exposition and zillions of clips from the once-popular arcade game of the same name. Why this was universally accepted as a good idea with the filmmakers I'll never know. The clips have no reference to any of the scenes and only degrade this trash even further, if that is at all possible.<br /><br />It has nothing to do with the game save for some cheap, throwaway line at the end. It makes Resident Evil look like cinematic glory. Hell, even the Double Dragon movie seems multi-Oscar worthy in comparison to this junk. The only one who comes out of this with his dignity still intact is Jurgen Prochnow. He could have just taken his money and ran but he tries his best with the awful script and brings a tiny bit of pathos to his character. The rest of the cast suck I'm afraid. The characters are idiots and deserve to die.<br /><br />Plus, if you cut out the swearing and pointless nudity, I see no reason why this film cannot be shown on Saturday morning TV. It's not frightening in the slightest. Pirates of the Caribbean is more scary than the skeletal bad guys in this film. And where did all those bad guys come from anyway? There were only a few people on the island to begin with. I guess this justifies the reason they chose to reuse footage over and over. I kid you not, you'll see the same zombie die a dozen times.<br /><br />Who's ultimately to blame for that scandalous waste of celluloid? None other than director Uwe Boll. His control over the movie is non-existent. You can clearly the see actors have no idea what they should be doing and that the zombies aren't really taking it all seriously. The actors seem like they're reading off cue cards as they constantly pause in the middle of long sentences and carry on talking as soon as they see the next card. It all feels very unnatural.<br /><br />Plus the film is shot like a two-part mini-series. I have indeed seen better TV productions. And don't get me started on the editing. The film is an incoherent babble with thousands upon thousands of pointless shots and dozens of meaningless camera pans. No real skill or talent was put into making this at all. It truly baffles and boggles the mind how movies this unfathomably bad can get made and George A. Romero can't even get anyone to take his calls. House of the Dead makes some idiotic reference to Romero in a lazy attempt to be 'post-modern' but it only irritates that they think THIS is in the same league as a REAL zombie movie.<br /><br />For what it's worth, the 1.85:1 anamorphic picture looks great and the Dolby 5.1 soundtrack is clean but very unimpressive and only serves to pronounce the heavily over-used ADR even more. The DVD comes with extras but why torture yourself. Isn't this review warning enough? Stay away! You are all doomed I tell you! Doomed! Doomed!!! | 0 |
There are some movies you just know they are going to be bad from frame one. Even if you were totally oblivious of Ed Wood's work, one look at that commentator from "Plan 9 from outer space" and you just KNOW you are not gonna see the next cinematic masterpiece. Just like that, when I saw the first shot of Uwe Bolls masterpiece "House of Dead", with that guy sitting at the front of the house starting his introduction while trying desperately to sound like he just arrived from Sin City, I knew I'm in for a helluva ride.<br /><br />So, the movie starts like this - first the lead character says that everybody else is going to die. You know, to keep you wandering. Then he starts introducing the rest of the characters with lines like "Karma..thinks she's Foxy Brown" or "Alicia..my ex.. we broke up recently.. I had to study and she had to fence". No, I'm not kidding.<br /><br />Anyway, this bunch of 20-somethings who couldn't act their way out of a wet paper-bag are going to the "Rave of the century", rave in question being a few tents, a port-a-potty and a shoddy stage located on small island in the middle of the Pacific. Our gang missed the ferry, but thankfully will find a way to get there, the way being a fisher-boat ran by Kirk (Cpt Kirk? Get it? Man, whoever wrote this script is a genius) and his sidekick who is a bastard child of Simpsons' Cpt McAllister and that hook killer who knows what you did last summer.<br /><br />To make the long story short, the gang gets to the island, finds nobody there except some bloody T-shirts and then decide to run the hell away from there. No wait, they do not, they actually get all happy and like cos there's free booze.<br /><br />With that scene the movie hits rock bottom and then against all odds proceeds to go further downhill. Some guys in rubber suits start running around, there is some screaming and shooting, our gang goes to some house to meet some other gang, they go out of the house, meet Cpt Kirk and some police woman (who between them have about 500 pounds of weapons) and then decide to go back to the house. Somewhere along the line they transform into a S.W.A.T. team, enter the Matrix, the rubber-suit guys start multiplying like bacteria and I start to cry because I actually paid to see this. To add insult to the injury, every few minutes there are shots from the video game this crap is based on and there is a cute game-over cut-scene for a few characters when they die.<br /><br />I seriously hate this movie. It doesn't even fit in that famed "So bad it's good" category. It's just plain bad. The script is bad, the zombies are awful, there is no tension, lines are bad, actors are bad.. the list just goes on.<br /><br />You will probably want to see this movie just because of its reputation of being awful. Don't. There are bad movies that deserve to be watched. This is not one of them. | 0 |
This is one of the worst films I've seen. The only positive thing I can say is it was so bad that is seemed comical. First off, there's no plot. The actors appear to be reading off cue cards and do the dumbest things. Such as being chased by dead people but yet wanting to go out and look for their friends. Also the zombies were terrible, no where near as fun as any of Romero's work, who gets s plug in the movie. And the dumbest part of all was they kept showing flashes of the video game in the action sequences. Like we don't get the video game is about shooting zombies. Also, all the 20 somethings some how know how to use automatic weapons and hit a target without even aiming the gun. And the way the people die is so stupid. It's like they run out of ammo so stand around waiting to be jumped on. And when cornered in front of the house they run out of ammo instead of shooting the door open, So dumb.<br /><br />FINAL VERDICT: If any of these actors appear in another film, then they've been blessed with a second chance. Definitely the worst film I've seen in years. A B-movie on cinemax is better. | 0 |
Laid up and drugged out, as a kidney stone wended its merry way through my scarred urinary tract, with absolutely nothing better to do than let the painkillers swoon me into semi-oblivion, I happened to catch this movie on cable. I wouldn't want anyone to think that I paid to view it in a cinema, or rented it, or heaven forfend! that I watched it STRAIGHT.<br /><br />Having played this sensationally gruesome video game and avidly trod the doomed rooms and dread passageways of The House, battling Chariot (Type 27), The Hanged Man (Type 041), and other impossible sentinels, my curiosity was piqued as to how the game would transfer to the movie screen.<br /><br />It doesn't.<br /><br />The banal plot revolves around a group of "crazy kids" a la Scooby Doo attending a remote island for a world-shaking "rave" whatever that is. (You kids today with your hula-hoops and your mini-skirts and your Pat Boone
) After bribing a boat captain thousands in cash to ferry them there (a stupidity which begs its own network of rhetoric), they find the "rave" deserted.<br /><br />Passing mention is made of a "house" presumably the titular House Of The Dead but most of the action takes place on fake outdoor sets and other locales divorced from any semblance of haunted residence.<br /><br />A fallen video camera acts as flashback filler, showing the island in the throes of a party?! Is that it? Oh, so this "rave" thingy is just a "party"? In the grand tradition of re-euphemizing "used cars" as "pre-owned", or "shell shock" as "post-traumatic stress disorder", the word "party" is now too square for you drug-addled, silicone-implanted, metrosexual jagoffs? <br /><br />It is learned that the party was broken up by rampaging zombies. Intelligent thought stops here
<br /><br />I don't think the pinheads who call themselves screenwriters and directors understand the mythos behind zombie re-animation. Zombies can't die they're already UN-DEAD. They do not bleed, they know no pain. Unless their bodies are completely annihilated, they will continue being animated. At least, that's what my Jamaican witch priestess tells me.<br /><br />Which means that a .45 shot into their "hearts" is not going to stop them, nor will a machete to the torso. And a shotgun blast to the chest will certainly NOT bring forth gouts of blood. At least in the video game's logic, the shooter pumps so many rounds into each monster that it is completely decimated, leaving a fetid mush that cannot re-animate itself.<br /><br />Yet each actor-slash-model gets their Matrix-circular-camera moment, slaying zombies on all fronts with single bullets and karate chops to the sternum. Seriously, these zombies are more ineffective than the Stormtroopers from "Return Of The Jedi", who get knocked out when Ewoks trip them.<br /><br />I suppose the film's writer, Mark Altman, having penned the not-too-shabby "Free Enterprise", felt compelled to insert a Captain Kirk reference, in the character of Jurgen Prochnow, who must have needed milk money desperately to have succumbed to appearing in this aromatic dung-swill. There is also a reference to Prochnow's primo role in the magnificent "Das Boot", when one of the untrained B-actors mentions that he "looks like a U-Boat Captain". ". I wonder how many of this movie's target audience of square-eyed swine picked up on ANY of the snide references to other films, as when Prochnow declares, "Say hello to my little friend", presaging his machine gun moment. <br /><br />Aimed at a demographic who have not the wherewithal to comprehend the Sisyphean futility of the video-game concept (i.e. the game ends when you die you cannot win), this is merely a slasher film for the mindless and mindless at heart. Accordingly, everyone dies in due course, except for a heterosexual pair of Attractive White People.<br /><br />A better use for this film's scant yet misused budget might have been to send the cast through Acting School, although Ona Grauer's left breast did a good job, as did her right breast and those slomo running scenes: priceless! I especially liked the final scene with Ona trying to act like she's been stabbed, but looking like she's just eaten ice cream too fast.<br /><br />Attempting to do something more constructive with my time, I pulled out my Digitally-Restored, 35th Anniversary, Special Edition, Widescreen Anamorphic DVD of "Manos: The Hands Of Fate." Ah, yes! the drugs were suitably brain-numbing - now HERE was some quality film-making
<br /><br />(Movie Maniacs, visit: www.poffysmoviemania.com) | 0 |
Ok, first of all, I am a huge zombie movie fan. I loved all of Romero's flicks and thoroughly enjoyed the re-make of Dawn of the Dead. So when I had heard every single critic railing this movie I was still optimistic. I mean, critics hated Resident Evil, and while it may not be a particularly great film, I enjoyed it if not for the fact that it was just a fun zombie shoot-em up with a half decent plot. This however, is pure crap. Terrible dialogue, half-assed plot, and video game scenes inserted into the film. Who in their right mind thought that was a good idea. The only thing about this movie (I use the term loosely) that I enjoyed was Jurgen Prochnow as Captain Kirk (Ugh). While his name throws originality out the window, you can see in his performance that he knows he's in a god awful film and he might as well make the best of it. Everyone else acts as if they're doing Shakespeare. And very badly I might add. Basically the only reason anyone should see this monstrosity is if you a.) Are a huge zombie buff and must see every zombie flick made or b.) Like to play MST3K, the home game. See it with friends and be prepared for tons of unintentional laughs.<br /><br /> | 0 |
Okay, so I'm not a big video game buff, but was the game House of the Dead really famous enough to make a movie from? Sure, they went as far as to actually put in quick video game clips throughout the movie, as though justifying any particular scene of violence, but there are dozens and dozens of games that look exactly the same, with the hand in the bottom on the screen, supposedly your own, holding whatever weapon and goo-ing all kinds of aliens or walking dead or snipers or whatever the case may be.<br /><br />It's an interesting premise in House of the Dead, with a lot of college kids (LOADED college kids, as it were, kids who are able to pay some fisherman something like $1,500 just for a ride after they miss their boat) trying to get out to this island for what is supposed to be the rave of the year. The first thing that comes to mind about House of the Dead after watching it is that it has become increasingly clear that modern horror movies have become nothing more than an exercise in coming up with creative ways to get a lot of scantily clad teenagers into exactly the same situations. At least in this case, the fact that they were on their way to a rave excuses the way the girls are dressed. They look badly out of place running around the woods in cute little halter-tops, but at least they THOUGHT they were dressed for the occasion.<br /><br />Clint Howard, tellingly the most interesting character in the film by far, delivers an absolutely awful performance, the greatness of which overshadows every other actor in the movie. I can't stand it when well-known actors change their accents in movies, it is so rarely effective, and Howard here shows that it is equally flat to have an well-known actor pretend that he's this hardened fisherman with a raspy voice from years of breathing salty air. He didn't even rasp well. It sounded like he was eating a cinnamon roll before shooting and accidentally inhaled some powdered sugar or something. Real tough there, Clint! I expected more from him, but then again, he did agree to a part in this mess.<br /><br />Once we get to the island, the movie temporarily turns into any one of the Friday the 13th movies that took place at Camp Crystal Lake. Lots of teenagers played by actors who were way too old for their parts getting naked and then killed. The nudity was impressive, I guess, but let's consider something for a minute. These kids pay almost two grand to get out to this island to go to the Rave Of The Year, find NO ONE, and say, well, who wants a beer! Even the guy who pulled that stack of hundreds out of his wallet to get them all over there didn't think anything of it that they found a full bar and not a single solitary person in sight. Here you have the input from director Uwe Boll - There's alcohol! They won't notice that the party they came for consists of no one but themselves!<br /><br />So not only do they start drinking, not minding the fact that the whole party seems to have vacated the island, but when one of the girls goes off into the dark woods to find out where everyone is (dragging one other girl and one of the guys reluctantly along), the guy and the girl who stay behind to get smashed decide that it would be a great idea to strip down for a quickie now that they're alone. It's like they expected to find the island empty, and now that they rest of the people that they came over with were gone for a little while, they would have some privacy since there's no one else around. Brilliant!<br /><br />Now for the things that everyone hated, judging by the reviews that I've read about the movie. Yes, intersplicing shots from the video game into the movie, mostly in order to show that, yes, the movie was being faithful to/directly copying the video game. Sure, it was a stupid idea. I can't imagine who thought up that little nugget, but worse than that is the Matrix-style bullet time scenes that were thrown in over and over and over and over. After the first time (at which point I found it pretentious and cheesy for a movie like this to have a shot like that as though it was something original) it is noticeable more for the technique of the shot itself rather than any dramatic meaning or creation of any kind of tension for the film.<br /><br />One of the things that makes a zombie film scary and gets you on the edge of your seat is to have them slowly but relentlessly coming after the living humans, who are much faster but getting tired, running out of places to run, and with a terrifying shortage of things with which to fight the zombies off with. The first two are done right in the movie, the kids are terrified and don't have a lot of places to run since they're on an island, but since they caught a ride over with a smuggler, they find themselves heavily armed. And I mean that very strongly. I mean, these people have everything from machine guns to hand grenades, which removes most of the tension of the impending walking dead.<br /><br />Then you have what I call the techno-slasher scene. Since the rave never happened, and I guess since Uwe Boll thought people were going to be disappointed at not hearing any techno music in the movie, there's one scene right in the middle where all the humans are fighting off the living dead, and amazingly enough it turns into something of a music video. There's techno music blasting as the shots are edited together faster and faster until it's nothing but a blur of gory shot, mostly only about 5 frames long (which is about 1/6 of a second) flashing across the screen in time with the speed techno music. Clever, I guess, but it has no place in a horror movie because it completely removes any sense of scariness or tension of even the gross-out effect because you can't see any one thing for long enough to react to it. You're just watching these shots fly across the screen and wondering what the hell the director was thinking when he decided that it would be a good idea to put something like this in the movie.<br /><br />I've seen a lot of people compare this movie to Resident Evil, mostly claiming that it copies the premise of it, and they're exactly right. I appreciate that at least here, as was not the case in Resident Evil, it wasn't some man-made virus that turned people into walking dead that were able to infect other people, changing them the way vampires turn others into vampires. 28 Days Later was also clearly an inspiration for this movie, it's just too bad that House of the Dead didn't do a single original thing, except for the somewhat moronic idea of putting in quick shots of the video game on which it is based, just in case you forget. I really think that this should have been a much better movie. While obviously I can't say that I know much about the game it's based on, just the title and the movie poster deserve a much better movie, but unfortunately I think that's more often the case than not with horror movies. It's really kind of sad when a movie comes out that is so obviously advertised as a no-holds-barred horror film, and the scariest thing in the entire movie is the closing shot, which suggests the possibility of a sequel. | 0 |
I found this movie in the 'horror' section of my video store. That seems to make sense as most zombie movies have their place there. From Romero's 'Dead' trilogy to '28 days later.' However upon watching it, you can quickly see what this movie really is.<br /><br />It is actually a music video that goes progressively faster and gets more and more and more gory. There is no horror here folks. Just some half-way decently staged action scenes which soon grow tiresome because they last... and last... and last... and soon you get the feeling maybe you're DVD player accidentally skipped back 3 minutes, but no, this is how they actually made the movie. It's a pity. I think anyone could find a better use for $7 million dollars in the movie industry than make this lump o' crud. Though some of the 360 effects were cool, but once again, they were over used and grew tedious since it was the same stunt over and over again each time, just with a different character.<br /><br />Also what is ROYALLY annoying is the splicing on of footage from the arcade game. I've played the game. It sucks. So why did they put it in here? Oh that's right, this isn't a movie but a music video, and it's a poor one at that. 3/10<br /><br />Rated R: a lot of violence/gore, and profanity | 0 |
Well, I had to sit down at the computer and write down the review immediately after watching this puddle of ooze. Why? Because I have to let it be known to all of you just how bad this movie is. It's unbelievably bad. Just to let you in on how bad it is, I'll offer this little detail about the movie. During scenes of mayhem, which usually consists of people shooting or kicking zombies, they intercut scenes from the video game. Yes, you heard me right. This movie really sucks. In fact, it makes me think about the fact that it costs ten dollars these days just to get into the theaters these days. And to see corn filled crap like this? There is no story to speak of and the movie basically has nothing to offer other than the occasional boob shot and really cheap kills. I'm really disappointed with this, knowing that I watched it. OK, I'm dumbstruck. It's so bad I can't even find the words. RATING: ZERO out of *****. | 0 |
This is by far THE WORST movie i have ever watched. I've seen some pretty awful movies in my time but this ones takes the cake, no, wait, i mean the the whole damn bakery. It is so bad that i believe a word to describe the way you will feel after watching this atrocity has yet to be created. Please just do yourself a favor, if you ever get the urge to watch this and watch thirty minutes of that annoying purple dinosaur Barney, then multiply that thirty times fold and you would still only get a small fraction of the horror you would be in store for. In summation, i guess you really can call it a horror movie, but only if you're willing to be scared senseless by the worst acting in the business and utterly pointless story.<br /><br />Real Rating, -10 Disgusting | 0 |
This movie has received a lot of bad press from people who don't understand what it was meant to be. One must understand that this movie was never meant to be taken seriously. It's camp, along the same lines as "Army of Darkness." AoD was silly, but funny and bad in a good way. "House of the Dead" fails to be "good bad.".<br /><br />There are qualities inherent in good campy movies, most important of those being believable fantasy. One needs to believe what's happening in a movie to see the humor when a situation goes incredibly wrong. Without boundaries, the movie becomes absurd. HotD lacks any believability.<br /><br />Worse still, HotD brings nothing new to the genre, and repeats the same plot twists and character reactions that many horror movies inevitably start to exhibit. For example, all too often, horror movies fall into the trap where the main characters find love amongst the gore and destruction. I don't know about you, but when I'm being chased by zombies, I wanna make out with a hot chick. Believe it? No? Then, you probably won't believe it when the characters start sucking each other's faces in this movie.<br /><br />Beyond the obvious issues that plague this movie like so many other horror movies, Uwe Boll elected to add scenes from the video game of zombies being shot, randomly whenever a character shoots a zombie in the movie. Not only is there no clear rationale for this artistic choice, but it distracts one from an already unbelievable plot. Further, there are frequent and numerous examples of bad acting, and seemingly no attempts by the director to guide the actors' reactions to events... leaving the movie with no redeeming qualities. Avoid... | 0 |
This is the only film I've seen that is made by Uwe Boll, I knew that he is probably the worst director ever who always makes films based on video games also that "House of the Dead" is one of IMDb bottom 100. But I still wanted to watch it because I'm a huge fan of the game and I wanted to see what doe's the film have that makes it so bad. After watching it I do agree that it is crap, the movie had no story. In the first 15-20 minutes there was nothing but topless teenage girls with no brains running about (for a moment there I was wondering are the zombies brain-dead? or the girls are?) then at night time the zombies popped out of nowhere & started attacking people later a woman started shooting them I mean it takes you one place then the other every 5 minutes. Is it supposed to be a comedy?, or horror? or both? Before I knew it I fell asleep at the second half & woke up during the end credits so I did not manage to watch all of it, which is a good thing! The film is a true insult to the classic game, Uwe Boll please do not make any more films. Thank you! | 0 |
I have watched some pretty poor films in the past, but what the hell were they thinking of when they made this movie. Had the production crew turned into zombies when they came up with the idea of making it, because you sure have to be brain dead to find any enjoyment in it.<br /><br />I am a fan of most genres and enjoy "shoot 'em up" games, but merging the daft scenes from the game just made this ridiculous and unwatchable.<br /><br />As most have already said, there was hardly any script and the acting was weak. I won't waste my time describing it.<br /><br />Anyone who rates this film above 4 has to be part of the production company or Sega, or else they have a very warped concept of entertainment.<br /><br />I must say, I was more annoyed with the video shop, who gave this a thumbs up, which led me to rent it. Thank god I had a second film to watch to restore some of my faith in movies.<br /><br />Comic book guy would be right if he said "Worst movie ever"! | 0 |
You know that feeling of hilarity you get when you watch a film that's trying so hard to be a serious, thought provoking piece of cinema and fails miserably? When you can't help but bust out laughing at the sheer terrible nature of the trash littering your screen? "House of the Dead" struggles to achieve even this low graded level of cinema.<br /><br />From start to end "House of the Dead" manages to recreate the feeling like you've just woken up to find out that the cat has laid it's curled business neatly on your forehead while you slept. It is clear from the start that the female actors have been cast for their cleavage size (which they exploit shamelessly) whereas the males for their hardcore "kick-ass" attitude. I honestly did not care any of the characters for any moment of the film and found myself actually wishing their demise so as to spare me a good hour of this torture. Uwe Boll should have considered screening two hours of footage from the actual game as a movie. At least then we'll get better acting
However not all blame can be placed on the actors as it is certainly a challenge to produce a convincing film when faced with the script of this film. It is arguably the worst section of the film and actually contains such lines as: "These are zombies, pure and simple" and "No cap'n, we must not go there! It's evil!".<br /><br />We all know that Zombie movies are never going to be particularly thought provoking or full of meaning; at best they are a harmless two hours of action, blood and closet terror. Trash, yes, but entertaining trash. Not the kind of trash which bursts out of your bin bag as you haul it across the room and smothers your shoes in sour milk cartons and decaying banana skins. According to IMDb, "House of the Dead" received such bad reviews that no Danish cinemas bought the movie. If only we could have had the same privilege.<br /><br />Final Score: 1/10. | 0 |
WOW! i didn't know that someone would make this movie! its awful! I have written down 5 things that can tell why u do not want to see this movie.<br /><br />number 1: "its the biggest rave ever" where is the that rave? i could only see a few people dancing around.. <br /><br />2. when they are on the rave,they can ONLY see blood everywhere,no people,two ruined tents and one stage.. and what do they do!? they drink!<br /><br />3.the worst actors i have ever seen! the captain and his crew.. awful! <br /><br />4. when one of the people is firing an ordinary gun, he shoots almost 30 times without reloading! <br /><br />5. i didn't knew every person in the world could fight as a pro! must be a new thing..<br /><br />i wonder what the producer was thinking! "this is going to be a big hit, its gonna be a classic" .. sure u dumb s**t anyway don't see this movie, its a waist of time. MY EYES ARE STILL BLEEDING! | 0 |
F*ck Me! I've seen some incredibly horrific movies in my time but this takes the p*ss!<br /><br />Honestly I can't express in words how bad this film actually is. Besides the plot that isn't really there, the comically crap acting, the hilariously dreadful excuses for zombies; You know what, I could go on all day. Every little thing in this film is either stupid, pointless, crap or embarrassing. I express to anyone who wants to watch this movie... don't!<br /><br />I'm ashamed to say, I have this on my rack. It's hidden away right at the god damn bottom of the huge pile. I couldn't even give this horse-sh*t excuse for a film away. That's how bad it is. | 0 |
If there were a movie that deserved a 0 out of 10, this would be it. 'House of the Dead' redefines the term "bad movie". Other bad movies, such as 'When A Stranger Calls' or 'Premonition', will actually look much better when compared to 'House of the Dead'. The basic "plot" of House of the Dead is a group of twenty-somethings travel to a remote island to attend the "rave of the century". When they get there, they only find some tents, a bar, a stage, and some bloody t-shirts. They decide to stay anyway, and they are soon attacked by zombies.<br /><br />There is absolutely nothing redeeming about this movie. It is not entertaining. Instead, it is painful to watch because of how terrible it is. The acting is unbelievably bad. In a DVD interview, one of the actors claimed that Uwe Boll, the director, is not afraid to tell someone when they are doing a good job or a bad job in a scene. This is a blatant lie. The script appears to have been written by an 11-year-old, who decided to include a scene of someone throwing up on a girl's chest and to include the hilarious line, "it smells like someone farted out here." The characters have no personality or depth and they do some of the most moronic things ever seen in a horror movie. Somewhere along the way, the characters also magically transform into a SWAT team to take down the zombies. It's like they don't even have to aim their guns and they automatically shoot the zombies in the head.<br /><br />The scariest thing by far about this movie is the directing. There is something wrong with Uwe Boll. Boll's camera work is astonishingly disjointed. His pans to zombies running through the forest are more silly than menacing. Worse yet, Boll actually thought it would be a good idea to include small bits of footage from the House of the Dead video game into the movie. Quite often, and at the most random times, you will suddenly see an animated zombie getting shot. It makes no sense. No one in their right mind would think that was a good idea. It's like Boll wants to remind us repeatedly that this movie is supposed to be based on the video game. Uwe Boll also decided it would be cool to include slow motion 360 degree rotating shots during the action scenes, a la 'The Matrix'. Unfortunately, he does it way too often and each shot is nauseating. The soundtrack to this movie also boggles the mind. Most action scenes are accompanied by loud rap track. This also adds to the ensuing headaches caused by the atrocious 'House of the Dead'.<br /><br />'House of the Dead' isn't bad because it's based on a video game. In fact, it has very little to do with the video game. It also does not fit into the category of 'so bad that it's good'. It does however fit into the category of 'so bad that it's painful'. This movie just plain sucks. Uwe Boll should never be let anywhere near another movie set. Even his presence will curse a production. To all the directors out there: whenever one of your movies gets a bad review, all you have to do is remember that you didn't make 'House of the Dead' and you will feel much better. I will never get those 90 minutes of my life back. To sum it up, words really cannot describe just how bad this movie is. Everyone involved in the production of this film, especially Uwe Boll, should be ashamed of themselves. Although what I have said may make 'House of the Dead' sound funny, it really isn't. Nothing about it is funny. Avoid this at all costs. | 0 |
Just like everybody else have said, the acting is awful, no story or whatsoever, poor directing. About the SFX, the 360 degree, matrix style shooting, 1 shoot is stupid enough, but for each characters. I mean come on gimme a break. And what's up with all those video game scenes, just to remind us it's a "video game adaptation"? Jesus, they should have fired whoever think up this idea.<br /><br />0.00001/10 | 0 |
I usually try to be professional and constructive when I criticize movies, but my GOD!!! This was THE worst movie I have ever seen. Bad acting, bad effects, bad script, bad everything! <br /><br />The plot follows a group of teen cliche's on their way to a rave (that takes place in broad daylight) at a remote island. However, when the group arrives, all they find is an empty dance floor and bloody clothes. Determined to find out what happened to the rest of the party-goers, the clan set's off on a mission through a zombie-infested forest. During this crusade, they are aided by a police chick and a sea captain that just happens to have the right number of weapons to give to each of the kids. They also meet up with Jonathan Cherry and some other survivors. Basically the rest of the movie is a collection of poorly directed action sequences including a far too long shootout outside of the "house of the dead." This fight came complete with cheesy Hollywood violence, redundant clips from the HOTD video game, and sloppy matrix-esque camera rotations. One of the character's even volunteers to sacrifice himself to save the others. Why? Not because he was noble and brave, but because part of his face got scarred by acid a zombie spat on him after he continued to beat the creature long after it had been disabled! I'm supposed to feel sorry for this guy?!?<br /><br />To sum it all up, there is absolutely no point in seeing this movie unless you want to see for yourself just how terrible it is. The theater I was in was more dead than the zombies on the screen, and I'm sure the money I wasted seeing this piece of sh*t could easily cover the costs it took to make it. GRADE: F | 0 |
Okay, let me start off by saying that nothing in this will come as a surprise to anyone who's read the other comments. That being said, MY G-D, THIS MOVIE REEKED! I mean, WOW, I didn't know it was possible to throw as much money as they obviously did at something and still come out worse than ANY Roger Corman movie! Corman was probably pitched this movie at some point but declined due to the poor quality of the script! The only reason this movie got made in the first place is that someone said, 'Hey, Zombies are popular. Video games are popular. What game can we get a hold of that has zombies in it? Resident Evil? No, someone else got there first. Silent Hill? No, too silent. People will never sit in a dark room just to be scared silly. Hey, didn't Sega have a game where people ran around shooting zombies? They're out of the platform biz, we could get that for pennies!'<br /><br />Basically they tried their best to make a movie that felt like the video game, even down to shooting the combat as if the characters were actually playing the game.<br /><br />The first and major problem is that the original game was horrid. I mean,<br /><br />bad-movie-merchandising-made-into-a-worse-game-in-two-weeks-and-then-shippe d-out-and-bought-by-morons-and-their-parents-for-christmas horrid. The graphics were boring. The monsters were boring. The levels were boring. The interface was boring. The CASE was boring. In other words, this was a boring game. And that was the ARCADE version. The home version was even worse! With the home version, you didn't even get the shotgun to hold in your hand while you were being bored silly by this pointless game! But I digress.<br /><br />The second problem is that they went so far as to actually intercut scenes from actual gameplay during the fight scenes. HUH??? Didn't the editor have enough confidence in the effects to indicate that there was an actual fight going on? Not to mention that EVERY fight was shot from the perspective of a video game, which may explain the tedious use of Matrix-style effects. The problem with this is that the game was a first-person shooter (the player proceeds from the POV of the character). Maybe that's why they put in the game graphics, to let you know that they were alluding to the game... Right, whatever...<br /><br />Anyway, the only thing that made this ENTIRE experience remotely enjoyable was the fact that everyone in the theatre was making fun of the movie out loud, so my sudden fits of hysterical laughter and general incredulity were taken as commonplace and didn't get me kicked out.<br /><br />To sum up, DON'T GO SEE THIS MOVIE! Don't even deign to rent it when it comes out on video in a couple of week. Run. Just run. | 0 |
It is cheese. If all you want is a video game, complete with what look like straight-from-the-computer cutaway sequences for action the film was too cheap to actually make special effects for, this is it. My friend and I actually had a great time seeing it, since the theatre was mostly empty and we could heckle a bit. This movie REALLY requires heckling.<br /><br />Plot? There was a plot? OK, some stupid college or later types get invited to "the rave of the year" and go to one of the San Juan Islands ("If they'd only stayed back in Seattle, they would have survived." - direct quote, or nearly.) to attend. They get there and everyone is gone, and the site is somewhat wrecked (but hey, the keg is still full!). With the help of a crusty old captain and a coast guard woman (who acted only slightly less tough - and slightly less well - than Cynthia Rothrock), they fight lots of zombies (some which spit acid), get an earful of freaky legends, and mostly get killed. That's about it.<br /><br />It's not quite as BAD as Demonicus, but not by much, and still better than Severed (they are sort of my own personal alpha and omega for bad movies - the former is bad but fun to heckle, and the latter is just too freaking bad to watch more than once). On the other hand, if you're expecting a video game movie as excellent as Resident Evil, run away!!! run away now!!!<br /><br />OK, some real big questions (without too many spoilers): Since when did Spanish ships of the 18th century venture into the Pacific Northwest????? Why is anyone in the Pacific Northwest smuggling guns, and to whom - CANADA, for crying out loud??? Why is a rave on an unnamed (oh, excuse me, it's called "isla del muerto", shya, right) San Juan Island - and outdoors, still keeping in mind this is THE PACIFIC NORTHWET. And the rave has about 30 people in attendance - "the rave of the year," my patoot.<br /><br />Lucky thing there's lots of hatchets around. Lots of them. Everyone has them. Must be a hatchet sales outlet nearby.<br /><br />Finally, while the movie started out playing with a little "parody" (with nudges at I Know What You Did and Jaws), it didn't carry it through near enough.<br /><br />OK, really finally - when the introductory comments (in a voice-over, no less) casually mention that one of the characters "gave up her boyfriend to focus on her fencing" you can be darn sure there'll be some fencing by the end of the movie. Not GOOD fencing, but a couple of people hacking at each other with swords, anyway. | 0 |
The thing about calling "House of the Dead" the worst movie of all time is that it's really not. There are worse movies out there. I watch alot of Hong Kong ninja movies that are basically the result of an unfinished Japanese police drama having footage of ninjas inserted at the end to create something that could technically be called "a movie."<br /><br />House of the Dead is however one of the worst films I've ever seen at the theatres. Walking out half way through, I actually felt I was somewhat dumber for having set through 45 minutes of this piece of garbage. | 0 |
The House of the Dead was the worst movie I have ever seen, between the pathetic 'matrix' 360 camera angle attemps and the cheesy acting I fell asleep. I don't think that the director and set manager could decide whether it was raining or not, because there would be rain on one side of the boat and not the other. I would rate this movie a 1 out of 10, (10 being the best, 1 being the worst). Also jumping scenes from the movie to the game was really annoying, it makes you wonder if they were just making up for lose time. I beg anyone who reads this, NOT TO SEE IT. It's not worth the time. | 0 |
You know you're in trouble when the opening narration basically tells you who survives. It all goes downhill from there. Unnecessary, "Matrix"-influenced bullet-time camera work. Pointless cuts to video game footage. Crusty old sea captains and wacky seamen. Ravers who become skilled combatants in the blink of an eye. Even the zombies are boring.<br /><br />I was hoping for at least a "so bad it's good" zombie movie, but this one is "so bad those involved with its creation should be barred from ever making a movie again".<br /><br /> | 0 |
This is about the worst movie I have ever seen. This movie does match the quality of such movies as "THEY" & "Cabin Fever", but even those had name actors where this one fell short. The "eye candy" of this movie looked to be a 50 woman with a bad face lift. (just an example of the quality). I would have rated this movie in the negative if possible. Ladies I have to tell you that the men were not bad to look at, but not much either. If you were planning on going to see this movie I would strongly recommend saving your money. | 0 |
I usually like zombie movies, but this one was just plain bad.<br /><br />The good parts: Girl swimming topless with thong bottoms, Sonya Salomaa's topless, and Ona Grauer's boobs jiggling in a skimpy top when she ran.<br /><br />The bad part: too much video cuts, too much Matrix slow motion (it drags the action), not enough blood and guts, bad acting, and no story. The only other person in the theater was smart and left right after the topless swimming scene. A total waste of $6 and time. I give it a 2 out of 10. | 0 |
I have never seen a worse movie.<br /><br />It is possible to take a shootem up video game and make it into a decent movie.<br /><br />Mistake 1: absolutely no connection to any of the characters. In this movie you don't bond with any of the characters because... you don't get a chance.<br /><br />The only character that is sympathetic or even interesting is the Deck Hand: Salish as played by Clint Howard. Except for this unique character, the outcome of the movie is meaningless as all the characters were lifeless from the begining.<br /><br />Mistake 2: the worst gunfight scene ever. I love gunfights. I love when the heros open up on the badguys and clean house. heck I even like to watch a badguy clean house sometimes. But this gunfight was weird I guess that the best way to describe it is "Apathetic" I've seen people shoot with more feeling and emotion while PLAYING THE VIDEOGAME. In this movie it looked and felt like the "Actors" were simply walking through shooting everything that moved without emotion.<br /><br />Why? Where's the trash talking? where's the snarls of rage amongst the gunfire? These are supposed to be kids that got caught at a rave gone bad... but even real soldiers acting professionally and ruthlessly show their humanity.<br /><br />If you want a GOOD horror movie about a secluded house full of monsters, I recomend Sam Rami's Evil Dead series. DO NOT see the disaster that is house of the dead. I hope that they burn the master and all copies of this movie. | 0 |
When I go to see a movie about zombie's, I'm not expecting oscar calibre performances, or writing on the level of The Godfather, but I do expect the actors to at least not look like their straining to read their cue cards, and dialogue that doesn't sound like it was typed out 10 minutes before the actor reads it into the camera. This movie was just awful, I actually got up and left about 25 minutes in and went next door and watched Cold Creek Manor, that wasn't very good either, but it seemed like Citizen Kane compared to this pile of crap. On the plus side, the girls were very pretty, that's probably the only thing that kept me in my seat for longer than the first 5 minutes, in fact I left after the hottest one got killed, there wasn't anything to hold my interest after that. | 0 |
What can I say? I ignored the reviews and went to see it myself. Damn the reviews were so right. What a waste of money considering it's budget.<br /><br />Good thing, I went to see Kill Bill after this one.<br /><br />To see a really scary movie, would be Crossroads!<br /><br />Bottom line-- I like "Girl in Gold Boots" better than this crap. | 0 |
It gets really bad. The only half-way redeeming quality is the effects from the thousands of bullets used during the film. There are context errors everywhere. The acting is horrible, save Kirk. The story is as holey as the grail, and the belief that the movie is a video game in itself just kills the movie, if it wasn't already a corpse. So all in all it's a waste of your life. I would have given this a zero had that been an option on the rating scale. | 0 |
Randolph Scott is leaving the USA for the greener pastures of Canada's British Columbia. He wants to start a cattle ranch there with partner Bill Williams and cook Lee Tung Foo. They stampede their small herd over a toll bridge erected by Victor Jory. Later Jory rustles their cattle and Williams loses his left arm during the fracas.<br /><br />From 1945 until 1962 when he retired, Randolph Scott made a series of good adult themed westerns, some of them considered real classics. Unfortunately the Cariboo Trail will never be listed among his best westerns. <br /><br />It's more like the material that Roy Rogers or Gene Autry might use. The story is downright silly at times. Williams who was along for the ride with Scott, he wanted to go prospect for gold as there was a big strike at the time. He doesn't blame the rustlers, he blames Scott for convincing him to make the trip for the loss of his arm. <br /><br />Also there's a scene in the film when Scott, Lee Tung Foo, and Gabby Hayes are captured by Indians. They escape because Gabby's mule has been taught to kick on command and he kicks away at the Indians allowing our heroes to escape. I'm not sure that would have played in a Rogers film.<br /><br />Furthermore the story actually wants you to believe that tyro prospector Randolph Scott accidentally stumbles on a gold strike after just a few lessons from prospector Gabby Hayes on how to find gold. <br /><br />This was Gabby Hayes's farewell feature film part. It would have been better had he gone out in a good western and in fact he had done a couple of better ones with Randolph Scott before this.<br /><br />I will say this, though no Caribou made any appearance in the film, this is one of the few Canadian locale films from the past that did NOT have any Mounties. <br /><br />But if I were you unless you are a big fan of Randolph Scott or Gabby Hayes, take the next detour off The Cariboo Trail. | 0 |
"The Leap Years" is a movie adapted from an e-novella by Singapore writer Catherine Lim, which became the first Singapore novel/novella to be sold over the internet. The film had a tortuous post-production schedule: shot in early 2005, it was slated for release at the end of 2005, but only turn up eventually 3 years later, on the 29th February 2008, a leap year.<br /><br />Before I say anything, I must first admit I'm no fan of the romance genre, so I may be a little biased against this film - I watched it merely because it was a Singapore production, and that it's available for borrowing at my neighborhood library. Here's my two cents on the movie.<br /><br />Let's just start by saying that other than Qi Yu-wu's KS and Wong Li-Lin, everybody here of note seems to be a Eurasian. The love interest is a Eurasian (Ananda Everingham), and Wong's trio of buddies are all, er-hem, Eurasians. Does this film perpetuate the stereotype that falling in love and associating with Eurasians are more "in" than the common Chinese (or whatever Asian race you are?) I don't know, it sure seems that way. Also, everyone in the movie speaks in some mystical "anglified" accent which doesn't exist anywhere, certainly not in Singapore. It's the kind of "semi-perfect English" that authorities would like us speak, but which doesn't exist anywhere outside, say, the MTV Channel. The effect is that the dialog of the movie sounds forced and stilted, not helped by the lack of true-blue Singaporeans in the cast.<br /><br />The scriptwriter seems to be trying too hard to string one-liners after one-liners. After twenty minutes, the "wit" of the movie starts to pall and the film starts serving up its usual plate of clichés. <br /><br />I guess I didn't enjoy the movie because the entire premise of sustaining a love affair over 16 long years seems unbelievable. <br /><br />There are other incredulities in the film. I can't for one believe that KS (played by Qi Yu-wu) would fall for one of Wong's girlfriends. And the scene where the bridegroom says, "Go, before I change my mind," has been used in a hundred East Asian (Korean, Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese etc) TV serials...<br /><br />So 4 stars for this film. The production value is fair, and Wong Li-lin tries her best, but she's not helped by the script. Joan Chen has a 15-minute bit-part in the movie as the older Wong and is perhaps the best actress of the lot, but, hey, her role is just cameo.<br /><br />If you come across "The Leap Years" in the rental or library, you may want to pop it in the DVD player for curiosity's sake, but otherwise, for people who don't exactly enjoy the romance genre, you can decide whether or not to give it a miss. | 0 |
Recherche is a good word to describe this movie.<br /><br />Let's say every movie has a selling point, a gimmick. Transformers' gimmick is the awesome effects as well as fan boys nostalgia. Sleepless in Seattle's gimmick is situational in their tag-line, "What if someone you never met, someone you never saw, someone you never knew was the only someone for you?" Many romance relies heavily on these gimmicks and some through draw of big names. Leap Years employs both by using the Irish folklore as the circumstance and featuring considerably famous names within the country.<br /><br />So now that the audience are in the cinema, besides all the usual elements in characters, conflict or consequences, crisis, resolve and denouement, they also look forward to stimulating dialog, more absorbing situations as a result of the leap years, interesting sub-plots and perhaps, to a certain extent, a good twist in the middle or towards the end of the story that favors the circumstances of the characters.<br /><br />This is what Jean Yeo is trying not to achieve. If they've tried to, their goal was apparently in the other court, at the other stadium, on the other end of the planet. She and her writer, Alain Layrac, utterly failed to provide stimulating dialog. Most of the lines were contrived. It seems that they have a bag filled with lines which she would like to use in her movie: "Okay, these are the lines and quotes which I've heard or read from either movies I've seen or books I've read before and they all sound good to me. If they sound good to me, they will sound good to the audience. Therefore, all i have to do is piece them all together. I am going to use all of them." The result is cathartic. I can't say that the lines were unnecessary and bears no relation to the story or in driving the plot on, but they seem to spring out of nowhere, catching you off guard with these quotable quotes.<br /><br />On a personal level, i know people who cite quotes based on most of the situations in our dialog, trying to make it meaningful to themselves while nodding along. I don't go out with them anymore because the urge to punch them is overwhelming.<br /><br />Secondly, the characters portrayed are silly and one-dimensional. With exception to the unnatural dialog which implies their motivation (necessary to drive the plot), there was no sense of conviction in them. I haven't an idea who they are. They are all simpletons spouting lines from the advice column of a female-oriented magazine.<br /><br />The gimmick in the leap years is not enough to drive the story on because the circumstances are too shallow. Then again, there are movies with less but fared better than this, aren't there. They made it up with my first and second point. Moreover, the sub-plots are inconsequential (not that it's a bad thing for movies) and thin (bad thing).<br /><br />Jean Yeo and the producers are trying to pass off the terrible plot with fancy locations and passable photography. This is because they probably understand that it is possible and easier to attain the approval from some viewers than the others with the good use of cinematography, soundtrack and filming location. These non-discerning viewers.<br /><br />It is not even the kind of movie that is so bad that it's good. It is just bad. Don't watch this. | 0 |
There are no spoilers in this review because everything was already shown in the movie's trailer. I am trying to be balanced in my review because I strongly support local movies, but I can't help but support the backlash against this movie. It is slow, boring and bordering on pointless. Even the "almost nice and believable moments" were immediately undercut by painful clichés and bad acting. Vernetta Lopez and Wong Li Lin, whom I usually love, were only passable in this movie. It felt like the director was trying to make a melodramatic TV Soap, then got carried away and decided to put it on the big screen. The Leap Years should come with an RA rating (Rated Awful) but it hasn't changed my faith in local movies. More good films will come, so long as more films like these don't get made. | 0 |
I must preface this by saying I am a huge romantic. Hence I really wanted to like this film. So I'm writing my thoughts to save the rest of you from the disappointment I felt watching it. The Leap Years tells the destiny-filled tale of Li-Ann who falls for the suave Jeremy and they commit to meet every leap year. A very romantic premise, based on a great short story and with a cast that doesn't feel like you're watching yet another Jack Neo flick. Then why oh why is it so bad? Firstly, I feel the filmmakers thought they were shooting a music video, because they chose to replace storytelling and any true emotions with cheesy montages, predictable actions and clichéd lines. I am both upset and embarrassed to have been one of the first few in Singapore to watch The Leap Years, but those of us in the cinema would agree that our muffled groans at the cringe-worthy performances spoke volumes. My hope was to watch a romantic movie that would surpass Forever Fever, the best Singaporean romantic comedy so far, and The Leap Years does not even come close. Some blogs have called it The Crap Years which is harsh but ultimately true. Don't waste your money or your emotions like I did. The movie will make you give up on love forever. | 0 |
The Leap Years stars some heavy hitters in the local and regional film and television scene. And yet, they cannot save this movie. It has so many things going against it - over acting, overly melodramatic, poor script, inconsistent direction; and too few things going for it - decent music , good cinematography. This comment is mainly for anyone who throws all local movies into one basket after watching this film and says all local movies are bad. Please do not judge the rest based on this one film. This is a television soap opera masquerading as a romantic feature film. My hopes were high when I bought my ticket and my hopes were dashed five minutes into the film. | 0 |
The only reason that this movie is rated a 1 is that zero is not one of the selection options. With a plot thinner than depression era cabbage soup, horrific acting, and special effects that look like they came out of the "Thunderbirds" TV series, it is amazing that Widmark didn't kill the director for putting this black mark on his resume. Even by 1950's standards, the special effects are atrocious, except for a couple of underwater submarine sequences. I can only assume that it was nominated for best special effects because, except for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and THEM!, there wasn't anybody else doing effects. It was certainly no contest for Disney that year if this was their only competition. I wouldn't recommend the film, even for hard core submarine movie buffs, as the most realistic scene on the submarine was limited to one shot where seawater can be seen dribbling down the up-raised periscope. There are other, much better, sub films that you can enjoy from this era, like the aforementioned 20,000 Leagues or Torpedo Run. | 0 |
...well, pop this into the DVD, waste an hour and a half of your life that you will never get back, and find out.<br /><br />Acting? What acting? <br /><br />Production values? ...Production? ...Values?<br /><br />Story? Don't get me started.<br /><br />After many years of posting on IMDb, I never thought I would see a film so bad that I truly wished for a lower rating than one. I always have found at least a reason or two to see merit - if only in the intent or the effort of the writer, the director, the cast, or the producer?<br /><br />In this case, they're all the same guy (!) who really needs to get a handle on the fact, at least as demonstrated by this worthless waste of video tape, that he has no talent. I mean it would be a reasonable excuse if this were some junior high schooler's "production" for his first cinema class, but the referenced "artist" behind this dreck was twenty-six at the time of this miscarriage. <br /><br />Just how did this ever get made? Who in their right mind ever wrote a check for this? Moreover, don't let the box cover fool you: there's not even anything that remotely resembles a good sex scene or any good "exposure" of the hunk on that cover.<br /><br />Two final items: there was one second when this "film" had redeeming value: the aforementioned "talent" gets roundly punched out by his lover. I cheered! And, I did learn one thing from this "film.". There are times when something is so very bad that it is, indeed, truly very funny. But not in any comical manner; it's just sadly humorous. Very sadly humorous. | 0 |
This movie was laughably bad. A friend rented it from Netflix and made me watch it. There are so many gaffes and goofs that it's impossible to even bother getting to know the characters and the plot. How about these for example...<br /><br />The "Vermont Airport" surrounded by palm trees<br /><br />Ben's miraculously appearing shirt during a phone conversation<br /><br />The priest's palatial office... complete with a folding card table desk<br /><br />There is a decent story hidden behind a very bad movie. But even if you look past the technical flaws, you'll find horrid acting and casting. I was most tickled by the casting of a flamboyantly gay actor to play the right-wing religious zealot brother. His opening scene, sitting in his immaculate apartment, stroking his kitty cat, was hilarious.<br /><br />I applaud the writer/director/producer/editor/star/caterer/cast dentist/composer (and whatever else he did on this move) for actually getting a movie like this distributed. If you have nothing better to do, it could be a fun group movie or even the basis of a drinking game but don't rent it for a powerful story about homophobia and gay marriage. | 0 |
If an auteur gives himself 2 credits before the main title and about 15 more credits before the movie starts, and the first shot shows the auteur rolling around on a bed in lycra bike shorts, it won't be a surprise to observe that said auteur has the kind of body that should never be seen in spandex. The kind of look that might be useful to a homosexual aversion therapist.<br /><br />Others have given this thing the dishing it deserves. For me the most pitiable moment came when the trip from LA was signified by a plane landing at what appeared to be LAX; and the return was signified by a shot of a Fedex cargo plane. | 0 |
Oh my GOD. I bought this movie and...I...watched...the...whole...thing. . . Okay, it's going to be alright... I'l know I'll be okay in a month or two. Some time soon I hope to be rid of the flash backs. I was going to eat something after the movie but I just can't seem to get up the courage to try and hold any food down at the moment. Bad? Yes bad. Very BAD. BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD. Wait, bad doesn't seem to get the message across in quite the right way. Hmm... There isn't a word to describe just how awful.... not awful... Hmm disgustingly horribly casted/acted/filmed/directed/written. Now I don't know what to do but throw it out. Possibly burn it I wouldn't want it to end up at the bottom of an architectural dig a thousand years from now. The worst movie ever since "Hey Happy" | 0 |
Your first clue that this is a cheesy movie is that it was shot on video, not film. The story is convoluted, and the production is amazingly sloppy. Note, for example, that when the title couple are on a plane ostensibly landing in Vermont, where they've gone to celebrate their relationship in a civil union ceremony, the plane is shown coming into an airport surrounded by palm trees. Their ceremony - in Vermont - takes place in a garden of tropical plants, including palms, which wouldn't last five minutes in the New England climate. On yet another airplane trip, the establishing shot depicts a FedEx cargo plane taking off. Presumably they could only afford to travel in steerage. As for the plot, this movie expects you to believe that Victor, the devoutly Christian brother of Arthur, is kicked out of his church when the congregation learns that his BROTHER is gay. Not only that, but the pastor eventually sets Victor up with a hit man to have Ben and Arthur killed "to purge their souls of sin." Apparently no one in this church has ever heard of the Ten Commandments. Were it not for Jamie Brett Gabel, who is surprisingly effective as Arthur, this movie would have no redeeming qualities at all. | 0 |
Ben & Arthur COULD have been a 10. Sam Mraovich wrote, directed, stared, and produced this movie. Sam should have given his idea to a good writer, director, and left the acting to somebody who could act. this is a good example of one person controlling the whole production. there was nobody to tell him, "Sam this is bad, really bad".<br /><br />Jamie Brett Gabel's acting was the only good point, but he could have been so much better with a good director, and better actors to work with. <br /><br />This movie is so bad i think Sam Mraovich should be tied to a chair and made to watch this movie (twice). the acting and direction was so bad, this movie was turned into a comedy. you just had to laugh, and in the wrong places. <br /><br />A second good point....this would make a great date movie. after the first two minutes you would quit watching the movie and pay more attention to your date! | 0 |
This film was the worst film I have ever viewed. It was like a "homework assignment" for a film class. It totally misses the mark when it comes to the "message" it is TRYING to relay. Characters are over exaggerated, poor acting and as for a plot...well it is utterly ridiculous. The cover shot is what made me think it may be a decent film, the co-actor is handsome and that's about it. Moral of this movie: NEVER JUDGE A MOVIE BY IT'S COVER! Save your time, money and energy and make your own home movie and you will be far better off than I. It was painful to watch and quite frankly I am surprised that anyone would spend money to make and distribute it! | 0 |
THE. WORST. FILM. EVER. MADE.<br /><br />After watching this supposedly gay made film, I suspect someone rounded up a brain damaged half blind neo-nazi and had him make the worst gay film ever, all in some deluded attempt to attack gay culture. I had to stop the movie and call a friend to come over just so I had someone to scoff at when I paused the movie out of shock, disbelief and outrage at such sheer stupidity.<br /><br />On top of all the horrible writing and acting and illogical and stupid plot, its just a poorly made film. A dog with a handycam tied to its tail could have churned out better.<br /><br />Seriously, after reading the few positive reviews this movie has here, I suspect the writer must have a half a dozen IMDb accounts. Anyone who says this film is even watchable as anything other than a joke, is a liar or being paid heavily to say so. | 0 |
I have never posted a review before, but I had to do it for this film! This film is SO bad, I found myself trying to justify how bad it is by trying to think of it as kitsch or parody. But it ISN'T. It is truly, un-self-consciously BAD. This is a serious attempt that flops gloriously. Other reviewers have pointed out the film's many flaws, so I'll try not to repeat these, but I do urge you to see this film. Throughout it I was either speechless, literally gasping with disbelief, or rolling on the floor in hysterics. I haven't had so much fun watching a film in years. In fact, I'm going to try to get all my friends to see it because it's the kind of movie that needs to be shared.<br /><br />My favorite parts: -- When Arthur auditions to be a go-go boy (his dancing is unbelievable) -- The gratuitous nudity (the director/leading actor just had to get a nude shot in) -- The preacher's office with its cardboard and crayon rendition of Christ -- Of course, the famous wedding scene with the palm trees and the forgotten rings (what narrative function does this play?!?) -- The ex-wife's wrestling match with Ben to get possession of her gun -- The detailed sequence wherein Arthur kills the preacher; he apparently burns him up with this incredibly measly match -- Yes, the gay religious-fanatic brother with his bleached hair and WeHo fashions -- And, my favorite, the use of Joplin's "The Entertainer" as the opening soundtrack and "Pachebel's Canon in D Major" as the closing soundtrack! -- the list goes on and on -- a MUST SEE!!! | 0 |
Intrigued by the synopsis (every gay video these days has a hunk on the cover; this is not necessarily to be construed as a good sign) I purchased BEN AND ARTHUR without knowing a thing about it. This is my second (and I assure you it will be my last) purchase of a CULTURE Q CONNECTION video. As far as I am concerned, this DVD is nothing but a blatant rip-off. I do not make this observation lightly I am a major collector of videos, gay and mainstream, and I can state with some authority and without hesitation that BEN AND ARTHUR is quite simply the worst film I have ever sat through in my life. Period. My collection boasts over 1,600 films (93% on them on DVD) and of those, well over 300 are gay and lesbian themed. I hardly own every gay movie ever made, but I am comfortable in stating that I pretty much purchase almost every gay video of interest that gets released, and very often I buy videos without knowing anything about the film. Sometimes, this makes for a pleasant surprise - Aimee & Jaguar, It's In The Water, Urbania and Normal are all examples of excellent gay titles that I stumbled upon accidentally. So when I read on the box that BEN AND ARTHUR concerned a conflict between gay lovers and the Christian Right, one of my favorite subjects, I decided to take the plunge sight unseen, despite my previously disappointing purchase of another CULTURE Q CONNECTION title, VISIONS OF SUGAR PLUMS. That film was pretty bad, but compared to BEN AND ARTHUR, it viewed like GONE WITH THE WIND. So what was so wrong with BEN AND ARTHUR? Plenty! To begin with, the "plot" such as it was, was totally ridiculous. This film almost made me sympathetic to the Christian Right we are asked to believe not only that a church would expel a member because his brother is gay, but that a priest would actually set up a mob style execution of a gay couple in order to save their souls (like this even makes sense). The writing is so poor that many scenes make no sense at all, and several plot points reflect no logic, follow-up or connection to the story. Murder and violence seem to be acceptable ends to the gay activist / right wing conflict on both sides, and the acting is so bad that it's difficult to imagine how anybody in this film got hired. The characters who are supposed to be straight are almost without exception clearly gay - and nelly stereotypes to boot; the gay characters are neither sexy nor interesting. This film is enough to put off anybody from buying gay themed videos forever, and the distributors should be ashamed of themselves. The only advantage this picture has over my other CULTURE Q Connection purchase, VISIONS OF SUGARPLAMS, is that this one has a soundtrack with clear dialogue. Hardly a distinction, since the script is so insipid that understanding the script only serves to make you more aware of how bad this film truly is. It is an embarrassment to Queer culture, and I intend to warn everyone I possibly can before they waste their money on it. At $9.95 this film would have been way overpriced; I understand that it's soon to be re-priced under $20, which is STILL highway robbery. I paid the original price of $29.95, and I never felt more cheated in my life. The only true laugh connected with this drivel is the reviews I have seen "user reviews" for this film on numerous websites, and there is always one or two that "praise" the director / writer / actor in such a way that it's obvious that the reviewer is a friend of this Ed Wood wannabe. How sad. How desperate. I just wish IMDb would allow you to assign zero stars - or even minus zero. If ever a film deserved it, this is it. | 0 |
Holy crap this movie was bad. I watched it just as a joke. It isn't even so bad that it's good in an unintentional way. This film seemed to be designed to personally make me angry. It worked really well at doing that. It's as if the people who made this just took all of the really annoying stuff about the movie PRIEST, added in a bunch of ugly dudes, took out anything interesting, funny, or even remotely sexy and clever out of the concoction, and then added in a bunch of old rotten cheese. That's all this is. Cheese. There isn't a single person this film could possibly connect to. There isn't any universe this film could possibly take place in. Why can't a film like this just be about enjoying life and being happy? Why did they have to make this already stupid idea for a film even more ridiculous than it already is? Why couldn't they at least even tried to make it an okay film, or even a B-movie. Now that I think of it, what they hell were they trying to do with this film? I watched it expecting a campy love story and instead I got some boring student project about some idiot who has to find the strength and courage to marry his boyfriend while his annoying Christian brother tried to destroy it all!!! No, I'm not joking. That's what it's about. Does that sound good? This film is pretty ignorant against people of the Christan religion, with it's stereotyping of all Christians being loudmouthed, rude, and hellbent on making as many people as miserable as possible. A lot of Christian people I know would never speak or act like these freaks. The film, however, is just as unfair and ignorant to the gay community as well. These have got to be the most tastelessly crafted stereotypical gay men since the guy on the radio station on that ROADKILL video game. It's so nerve wracking and simply irritating to the point that I wasn't able to fully pay attention to this film. The makers of this train-wreck had no strategy for set design, acting, camera angles, lighting, script, authenticity, or an idea to make this entertaining or interesting. There isn't even a single sex scene, or at least not a believable one. Jamie Brett Gabel was the only guy in the film that looked any good at all, but his good looks were sadly put to waste. This is trash. In a perfect world, this film would get voted a 0.0. It's worth 0 as a film alone. A mentally handicapped nun who is blind, deaf, and has tiny little bones for arms and legs and whose face is located on her armpit could write, direct, and produce a better film, and she'd probably be a better actor as well. the fact that this film exists is a crime against the word "film" itself. This film is so bad that other films should be ashamed of being available in the same watchable format. I could put a broom in a chair and then record it with a camera and then stop the film and then replace it with a mini x-mas tree and then record that and I've already made a film that will always be better than BEN & ARTHUR by at least half. There are only two things worse than death. Torture and watching BEN & ARTHUR. I'm a homosexual and I will probably be the gayest person you will ever meet if you ever met me, and I don't think I've ever been more offended by an entire film than I was by the first five seconds of this film alone. If this movie was a mistake, I will personally find a way to change the famous phrase "It's okay to make mistakes" to "It's okay to make mistakes unless that mistake was BEN & ARTHUR." You know how people always say things like, "Good things come out of everything!"? I think that BEN & ARTHUR was primarily invented so that there could be something on this earth that nothing good would ever come out of. To call this movie the worst movie I've ever seen would be giving it WAY too much credit. It's as if this film were designed just so that it could qualify in a category of it's very own. There are good movies, there are bad movies, and then there's BEN & ARTHUR. This is BEN AND ARTHUR. | 0 |
There is absolutely nothing in this movie that shows even the tiniest scrap of talent. Nobody in it has ever tried acting before, even the extras in the coffee shop look as if they've been glued in place. Nothing looks rehearsed.The film quality is terrible. Most of the 'action' takes place in narrow corridors or apartments with the cameraman crammed in as an afterthought, swinging some cheapo camera backwards and forwards between 'actors' as they deliver their lines. No tripod and no proper microphone either, there sound quality is terrible. Even 'Manos' fares better than this, at least they had proper equipment. What plot there is simply gets lost in the production mess.<br /><br />Stick to home videos, preferably made by some 5 year kid trying out the video feature on daddy's new camera phone. You will be in for a long search to find a movie more inept than this. | 0 |
I was looking on Imdbs bottom 100 because i thought id never seen anything as bad as plan 9 from outerspace or Roller Ball remake, I was wrong. Ben and Arthur has beaten both.<br /><br />This out of the many countless amount of movies I've seen is the number one worst film on the i ever saw. Bad Directing ,Bad Characters ,Horrible Acting ,Horrible story There's a reason nobody but Sam ever says anything positive about this film. Sam was a horrible annoying actor but his directing was so bad he may just overthrow Ed Wood.<br /><br />The Director should be ashamed of his work unfortunately i have to give it at least 1 star but it deserves - to be continued stars. | 0 |
I have no idea what on earth, or beyond, could have possibly made Sam Mraovich believe that this would have been a worthy project to undertake. Ben & Arthur is one of the worst movies ever made. In fact, I see no reason why it should not be at #1 on the Bottom 100. For although I have not seen, for example, SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (#5 at the time of this publication), I would venture to guess that that film is considerably better than this oozing wound, because even in its vapid dismalness at least Baby Geniuses 2 was professionally made. By contrast, everything, and I do mean everything, in this film is completely unprofessional.<br /><br />The movie is intended to be an attack on the Christian Right's supposed bigotry and hatred toward gays. And I do emphasize "intended." Not only does it completely and utterly fail at its purpose, it also leaves an ugly scar. Instead of creating a compelling and realistic portrait of a gay couple's struggle against a society that largely opposes them, it creates tired, crass stereotypes of each party involved. Ben and Arthur, the namesake couple, are portrayed as two crude, sex-starved, and hopelessly romantic cardboard cutouts who marry when the laws change to allow them to do so. This meets with the opposition of Ben's brother Victor, a Christian minister who, like all Christians (as this movie would have us believe), is loud, prying, stupid, and violent. He tries to kill Ben and Arthur after his associations with them get him kicked out of the ministry. Just like in real life. And if you think that's dreadful (it is), you haven't seen it all.<br /><br />The actors (?) here manage to completely destroy any vestige of credibility in this movie by saying their lines as if they were narrating a YouTube home comedy video. But not even Daniel Day-Lewis and Marlon Brando as the title characters could have saved this clunker, for there would still be the matter of the completely inane and laugh-inducing dialogue that fills every minute of the movie. Every scene has at least one awkward or misplaced quote. For example, in one scene, Victor tries to complain about not being able to have nieces or nephews because of his brother's homosexuality. But instead of portraying this idea clearly, he spits out the stupid, utterly confusing, whiny-sounding line, "You know what, I'm never going to have any nieces or nephews, okay, because you're so F***ED UP!"<br /><br />Even more glaring is the complete lack of production values. Yes, I know this ain't The Dark Knight, but even amateur film makers should know some basics about special effects and editing. For example, six dots of red cake dye do not suffice for realistic bullet wounds. People do not teleport across a room between takes. And objects do not fall FORWARD when shot! <br /><br />Do not waste your money on Ben & Arthur. I don't care if you're 7, 17, or 107. I don't care if you're gay, straight, bi, or undecided. I don't care if you're "just curious." I don't care what pathetic reason you may have to be tempted to buy this dung-heap. Stay away, far away. This movie's only redeeming quality is its ability to be used as a Frisbee. | 0 |
Sam Mraovich should never be allowed to touch a camera again. If he does he should be arrested on the spot...at the very least for petty larceny. Anybody who pays even a dime to rent any of his garbage should file a claim and be compensated. This was innocently my first viewing of his "work"...and it will my last. Ed Wood looks awfully good to me right now.<br /><br />When I return this piece of crap to the video store, I will personally ask that it be taken off the shelf. An active supporter of gay cinema, I am incensed and angered that this warped, exceedingly untalented man-child be allowed to distribute and package something like this, with a coltish pretty boy on the cover (Jamie Brett Gabel, who, thankfully, has no other acting credits in IMDb) and an interesting synopsis on the back used as bait, and then market it as a "movie" rental. Trust me, this has no place being on any rack anywhere; it is simply not a movie in any sense of the word. Offensive, irresponsible junk such as this can only be detrimental to the efforts being made to promote and support gay cinema (hell, gay rights in general!) For those tempting to rent this out because of the cover, you WILL be disappointed. Gabel is not as flattering to look at on film as he is on the cover, and he appears once or twice without a shirt -- that's it. Instead, the homely Mroavich inflicts on us his own disgusting, sorry-looking dough-boy nakedness.<br /><br />This "thing" he "assembled" is a reverse vanity project for Mraovich. Both he and his friend Michael Habousch (who, I understand, puts out similar sleazy garbage) are terrible in this. Mraovich is purposely posing as a complete no-talent (in all fields), desperate to grab onto any "loser" attention he can for himself. He is to be pitied. | 0 |
Let me first state that I enjoy watching "bad" movies. It's funny how some of these films leave more of a lasting impression than the truly superb ones. This film is bad in a disturbingly malicious way. This vehicle for Sam Mraovich's delusional ego doesn't just border on talentless ineptitude, it has redefined the very meaning of the words. This should forever be the barometer for bad movies. Sort of the Mendoza line for film. Mr. Mraovich writes, directs, and stars as blunt object Arthur Sailes battling scorned wives and the Christian forces of evil as he and his partner Ben "dead behind the eyes" Sheets struggle for marital equality. As a libertarian I believe gays should have a right to get married. Ben & Arthur do more harm to that cause than an army of homophobes. The portrayal of all things Christian are so ugly and ham-fisted, trademark Mraovich, that you can't possibly take any of them seriously. Arthur's brother Victor, the bible toting Jesus freak, is so horribly over-the-top evil/effeminately gay that you have to wonder how he was cast in this role. That's because Sam "multitasking" Mraovich was also casting director. The worst of it all is Sam Mraovich himself. When you think leading man do the words pasty, balding, and chubby come to mind? Sam also delivers lines like domino's pizza, cold and usually wrong. The final tally: you suck at writing, directing, acting and casting. That's the Ed Wood quadruple crown. Congratulations you horrible little man. | 0 |
This movie is just truly awful, the eye-candy that plays Ben just can make up for everything else that is wrong with this movie.<br /><br />The writer/director/producer/lead actor etc probably had a good idea to create a movie dealing with the important issues of gay marriage, family acceptance, religion, homophobia, hate crimes and just about every other issue effecting a gay man of these times, but trying to ram every issue into such a poorly conceived film does little justice to any of these causes.<br /><br />The script is poor, the casting very ordinary, but the dialogue and acting is just woeful. The homo-hating brother is played by the most camp actor and there is absolutely no chemistry between the two lead actors (I think I've seen more passion in an corn flakes ad). The acting is stiff, and the dialogue forced (a scene where the brother is feeding the detective his lines was the highlight).<br /><br />I'm just pleased to see that the creator of this train wreck has not pushed any other rubbish out in to distribution, and if he is thinking of doing so, I have some advise - JUST DON'T DO IT. | 0 |
as an actor I really like independent films but this one is amateur at best.<br /><br />The boys go to Vermont for a civil service yet when the plane lands it flies over a palm tree - were the directors aware that palm trees are not in Vermont? Pines yes - palms no. And the same for the wedding service - again nice grove of palm trees.<br /><br />When the boys are leaving VT they apparently could not get a ticket on any major airline since the plane that is filmed is Federal Express. Did they ship themselves Overnight in a crate? Come on guys little details like this separate an indi film from totally amateur.<br /><br />The Christian brother is far gayer than Arthur with his bleached hair and tribal band tattoo. The two should have switched roles.<br /><br />The minor characters are laughable and overact something terrible.<br /><br />Applause to the directors for making a gay film but pay some attention to your locations and casting next time | 0 |
Just watched this after hearing about how bad it was and wanted to see for myself. Seriously, even if you read all the negative comments on here you will be nowhere near able to comprehend how awful this film actually is, although it has to be one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen! Never bothered to post a comment on here before, but this piece of crap really warrants it. <br /><br />Firstly the entire plot is ridiculous and nonsensical. Brother of the lead character (either Ben or Arthur, I forget which is which, and frankly it's never very clear) wants to stop some kind of gay marriage by killing everyone in sight - because homosexuality is abhorrent to Christians, but apparently mass murder isn't. Then there's some other crap thrown in about one of the gay couple's ex-wife trying to force him to remarry her at gunpoint. This leads to nothing, but provides us with one of the funniest lines of dialogue in the whole "film" - "I don't make sense? You don't make sense! That's who makes sense!". Brilliant.<br /><br />Then there's the acting, which is just atrocious. It must be seen to be believed. My personal favourite is the apparently stoned civil rights lawyer woman, who is clearly reading her lines off of something, yet still managing to mess them up. Enough said. The gay couple couldn't be less convincing. There's the vaguely attractive and completely gormless guy, and his boyfriend who looks like that little cartoon dough man of the bisto adverts. Only fatter. And less talented. <br /><br />The "film" has also been filmed by someone who is incapable of holding a camera even remotely still, and the number of mistakes throughout is amazing. The whole thing kicks off with the fat main guy in bed with a pair of boots on. Yep.<br /><br />But anyways, we all know how terrible this thing is, so I'd like to highlight some of the most priceless comedy moments that the "film" provides. <br /><br />- When the fat guy sets the church on fire and then prances like a six year old girl across the car park to make his escape. Hilarious.<br /><br />- Mildread! No idea what relation she is to the main characters - sometimes they know her, sometimes they don't, but she pops up in a couple of scenes nonetheless. Hilarious.<br /><br />- The stoned lawyer. Already mentioned her, but she's so funny she's worth another mention.<br /><br />- The evil brothers dinner of crackers that he lays on for his guests.<br /><br />- The evil brother's anti-gay potion.<br /><br />- The evil brother's cats.<br /><br />- The ending, which I won't give away because it MUST be seen to be believed. I warn you though, make sure you're not eating at the time!!!! The tub of lard main character/director/producer gets naked. It's foul. <br /><br />Basically, Ben and Arthur is indescribably bad, but unintentionally the most comical thing you'll see for a long time. Literally, nothing is good about this excuse for a film, the goon of a director even manages to make the opening credits into a joke by writing his own name about 15 times. | 0 |
Oh man, what was Sam Mraovich thinking? What was anyone who was involved in this "film" thinking? Mraovich is the head of nearly everything of "Ben and Arthur": Director, writer, producer (also EXECUTIVE producer!), caster, lead star- you name it, he did it. And he (Mraovich) sucks more than anyone has ever sucked in every department of film making.<br /><br />So what is wrong with this film? Everything. The film is about two gay lovers, Ben (Jamie Brett Gabel) and Arthur (Mraovich- *groan*). Ben and Arthur want to get married in a world where everyone basically hates gay people. To make things worse, Ben's crazy "ex-wife" (they don't exactly divorce), Tammy (Julie Belknap) is steaming mad that Ben's left her for another man and demands Ben that they get back together (saying that she can be gay, too!) and Arthur's Christian devoted, excessively hypocritical, equally batty as Tammy brother, Victor, is hell bent on making Arthur turn straight and then try to kill him after he gets kicked out of his church.<br /><br />The film is absolutely chock a block with so many goofs (ie. Ben and Arthur fly to Vermont to get married- they go there on Alaska Airlines and Vermont has palm trees; they fly back on a FedEx cargo plane- hope they were comfy in a wooden crate, plus many, many more) and plot holes to boot (Victor calls killing Arthur "The Final Plan" which later changes to "The Final Deed"; Arthur and the private (intern) detective drive the same car, blah, blah, blah). The "actors" are all very bad and are way, way over the top; the script is laughably horrible(one such example is "I don't make sense? You don't make sense! I make sense, that's who makes sense!") and there so much more wrong with the "movie" that I can't write them all down.<br /><br />However, the most laughable yet unbelievable thing about "Ben and Arthur" is that Sam Mraovich thinks that he has created something that is truly fantastic (see his fake reviews for "Ben & Arthur" and obvious comments by him on YouTube.). Mraovich is narcissistic and his arrogance blinds him from seeing how awful anything with his name on it really is.<br /><br />So, to conclude, forget every bad film that you claim is the worst movie ever- "Ben and Arthur" will knock them right off that title, even Paris Hilton movies look like "The Dark Knight" compared to the monstrosity known as "Ben and Arthur". | 0 |
Phew--I don't what to say. This is a film that could be really good a with a bunch of stoned viewers. Some of the acting reminded me of John Waters' early offerings. Perhaps I should take that back--I don't want to insult Waters' ability as a director/storyteller.<br /><br />I particularly loved the lawyer taking about the "full faith and credibility" clause. It's "full faith and credit," by the way!<br /><br />This also reminds me of "The Conrad Boys," where the main actor is also the writer, director, film editor, etc. Those sort of multi-involved undertakings such as that are probably best left to very seasoned film professionals who would have the technical ability (albeit a stunt, some might say) to pull something off like that. | 0 |
I don't know what it is about this movie- director Sam Mraovich somehow messed up just about every little aspect in this movie. I would normally say that this is a movie that should not exist, but this movie may be the most important of all time. This movie should exist for the sole purpose of being without a doubt 'The Worst Movie Ever Made'. I've seen bad movies in my lifetime, but this somehow breaks what I considered bad into something much more hard to imagine.<br /><br />Everything in this movie is hilarious, but the single funniest thing is that Mraovich himself considers this to be a great movie.<br /><br />Oh wow... | 0 |
Worst film ever, this is a statement that people here on IMDb often throw around. Whether it's an Uwe Boll movie, bad classics like Manos The Hands Of Fate or the latest no brains summer action fest from Michael Bay, people are often quick to jump to the sudden conclusion that on the board they're posting that there is nothing worse in the movie world.<br /><br />I envy these people, because they're blissfully ignorant and unaware of how deep the rabbit hole of crap movie making really goes. There are films out there so bad, so hideous, so unintentionally hilarious and so ridiculous that cults form around them to celebrate their awfulness and their discussion boards are the kindest places on the internet due to everyone agreeing unanimously that said film is really that bad.<br /><br />Ladies and Gentlemen, i present to you Ben and Arthur, an 85 minute gay epic that is so utterly bad that it's a lot like a violent car crash, you know it's awful but you can't stop looking at it. The brainchild of self proclaimed "hollywood actor, director" and may i add beached whale Sam Mraovich, this film is legendarily terrible. Let me give you a hint of how ego driven this project was. Mr Mraovich not only directed this film, he wrote it, produced it, executive produced it, scored it, edited it and then finally starred in it. This is a man so blinded by his own ego and so believing of his non existent genius that like someone with an ugly child he fails to recognise just how catastrophic his bastard creation really is.<br /><br />Everything in this film fails on an epic level, the acting is the worst you will ever witness, the plot is the most ridiculous, the editing and cinematography is the most amateur and even the music is like nails on a chalkboard. I'm aware i've gone on a bit of a tangent here, but please believe me that this film is really as bad as i describe it, i would say this film is horse crap squished into a film reel, but the truth is it wasn't even shot on film, it was shot on a digital camcorder not much better than the one sitting in your closet right now gathering dust. Don't get me wrong, i forgive low budgets for films provided the concept is interesting, for example as much as i disliked it The Blair Witch Project proved that low budgets can still lead to an atmospheric interesting film. Ben and Arthur does not have a good concept to fall back on, even if this film was shot on a budget of 20 million with Hollywoods finest actors it would still suck, the plot is that atrocious, and the characters are even worse. One of the main characters Arthur who is portrayed by non other than Sam Mraovich is one of the most whiny loathsome little turds ever put in a film. You'll dislike him within 5 minutes of the start of the film and by the end of the film that hate will have turned into outright loathing. Apparently Mr Mraovich forgot that we're supposed to root for the hero.<br /><br />I don't want to spoil all the gut busting hilarity you'll experience watching this film (which i urge you not to pay for) so i will give you two tame mild examples of how stupid this film is, tame and mild as in amongst the least offending mistakes in the movie. In one cut we hear one of the main characters say how "they know a good lawyer and will give HIM a call" the shot fades out then fades back in and this HIM they spoke of earlier is actually a woman, quite a spectacular mistake to make in post production i think. The second is simple, seconds after seeing this transsexual lawyer the characters are told to fly to Vermont, we then cut to a shot of a plane landing amongst palm trees in a sunny area. I've never been to Vermont personally but i'm certain you won't find any palm trees there.<br /><br />Imagine this kind of stupid amateur inconsistency stretched to nearly an hour and a half combined with ridiculous dialogue and plot and then multiply it by 10 and it still won't fully prepare you for Ben and Arthur. Imagine the absolute worst film you've seen in your life and imagine it being even worse and you still won't be on the same level as Ben and Arthur, this film is really that bad.<br /><br />However we should be glad in a way, films like this are a true rarity. They give us hope that one day we can become film makers ourselves or that we can be screenwriters. Simply because we'll have a new found sense of confidence due to the fact that we'll know that nothing we produce no matter how amateur could be as much of a suck fest as this.<br /><br />The real worst movie of all time has finally been discovered, and it is called Ben and Arthur. | 0 |
What can I say, this is a piece of brilliant film-making that should have won an Oscar. A copy should be kept safe in a secure vault for posterity. It should be required viewing for all high school students across the world. Sam Mraovich is a genius, perhaps the most genius writer/director/producer/chef/babysitter/walmart greeter to ever grace the cinema world with his art.<br /><br />Where do I begin with this one? Every millisecond of Ben and Arthur was so completely breathtaking! And Mraovich as Arthur, wow, he is so attractive I'm surprised he didn't go for Mr. Universe. I couldn't contain myself during the nude scene. I loaned this movie to my brother and he called me on the phone saying how Arthur's nude scene turned him gay. I am totally supportive of course, because of this film and it's beautifully crafted lessons in tolerance. Why just yesterday I burned down a church and I wrote "for Sam and Arthur" in its smoldering ashes.<br /><br />The cinematography was the best thing about this film. When that Fed-Ex plane took to the skies amid the palm trees of Vermont, I wept! Why, I never even knew they had palm trees in Vermont or that people could travel on Fed-Ex planes before this film. It opened my eyes to a new realm of possibilities. This film inspired me to enroll in Sam Mraovich's school of Screen writing, Acting, Directing, Composing, Casting, Producing, Production Design and Real Estate. I just want to say, "Thank you, Mr. Mraovich. Thank you for bringing this creation into the world. We can never re-pay you enough." | 0 |
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